The Things We Carry | PJM pt 6
SUMMARY: Performance specialist, Mina Seo has made a career out of taking care of everyone else. As BTS throws themselves into comeback preparations, she spends her days managing injuries, recovery plans, and the impossible task of keeping seven overworked artists healthy. What nobody realizes is that she’s becoming increasingly skilled at hiding her own struggles. When an unexpected connection with Jimin begins offering relief neither of them fully understands, it slowly becomes part of their routine. Late-night conversations, shared silences, and a comfort that grows easier to rely on with every passing week. But while Jimin is getting better, Mina isn’t. And sooner or later, someone is going to notice.
WARNINGS: chronic illness, overwork injuries, some medical scenes, slight cursing, eventual smut scene—This story contains a realistic depiction of chronic illness, including rheumatoid arthritis, pain flares, fatigue, hospitalization, and the emotional impact of long-term health conditions.
The first thing Mina heard when she opened her bedroom door was Korean moving too quickly for the hour. It carried up from downstairs in overlapping waves, one voice answering another before the first had finished, laughter cutting through the middle of it, someone calling from farther away as if distance had no bearing on whether anyone could follow the conversation. She paused in the hallway for a moment, hand still on the doorknob, listening with the bleary concentration of someone whose brain had not yet fully agreed to participate in the day.
At HYBE, Korean was manageable. Meetings had structure. People took turns, most of the time. Even when schedules became chaotic, there was usually a clear subject, a clear speaker, and enough professional restraint for Mina to follow what was being said without constantly having to translate the rhythm as much as the language…This was not that.
By the time she made it downstairs, the kitchen was already awake. Morning light spilled across the counters, a pan hissed softly on the stove, dishes had begun accumulating beside the sink, and half the island had been overtaken by ingredients that suggested several breakfast plans had been started at once and none of them had been formally agreed upon. The members moved around one another with the casual awareness of people who had shared too many kitchens, dorms, hotel suites, and waiting rooms to require much explanation. Someone reached past someone else for chopsticks. Someone moved a mug two inches to the left without looking. Someone answered a question that had been asked in another part of the room entirely. This was way more chaotic than she was used to. Her mornings started slow and quiet. Alone. In her own apartment (or hotel room). This was the opposite of that.
Mina stopped just inside the doorway and tried to work out whether there was an actual discussion happening or whether she had walked into the middle of seven unfinished thoughts.
Jimin noticed her first. He was standing near the island with a mug in one hand, listening to Namjoon and Hoseok talk across each other while Jungkook attempted to correct a detail from the stove. His gaze shifted toward her, and the slight lift of his mouth was enough to make her feel as though she had been expected rather than merely observed entering the room.
Several greetings followed, all at once, and Mina lifted a hand in return as she crossed toward the island. “Morning. Is it this energetic every morning?” She laughed a bit, rhetorical question filling the space.
“We’re making breakfast,” Jungkook said, as if that explained the state of the counters.
“You’re making several possible breakfasts,” Mina corrected, looking around the kitchen. “That’s different.”
Jin, who had been searching through a drawer near the sink, glanced over his shoulder. “You’re welcome to take over.”
“I’ve been awake for all of seven minutes. Don’t start.”
That earned a laugh from Hoseok, and for a brief moment Mina thought she might actually be able to settle into the conversation. Then Taehyung said something from the far side of the kitchen, Jungkook answered before Mina had caught the full sentence, Namjoon added a correction, and Yoongi made a dry comment into his coffee that caused three of them to laugh while Mina stood there holding an empty mug and wondering how the topic had moved from breakfast to something involving penalties, a camera crew, and what sounded suspiciously like a complaint about socks.
She waited for the conversation to catch up in her head….It did not.
Instead, the conversation widened around her, quick and familiar and full of references she had no context for. She caught individual phrases easily enough, but they arrived without the surrounding structure she needed to make them useful—Breakfast. Filming. Yesterday. No, not that one. Hyung, you said it first. Why would that count? Someone mentioned the lake. Someone else objected. Jungkook sounded personally betrayed by whatever was being suggested. The details slid past her too quickly to organize.
Mina stared down into her empty mug.
Jimin moved beside her and reached for the coffee pot. “You missed an argument.”
“It started as a breakfast argument.”
“Then it became a filming argument.”
“Now I think it’s about whether Jungkook can be trusted near water before lunch.”
Mina looked up. “Can he?”
Jimin considered this with visible seriousness. “Probably not.”
“I heard that,” Jungkook said from the stove.
“You were meant to,” Jimin replied.
Mina accepted the coffee Jimin poured for her and took a grateful sip before turning back to the room. “Right. I need one person to tell me what’s happening, because I understood breakfast, lake, and socks, and I’m not convinced those belong in the same sentence.”
There was a brief pause before the kitchen erupted in laughter.
Jungkook pointed at Namjoon. “He started it.”
Namjoon looked genuinely wronged. “That is not an explanation.”
“It is not even close to the truth.”
Mina raised her mug slightly. “One at a time, please. You lot speak like subtitles are optional.”
That made Taehyung laugh into his coffee, and even Yoongi’s mouth twitched as he leaned back in his chair. Namjoon, perhaps out of mercy, started again at a slower pace, explaining that production had sent over a revised outline for the morning’s filming. The members were supposed to cook breakfast together on camera later in the week, but someone had suggested doing a practice run before filming began, which had then somehow become a debate about whether practicing ruined the natural chaos production was hoping to capture.
“That,” Mina said after listening carefully, “is the most ridiculous professional concern I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s valid,” Hoseok said.
“It might be,” Jimin said, though his expression gave him away before he finished speaking.
Mina turned toward him. “Don’t you start as well.”
“You are absolutely not being neutral. You’re enjoying this.”
He smiled into his mug, making no attempt to deny it.
The conversation resumed after that, though with slightly more effort made to keep her inside it. Namjoon slowed down when he caught himself speaking too quickly. Hoseok repeated something when Taehyung interrupted over him. Jungkook leaned across the island to clarify a word Mina had missed, only for Jin to correct his explanation because, apparently, Jungkook had misunderstood the original point as well.
It should have been frustrating. In some ways, it was…But it was also strangely comforting to realize that nobody treated her confusion like failure. Nobody looked surprised when she asked for something to be repeated. Nobody made her feel as though professional fluency required her to keep up with seven people speaking over one another before breakfast. They simply adjusted, sometimes badly, sometimes with unnecessary commentary, but with enough ease that Mina found herself relaxing into the mess of it.
At some point, Taehyung slid a plate toward her without pausing his conversation with Jin.
Mina looked down at it, then over at him. “Is this mine?”
He nodded as though the answer should have been obvious.
“You were going to forget.”
Several members objected at once.
Mina pointed at the room with her chopsticks. “See, this is exactly what I mean. One accusation at a time.”
Jimin laughed beside her, and when she glanced over, he was already looking at her with that expression she had started noticing more often lately, as though he was quietly entertained by the way she handled them and far more interested in watching than joining in.
“What’s that look?” she asked.
His eyes widened with exaggerated innocence. “What look?”
“You absolutely have a look.”
Jin spoke without glancing up from his plate. “He has many.”
“Hyung.” jimin protested with no real bite.
Mina smiled despite herself and turned back to her breakfast before Jimin could defend himself. Around them, the kitchen continued moving in its own peculiar rhythm. People ate standing up, sat down, got back up again, stole pieces of food from plates that were not theirs, corrected each other’s memories, and restarted conversations everyone else thought had already ended.
It was nothing like a staff breakfast. It was nothing like a meeting. It was not even particularly restful. But as Mina sat there with coffee warming her hands and the morning unfolding messily around her, she began to understand that living with BTS was going to be far more complicated than working with them.
The front door opened before she could think much further on it, and the sound of production staff arriving shifted the room almost immediately. Chairs scraped back. Someone checked the time. Someone else asked where the call sheet had gone. Namjoon stood, already reaching for the version of himself that led rooms with cameras in them, and the loose domesticity of breakfast began reorganizing itself into the first official filming day.
Mina took one last sip of coffee and watched the change happen in real time. The retreat had begun.
By the time production finished setting up, the house no longer felt entirely like a house. The breakfast dishes had been cleared away, the counters wiped down, and the easy disorder of the morning had been pushed to the edges of the room to make space for camera equipment, lighting cases, wireless microphones, and staff moving through the living area with the quiet efficiency of people who had done this hundreds of times before. The change was subtle. A place that had felt lived in twenty minutes earlier now carried the familiar tension of a set waiting to begin.
Mina stayed near the kitchen island with her tablet tucked against her side, close enough to hear the briefing but far enough away that she would not accidentally end up in the middle of filming. It was a position she knew well. Available if needed. Invisible if not. Unfortunately, the members had never been particularly respectful of invisibility.
Jungkook noticed her standing apart within seconds and frowned as though she had broken some rule everyone else had been told about. Before he could say anything, Taehyung glanced over and patted the empty space beside him on the couch without interrupting whatever he had been saying to Hoseok. The gesture was so casual that Mina almost ignored it on principle, but then Jimin looked back as well, his attention catching hers briefly before he shifted to make more room.
Mina sighed under her breath.
“You lot are very difficult to avoid,” she muttered, crossing the room.
Jin, who was seated at the end of the couch, looked entirely too pleased. “We’re charming.”
“That is not the word I’d use.”
The producer began speaking before anyone could argue, which was probably for the best. The concept for the first day was simple enough. The morning would begin with a team-based mission around the property, something light and domestic rather than aggressively athletic, because the retreat was supposed to feel like rest even if everyone involved knew filming was still filming. The points earned during the mission would decide which ingredients each team could use for lunch. After lunch, the schedule would pause for recovery blocks, individual interviews, and downtime before the afternoon segment.
Mina listened carefully, her attention sharpening at the mention of the recovery window. That was where her day truly began. Namjoon’s ankle needed checking before any outdoor filming. Yoongi’s shoulder program had to stay consistent. Jimin still had hip work scheduled, including TENS later in the day, and the others would need mobility and soft tissue maintenance if production insisted on turning relaxation into content.
The producer’s Korean was clear and measured, easy enough to follow even while she added notes to her tablet. The members were less helpful.
The second questions opened, the room filled with overlapping voices. Someone wanted clarification on teams. Someone else wanted to know whether ingredient trades were allowed. Hoseok asked a sensible question that immediately got buried beneath Jungkook objecting to a hypothetical rule violation that had not yet happened. Namjoon tried to reorganize the discussion and accidentally gave three more people an opening to speak at once.
Mina stared at her tablet, then at the room, then back at her tablet.
Beside her, Jimin leaned slightly closer without taking his eyes off the producer. “They’re asking if stealing ingredients counts as strategy.”
Mina blinked. “That’s what this is about?”
“I think Jin hyung is arguing that bad cooking should count as a penalty.”
Mina took a second to process that, then nodded. “That one I support.”
Jimin’s smile appeared quickly, private enough that it did not interrupt the briefing. “I thought you might.”
Production eventually regained control, though Mina suspected it had less to do with authority and more to do with everyone running out of breath. Teams were announced, filming routes explained, and microphones adjusted. The room shifted again as the members stood, stretching and joking while staff moved around them.
Mina remained seated for a moment longer, reviewing the recovery schedule she had already built into the gaps between filming. The retreat, she was beginning to understand, was not going to be less work. It was simply going to be work with more witnesses.
When she looked up, Jimin was waiting near the edge of the living room. Not hovering. Not obviously. Just waiting.
Mina lifted an eyebrow. “What?”
He nodded toward the front doors, where the others were already gathering for the first mission. “You coming?”
She gave him a look. He smiled as if he had won something. Mina stood, tablet in hand, and followed him toward the rest of the group as the cameras began rolling.
The first mission was explained with the kind of optimism only production staff seemed capable of maintaining around BTS. The rules, at least, sounded simple at the beginning—The members would divide into pairs for a telepathy-style game designed to test how well they knew one another after years of living, working, travelling, performing, arguing, and apparently misremembering the same stories in seven different ways. Each pair would sit back-to-back with small whiteboards. Production would ask a question. Both people would write an answer. Matching answers earned points, and points would later be exchanged for lunch ingredients.
Mina thought it was a good concept. Safe, first of all, which immediately made it better than anything involving running, climbing, jumping, throwing, or allowing Jungkook to interpret the phrase “light activity” with the enthusiasm of a man who considered moderation a personal insult.
It was also practical from a filming perspective. The members were funny when left to talk their way into problems, and this game seemed designed almost entirely to let them do exactly that.
Most importantly, it did not require her. She remained near the edge of the living room with her tablet in one hand, reviewing the recovery blocks she had scheduled after lunch..
Then one of the producers said, “We’ll have four teams.”
Mina looked up. So did several members. There was a brief silence while everyone arrived at the same mathematical problem—Seven members. Four teams. One missing person.
Mina glanced toward the production staff, expecting them to explain that one member would rotate through rounds or act as host. That was usually how these things worked. Somebody would sit out, complain loudly about sitting out, then become far too invested in everyone else’s answers.
Before the producer could clarify, Jungkook turned around and pointed at her, t“I’ll take Mina.”
The room shifted around her. Mina blinked, “I beg your pardon?”
Jungkook looked genuinely confused by her confusion. “For the team.”
“I understood that part.”
“Then why do you look like that?”
“Because I’m not playing.”
“You’re in the house,” he said, as if that settled the matter.
Several members immediately began talking at once. Jin objected on the grounds that Jungkook did not get to claim people before teams had been assigned. Hoseok wanted to know whether Mina counted as a member for scoring purposes. Taehyung seemed mostly interested in whether she would be allowed to use medical knowledge against them, which Mina found flattering and mildly concerning. Namjoon attempted to bring the conversation back to the actual rules while simultaneously asking production whether staff participation had been approved.
Yoongi, from his place on the couch, looked at Mina over the rim of his coffee and said, “You should run while you can.”
Unfortunately, he was probably right. Mina looked toward the producer, hoping for intervention from the only people in the room still operating under the assumption that production schedules mattered. The producer glanced between Mina and the members before smiling in the careful way people smiled when they realised unexpected content had just been handed to them for free.
“If Mina is comfortable participating, we can include her.”
Seven faces turned toward her.
Mina stared back at them, “Absolutely not.”
Jungkook’s face fell with such immediate disappointment that it felt unfair.
Jin leaned forward. “It’s only the first mission.”
“That is not the compelling argument you think it is.”
“You’ll be with one of us.”
“That is also not reassuring.”
Taehyung lifted his hand. “I vote yes.”
“Then why did you ask us?”
The conversation might have continued indefinitely if Namjoon had not quietly pointed out that including Mina made the teams even and would avoid having one member sit out for the first filming segment. It was the sort of reasonable explanation she disliked because it made arguing feel petty, particularly when the producer added that she could step out after the first round if she preferred.
Mina looked down at her tablet, then at the recovery schedule she had already rearranged twice that morning, then back at the room full of men watching her with varying degrees of hope, amusement, and badly concealed anticipation.
“You lot are exhausting,” she said eventually.
Jungkook grinned in victory.
“It sounded like me being bullied.”
Production accepted that as consent. Teams were drawn from a small bowl a few minutes later, because apparently allowing the members to choose partners would have taken the rest of the morning and possibly ruined several friendships. Names were called one by one. Jin ended up with Namjoon, which produced immediate concern from both of them for entirely different reasons. Yoongi and Hoseok were paired together and looked quietly pleased with the efficiency of it. Jungkook drew Taehyung, prompting both of them to declare victory before understanding the questions.
Then the producer unfolded the final slip, “Jimin and Mina.”
The room reacted before Mina did. Jin looked down at his board with a smile he did not bother hiding quickly enough. Jungkook made a pleased sound under his breath. Hoseok glanced between them and then immediately looked away, which was somehow worse. Mina chose to ignore all of them. Jimin, to his credit, only shifted on the couch to make space beside him.
“You okay with this?” he asked quietly. The question was low enough that the microphones might not catch it cleanly beneath the noise of everyone else getting settled.
Mina glanced at him. There was no teasing in his expression now, only a kind of careful attention that made her want to look away before she gave too much of herself back.
“It’s a game about knowing people,” she said. “You lot have known each other for half your lives. I’m about to embarrass myself on camera.”
“You know more than you think.”
“That sounds dangerously optimistic.”
“It’s one of my better qualities.”
She gave him a look, and he smiled as though he had been aiming for exactly that.
They settled back-to-back on the floor in front of the couch, whiteboards balanced on their knees while production adjusted the camera angles. Mina could feel the warmth of him through the thin space between their shoulders, close enough that every small movement registered. It should have been distracting for obvious reasons. Instead, what unsettled her most was how quickly the position felt familiar.
The first question placed Mina as the subject:
If Mina could choose any breakfast, what would she pick?
Mina stared at the board and nearly laughed. This, at least, was easy. She wrote her answer quickly, while Jimin, behind her, made a thoughtful sound that immediately made her suspicious.
“Don’t overthink,” she warned.
“You don’t know what I’m writing.”
“I know you’re overthinking.”
His laugh moved through his back into hers. When production called time, Mina revealed her board.
Jimin lifted his a second later.
Tea. Toast. Something boring.
The room erupted. Mina turned halfway around, offended despite the fact that they had technically matched. “Boring?”
Jimin looked entirely unrepentant. “Am I wrong?”
“Would you have picked something exciting?”
“That is hardly the point.”
Jin leaned over to read the board and laughed. “He gets the point.”
“I should get extra for accuracy,” Jimin said.
“You should get deducted for attitude.”
Production awarded them the match. Mina did not thank them.
The next round switched subjects, and Jimin had to write his own answer while Mina guessed. The question:
what he would do first on a completely free day with no schedules, no cameras, and no responsibilities.
The room immediately became noisy with opinions. Mina capped her marker and thought about it longer than she expected to. There was the obvious answer, the one most people might give because it fit the version of Jimin they saw from a distance. Sleep. Dance. Eat. Call someone. Go shopping. Visit the members.
But she thought of his apartment instead, of the way he had talked late into the night without seeming to notice the time passing, of how often he sought people out without making it look like need. She thought of the way he had admitted missing the members on his solo tour, not dramatically, not as a confession, simply as a truth that had shaped the experience of standing alone.
Find someone to spend it with.
When the boards turned, Jimin’s answer read:
See the members. Or someone comfortable.
For a moment, the room made the kind of noise people made when an answer landed a little closer than expected. Jimin glanced over his shoulder.
Mina lifted an eyebrow. “What?”
“That is not a nothing face.”
“I noticed.” The comment was quiet enough that it could have passed as part of the game, but Mina still looked away first.
The questions continued from there, growing increasingly specific and increasingly designed to provoke arguments.
Who would your partner trust to cook dinner without supervision?
What item would your partner forget when travelling?
Which member does your partner scold most often?
That last one caused immediate shouting. Mina did not need perfect Korean to understand that every single member believed he had been wrongfully accused of something.
This time Mina was the subject again, which meant she had to write the true answer while Jimin guessed. She sat with her marker hovering above the board as six conversations happened around her at once. Jungkook was objecting to being named by two different teams. Jin was insisting that scolding and loving guidance were not the same thing. Namjoon attempted to ask whether professional scolding counted, which made everyone turn toward Mina as though she were personally responsible for the category existing.
Mina looked at Jimin over her shoulder. “What did Namjoon just ask?”
“Whether your work scolding counts.”
Jimin’s mouth curved. “Then the answer is everyone.”
“That won’t fit on the board.”
“Because statistically it’s safest.”
She considered this for half a second, then wrote Jungkook in English because she did not trust herself to spell quickly in Korean while everyone was still arguing over the moral definition of being told to stretch properly. Behind her, Jimin wrote something. When the boards flipped, his answer matched hers. Jungkook stood up.
Mina immediately pointed at him. “Don’t start. You proved us right by standing.”
That ended the argument for approximately three seconds before everyone began laughing, including Jungkook, who sat back down with the deeply wounded dignity of someone who knew the accusation was fair.
The game became easier after that, not because Mina suddenly understood every reference or because the members slowed down consistently enough for her to catch everything, but because Jimin began quietly filling in the gaps without making a performance of it. A phrase here. A name there. A murmured explanation when an inside joke clearly belonged to a decade she had not been present for. He never made her feel as though she had missed something obvious. He simply handed her the missing piece and let her place it herself.
By the fifth question, Mina realised they were doing better than she had expected.
By the sixth, she realised Jimin was enjoying himself immensely.
By the seventh, she was enjoying herself too.
The final category appeared on the monitor: When overwhelmed.
Mina felt the shift in the room before anyone spoke. The other questions had invited teasing, complaints, and arguments over technicalities. This one invited observation, which was far more dangerous. The producer explained that each team would answer twice. First, one partner would write what they did when overwhelmed while the other guessed. Then they would switch.
Mina was the subject first. She uncapped her marker slowly.
The obvious answer came to her immediately because it was the truth she let people see. She worked. She organised. She found something useful to do with her hands until the rest of her had somewhere to put itself. So she wrote: Keep busy.
Behind her, Jimin remained quiet. The silence lasted long enough that Mina became aware of it.
When production called time, she lifted her board. Jimin raised his a second later. Pretends she isn’t.
The room quieted around them in a way that did not feel staged. The answers did not match. Not technically. Production moved on after a moment, awarding no point, but nobody rushed to joke over it the way they had with the earlier questions. Mina looked at Jimin’s board longer than she meant to, the black marker letters sitting there with uncomfortable accuracy—Pretends she isn’t.
It was not the answer she had written. It was not wrong either.
Behind her, Jimin shifted slightly, and she could tell without looking at him that he had realised the same thing. The producer cleared their throat gently and moved to the second half.
Now Jimin was the subject. Mina stared at the blank board in her lap.
She had already answered this in another form, earlier in the game, but the wording made it feel different now. What did Jimin do when he was overwhelmed? She thought of the apartment again, of the quiet after midnight, of his voice when he talked about solo touring and how strange it had been to stand backstage without the members nearby. He did not always say he needed people. Sometimes he made it look like checking in. Sometimes he made it look like curiosity. Sometimes he simply drifted toward the places where someone else was already sitting.
Mina wrote: Finds people.
When production called time, Jimin lifted his board.
This time the room responded warmly, several members laughing in recognition while Hoseok reached over to pat Jimin’s shoulder. The answers matched easily enough for the point, but Mina barely heard the producer announce it.
Jimin turned slightly, just enough to look at her. Their shoulders brushed. Neither of them moved away. For once, Mina did not have anything clever to say.
The final scores were counted while the room reorganised around them. Jimin and Mina had earned enough points for vegetables, rice, and one decent protein option, which was apparently considered respectable for a team that included someone who still did not understand three of the questions.
The others began arguing about ingredient strategy almost immediately.
Mina capped her marker and set the board aside. Jimin leaned closer as everyone else shifted toward the next part of filming.
She looked at him. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
His smile came quickly, but there was still something thoughtful beneath it, something left over from the final question. Mina saw it. So did he. Neither said anything about it.
Instead, she stood and brushed invisible dust from her trousers while Jungkook shouted from across the room asking whether rice could be traded for meat, and the entire group was swallowed back into the noisy, ridiculous business of trying to earn lunch.
The second mission began with ingredient cards spread across the coffee table and seven members taking lunch far more seriously than Mina had expected. To be fair, production had made the stakes sound dramatic. Each team would keep the basic ingredients they had earned during the telepathy game, but the second mission would determine whether those ingredients became an actual meal or something everyone would spend the rest of the day pretending to enjoy for the sake of the cameras.
The new game was called the Household Relay, though Mina suspected that title had been chosen mainly because it sounded more organized than whatever was about to happen.
The rules were sounded simple: Each team would move through three stations set up around the house, earning bonus cards at each one. Those cards could be exchanged for sauces, side dishes, better cuts of protein, additional vegetables, or cooking privileges. Production emphasized that the relay was not athletic, which Mina appreciated, though the warning seemed aimed mostly at the members who had already begun stretching as if table setting required hamstring preparation.
Jungkook, to his credit, was not one of them. He had gone quiet in the way he sometimes did when a task clicked into place for him, crouched near the coffee table with Taehyung while sorting their cards into categories. Mina had seen that focus before in training rooms and rehearsal footage, the way playfulness could fold away when he decided something was worth doing properly. He was still smiling, still answering Taehyung’s occasional comments, but his attention kept returning to the cards, already calculating which ingredients could become something workable. Mina found herself watching for a second longer than she meant to.
“You look impressed,” Jimin said beside her.
“I’m always impressed when people take food seriously.”
“Jungkook takes winning seriously.”
“He also knows what he’s doing.”
Jimin followed her gaze to where Jungkook had begun explaining something to Taehyung with a level of detail that made the younger man’s enthusiasm look almost dangerous.
Mina looked back at their own cards and tried to decide whether rice, vegetables, chicken, and whatever dignity remained after being pulled into a Run BTS mission could reasonably become lunch. Jimin crouched beside her, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers when he reached for one of the cards.
“We need seasoning,” he said.
“We need seasoning, something with fat, and ideally another protein option if we don’t want everyone stealing from Jungkook’s team by noon.”
“I think he’s already planned three meals and a backup.”
Jimin laughed quietly, and Mina allowed herself a small smile before production called the first teams forward.
Their first station was set up in the kitchen, where covered bowls had been lined along the island. Each pair had to identify five ingredients by smell alone and then choose two to keep as bonus cards. It sounded easy until the first team stepped up and immediately began arguing over whether one bowl contained garlic, onion, or something that had once stood near garlic emotionally.
Jin and Namjoon went first. Jin identified sesame oil before the cloth had fully lifted. Namjoon took longer with the second bowl, not because he was wrong, but because he seemed determined to justify his answer with enough context to turn dried kelp into a philosophical inquiry. By the time they finished, Jin had earned their team two seasonings and a headache.
Yoongi and Hoseok moved through the station with quiet efficiency, conferring in low voices and wasting almost no time. Mina watched them earn soy sauce and chili flakes with the sort of calm competence that made the entire process look suspiciously easy.
Jungkook and Taehyung were next, and if anyone expected chaos, Jungkook ruined it by being annoyingly good. He leaned over each bowl, identified the ingredients with quick certainty, and listened when Taehyung caught something he had missed. The two of them earned ginger and sesame oil without much difficulty, though Taehyung did spend several seconds insisting that one mystery bowl had “a suspicious personality,” which production seemed delighted by.
When Jimin and Mina were called forward, the kitchen still carried traces of everyone else’s guesses. Soy sauce, chili, ginger, oil, dried seafood, garlic. The scents layered together in a way that made the challenge harder than it should have been.
Mina leaned over the first bowl and closed her eyes.
Jimin watched her. “You look very serious.”
“This is the most important thing I’ve done all morning.”
“The telepathy game meant nothing to you?”
“The telepathy game did not decide whether I have to eat under-seasoned chicken on camera.”
He laughed but focused when she lifted the first cloth. They worked better together than Mina expected. Jimin caught the soy sauce immediately. Mina identified ginger and sesame oil. They disagreed over one bowl long enough for Hoseok to start laughing behind them, but when Mina finally realized it was doenjang, Jimin accepted the correction with the solemnity of someone narrowly avoiding public disgrace—They chose sesame oil and gochujang as their bonus cards.
“Now we have lunch,” Mina said as they returned to the others.
Jimin looked far too pleased with himself. “We had lunch before.”
“We had ingredients. Those are not always the same thing.”
The second station was outside on the deck, where production had set up a long table covered with items for a filming-day basket. Teams had to choose eight things they believed would be useful during an afternoon outdoor shoot. Some were obvious: water bottles, sunscreen, wet wipes, towels, a portable battery. Others seemed designed purely to cause arguments, including a frying pan, a decorative lantern, three different hats, a blanket too small for more than one person, and a single sock nobody wanted to touch.
Mina understood the trick immediately. The challenge was not about choosing the most amusing items. It was about thinking past the next ten minutes.
She reached for water first, then sunscreen, wet wipes, towels, and the portable battery. Jimin selected the blanket, then hesitated over the first-aid kit at the same time Mina did.
Their hands nearly met above it. Only nearly. Still, both of them paused for a fraction of a second, long enough for Mina to become aware of how careful they had become with each other in small, unspoken ways. Jimin withdrew first, letting her take it, and the moment passed quickly enough that the cameras probably caught only two people reaching for the same object in a practical game. Mina placed the kit into the basket.
“Always prepared,” Jimin murmured.
“That is literally why I’m here.”
His smile softened at the edge, though he wisely did not comment on it.
Their final item became a portable speaker after Jimin argued that morale counted as practical. Mina disagreed, then allowed it anyway because his argument was delivered with enough confidence to be irritatingly persuasive.
Jin inspected their basket when they passed, “No food?”
“You should always bring emergency food.”
“That is exactly the sort of thing you would say.”
Mina looked at their basket, then at Jimin. Jimin looked back at her. They both turned to the table and swapped the speaker for protein bars.
From the other side of the deck, Jin looked deeply satisfied.
“I hate that he was right,” Mina muttered.
“He usually is about food.”
By the final station, everyone had stopped pretending the relay was casual. The dining room had been rearranged while they were outside, the long table cleared except for a tray placed carefully at one end. On it sat a full lunch setting: bowls, chopsticks, spoons, folded napkins, small dishes of sauce, a water glass, a plate angled slightly toward the camera, and several side dishes arranged with the kind of precision that made Mina immediately suspicious.
Production explained that each team would have ten seconds to study the tray before it was covered. After that, they would have to recreate the arrangement from memory using identical items from a second table. Accuracy would earn ingredient upgrades.
The members reacted with immediate confidence. Of course they did.
Years of choreography, stage marks, camera blocking, and formation changes had made all of them sharper than most people would expect at remembering placement. Mina watched Jin and Namjoon go first, both of them arguing softly over the exact position of a spoon while somehow managing to score well despite disagreeing through most of the task. Yoongi and Hoseok were quieter, splitting the tray between them with the efficiency of people who understood each other’s strengths without needing to discuss them. Jungkook and Taehyung moved quickly when their turn came, Jungkook remembering the practical layout while Taehyung caught two visual details that had slipped past everyone else.
By the time Mina and Jimin stepped forward, she could feel the room expecting the members to have the advantage. She understood why. She also found it faintly amusing.
The tray was uncovered. Ten seconds began. Mina looked once and let the image settle.
She did not try to memorize it as a list. Lists were too slow. Instead she took in the shape of it: the balance of the bowls, the diagonal line from glass to plate, the slight turn of the chopsticks, the distance between the red sauce dish and the folded napkin. It was not so different from learning spacing in a studio, from marking where a shoulder should angle, where a foot should land, where another dancer’s arm would be in relation to her own when the music changed.
Her body remembered that kind of seeing, even if it no longer let her use it the same way. The way she would make shapes in the mirror all those years ago in the studio.
The tray was covered. Jimin leaned closer as they turned toward the second table. “Sauce dishes at the top?”
“Red one slightly left of centre,” Mina said, already reaching for it. “Dark one above the spoon, but not in line with it.”
He paused. Mina placed the first dish, then adjusted it half an inch.
“The plate was angled,” she continued. “Not straight. Toward the camera.”
Jimin followed her instructions, his expression shifting from concentration into something more openly surprised when she corrected the chopsticks before he had even finished setting them down.
“The napkin fold was facing the wrong way on the example table.”
“You noticed the napkin fold?”
“I spent most of my childhood being told my left foot was three centimetres too far forward. A napkin fold is hardly going to defeat me.”
The sentence slipped out before she had time to think about it, carried by concentration rather than intention. Mina was ready reaching past him to move the spoon closer to the bowl, her attention fixed on the table in front of them, so she missed the way Jimin’s expression changed.
Jimin looked at her for a moment longer than the task required. He knew she had danced. She had told him that much in his apartment, curled into the corner of his couch with her knees tucked beneath her, speaking about it as though it belonged to another lifetime. She had admitted wanting it professionally, admitted the career change, then carefully stepped around the rest of the story before he could ask too much.
This was the first time he had heard the shape of it in her voice. Not the fact of dancing, but the discipline of it. The years of correction. Not just a childhood fantasy. The precision. The kind of childhood where three centimetres could matter enough to be remembered years later. Mina did not seem to notice what she had revealed.
“The spoon,” she said, still focused. “It was closer than than.”
Jimin looked at the spoon, then back at her, then back at the table.
Whatever question had risen to the surface stayed there, unanswered, because Mina had already moved on to the water glass, “There.”
He didn’t question her after that.
They worked quickly after that. Jimin remembered the items she had not focused on, filling in the practical gaps while she adjusted spacing and angles with a precision that made one of the camera operators laugh quietly behind the lens. When he hesitated over the placement of the water glass, Mina reached past him and shifted it closer to the upper corner.
When production checked their arrangement against the original, the room grew louder almost immediately. They had missed the spoon by less than an inch, but everything else was close enough that the producer awarded them the highest score of the station. For a moment Mina only looked down at the table, surprised by the small, ridiculous rush of satisfaction that moved through her.
Then Jungkook called out from across the room , accusing them of brings professional experience into a household challenge.
Mina folded her arms and looked at Jungkook. “Are you accusing me of being good at the game?”
“I know.” At least he sounded honest about it.
Jin, who had been watching from beside Namjoon glanced at the recreated tray and then at Mina with a look she recognized immediately, “Centimeters still matter, then?”
Mina’s smile faltered for half a second before she recovered, she hadn’t meant to say that comment earlier, “Oh don’t start.”
Jin lifted both his hands innocently. The exchange passed quickly, swallowed almost immediately by the others arguing over final point s, but Jimin caught it. He caught the way Jin’s comment had landed differently than Jungkook’s teasing, the way Mina understood it without needed explanation, the way her answer sounded less like confusion and more like a warning. Her caught enough of it to understand that Jin had heard something he hadn’t. Or rather, Jin had understood something Jimin only partly knew.
The final ingredient totals were announced while the room was still laughing. Their accuracy at the memory station earned them an upgrade from chicken to beef and an extra vegetable card, which Mina considered a respectable outcome for someone who had begun the morning fully intending to stand behind the cameras with a tablet and avoid being perceived.
Jimin gathered their cards from the table and handed them to her, “You realise we might actually make something good now.”
Mina looked over the ingredients, then toward the kitchen where everyone would shortly become far too invested in lunch. “That depends entirely on whether you lot follow instructions.”
His smile appeared before he could hide it. “Your instructions?”
She tried not to enjoy that as much as she did.
The cooking segment began with considerably more confidence than the ingredient cards deserved. Production moved everyone into the kitchen, where the fixed cameras in the corners were joined by handheld cameras near the island and stove. The teams spread their ingredients across every available surface. The house had been noisy all morning, but the kitchen gave the noise somewhere to land. Cabinets opened and closed. Water ran at the sink. Someone asked where the extra bowls had gone. Someone else answered from the wrong side of the room.
Mina stood beside Jimin at the end of the island, looking down at their ingredients—Rice. Beef. Vegetables. Sesame oil. Gochujang. Protein bars they had not meant to earn but were now quietly grateful for.
“This is workable,” she said.
Jimin glanced over. “That sounded almost positive.”
He smiled and reached for the rice. “Yes, chef.”
Mina gave him a look. “Absolutely not.”
The cameras were close enough to catch him laughing, though the moment disappeared quickly into the general movement of the kitchen. Across from them, Jungkook had already settled into the kind of focused competence that made Mina suspect his team would produce something annoyingly good. He and Taehyung discussed their ingredients in low voices, Taehyung offering suggestions while Jungkook adjusted them into something practical. Jin and Namjoon had taken over a corner near the stove, with Jin explaining a process and Namjoon listening intently enough that Mina briefly wondered whether he was memorising the recipe or preparing to cite it later. Yoongi and Hoseok worked with little fuss, dividing tasks so naturally that they barely needed to speak.
It was oddly satisfying to watch. Not because everyone was perfect in the kitchen. They were not. There were too many people, too many cameras, and too many opinions for anything to happen cleanly. But nobody was helpless. They were perfectly capable adults making lunch badly, well, and loudly in their own ways, and for once she let herself simply be part of it.
Jimin turned out to be easy to cook with. That surprised her more than it probably should have. He listened when she suggested balancing the gochujang with sesame oil. She stepped aside when he reached for the pan without either of them needing to make room deliberately. He passed her the vegetables before she asked. She handed him the plate when he looked for it. Their movements found a rhythm quickly, the kind of quiet coordination that should have taken longer between two people who had not cooked together before.
At some point, he reached behind her for a bowl and his hand brushed lightly against her waist to warn her he was there. Mina shifted without thinking. A few minutes later, she leaned past him for the cutting board and his shoulder pressed briefly against hers. Neither of them commented.
The kitchen was too busy for anyone to make much of it. Touch happened naturally in crowded spaces. People passed behind each other, reached over counters, moved around open drawers and hot pans. The practical intimacy of it should have meant nothing at all. Yet with Jimin, every small contact seemed to settle somewhere under Mina’s skin before fading.
They plated their lunch with only one disagreement about whether Jimin had added too much sauce, which he had, and whether Mina was being overly strict, which she was not. When production called time, the teams presented their dishes with varying levels of pride and defensive explanation. Jungkook and Taehyung’s dish looked infuriatingly good. Jin and Namjoon’s was simpler but clearly reliable. Yoongi and Hoseok had produced something clean, balanced, and quietly smug. Mina and Jimin’s chicken bowl earned approving noises from several people, which Jimin accepted with far too much satisfaction for someone who had argued with her over sauce three minutes earlier.
“You look pleased with yourself,” Mina murmured as they sat down to eat.
His expression softened into something more genuine. “You sound surprised.”
“I’m adjusting my assessment.”
She tried not to smile and failed. The meal itself stretched longer than the cooking segment. Production collected reactions while the members tasted from each other’s plates, traded bites, argued over whose ingredients had been most unfairly limited, and accused one another of hiding better cards during the relay. Mina followed most of it, though when everyone began talking at once she gave up on understanding the full conversation and focused instead on eating while the food was still warm. Jimin noticed after a minute and leaned closer, murmuring enough context to keep her from being completely lost without making her feel as though he was translating for an audience. She appreciated that more than she said.
When filming paused, the room loosened almost immediately. Staff began resetting for the afternoon. The members scattered in the natural aftermath of being fed. Jungkook and Taehyung took their plates toward the sink still discussing seasoning. Namjoon disappeared briefly to check something on his phone. Yoongi claimed a chair near the windows, and Hoseok followed him with the easy intention of someone who meant to sit for five minutes and would probably end up talking for twenty. Jin stayed near the kitchen long enough to make sure leftovers had not been abandoned irresponsibly, then allowed himself to be pulled into a conversation near the living room.
Mina waited until the cameras shifted focus toward the next setup before returning to the island. The fixed cameras were still there, small red lights glowing from the corners, but after a morning of being surrounded by equipment, they had become part of the furniture. Mina was aware of them in the same distant way. Present, but not demanding her attention. Her attention was on the tablet.
She opened the nutrition sheet she had built before the retreat and began updating the lunch column for each member. Not guesses, not vague impressions, but actual intake based on what she had watched them eat. Protein. Carbs. Vegetables. Sodium. Who had eaten enough. Who had picked around half their meal because they were distracted. Who would need something more substantial before the afternoon activity. Who would crash before dinner if she did not plan a snack window between filming and recovery.
This was the part of her work nobody tended to think about. The visible parts were easier to understand. Stretching. Soft tissue work. TENS. Rehab exercises. Taping an ankle. Checking a shoulder. Telling someone to stop pretending a limp was a personality choice.
Nutrition was quieter. Less dramatic. More constant. It mattered anyway.
Mina leaned one hip against the counter and entered the last of the lunch notes. Namjoon would need more carbohydrates before the outdoor segment, especially with the ankle still recovering. Jungkook had eaten well enough but would need a planned snack rather than relying on whatever he found later. Yoongi had done better than she expected, though dinner would need to account for the fact that he tended to under-eat when schedules stretched too long.
Jimin—She paused. Jimin had eaten well. Could use another portion later, but that wasn’t what her mind was stuck on.
He had moved well all morning. Better than she had expected. So had she. The realization arrived slowly enough that she almost missed it. Her wrists were not stiff. Not entirely pain-free, but quieter than they usually were by this point in the day. Her knees did not feel as locked as they often did after a busy morning. Even the familiar heaviness that came from standing too long had stayed muted, present at the edges rather than pressing insistently for attention.
Mina stared at the tablet without reading it. She thought back over the morning—The telepathy game, sitting back-to-back with Jimin for longer than either of them had seemed to notice. The relay, shoulders brushing at the station tables, fingers nearly colliding over the first-aid kit. The kitchen, the constant passing behind one another, his hand briefly at her waist, her shoulder against his, their arms touching as they plated lunch. Touch after touch after touch, none of it planned, none of it dramatic enough to think about at the time.
A shadow fell across the counter. Mina looked up. Jimin stood on the other side of the island, holding two bottles of water. He placed one near her tablet without comment and glanced down at the screen, “Working again?”
“I’m starting to understand that.”
His tone was light, but his eyes moved over her face with the same quiet attention that had unsettled her more than once over the past few weeks. Mina looked back at the tablet before he could read too much.
“I’m updating your intake for the rest of the day.”
“All of you. You still have filming, recovery blocks, and whatever production has planned this afternoon. If you lot eat like this was the only meal that matters, I’m going to have seven dramatic men on my hands by dinner.”
Jimin reconsidered. “Some of us are that bad.”
He smiled, but it did not last long. His gaze dropped briefly toward her hands resting on the tablet, then back to her face.
“You moved better today,” he said eventually.
Mina’s fingers stilled against the edge of the tablet. The comment was quiet enough that it did not feel like he meant it for the room, but the kitchen was not private. Staff passed through the far end with equipment. Someone laughed in the living room. The cameras continued watching from their corners, indifferent to whether a conversation mattered.
“I was cooking lunch, Jimin.”
“Not exactly a medical assessment.”
“I wasn’t assessing you.”
That made her look at him. He held her gaze for a second before glancing down at the bottle between them, “You just seemed easier. During the game, and then in the kitchen. Like it wasn’t hurting you as much.”
Mina knew what he meant before she wanted to. The pact had started as something practical, or at least that was the explanation they had both agreed to use because neither of them had been ready to call it anything else. Touch helped. Contact shifted pain into something less unbearable. They did not fully understand it, but they had accepted enough of it to build rules around it, to make it sound manageable, to make it sound like a choice.
Only today had not felt like a choice. Today it had simply happened. Small, ordinary contacts folded into the movement of the day so naturally that she had not counted them until now. And he was right. Her wrists were quieter. Her knees had not stiffened the way they usually did after a morning on her feet. The pain was still there, held somewhere beneath the surface, but it had softened around the edges until she had almost forgotten to brace for it. Almost normal.
The thought made her grip the tablet a little tighter. Jimin noticed, because of course he did, but he did not push.
“I think it helped,” he said.
Mina let out a careful breath and looked toward the living room, where the others were beginning to gather again, “We were touching all morning.” The words sounded different once she said them aloud.
Jimin’s mouth curved slightly, not quite a smile and not quite teasing. “That was my observation as well.”
“Don’t make it sound like that.”
“Like you’re pleased with yourself.”
His smile appeared properly then, quick and warm enough that she had to look away before it did something inconvenient to her chest.
For a few seconds they stood on opposite sides of the island with the water bottle between them and the knowledge of the morning settling into place. It was quiet enough to ignore if she tried hard enough, but obvious enough that pretending would take effort.
Jimin nudged the bottle a little closer. Mina reached for it at the same time he let go. Their fingers touched—Briefly. The ache in her wrist eased another fraction. This time she did not imagine it.
Jimin’s eyes lifted to hers, and the small shift in his expression told her he had felt something too. Neither of them moved for a second, caught between the ordinary noise of the house and the impossible thing sitting quietly between their hands.
Then someone called for Jimin from the living room. He let go first.
“Yeah.” Mina’s voice came out quieter than she intended.
Jimin stepped back, then paused near the edge of the kitchen. “Don’t forget yourself in the schedule.”
She looked up sharply. He did not wait for her to answer. By the time she found something to say, he had already turned toward the others, leaving Mina with the tablet, the water bottle, and a wrist that hurt less than it had any right to.
That was a long one 🫣 hope you like it tho:)
Like, comment, reblog, share please!!
Taglist: @bbl32 @bb3armira @bjoriis @lumora-the-white @itsluvie @traumaanatomy @joonmonjagi @thedelulusafespace @blue-and-grey-swan @dayquilforthewin @jajabro @ineed-myspace @airwolf92 @alittlelostalittlefound @gemini5991 @jhens-world @sugalarity @bebesnyia7 @lcvesugaa
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
andulkaphoto
dededos
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
snowghoul
