── DROP DEAD | kim seokjin.
pairing: fashion pr! fem reader x idol! kim seokjin
summary: It all started as a silly joke between friends. One harmless unimportant conversation, one name thrown into the mix, and one boring late-night search that should’ve ended after a single Instagram post and not in thousand of hours stalking a famous idol. Looking back, maybe your feminine intuition already knew that the story wouldn’t stop there… because once Kim Seokjin crossed your mind, it seemed impossible for the universe to keep him out of your life.
genre: (fluff). acquaintances—friends-to-lovers. romantic comedy. idol au. lovesick idiots.
warning! ── reader is obsessively and stupidly in love makes you want to puke. mentions of stalking. mentions of anxiety. nonchalant jin era but not really. he’s very shy and cute. a real man. this is very much inspired by candace and jeremy’s relationship (phineas & ferb) — literally like she will gaslight you into thinking he doesn’t like her.
author’s note: okay so i had to delete the smut part because when i paste the story here i realized i reached the limit and i didn’t want to make it a two-part one shot (i do love the smut and the original final i wrote so if u ever wanna see it lmk) i hope u still fuck with it tho i’ve been really excited about this one and i really like how it turned out without the smut too so i hope u enjoy it:( HI guys let’s pretend is the first of august okay?? happy first of the month yay!!!!!!
word count: +20k words.
──── pretty sad for a girl so in love (series)
The first thing you noticed when you stepped into Mina’s apartment was that she had definitely invited more people than her dining table could fit.
There were already six pairs of shoes scattered by the front door, music playing quietly from a speaker somewhere in the living room, and at least three different conversations happening before you’d even taken your jacket off. Someone waved at you from the kitchen, another person you vaguely recognized from college smiled in your direction before going back to whatever story they were telling, and the smell of garlic and takeout filled the apartment.
“She’s here!” Mina called the second she spotted you. She was balancing two bowls in her hands, somehow managing not to drop either of them as she crossed the room. “Finally. I was about to tell everyone you bailed.”
“I said I’d be late,” you laughed, slipping your shoes off. “Some people have actual jobs.”
“So do I.”
“Then act like it,” you joked harshly. “I have you at 10am on a Wednesday asking me to bring ice cream. Sounds very unemployed to me.”
“It was an emergency.” You raised an eyebrow. “The convenience store only had one tub left and you know I need to host perfect hangouts, okay?”
“Yeah, I know you’re a control freak.”
“See?” Mina pointed at you before turning to the rest of the room. “She gets me.”
Haeun looked up from where she was sitting on the floor beside the coffee table, her legs crossed underneath her. “No,” she said, completely unimpressed. “She enables you.”
You laughed as you walked over, dropping onto the empty spot beside her before kissing her cheek.
“That’s what real love means,” Mina said like it was obvious.
“It’s definitely not what it means.” Haeun rolled her yes. Mina disappeared back into the kitchen, already distracted by someone asking where the serving spoons were. “You came empty-handed?” Haeun asked.
“I brought dessert.”
“Where?”
You reached into your tote bag and pulled out two tubs of ice cream, probably already melted. Mina immediately reappeared. “I KNEW I invited the right people.”
“You invited everyone,” you looked around to your friends who all raised an eyebrow. “What? It’s true, I love you guys but really I can’t believe everyone agreed to hangout a Wednesday night. Do you guys need a job or a reference? I can help you with…”
“This is why we leave early when you come to the hangouts.”
“Hey!”
“Agreed.”
An hour later, dinner had turned int a bit of a mess. Half the food and dessert were empty and every plate on the table was being shared whether the person who ordered it liked it or not. You’d barely managed to keep more than three fries on your own plate before Mina reached over to steal another one. She had always being a pain in the ass, specially the days you met her in college together with Haeun— at least the one was more generous and didn’t steal your fries.
“I don’t know why I even bother ordering food for myself.”
“You don’t,” she answered easily, popping the fry into her mouth. “You order food for the community.”
“The community can buy its own.”
“It could.”
“It should.”
“It won’t.” Haeun smiled into her drink. “You promised once you’d became rich you were always going to invite dinner.”
“I’m not rich, even Mina makes more money than me.”
“Doubtful,” your friend smiled.
“You manage the biggest singer in Korea right now, I know you’re making bank.” You pointed at her accusatory.
“I’ve never said I wasn’t making bank,” she said immediately. “I’m just saying probably not as much as you. You had been making big deals later.”
“That’s true,” Jiho said— another close friends of yours— suddenly everyone was having interest in the same conversation. He leaned back in his chair, “how’s work? The glamorous fashion world.”
You laughed. “Doesn’t feel glamorous at all. I spend more time looking at calendars than clothes.”
“What were you working on this week?” Haeun asked.
“A campaign for a luxury brand. I’m working now with some actor I’m not legally allowed to tell yet.”
Mina immediately leaned forward with interest. “I love hearing about celebrity gossip.”
“You literally work for IU. That’s the biggest it can get.”
“She’s too nice, she never reveals anything,” she pouted.
“Maybe because there’s no actual gossip going around,” you tried again.
“You work with more celebrities than me you have to have some.” She insisted.
“I work with their managers,” you corrected. “Literally I’m mostly coordinating schedules between the brand, photographers, stylists, management… making sure everyone’s available on the same day.”
“That sounds significantly less fun.” One of your other friends said. “I thought you just picked pretty outfits.”
“I wish.”
“You don’t even get free clothes?”
“I get emails.”
“I’d rather have the clothes.”
“So would I,” you sighed dramatically and everyone laughed. “But it’s still fun,” you admitted after a moment. “I get to see campaigns come together from the beginning, and when everything actually works it’s really satisfying.”
“You always sound happier talking about work than dating,” Mina pointed at you.
“Maybe because work doesn’t suck as much as dating,” you stated.
“I don’t know what that says about you.”
“Probably something concerning,” Haeun nodded.
Before you could answer, Soomin let out the longest sigh you’d ever heard. “Speaking of dating…” Everyone turned toward her. “I finally went out with that guy from Hinge.”
“The accountant?”
“The accountant.”
“And?”
Soomin stared into the distance for a second. “I don’t think he asked me a single question.”
Haeun frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he spent an hour talking about himself.”
“That’s annoying,” you commented.
“He showed me a spreadsheet.”
There was a beat of silence. “A what?”
“A spreadsheet.”
“For work?”
“No. He tracks every restaurant he’s ever been to.”
Mina blinked and you tried not to laughed with Haeun “Actually…”
“No,” Soomin interrupted before she could finish. “Don’t even start.”
“I was going to say that’s kind of organized.”
“There was a section for him to rate the lighting!” she exclaimed frustrated.
“…Never mind.”
“I spent forty minutes pretending I cared about overhead lighting.”
You couldn’t help laughing. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“It’s a good story.”
The table dissolved into laughter, and once everyone had recovered, the stories started coming one after another. One date had ended with someone accidentally running into their ex halfway through dinner. Another had spent the entire evening talking about cryptocurrency. Someone else admitted they’d been ghosted after what they thought had been the most amazing date ever.
“It feels impossible lately,” Soomin complained, reaching for another slice of pizza. “Either they’re creepy, they just wanna fuck or they’re trying to use you to make their ex jealous.”
“Usually all at once,” Jiho added.
“What about you?” Mina looked over at you. “Any exciting romantic developments?”
You looked up from your plate. “Not really.”
“None?”
“I’ve been on exactly one date this year.”
“The guy from the bookstore?” You nodded. “What happened to him?”
“He was nice but… I don’t know,” you thought about it for a second before shrugging. “He didn’t made me nervous or excited. I guess… he just wasn’t my person.”
“How do you know after one date?” Jiho asked.
“I don’t know.” You smiled a little. “You can usually tell if you actually want to see someone again and I didn’t.”
“So you’re taking a break from dating?” Haeun asked.
“I think so.”
“For how long?” she asked curious.
“I don’t know,” you said simply.
Mina rested her chin in her hand. “I’ve been saying this for years.”
“What?”
“You expect too much for a first date.”
You laughed. “I really don’t.”
“You do.”
“I have standards.”
“You have requirements.”
“I have normal requirements.”
“You eliminated a guy because you thought he was checking his reflection in every window you walked past.”
“He was.”
“You eliminated another one because he called every woman ‘female.’”
“That one was justified.”
“Okay, fair.” She frowned. “But one time you left a date because he was too perfect.”
“He was. He could definitely do better,” you nodded thoughtful.
“You know what?” Haeun grinned. “I support you for that one.”
“But,” Mina continued, refusing to give up, “my point still stands.”
“What point?”
“You’ve built this perfect imaginary man in your head,” she pointed at you. “After your ex boyfriend you’ve just put excuses for every new guy.”
“Not true and I really haven’t.”
“You have.”
“I just don’t want to date someone for the sake of dating.” The room quieted a little, everyone listening now. “I’ve done that before,” you admitted. “You convince yourself maybe the attraction will grow or maybe you’ll eventually have more in common, and then three months later you’re wondering why you stayed. I’d rather be single than settle because everyone thinks I should have a boyfriend.”
Haeun nodded. “I actually agree.”
“You always agree with her.”
“Because she’s right.”
Mina rolled her eyes dramatically. “Fine. I support healthy standards.”
“Thank you.”
“But you need to be a little more open,” she accused you.
“Sure, I’ll try.” You said without making it a big deal.
“I can help if you want me to. I can put you out with some friends.” Her smile started getting bigger.
You already knew where this was going. “No, thank you.”
“I absolutely can. I’m great at matchmaking...”
“Mina.”
“I know a lot of people who would be perfect for you,” she insisted.
“You know people who you think would be perfect for me.” You corrected her.
She ignored you completely. “What about my coworker?”
“No.”
“My cousin’s friend?”
“No.”
“The photographer I met last month?”
“You’ve run out of people already?”
She frowned, pretending to think. “Hm…” Then her face lit up. “Oh.”
“No.”
“What about Jin?”
You looked at her blankly. “…Which Jin?”
“Kim Seokjin.”
You stared at her for a second before laughing. “The idol?”
“Yes, the idol.” She said obvious.
“Mina,” you looked at her incredulous.
“What?”
“I’ve said hello to him, like… three times.”
“So you’ve met,” Mina took it as a win.
“I’ve greeted him.”
“Close enough.”
“It’s really not.”
“You literally worked with Taehyung,” she reminded you.
“I work with brands that hire Taehyung,” you corrected. “Those are two very different things.”
“But you’ve met Jin.”
“I’ve been in the same room as Seokjin.”
“And?”
“And that’s it.”
Haeun smiled, shaking her head. “I don’t even think he’s spoken more than five words to her.”
“He made me show him where the coffee station was once,” you told her. “And I think one time I probably bumped into him accidentally.”
“There you go,” Mina replied triumphantly. “You’re basically family.”
You laughed so hard you nearly spilled your drink. “I don’t even think he’d recognize me if we crossed paths tomorrow.”
“He might.”
“He absolutely would not.”
Mina insisted. “He’s a really nice person. Very shy but I know he would be perfect for you!. Ugh, I need to find an excuse to invite him to some hangouts now…”
“I’ll pass. Thank you.”
Your friend sighed dramatically. Like she had lost the war. “Fine. I tried.”
“You really did,” you said sarcastically.
“I’ll keep looking.”
“Please don’t.”
“Too late.”
By the time someone suggested opening another bottle of wine, the conversation had already moved on to something completely different. Jin’s name disappeared from the room as quickly as it’d come up, buried beneath complaints about work, arguments over which movie they should watch after finishing the dinner and if the next hangout would be this same month or the next one, trying to match schedules.
You didn’t think about him again that night. There wasn’t any reason to. After all, he was just someone you’d crossed paths with a handful of times through work— a polite face attached to brief greetings backstage or at brand events before you both disappeared back into your own schedules. The joke was exactly that: a joke. One of dozens exchanged over dinner that evening, forgotten almost as quickly as it had been said.
At least, that’s what you thought then.
——————————
Your apartment was completely dead by the time you arrived there. You dropped your keys into the ceramic bowl by the front door out of habit, kicked your shoes off somewhere behind you, and stood there for a second, stretching and feeling the weight of the day finally catching up to your body. After spending the last five hours surrounded by people talking over one another, laughing across the dinner table and arguing about movies nobody was actually going to watch, your own apartment almost felt unnaturally still. But you weren’t tired yet. Comfortably full, maybe. Socially exhausted definitely.
You changed into an oversized T-shirt, took your makeup off, tied your hair into a messy bun and wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water, your phone tucked underneath one arm. There were already three new messages in the group chat but you were too lazy to check, maybe it was just Mina planning the next hangout already.
By the time you crawled into bed, the digital clock on your nightstand had already slipped past one in the morning. You should definitely needed to sleep, however, sleep didn’t seem nearly as interested in finding you. You rolled onto your back, staring at the ceiling, thinking about some words that didn’t left your mind the entirely night after the conversation. Mina wasn’t entirely wrong, probably that was the most annoying part.
You really hadn’t been trying. For a while, you’d blamed it on work. Luxury fashion PR wasn’t exactly a nine-to-five job, especially once campaign season picked up. Some weeks you barely had time to eat lunch before someone called to tell you a fitting had been moved, a photographer had cancelled, or a celebrity’s schedule had changed for the third time in two days. It was easier to tell people you were busy than admit dating had quietly slipped to the bottom of your priorities.
But work wasn’t the real reason… or at least not completely. If you were honest with yourself, it had started long before your calendar became impossible. Your last relationship had ended almost two years ago. It didn’t really end in a dramatic way, nobody cheated and nobody threw plates across the room or begged anyone to stay, it had simply stopped working. Between different priorities, missed conversations and the slow realization spending time with someone was actually a big part for it to work, the relationship had quietly unraveled until one day you both admitted what you’d been avoiding for months.
Of course it hurt but the worst part hadn’t even been the breakup itself, it was everything that came after. Friends insisting you “just needed to get back out there,” blind dates, dating apps, conversations that felt more like interviews than actual conversations. Men who spent the entire evening talking about themselves. Men who seemed offended that you actually liked your career. Men who confused confidence with arrogance… Eventually, somewhere along the way, you’d stopped opening the apps, stopped agreeing to dates, stopped looking altogether.
It wasn’t that you’d decided to stay single forever. You’d simply gotten… comfortable in your own world, comfortable with your own routines, comfortable with dinners by yourself, comfortable enough that dating started feeling like another task to squeeze into an already busy week…. But Mina had been right, maybe you had checked out.
You reached for your phone on the bedside table and almost without thinking, you opened Hinge. Your profile was still there with the same pictures of months ago, the same prompts and a handful of likes waiting from weeks ago. You stared at the screen for maybe ten seconds before quietly laughing to yourself.
“Fuck no.” You closed the app.
You turned your phone over in your hands before another thought floated back into your head.
What about Jin? You actually laughed out loud this time. Mina’s ridiculous, you thought.
Of all the people she could’ve named… It wasn’t even that the suggestion was impossible— although it obviously was— it was just… random. You’d met him before… technically. The same way you’d “met” dozens of celebrities through work. A greeting backstage before a fitting, a polite nod while waiting for a meeting room to open, someone introducing you in passing before both of you were immediately pulled in opposite directions.
If you passed each other on the street tomorrow, you doubted he’d recognize you. You weren’t even sure you’d recognize him immediately either. Celebrities always looked different once they were standing three feet away instead of behind professionally edited photos.
Still… Why Seokjin?
You frowned slightly, unlocking your phone again. Purely out of curiosity you typed his name into Instagram. His account appeared immediately. Millions of followers and likes. Well, you couldn’t exactly say Mina had terrible taste. He was ridiculously handsome, that much was obvious.
You spent a minute absentmindedly scrolling through his feed, expecting to lose interest almost immediately. Instead… there wasn’t actually that much to see. A few campaign photos, brand collaborations, professional shoots, some travel and some silly pictures on tour. He looked exactly how you’d expect someone like Kim Seokjin to look. Polished, expensive and almost intimidatingly good-looking.
You were just about to close the app when your thumb drifted to the side to see his tagged posts. There were dozens of pictures and videos he was tagged from fans… One clip couldn’t hurt. It was only twenty seconds. A compilation of him throwing flower petals over him in award shows. You chuckled at his confidence and attitude, he was pretty funny.
“Cute,” you mumbled before catching yourself.
No, not cure. Funny. Endearing. There was a difference.
You scrolled a bit and another reel played. One that looked like it came from some variety show. He was laughing so hard he had both hands over his face, shoulders shaking as someone off-camera kept teasing him about something you didn’t understand. But he was so red and he laughed so loud it was really annoying.
You smiled. Then watched another… and another. One where he was stubbornly refusing to lose a game. One edit where he was winning a game and looked really hot. Another where he somehow managed to make everyone around him laugh within thirty seconds. One where he was confidently explaining something before immediately proving himself wrong.
Your eyebrows lifted slightly. He was… really funny. Not in the polished, media-trained way celebrities sometimes were, just naturally funny, comfortable in his own skin, a little too dramatic. The kind of person who didn’t seem embarrassed about laughing at himself or do something cringe just for the fun of it.
Later you were lying in the exact same position, phone balanced against your knees, smiling at a man you’d exchanged maybe three greetings with over the course of your entire career. You hadn’t even noticed how much time had passed until Instagram reminded you you’d reached your three hours of the day. Your thumb hovered over the screen.
“Holy shit.” You’ve spent three hours watching videos of Kim Seokjin. You lowered the phone onto your chest and stared at the ceiling. “Ah, fuck.”
Now you understood why Mina had said it. Not because he was famous or because he was objectively attractive. From the little you’d seen… He actually seemed exactly like the kind of person you would’ve liked if he’d been anyone else.
Shit.
——————————
The next time you saw Seokjin was not really your doing. It was, for once, the universe deciding to be surprisingly generous. Well… generous was probably a strong word. Convenient, that sounded way better.
The invitation had landed in your inbox earlier that week, forwarded by one of the stylists your agency worked with every few months. It wasn’t a launch party or a brand event, nothing that required speeches, photographers or carefully prepared guest lists. Someone had wrapped up a successful campaign, someone else had just gotten back from a tour overseas, and somewhere along the way the excuse had turned into come over, bring whoever you want and let’s have a drink. Half the people attending knew each other from the entertainment industry, the other half from fashion, and after working in luxury fashion PR for long enough, you’d realized the two worlds overlapped far more than most people imagined. So you decided to attend for once since Mina was going too.
By the time you arrived, the apartment was already buzzing with conversation. Music drifted through the open balcony doors, low enough that people didn’t have to raise their voices over it, and every surface seemed to be covered in bottles, half-empty glasses and small plates of food that everyone kept picking at without remembering what was theirs. Someone from a magazine you occasionally coordinated shoots with greeted you on your way in, another stylist pulled you into a quick conversation about Paris Fashion Week before disappearing again, and not five minutes later you spotted Mina standing near the dining table with a wine glass in one hand, laughing at something a singer beside her had just said.
She noticed you almost immediately. “There you are,” she said, reaching over to squeeze your arm as you walked up. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”
“I almost didn’t,” you admitted with a smile. “I spent all afternoon fixing a schedule because one actor suddenly decided he’d rather shoot in Milan than Seoul.”
Mina winced sympathetically. “Please don’t remind me what was working with actors. I still have PTSD.”
“You’re lucky you got yourself a nice boss.”
“Still stressful sometimes,” she grimaced. “Today I’ve answered twenty-five phone calls since six o’clock.”
“You counted?” You raised your eyebrows, not really surprised.
“I was angry enough to.”
You laughed, taking the glass she silently offered you.“Everything okay?”
She nodded. “Fine now. Everyone was losing their minds because they thought she wasn’t making it in time to a big event after a rehearsal fit. Bitch, I did her schedule, she was going to make it on time.”
“Only took twenty calls.”
“Twenty-five,” she corrected, like it was something it needed to be remembered.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she sighed dramatically before taking a sip of her wine. “I’ve accepted that this is my life now.”
The two of you stayed where you were for a while, talking about work the way people only could when they understood each other’s jobs. Mina complained about artists changing their minds at the last minute, you complained about luxury brands insisting every campaign was somehow the most important project of the year, and somewhere between those conversations someone joined in to tell a story about a photographer who’d accidentally shown up to a shoot in the wrong country. You weren’t sure if he was joking. With this industry, it was genuinely difficult to tell.
At some point your conversation broke apart naturally as people wandered off into smaller groups, and you found yourself listening more than talking, occasionally adding a comment before someone else picked up the thread. It was comfortable, you liked those kinds of gatherings, nobody expected anything from anyone. People drifted between conversations, disappeared onto the balcony, returned twenty minutes later carrying dessert as if they’d never left. People knew each other.
You were halfway through listening to a stylist passionately explain why silver jewelry was making a comeback when the front door opened again. Someone greeted the newcomers loudly enough for half the apartment to glance over.
You looked up too. And there he was.
Kim Seokjin stepped inside with an easy smile, greeting the host before taking a moment to shake hands with someone near the entrance. He looked almost exactly the way you remembered him from the handful of events where your paths had crossed over the years, except this time your brain supplied far more information than it had any right to.
He really giggles like that. The thought appeared before you could stop it… But he really did.
The laugh you’d heard through your phone speakers more times that you would ever admit out loud, it was unmistakable, warm enough that it carried across the room for being too loud. It was strangely disorienting, recognizing something so familiar about someone you barely knew.
You looked away almost immediately. Not because you’d been caught staring— he hadn’t even looked in your direction yet— but because it suddenly felt ridiculous that your first instinct had been to compare him to internet clips.
Get a grip.
You took another sip of your drink and forced yourself back into the conversation happening beside you, although it lasted all of three minutes before your attention wandered again. It wasn’t intentional, not that you would admit anyway. You simply… noticed him more this time.
You noticed that he never interrupted people when they were speaking, even if they were telling a story that was clearly going nowhere. That when someone walked over to say hello, he turned his whole body toward them instead of trying to keep talking to someone else at the same time. Every now and then someone would laugh at something he’d said, but he never seemed interested in becoming the center of the room. If anything, he looked happiest standing slightly off to the side, listening.
It was odd. A month ago you probably wouldn’t have registered any of it. Now every little habit felt strangely familiar, as though you’d skipped several chapters of a book and were only now catching up.
You were still mentally scolding yourself for finding this amusing when someone asked if anybody wanted another drink. You looked down at your empty glass. “I’ll grab one,” you said.
The kitchen was thankfully quieter than the living room. Someone had left the balcony door open just enough for the cool evening air to drift inside, carrying the faint sound of conversation from outside. You set your empty glass beside the sink and reached for one of the bottles lined up along the counter, only realizing someone else was doing exactly the same thing from the opposite side. Your hands bumping into each other a little hard.
You looked up. “So, you finally found your way to the beverage station without any help?.”
The words slipped out before you thought about them. For a second Jin looked almost confused. Then recognition settled across his face and he laughed softly as he blushed slightly.
“I did it all alone.”
“So I’m not imagining it.”
“No,” he smiled, reaching for another glass. “The first time was over coffee, right?.”
“Oh.” You pointed at him. “You asked where it was and then your manager made me guide you to the station.”
“Yeah… that happened.” He chuckled nervously.
“Don’t worry, I know the importance of coffee in the morning.”
Jin nodded in complete agreement. “Thank you. Coffee is the most important thing to survive.”
“And now alcohol. We’re upgrading.” You joked and he smiled.
For a brief moment the conversation settled into a comfortable silence while the two of you poured your drinks. It wasn’t really awkward, just a bit weird.
He glanced toward the living room before looking back at you. “You still work at Étoile?”
The question caught you pleasantly off guard. He knew that?. Maybe he remembered you working with Taehyung a lot. “I do.”
“I wasn’t sure. I thought I recognized you at the Cartier event a few months ago. I wasn’t completely certain.”
“I spend most of those events trying not to look stressed so I probably had a completely different face.” You said truthfully and Jin chuckled.
“You hide it well.”
“I absolutely don’t.”
“You do.”
“I promise I don’t.”
“I’ve only ever seen you looking very calm.”
You laughed. “That’s because if I panic, everyone else starts panicking.”
“So you’re secretly panicking,” he hummed.
“Almost constantly.”
“That actually makes me feel better. I thought everyone in fashion had their lives together.”
You stared at him for a second before bursting into laughter. “I’m sorry… Who told you that?”
“A lot of people?” He obviously lied.
“They lied.”
“So none of you know what you’re doing?” He asked jokingly.
“Oh, we know what we’re doing.” You leaned against the counter with an amused smile. “We just happen to be doing it while answering twelve phone calls, rewriting schedules and praying nobody changes their outfit thirty minutes before a campaign. So we are always panicking while making everything work.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
“What keeps you there then?”
You thought about it for a moment. “I like watching everything come together.”
“The campaigns?”
You nodded. “People only ever see the finished product, but there are so many people behind them. Stylists, assistants, lighting teams, producers, makeup artists… I like being part of that.” He listened without interrupting, his attention resting entirely on you in a way that felt unexpectedly rare. “I don’t know,” you continued with a small shrug. “When something goes well, it’s satisfying.”
“I get that.”
“I would thought so,” you smiled slightly. “Fashion it’s a performance so you should know about that.”
He smiled at that. You liked his smile. “I do. And I know the feeling when people assume performing is only the two hours you’re on stage.”
“But it isn’t.”
He shook his head. “It’s months before that. Rehearsals, meetings, recordings, planning… by the time people finally see something, you’ve been living with it for a long time.”
“I never really thought about it like that,” you hummed.
“I guess we’re both in jobs where everyone only notices the finished product.”
You smiled. “I like that.”
“So do I.”
The conversation wandered from there almost effortlessly. Somehow it turned into travel after he mentioned how often work had him living out of a suitcase, which became a debate over whether airport coffee was actually drinkable, which then led to food recommendations in different cities and also about what was the best dessert to have after a big dinner, and before either of you realized it, the glasses you’d filled at the beginning of the conversation were nearly empty.
You found yourself laughing far more than you’d expected to. Not because he was trying particularly hard to be funny, but because talking to him felt very easy and comfortable.
He listened just as much as he spoke, asked questions that made it obvious he was genuinely interested in the answers, and had a habit of smiling halfway through your stories that somehow encouraged you to keep talking. Every now and then he’d tell one of his own, usually ending it with an expression that suggested he still couldn’t believe it had happened, and you understood almost immediately why people seemed so comfortable around him.
“Hey.” Both of you turned at the sound of Mina’s voice. She was standing in the doorway with an amused smile, looking between the two of you before raising an eyebrow. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said, directing the comment at you. “Apparently someone wants to talk to you about a campaign you did last year. Hey Jin,” she greeted him with a smile he returned.
You blinked a bit confused. “How long have I been in here?”
“I don’t know.” Mina glanced at Jin before looking back at you. “Long enough that I assumed you’d gone home already.”
You laughed, setting your empty glass on the counter. “I should probably go save my professional reputation.”
“Probably.”
You looked back at Jin. “It was really nice talking to you.”
“You too,” he said with an easy smile. “Hopefully next time it won’t be around coffee or water.”
“I can’t promise anything. I like drinks.”
“I guess we’ll find out then.”
You smiled once before following Mina back toward the living room, already letting yourself get pulled into another conversation before you’d made it halfway across the apartment.
The rest of the evening passed with too many conversations happening at once, people arriving and leaving whenever they pleased, someone ordering late-night food nobody needed but everyone ate anyway. You spoke to Seokjin once more before leaving, nothing more than a quick goodbye as people gathered near the front door, and by the time you stepped into the elevator you were convinced that was all the night would become.
It wasn’t until you were driving home with the windows cracked open and the music playing quietly in the background that you realized something had changed. It wasn’t that you’d spent the evening talking to someone super famous, that part genuinely didn’t matter. It was that, somewhere between discussing airport coffee, impossible work schedules and the strange satisfaction of seeing a project finally come together, you’d completely lost track of time.
You couldn’t remember the last conversation you’d had with someone new that had felt so effortless.
And, much to your own surprise, you caught yourself wondering what the two of you would’ve talked about if someone hadn’t interrupted. That thought stayed with you all the way home, quietly settling into the back of your mind.
For the first time in a long while, you found yourself hoping your paths crossed again. And, for the first time ever, you just knew it will happen again.
——————————
You could dress it up however you wanted, tell yourself you were simply becoming more social or that it had been nice meeting new people outside of work, but somewhere between leaving that apartment three weeks ago and accepting yet another invitation you normally would’ve declined, you’d become painfully aware of one very embarrassing fact.
You were trying to see him again. Not in a creepy way, of course… At least, that’s what you insisted every time the thought crossed your mind.
It just so happened that after that night you’d kept in touch with a few of the people you’d met. One of the photographers had sent you a meme after discovering you shared the same hatred for some kind of food, a stylist had invited you to lunch with a couple of mutual friends, and before long you found yourself in a group chat that seemed to organize dinners, birthdays and last-minute gatherings every other weekend.
You said yes to all of them.
Was it because you’d genuinely enjoyed everyone’s company? Absolutely. Was it also because every invitation carried the tiny possibility that Jin might be there? …That part didn’t need to be examined too closely.
By the third invitation you had accepted, even Mina had started looking at you suspiciously. “You’ve become weirdly available lately.”
You looked up from where you were digging through your wardrobe. “I’ve always been available.”
“You canceled dinner with me two weeks ago,” she reminded you.
“I had work.”
“You left work at six.”
“Then I was tired.”
Mina crossed her arms, watching as you held two nearly identical sweaters up against yourself before putting one back on the hanger. “And yet,” she continued slowly, “you’re apparently not too tired to drive forty-five minutes across the city for a casual hangout hosted by people you’ve known for…” She pretended to count on her fingers. “…Roughly three weeks?”
You didn’t even bother turning around. “I’ve known them more time, silly. We just started talking more since the hangout. We connected.”
“Right. I’m sure you did.” She said suspiciously.
“They’re fun.”
“Mhm.”
“And it’s good to make new friends.”
“Mhm.”
You sighed, finally looking at her. “Okay, what? What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything.”
“You’re humming like a bitch, just say it.”
Mina smiled into her coffee before taking a sip. “I just think it’s interesting.”
“What is?”
“That you suddenly have a thriving social life.”
“I’ve always had a social life.”
“You absolutely have not.”
“I did.”
“You’ve spent the last year declining every invitation that wasn’t work-related.”
You opened your mouth to argue before stopping halfway through. “…Okay, you’re right. But I’m just trying something different now.”
“I think that’s great.”
“I knew you’d understand,” you pointed at her with a cheeky smiled, turning around to keep looking for an outfit.
“I do.” She smiled sweetly. “I also think it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that a certain someone might be there tonight.”
You froze for a second before reaching for the nearest cushion and threw it at her. “Shut up.”
She caught it without much effort. “I knew it”
“You don’t know shit.”
You rolled your eyes, but the smile tugging at the corner of your mouth ruined whatever annoyance you were trying to perform. “I cant believe I was right. Do you like Seokjin?”
“Of course not!” You laughed despite yourself, dropping onto the edge of your bed. “I barely know him.”
“But you wanna see him again,” she pointed out.
“… Yeah.” You couldn’t lie. “I don’t even know him enough to know if I like him but… I don’t know. He’s cute.”
“I haven’t see you interested in someone in so long!” She said excitedly. “I’m so happy. I’m sure he’s interested in you too.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I can feel a vibe.”
“I bet he barely remembers our conversation. He was probably being just polite.” You shook your head.
“Nah, people usually remember conversations. At least he had to remember a word or something.”
You groaned dramatically, burying your face in your hands. “You’re the worst person to ask for reassurance.”
“I don’t think he dislikes you.”
“That’s not reassuring at all!.”
“Okay, okay. I’m serious.” She set her coffee down before looking at you properly. “From what I saw that night, he looked comfortable talking to you.”
“He also looked comfortable talking to literally everyone.”
“Thats true but because he knew everyone. Usually with new people he’s very shy. So the fact that he was talking to you comfortably I think it says a lot.”
“So?”
“So go and find out. Talk to him more, see if you actually like him.”
You chuckled. “Okay, sure. Whatever I’ll just go. Worst-case scenario, I spend an evening with nice people.”
“And best-case scenario?” She raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll tell you about it if it happens,” you said with a smirk.
Mina groaned so loudly that she nearly spilled her coffee laughing.
——————————
The gathering was even smaller than the last one. Someone had volunteered their apartment, someone else had ordered enough food to feed twice the number of guests, and by the time you arrived most people were already spread around the living room, talking over one another while music played quietly from the speakers. You recognized almost everyone this time. Not well enough to call them close friends, but enough that conversations started easily
The photographer from the previous party greeted you with a hug before immediately pulling you into a discussion about an impossible decision he had to make for his career, an stylist insisted you try whatever dessert she’d brought, and before long you found yourself laughing at stories from a recent campaign shoot that had apparently gone catastrophically wrong. It felt surprisingly natural and comfortable being with these people you never really had the chance to get closer to.
You were halfway through telling someone about a model who’d accidentally boarded the wrong train during Milan Fashion Week when the apartment door opened. You didn’t look immediately because you obviously weren’t waiting for anyone.
Then someone near the entrance said, “Jin!”
Your head turned so fast you almost broke your beck… Very subtle.
He stepped inside carrying a paper bag from a bakery, apologizing for being late before greeting the host. There was something oddly familiar about watching him move through the room now. A month ago he would’ve blended into the evening like everyone else. Now you found yourself recognizing little things almost unconsciously— the way he smiled before saying hello, the habit of slightly bowing his head when someone older greeted him, how he always seemed to listen before speaking.
You hated that your brain had memorized all of it.
He spotted you a few moments later. There was the smallest pause before recognition crossed his face, followed by an easy smile. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“You made it.”
The words were so ordinary that you almost laughed. “So did you.”
“I almost didn’t. Work really keeps you busy.”
“Were you actually working, or is that the excuse everyone in our industry uses?”
He smiled, rubbing the back of his neck. “…Both.”
“Fair enough.”
Someone called his name before either of you could continue. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said apologetically, nodding toward the group waiting for him.
“Yeah, of course.”
He disappeared almost immediately and you watched him walk away before frowning slightly. You weren’t entirely convinced if he was just being nice of if he also felt that weird vibe going between you two. Maybe you were just too delusional.
Over the next hour your paths kept crossing in the strangest ways. Every time you thought maybe you should walk over, someone else was already talking to him. When he finally looked free, another friend dragged you into a conversation on the balcony. Then, just as you managed to excuse yourself, Jin was helping someone carry drinks into the kitchen.
It was becoming almost comical.
You couldn’t help smiling when he finally made his way over, balancing two glasses in one hand after what felt like an entire evening of narrowly missing each other. It had almost become a running joke in your own head; every time one of you looked free, someone else inevitably appeared to steal the other’s attention. By now it was honestly impressive.
“I was starting to think this apartment was cursed,” you said as he stopped beside you, accepting the glass he held out. “Every single time I thought about coming over to talk to you, somebody got there first.”
“You wanted to talk to me?”
“Of course,” you didn’t shy away, trying not to make the situation uncomfortable. “We had a nice chat last time.”
A laugh escaped him, quieter than the ones you’d heard from across the room but just as genuine, and he shook his head before taking a sip of his drink. “Me too. And I thought that was only happening to me,” he admitted. “Twice I walked over because I figured everyone was finally done talking to you, and then someone else started another conversation before I made it halfway across the room.”
“Seriously?”
“Mhm.” He smiled, looking almost sheepish. “At one point I thought maybe you were avoiding me.”
You looked at him for a second before laughing “I thought you were avoiding me.”
For a moment he simply stared at you, almost as if he was trying to decide whether you were joking, before the corners of his mouth lifted again. “So we’ve both spent the last hour being wrong.”
“I guess we have.”
Whatever awkwardness had followed you around since he’d arrived seemed to disappear with that exchange. It wasn’t some magical shift where suddenly everything became effortless, but the uncertainty you’d both apparently been carrying dissolved enough that the conversation no longer felt like something either of you had to force. Instead of wondering whether you were interrupting him or whether he was only being polite, you found yourselves walking toward the quieter side of the balcony almost without thinking, making room for another group squeezing through the doorway while continuing exactly where you’d left off.
“So, what do you do for work?” You said almost jokingly.
He looked genuinely caught off guard by the question. “What do you mean? You already know.”
“I don’t know,” you laughed. “Everybody always asks what you do for work, but work is only part of your life. So I don’t know, maybe tell me something you like to do that is not working.”
He thought about it for a second, absentmindedly turning his glass in his hands. “I sleep.”
You looked at him. “That cannot be your final answer.”
“I’m serious.”
“I believe you. I just refuse to accept it.”
“It takes up a surprising amount of my free time.”
“I’m trying to discover your hobbies, Seokjin.”
Jin smiled to himself before giving in. “I play video-games.”
“You play video games?”
“I do,” he nodded confidently even when his neck started getting red. “And I’m really good at them. Computer games, play station. Everything.”
“That’s nice,” you nodded with a little chuckle trying to scape out of your lips. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“It’s pretty fun.”
“Yeah, I can tell by the way you talk about it.”
He laughed quietly, and there was something strangely endearing about how easily he laughed at himself. Most people, especially in your line of work, had a habit of polishing every story until they sounded impressive. Jin seemed to do the opposite. Every time he talked about something he’d done well, he somehow ended up mentioning the part that had gone wrong too, as though he didn’t really see the point in pretending otherwise.
“So what about you?” he asked. “What do you like to do?”
You smiled. “I like to read.”
“What kind of books?”
“Anything that makes me forget to check my phone.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I like movies like that.”
“The ones where you forget you’re watching one?”
“Exactly.”
“Oh my god. I actually have a section in my Letterbox like that. ‘Movies that feel like movies.’” You said excited.
“I’m gonna need you to send me your account then,” he said seriously.
The two of you ended up lingering near the balcony more minutes, just talking. Around you, people drifted in and out of the apartment with the same relaxed rhythm the evening had carried from the beginning. Someone stepped outside to answer a phone call, another group squeezed past on their way to refill drinks, music floated faintly from the living room, but none of it seemed to interrupt the conversation anymore. It simply became part of the background.
“I know this is going to sounds ridiculous.” He looked almost embarrassed. “But I’m not great with new people,” he admitted. “So I’m glad you’re easy to talk to.”
“Really? You said, shaking your head as you leaned against the railing. “You seem so in ease.”
“Nah. Two years ago you probably would’ve had to carry the conversation by yourself.”
“I feel like I already do that sometimes.”
He looked at you, amused. “You?”
“I overshare when I’m nervous.”
“I would’ve never guessed.”
“Exactly. That’s the problem, I just talk to much.”
Jin smiled to himself before taking another sip of his drink. “I get quieter.”
“So we’re opposites.”
“Maybe.”
“I fill every silence.”
“I wait for the other person to.”
“So we are a match made in heaven.”
“Exactly.”
You both laughed, and for a second you simply watched the people inside the apartment. Someone had convinced half the room to play some card game that looked increasingly chaotic with every passing minute. A girl was already arguing about the rules despite the game having barely started.
“You know,” you said, “It’s kind of funny. I would’ve guessed the complete opposite.”
“About me?”
You nodded. “I don’t know… I think because you’re around people all the time, I just assumed talking to strangers came naturally.”
“It doesn’t, at all.” He shook his head. “I still overthink almost every conversation.”
You frowned. “Seriously?”
“Mhm.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
“But you seem…” You searched for the right word. “…Comfortable.”
“I pretend.”
“So you’re acting?”
He laughed. “I don’t know if I’d call it acting.”
“What would you call it?”
“I just… remind myself that nobody else knows I’m nervous.”
You looked at him for a moment, surprised by how simple the answer was. “I’ve never thought about it like that.
“It helps.”
“I usually assume everyone can tell.”
“I think everyone assumes that.”
You smiled. “I’ve spent half my career convinced people can see me panicking.”
He looked genuinely confused. “I thought you were one of those people who had everything under control.”
You laughed so suddenly you nearly spilled your drink. “I don’t think anyone who’s worked with me would describe me that way.”
“They would.”
“They absolutely wouldn’t.”
“They would.”
“Seokjin.”
“I’m serious.”
You raised an eyebrow. “You’ve only talked to me like twice.”
“I would say more.”
“Mm, not really.”
He nodded. “There was a campaign dinner last winter where we talked a bit.”
You blinked a little taken aback. “You remember that?”
“You were trying to find someone’s assistant. I remember because in that event you were working with Taehyung too.”
“Ah, yes. I was trying to find a missing garment bag.” You couldn’t stop yourself from laughing. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
He shrugged almost apologetically. “I remember weird things.”
“Apparently.”
There was something about that answer that stayed with you. Not because he’d remembered the event itself— that wasn’t impossible— but because he’d remembered you in it. You hadn’t been the client, you hadn’t been the center of the evening. You’d simply been another person running around making sure everything worked. Most people never noticed those things.
“You know what’s strange?” you asked after a moment. “I’ve spent years assuming nobody notices the people behind events.”
Jin tilted his head. “Some do.”
“You do.”
“People behind the scene make everything happen. It’s impossible not to notice.”
You smiled, a little uncertainly. “Most people only remember the face wearing the clothes.”
“I think that’s normal.”
“I know.”
“But…” He paused for a second, as though trying to explain something he hadn’t really put into words before. “I think once you’ve worked around enough productions, you start noticing the people who keep everything moving. You can usually tell who’s solving problems. I guess that’s why I noticed you.”
You looked down at your glass for a second before smiling. “I don’t think anyone’s ever complimented me like that.”
He looked almost surprised. “It was a compliment?”
“Yeah. For me it is.”
“I was just telling the truth.”
The conversation wandered somewhere else after that, not because either of you tried to change the subject but because that seemed to be how talking to him worked. One thought naturally led to another. You ended up discussing the strange satisfaction of crossing things off handwritten to-do lists, the fact that both of you still preferred carrying notebooks despite having every reminder imaginable on your phones, how much you hated the smell of beer, how much he loved snowboarding and the ridiculous amount of time people spent pretending to enjoy networking events.
“So you don’t like them either?” you asked.
“I like leaving them.”
You laughed out loud. “That’s such an honest answer.”
“I always tell myself I’ll stay for an hour. Then I look at the time and it’s three hours later.” He shook his head. “Every time.”
“Why don’t you leave?”
Jin smiled. “Because then I meet someone interesting.”
You felt your heart give one annoyingly noticeable beat. “Does that happen often to you?.”
“It doesn’t.” Before you could think of a response, someone called his name from inside. He turned instinctively. “What?”
“Your food is getting cold! Are you eating?”
“I’ll be there!” He looked back at you almost immediately. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“You were saying?”
The fact that he’d come back to the conversation instead of letting it die made something warm settle somewhere in your chest.
“I honestly don’t even remember.”
“You were probably making fun of me.”
“I probably was.”
“I think you were.”
“I’ll continue after you get food.”
He smiled. “Deal.”
And he did.
Five minutes later, after grabbing two slices of pizza and somehow convincing someone else to stop stealing olives off his plate, he walked right back over and picked up the conversation as though nobody had interrupted it in the first place. It happened again later. Someone asked him to settle an argument in the kitchen, another friend pulled him into a group photo. Every single time, he came back. Not tired or with some grand excuse, just quietly returning to where you’d been standing before asking, “Where were we?”
By the end of the night you realized you’d talked about almost everything and almost nothing. Childhood hobbies, the fact that both of you hated talking on the phone but would happily send ten-minute voice notes, how neither of you understood people who enjoyed going out every weekend to party, the weird satisfaction of grocery shopping late at night. You talked about the best convenience store snacks, whether pineapple belonged on pizza and more. The conversation never felt like it needed to impress the other person, it just kept going.
When people finally started putting on their jackets, you were genuinely surprised to see the apartment had emptied without you noticing. “I should head out too,” you said, slipping your phone into your bag.
Seokjin nodded. “Me too.” For a second neither of you moved. “I had a really good time,” he said, smiling in that same quiet way he always seemed to.
“Me too.” You stayed in your place, waiting for him to ask for your number.
“I’ll…” He hesitated just enough for you to notice it. “…I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
“Right,” you said, almost disappointed. “Yeah, I hope so.”
He smiled once more before following his friends toward the door. You watched him leave, waiting until the apartment had almost emptied before saying your own goodbyes.
The drive home was spent replaying conversations you hadn’t meant to memorize. Not because anything extraordinary had happened. He hadn’t flirted with you, he hadn’t asked for your goddamn number. Seokjin hadn’t looked at you in some life-changing, movie-worthy way. If anything, the evening had been remarkably ordinary. And maybe that was exactly why you couldn’t stop thinking about it.
You liked talking to him, like a lot. There had been no awkward pauses to fill, no pressure to sound clever, no moments where you found yourself wondering what you should say next. Somehow the two of you had managed to spend hours discussing the most ridiculous, everyday things, and you’d still walked away feeling like there were another hundred conversations left to have. That should have been exciting. Instead, it left you hopelessly confused. Because Jin was nice. Painfully, consistently nice. He listened to everyone, he smiled at everyone, he remembered details about people that most would’ve forgotten. So how were you supposed to tell whether any of tonight had actually meant something?
Maybe he talked to everybody like that, maybe every person who left one of his conversations went home thinking they’d been understood, maybe this was just who he was. You couldn’t read him. Every time you thought he’d given you a sign, your brain immediately found another explanation for it, and by the time you pulled into your apartment building you were somehow even more confused than when the evening had started.
The only thing that wasn’t confusing anymore was yourself. There wasn’t any point pretending this was simple curiosity, that excuse had expired somewhere around the conversation about how much you loved strawberry cheesecake.
You liked him. Entirely, inconveniently and undeniably.
You smiled all the way upstairs because the realization was somehow equal parts embarrassing and exciting. And later, before you’d even finished getting ready for bed, you found yourself opening the group chat from the party. Your thumb hovered over the upcoming plans someone had mentioned earlier. A birthday dinner next week. A movie night the weekend after. A barbecue if the weather stayed nice. You stared at the messages for a moment before smiling to yourself. A month ago, you would’ve checked your calendar first or invent another excuse to not show up. Tonight, you were already trying to figure out how to make sure you didn’t have any plans at all so you could see him again.
——————————
Monday mornings at HYBE building looked exactly the way you imagined a music company would. Stylists hurried down the hall balancing garment bags over one shoulder while trying to answer phone calls at the same time, assistants walked briskly between meeting rooms carrying stacks of documents that somehow looked urgent regardless of what was inside them, and every few minutes someone you vaguely recognized from a campaign, a magazine shoot or an awards show passed by with a polite nod before disappearing around another corner. It was organized chaos, the kind that somehow managed to function despite looking as though everything was happening at once.
You’d been there often enough over the years that the receptionist greeted you by name before you’d even reached the desk. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” you smiled, accepting the visitor’s badge she handed over. “I’m here for the ten o’clock.”
“They’re already waiting for you.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
Luxury fashion PR had a funny way of making every company building start to feel familiar. One month you were spending every afternoon at a magazine headquarters preparing a campaign, the next you were coordinating fittings at a fashion house, and then suddenly you were sitting in entertainment agencies discussing contracts between artists and brands. It meant learning hundreds of names, remembering dozens of schedules and somehow keeping track of who was available on which side of the world.
By the time you reached the conference room, three people from HYBE’s partnership team were already seated around the table, laptops open and coffees untouched.
The meeting itself was surprisingly straightforward. The agency had recently signed a new rookie group whose first luxury campaign was already attracting attention from several international brands, and your company had been hired to coordinate the negotiations and oversee the campaign schedule. Most of the creative decisions had already been approved weeks earlier, which meant your morning was spent going over travel dates, confirming fitting appointments, discussing possible magazine covers and making sure nobody had accidentally scheduled three different events in three different countries on the same day… It happened more often than people realized.
“I’ll send over the updated timeline this afternoon,” you said, closing your notebook once everyone seemed satisfied. “As long as the group’s comeback date doesn’t move again, everything should stay on schedule.”
One of the managers laughed. “Please don’t say that out loud.”
“I’m choosing optimism.”
“We’ve learned not to.”
You smiled. “Fair enough.”
Another hour disappeared into emails and final revisions before the meeting finally wrapped up. By the time you stepped back into the hallway, your shoulders already felt lighter. There were still a dozen things waiting for you back at the office, but the most complicated part of your week had gone considerably smoother than you’d expected.
You had just slipped your notebook and laptop into your bag when a familiar voice called your name from the other end of the corridor. You turned just in time to see Taehyung walking toward you, sunglasses hooked onto the collar of his T-shirt despite being indoors. For a second you simply stared.
“Well, that’s a face I haven’t seen in forever.”
He laughed. “I was about to say the same thing.” The two of you met halfway down the hallway, exchanging a quick hug before stepping back. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought your office was like 3 hours away.”
“It is. We were meeting with the partnership team.”
“For the rookie group?” You nodded. “Please tell me they’re behaving.”
“So far.”
“So they haven’t started changing schedules every six hours yet?”
“It’s only Monday.”
“There’s still time to run.”
You laughed. “You sound like you’ve been traumatized.”
“I’ve worked in this building long enough. Rookie groups are starting to be a nightmare.”
“That’s fair. I’ve seen some news.”
The conversation slipped back into familiarity almost immediately. You hadn’t worked together in nearly two years, but spending months coordinating the promotional aesthetic campaign for his first solo album had a way of making people remember each other. After that there had been fashion events, magazine dinners, a handful of award shows and enough passing greetings over the years that seeing him now felt less like bumping into an old client and more like running into an old coworker.
“So,” he asked, leaning casually against the wall, “how’s life?”
“Busy.”
“I expected a more exciting answer.”
“I coordinate luxury campaigns.”
“So… busy.”
“Exactly.” You chuckled. “What about you?”
Taehyung sighed dramatically. “We start rehearsals again next week.”
“For the tour?” He hummed in agreement. “I saw the dates.” You mentioned. “They look impossible. You have, what…” You frowned, trying to remember. “Three countries in a week and then another one next week in another continent?”
“Yeah.. I’ve stopped looking.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“You learn not to pay attention,” he smiled cheekily.
Before either of you could continue, another voice joined the conversation.
“I had a feeling I’d find you here hiding.” You looked up instinctively. Jin had just stepped out of one of the rehearsal studios further down the hallway, a black hoodie thrown over his shoulders. He slowed as he reached the two of you, smiling in quiet surprise when he noticed you standing there. “Oh.” His smile widened just slightly. “Hi.”
“Hi,” you smiled slightly, heart starting to beat a little faster.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
You lifted the visitor’s badge hanging around your neck. “Work.”
“That makes more sense.” He nodded knowingly.
“Lucky for her,” Taehyung interrupted, “she gets to leave.”
You smiled. “I do.”
“I’ve still got vocal rehearsal.”
Jin looked at him. “I thought you were eating first.”
“I was.” Taehyung glanced down at his phone before groaning. “…Actually, no, apparently I’m not. They just moved my reservation.”
“Again?”
He held up his screen dramatically. “I’ve officially given up questioning management.”
You laughed. “Some things never change.”
“They really don’t.”
He pushed himself away from the wall before pointing between the two of you. “I’m leaving you to catch up because if I’m late one more time they’ll start pretending I’m difficult.”
“You are difficult,” Jin said.
“But you love me anyway”
“Ew, don’t say that.”
“You do!” Taehyung looked back at you. “It was good seeing you again.”
“You too.”
“Don’t disappear for another two years.”
“I’ll do my best.” With one last wave, he disappeared around the corner, leaving the hallway noticeably quieter. For a moment you and Jin simply watched him go. “He hasn’t changed,” you said eventually.
“Not even a little.”
“I think that’s impressive.”
“I think it’s exhausting.”
You laughed. “I can imagine.”
The two of you started walking almost without discussing it, heading slowly toward the elevators at the end of the hallway. Neither of you seemed particularly rushed, and after the last few times you’d talked, it no longer felt strange to fall into conversation so easily.
“So,” he asked, glancing over at you, “how did the meeting go?”
“Better than I expected. I was preparing for at least one scheduling disaster but everything went well.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Nah. I like being pleasantly surprised. You shrugged. “What about you?” you asked. “Taehyung mentioned rehearsals.”
He nodded. “We leave in a few weeks.”
“You excited?”
“I am.” He smiled to himself before looking ahead again. “I think the rehearsals are always the hardest part.”
“Really?”
“I like performing but I don’t like preparing to perform.”
You laughed softly. “I don’t know why that makes perfect sense.”
“I spend weeks wondering if we’re ready. And then the first show starts and I stop worrying for about two hours.” He told you, a little exhausted. “Then I start worrying about the next one.”
You smiled. “I feel like that’s every job.”
“It probably is.”
By the time you reached the elevators, the conversation had wandered somewhere entirely different. Somehow you’d ended up talking about travel again, comparing favorite cities from work trips, complaining about airports, laughing over the fact that neither of you had figured out how people managed to sleep comfortably on planes.
The elevator arrived with a quiet chime. You both stepped inside. “Oh, I forgot to ask,” he said as the doors closed. “What are you doing this weekend?”
You looked at him, a little excited. “This weekend? I don’t really have plans. Why?”
“You wanna have dinner?.” He hesitated for a second before clarifying. “Everyone’s getting together on Saturday. Some close friends, Taehyung is also included. We’re going to a nice restaurant. I thought maybe you would like to come.”
“Oh.” You smiled. An invitation, as friends. Great. “Yeah, of course. I’ll be there.”
“Great,” he said with a smile. “Nice.” There was a small pause, comfortable rather than awkward, before he looked at you again with the same thoughtful expression you’d started recognizing over the past few weeks. “Actually…” He rubbed the back of his neck almost absentmindedly. “I just realized I don’t have your number.”
You hummed. “Yeah… You don’t.”
“I probably should.”
“That would make things easier. You know, for the address of the restaurant and all.”
“It would. Yes.”
You unlocked your phone and handed it to him. “Here.”
Seokjin smiled as he typed his contact into it before giving it back. “I’ll text you,” he said simply. “To let you know it’s me and send you the address”
You nodded. “Right.” The elevator doors opened onto the lobby. You stepped out together before stopping near the entrance, where your paths naturally split in opposite directions. “I should let you get back to work,” you said before smiling. “I’ll see you Saturday.”
He nodded. “See you Saturday.”
You watched him disappear back toward the elevators before pushing through the glass doors into the afternoon sun. Halfway across the parking lot, your phone vibrated.
Unknown Number. You opened the message before you’d even reached your car.
Seokjin: Just proving it’s actually me.
A second message appeared almost immediately.
Seokjin: Don’t be late on Saturday. Taehyung will absolutely blame someone else if he is, and I’d rather it not be you.
Seokjin: [address]
You: Noted. I’ll arrive early just to preserve my reputation.
His reply came less than a minute later.
Seokjin: Smart girl
Okay, that was hot.
You know it wasn’t flirtatious, it wasn’t even particularly memorable. But as you slid your phone back into your bag, you couldn’t stop smiling. In all the times you had spent talking for hours at a friend’s apartment and now exchanging numbers in an elevator, things had quietly become very comfortable with him. You still had absolutely no idea whether Jin saw you as anything more than someone he enjoyed talking to. If anything, getting to know him had only made him harder to read. He was attentive with everyone, kind without making a performance of it, and thoughtful in a way that could easily be mistaken for interest if you weren’t careful.
Which was exactly the problem. You couldn’t tell whether he liked you like that. The uncertainty was still there, lingering in the back of your mind every time you replayed one of your conversations, but it didn’t bother you quite as much anymore. Because one thing, at least, had become impossible to deny. He liked spending time with you.
Saturday suddenly felt very, very far away.
——————————
The restaurant wasn’t particularly fancy, which somehow suited the group better than any upscale place ever could have. It was tucked away on a quiet street a little outside the city center, the kind of place people only seemed to know about through recommendations rather than advertisements. Warm lights hung above the terrace, the windows were thrown open to let the late summer air drift inside, and the steady murmur of conversations mixed with clinking glasses and the occasional burst of laughter from another table.
You spotted everyone almost immediately. There couldn’t have been more than ten people, already gathered around a long wooden table near the back of the restaurant. Someone waved the second you stepped through the door, and within moments three different voices were greeting you at once.
“There she is.”
“I told you she’d be late.”
“I am three minutes early,” you protested, laughing as you slipped your bag off your shoulder.
“You’re ten minutes late.”
“That’s early for her.”
You smiled, making your way around the table to greet everyone properly. A couple of faces were still relatively new, people you’d only met once or twice over the last month, while others already felt strangely familiar despite how recently they’d come into your life. It was funny how quickly comfort formed when everyone shared the same chaotic industry. Then your eyes found Jin. He was already seated halfway down the table, listening to something Taehyung was saying with that small smile you were becoming increasingly familiar with. When he noticed you looking over, he gave you an easy wave.
“Hey.” He smiled. “You finally found the place.”
“Barely,” you admitted. “Your directions were significantly better than my navigation.”
“I knew I should’ve sent more landmarks.”
“I still would’ve gotten lost.”
“I believe that.”
You caught yourself smiling at the quick exchange before you’d even reached your chair. When you looked around for somewhere to sit you noticed there was only one empty seat left. To the other corner of the table, directly across from him, not close at all. You stared at it for a second. “…Seriously?”
Someone looked up. “What?”
“Nothing.” You smiled, sliding into the chair. “I just thought I’d made it before everyone else.”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
You reached for the menu before anyone could ask another question. Across the table, Jin looked briefly amused, though he didn’t comment, instead returning to whatever story Taehyung had been telling before you’d arrived. You tried very hard not to let the tiny disappointment bother you. It was ridiculous, really ridiculous. You weren’t in middle school. You weren’t twelve years old trying to sit beside your crush in class. You were a grown woman who coordinated campaigns worth more money than most people made in a year. You could survive sitting far from this guy …Probably.
Dinner started slowly, with everyone ordering drinks while waiting for the last two people to arrive. Once they did, the conversation settled into that familiar rhythm you’d started associating with this group. Nobody stuck to one topic for very long. One person would mention work, someone else would remember a completely unrelated story, and twenty minutes later everyone would somehow be debating whether overnight flights were worse than six a.m. call times.
Laughter rippled around the table. You found yourself joining in easily, adding comments here and there whenever the conversation naturally drifted your way. It felt comfortable, and yet every now and then your attention wandered somewhere it probably shouldn’t. Across from you, Jin was talking to one of the producers about the upcoming tour. You couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but every so often he’d laugh quietly or shake his head at something someone else had said, and despite telling yourself not to, your eyes kept finding him. Once and then again. Then another time. It was becoming embarrassingly automatic. At one point he happened to glance up while reaching for his water. Your eyes met for barely a second and he gave you just a small smile. Then the conversation beside him continued, and he turned back toward it. You did the same.
See? He’s talking to everyone.
You forced yourself to pay attention to the conversation happening on your side of the table instead. For the next hour that became the pattern of the evening. Whenever everyone spoke together, it felt easy. You’d catch each other’s eye occasionally across the table, laugh at the same stories, tease Taehyung whenever he exaggerated something, but there wasn’t really an opportunity for the kind of conversation you’d secretly been hoping for.
The distance of a table suddenly felt much larger than it actually was. You hated yourself a little for caring. There were at least eight other people there and you liked all of them. You were having a genuinely good time. And yet some stubborn, irritating part of your brain kept thinking… I haven’t actually talked to him. Every now and then someone beside him would ask him something directly, another person would join in, and before long he’d be caught in another conversation while you were doing exactly the same thing at your end of the table.
Maybe this was normal, maybe you’d built up the last few weeks too much in your own head. Maybe they had felt significant because they’d happened one-on-one and your brain had made the situations feel extra intimate only becuase you liked him like that. Here, surrounded by everyone else, he seemed exactly the way he always had. Kind, relaxed and happy to talk to whoever happened to be nearby.
It occurred to you, not for the first time, that maybe this was simply who he was.
You were halfway through telling the photographer beside you about a campaign that had nearly fallen apart because a shipment had been sent to the wrong country when another burst of laughter echoed from Jin’s side of the table. Almost instinctively, you looked over. He was smiling at something a friend had just said. Nothing unusual, nothing you hadn’t already seen a hundred times. Still… A tiny, childish part of you felt oddly deflated.
You took another sip of your drink. Get over yourself. The evening wasn’t about you. You’d barely known him for a month. There was no reason to expect him to spend the entire dinner talking to you. Honestly, if someone else described this situation to you, you’d probably tell them they were overthinking it. Which, unfortunately, meant you were almost certainly overthinking it.
“You’ve gone quiet.”
You looked back toward the woman sitting beside you. “Hm?”
“I was asking if you’re coming to Milan next month.”
“Oh.” You laughed softly. “Sorry. I got distracted.”
“I noticed.”
“I probably am.”
“You probably?”
“My calendar changes every three days.”
“That’s the most PR answer I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s also the only honest one.”
The conversation picked back up, and eventually you stopped checking the other end of the table quite so often. Or at least, you convinced yourself you had.
Dinner stretched comfortably into the evening. Plates gradually disappeared, dessert menus appeared almost without anyone noticing, and one by one people started glancing at their phones, remembering early schedules or long drives home.
“I should probably go,” one of the producers sighed eventually, pushing his chair back. “I have a seven a.m. meeting tomorrow.”
“On a Sunday?”
“I know.”
“My condolences.”
Another person stood and some of them followed. Goodbyes started overlapping with fresh conversations, people lingering by the table while putting on jackets because nobody ever managed to leave immediately. You’d barely noticed how many people had already gone when the friend beside you launched into a story about their parents divorce.
By the time she’d finally reached the end of the story, probably regretting saying too much, the restaurant had become noticeably quieter. You looked around almost absentmindedly. The table that had been full less than fifteen minutes earlier was almost empty. Taehyung had already left, your photographer friend was gone, one stylist had disappeared after hugging everyone goodbye. Only one chair across from you was still occupied.
Jin looked up from the beer he’d been absentmindedly nursing for the better part of an hour and smiled. “I think everyone abandoned us.”
You blinked before looking around once more. “They actually did.”
He laughed quietly. “I didn’t even notice.” Neither had you. Jin glanced toward the front of the restaurant, where the last of your friends were saying their goodbyes near the entrance, then looked back at you with an expression that suggested he was just as surprised as you were. “I guess we were really invested in our conversations.”
You laughed, still looking around as if someone else might suddenly reappear. “I feel like there were ten people here five minutes ago.”
“There were. But I think they slowly escaped while we weren’t paying attention.”
“So we’re the last ones here.”
“I don’t think the staff minds.”
As if on cue, one of the waiters walked past carrying a stack of empty plates, offering the two of you a polite smile before disappearing into the kitchen. You glanced back toward the entrance. “I should probably head out too.”
Jin looked down at the beer still sitting in front of him before looking back up. “I mean…” He hesitated for a second, almost like he was debating whether to ask. “Would you mind staying for a bit? I haven’t finished this yet.”
You followed his gaze to the glass. It was still almost half full. “…Of course.”
“I don’t want to keep you if you have plans.”
“I don’t.”
“You sure?”
You smiled. “I’m sure.”
He smiled back, a little relieved. “Okay.”
Neither of you spoke for a moment, but unlike before, the silence wasn’t searching for a conversation. It simply existed while the restaurant slowly emptied around you. Someone in the kitchen dropped a tray, a waiter laughed at something another employee had said, and outside the windows the street had grown noticeably quieter than it had been when everyone first arrived.
Jin took another sip of his beer. You were almost certain it had to be warm by now. “So,” he said eventually, moving to seat next to you before resting his forearms against the table, “did you have a good time tonight?”
“I did.” You smiled. “I actually like this group a lot.” You thought about it for a second. “I feel like everyone already knows everyone else’s schedules are a mess.” He laughed. “So nobody gets offended when someone cancels.”
“They know what life is like this.”
“What about you?”
Seokjin shrugged. “I like that they remember you’re also a person.”
You looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”
He smiled as he said it, but there was something thoughtful underneath the smile that made you think he wasn’t entirely joking. “I think when people see someone whose job is public, they forget that the rest of your life still exists.”
You nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”
“They just assume you’re always in your performing mood.”
You rested your chin lightly against your hand. “I prefer the honest side of people.”
“That’s even better then.”
The conversation drifted naturally from there, taking the same shape all of your conversations seemed to take. One topic quietly became another without either of you trying to steer it anywhere in particular. Somehow you ended up talking about childhood, about the strange jobs you’d imagined yourselves having when you were ten years old, laughing when he admitted he’d once been absolutely convinced he’d become a veterinarian despite fainting the first time he watched blood being drawn.
“You fainted?”
“I was twelve.”
“I don’t think age helps your case.” You laughed silently. “So what happened to becoming a veterinarian?”
“I realized animals deserved someone much braver.”
“I think that’s fair.”
“What about you?”
“I wanted to be a librarian or own a bookstore.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Really?” You hummed. “I can actually picture that. I feel like you’re the kind of person who probably organize everything alphabetically.”
You gasped dramatically. “I’m not. I’d organize them by genre!”
He snorted, blinking a little slow before biting his lower lip to not smile. You thought he was really handsome like that. “Of course you would.”
“Shut up, you don’t know me.” You said like a kid.
Seokjin looked down at his beer with the faintest hint of a smile before quietly saying, “I’m getting there.”
A waiter stopped beside the table before you could say anything. “Can I get you two anything else? Dessert, maybe?”
You instinctively shook your head. “I’m okay.” You glanced at Jin and he looked at you.
“You sure?”
“I don’t really have a sweet tooth.”
“I do.” He looked back at the waiter. “We’ll share one.”
You blinked. “You don’t have to—”
“I know.” He smiled. “But I want cheesecake. You said you like the strawberry one, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“I think dessert is always better with company.”
You laughed, accepting defeat. “I can’t argue with that.”
“Good.”
The cheesecake arrived a few minutes later with two forks. Seokjin ended up stealing exactly two small bites while you finished the rest while he insisted that if he was ordering dessert anyway, someone should help him justify it.
And by the time the plates had been cleared away, neither of you had noticed that the music inside the restaurant had grown quieter. It wasn’t until a chair scraped across the floor nearby that you looked around. The staff had started stacking the empty tables near the windows. Someone was wiping down the counter, another waiter was rolling silverware into napkins. You checked your phone. 10:54 p.m.
“We’ve been here for a while.”
Seokjin followed your gaze before looking down at the beer still sitting in front of him. He laughed. “I don’t think I’ve touched this in twenty minutes.”
You looked at the glass. “Longer. It’s definitely warm.”
“It probably is.”
“You should finish it.”
“I probably should.” Instead, he took the smallest sip imaginable before setting it back down exactly where it’d been.
You smiled to yourself. He wasn’t trying very hard but you weren’t about to complain. You were hoping he never finished that beer. You wanted to stay longer with him either way. Even if the restaurant closed at 11pm…. But the fantasy broke because few minutes later one of the waiters approached with the bill tucked neatly inside a black folder.
Seokjin reached for it before you even realized it had been set on the table. “I’ve got it.”
You looked up. “I took most of the dessert so I definitely should—” You reached for your wallet.
He shook his head. “You can get the next one.” The words came out so naturally that neither of you reacted immediately. He paid quickly with his card before looking at you with a small smile. “Although I’ll fight you again next time.”
Something warm settled somewhere beneath your ribs. “I can live with that.”
As you walked toward the door together, he stopped briefly near the counter where a small glass bowl filled with individually wrapped mints sat beside the register. He picked one up, unwrapped it as the two of you stepped outside and laughed quietly when he caught you watching him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
He smiled, shaking his head as he popped it into his mouth. “I just don’t like leaving restaurants smelling like beer.”
You stared at him for a second. “That’s oddly considerate.”
Did he really remember all you said? You were definitely making him up. He couldn’t be real.
“I’ve always done it.” He slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket as the two of you started walking down the quiet street. “Which way are you parked?”
“I’m not.”
“You took a taxi?”
“I walked. Its only about twenty minutes.”
Jin looked ahead for a second before nodding once. “Then I’ll walk you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know,” he shrugged. His answer was immediate, almost matter-of-fact. “I’d like to. I live close this neighborhood anyway.”
You smiled despite yourself. “Okay.”
The streets had quieted considerably by then, the warmth of the evening lingering even as the city settled into the slower rhythm that only seemed to exist after ten o’clock. You walked side by side without rushing, continuing the same conversation you’d been having inside as though leaving the restaurant hadn’t interrupted it at all. You realized, somewhere between laughing about the worst movies either of you had ever paid to see and debating whether breakfast food should be acceptable at any hour of the day, that talking to him never felt like work.
By the time your apartment building came into view, you almost wished it were another ten minutes away. “So…” you said, slowing to a stop outside the entrance. “Thanks for walking me home.”
“Of course.”
“And thanks for dinner.”
“Don’t even mention it.” For a brief second, neither of you moved. Then he smiled. “I’ll see you soon.”
“I hope so.”
“You will.”
He said it with such quiet certainty that it didn’t even occur to you to question it. You watched him disappear back down the street before finally heading upstairs. It wasn’t until you were brushing your teeth later that night that the entire evening replayed itself in your mind.
The conversation. The strawberry cheesecake, the warm beer he’d barely touched because he’d been too busy talking to you. The mint he took after. The way he’d said the next one as though another dinner between the two of you was already the most obvious thing in the world.
You still couldn’t tell if Jin liked you. Not in the way you wanted him to. He was still frustratingly impossible to read, still so effortlessly kind that every thoughtful gesture came with another explanation you could use to convince yourself not to overthink it. Maybe he walked everyone home, maybe he paid for everyone when he was feeling generous. Maybe he remembered everyone’s favorite dessert, maybe he was gentle enough to know what the other person dislike. Maybe this was simply who he was. But lying in bed that night, staring at the ceiling with a smile you couldn’t quite get rid of, you admitted something to yourself that you hadn’t been brave enough to say out loud before.
Whether he liked you or not had almost become secondary. Because somewhere along the way, without even noticing exactly when it had happened, you’d stopped looking forward to seeing him but you started missing him.
——————————
By the time May rolled around, seeing Jin had stopped feeling like an event. It had happened so gradually that neither of you could have pointed to the exact moment things changed. One dinner became another, then someone suggested drinks after work one Thursday, a birthday turned into brunch the following weekend, and before long your names simply started appearing together in plans without either of you having to ask. If someone created a group chat to organize something, you already knew there was a good chance the other person’s profile picture would be somewhere near the top.
Somewhere in between all of that, phone calls had quietly become part of your routine too. It had started innocently enough. One evening he’d called because he couldn’t remember the name of a restaurant you’d recommended a few weeks earlier. Another time you rang him while walking home because you’d spent twenty minutes trying to decide between two birthday gifts for a friend and wanted a second opinion. Then, somehow, those practical conversations turned into hour-long calls that had very little to do with why either of you had picked up the phone in the first place.
You’d tell yourself you only had five minutes. An hour later you were somehow debating whether cereal counted as dinner, arguing over which city had the worst airports in Europe or listening to Jin explain, in alarming detail, why he believed every household should own at least three different frying pans.
“You don’t need three,” you’d laughed one night, curled up on your sofa with your laptop forgotten beside you. “No normal person owns three.”
“You own twelve mugs,” he fought back.
“Mugs are different.”
“How?”
“Each one has a purpose. They hold memories.”
He’d been quiet for exactly two seconds before laughing so hard you could barely understand what he was trying to say. “They hold coffee.”
“And memories.”
“I’ll pray for whoever has to move house with you one day.”
“I’ll make them carry the mugs.”
“You’ll have to marry someone very patient.”
“I know.”
There had been a tiny pause after that, neither of you had acknowledged it. Then the conversation had simply moved on. Moments like that happened more often now, little sentences that accidentally wandered somewhere dangerously close to something bigger before one of you quietly steered them back toward safer ground.
It was strangely comfortable, enough that, when one of your friends suggested meeting for drinks after work on Friday, you didn’t even think twice before sending Jin the details.
You: we’re at Kaqwi bar around 8 if ur free
Jin: I’ll be there :)
The smiley face shouldn’t have made your heart react the way it did.
The bar wasn’t particularly busy when you arrived, but it filled quickly as the evening went on. Music hummed softly beneath conversations, the terrace outside was crowded with people escaping the lingering starting of summer heat, and inside your group had somehow managed to claim one of the larger booths before anyone else could steal it.
You were already halfway through telling a story about one of your clients showing up to a fitting wearing two completely different shoes when Jin finally appeared. He apologized to everyone for being late before sliding into the empty space beside you like it was second nature. “Traffic?”
You looked at him. He nodded dramatically. “And one very determined taxi driver.”
“Well, you survived.”
“Barely.”
“You look alright.”
“I’ve been through a lot.”
“Oh, please.” You rolled your eyes. “You texted me from the car saying you were buying chips because you were hungry.”
Jin looked genuinely offended. “I can have two problems at once.”
The people sitting across from you laughed. You glanced at Jin, unable to stop smiling. Three months ago you would’ve hesitated before teasing him. Now it came naturally. He teased you back just as easily too. He looked at everyone else. “Do you see what I deal with?”
One of your friends laughed. “You two sound married.”
You nearly choked on your drink, trying really miserably not to blush. Jin, somehow, stayed completely composed. “I think married people argue less.”
“Oh, definitely less,” you agreed.
“They eventually get tired.”
“We’re nowhere near that stage.”
“I wasn’t aware there were stages.”
“There are.” You nodded thoughtfully. Nobody took the conversation seriously and neither did you, moving to the next subject and pretending that you haven’t been daydreaming about him for the last couple weeks…. At least until you noticed that he’d stolen three fries from your plate while arguing. “You’ve been eating my fries this entire time?!”
“…Have I?” He said while grabbing another one.
“Yes. You’ve eaten half my fries. You didn’t even order anything!.”
“I genuinely didn’t notice,” he lied. “I thought they were ours.”
“There is no ‘ours. You owe me fries.”
“I’ll buy you fries.”
“I don’t want replacement fries.”
“Do you want me to throw up and give them to you then?”
“You’re disgusting.”
He smiled to himself. “I know.”
You stared at him for a second. It was becoming a problem. A genuine, actual problem. Because somewhere over the last few weeks you’d become frighteningly good at recognizing all the tiny expressions nobody else seemed to notice. The smile he did when he was trying not to laugh, the one where he ducked his head slightly whenever someone complimented him. The way he’d absentmindedly roll up the sleeves of his shirt whenever he got comfortable somewhere. How he listened with his entire attention, never looking over someone’s shoulder to see if another conversation was more interesting.
None of those things should’ve been attractive. And yet your brain had apparently decided they were the most charming habits any human being had ever possessed. It was honestly becoming ridiculous. You caught yourself watching him while someone else spoke, noticing the way he laughed with his whole face, the little crease that appeared beside one eye, the way he always pushed his empty glass a few centimeters away before leaning forward whenever he got interested in a conversation.
He wasn’t even doing anything, he was just existing. There were moments— small, completely insignificant moments— when you’d look at him and genuinely wonder if your body was capable of handling much more of this before simply giving up altogether. He was just so handsome and he got more prettier everytime you looked at him. He’d looked at you across a crowded table while stealing your fries and smiled like he already knew you’d forgive him. It was embarrassing, you’d never been this gone over anyone before.
The worst part was that nothing about it felt obsessive in the loud, dramatic way people usually described crushes. It was quieter than that. It lived in all the little things. You wanted to see him everyday, you wanted to spend time with him and talk to him almost every second. You liked seeing him even if your body went immediately into an intolerable nervous breakdown because he was so annoyingly handsome. It was frustrating.
As the evening stretched on, people naturally split into smaller conversations, the table growing louder without ever becoming chaotic. Someone suggested another round of drinks, someone else started planning a weekend trip that would almost certainly never happen, and at some point you found yourself sitting slightly turned toward Jin, the two of you talking while the rest of the table carried on around you.
“So…” you said, tracing absentminded circles through the condensation on your glass, “next month.”
He nodded slowly. “Next month.”
“The tour.”
“Yeah.”
“You finally sound excited.” You pushed him slightly with your shoulder. “How’s it going?”
He let out a quiet breath through his nose. “My legs hurt.”
You laughed. “That’s your review? I expected something more profound, Seokjin.”
“I’ll save the profound thoughts for next week.”
“You don’t have any.”
“I probably don’t.” For a moment, he watched the people around the table before looking back at you. “I am looking forward to it, though. I just…” He searched for the words. “It’s strange.”
“What is?”
“I’ve gotten used to being here.”
You tilted your head slightly. “Home?”
He nodded. “And…” He smiled. “…To seeing everyone.”
You knew he meant the group, even if he was only looking at you. So why did your stomach still flip? Well, you couldn’t control your reaction very easily. “Well,” you said lightly, “we’ll survive. You’ll be back before you know it.”
“I hope so.”
“You’ll call?”
“I will.”
“You better.”
“I was planning to.”
“You can tell me all about your glamorous airport meals.”
“They’re never glamorous.”
“I know.”
“And you can complain about work.”
“I always complain about work.”
“I know.”
You smiled. “See? Nothing changes.”
He smiled back, though there was something softer about it this time. “I guess not.”
Even surrounded by everyone else, the thought settled quietly between you. Next month would be different. And for the first time since meeting him, you realized there would soon be weeks where seeing Jin wouldn’t simply be a matter of waiting until the next weekend hangout. You’d actually have to miss him. The realization sat surprisingly heavy in your chest. You hid it behind another joke, another laugh, another stolen fry from his plate this time, but as you watched him throw his head back laughing because you’d finally managed to get revenge, one completely unhelpful thought echoed through your mind.
You’re in so much trouble. Because if you already felt like this now… You couldn’t imagine what a month apart was going to do to you.
——————————
The strange thing about missing someone wasn’t that one dramatic morning you woke up and suddenly realized two months had felt unbearably long. Instead, it settled quietly into your routine until one day you noticed you were reaching for your phone before anything interesting happened because you already knew who you’d want to tell first.
The first week after Jin left for tour had been easier than you’d expected. You’d both been busy enough that the time difference and impossible schedules almost worked in your favor. If he finished a show just as you were leaving the office, you’d call while walking home. If you happened to be awake when he landed somewhere new, he’d send you a blurry photo from the airport with a single complaint about the coffee. There were days when your conversations lasted forty minutes and others when they barely stretched past five, but somehow neither of you seemed bothered by it. The expectation wasn’t that you’d always have time; it was simply that, sooner or later, one of you would hear from the other.
Then Fashion Week arrived with its usual lack of mercy.
Your calendar became a wall of color-coded appointments, garment fittings, showroom visits and dinners with clients that somehow always ran longer than anyone intended. You spent more time inside black cars than in your own apartment, learned to survive on coffee and protein bars tucked into your handbag, and answered emails in elevators because they were sometimes the only quiet place you could find.
One evening, somewhere between a fitting that had overrun by an hour and a last-minute venue change for a presentation, your phone buzzed in the pocket of your blazer.
Jin: Are you alive?
You: Debatable.
His reply came almost immediately.
Jin: That’s not very reassuring.
You: Fashion Week.
Jin: Good point.
You laughed softly to yourself while stepping into the back of a waiting car.
You: What are you doing awake?
Jin: Airport
You: Again?
Jin: Again
The conversation drifted from there, as it always seemed to. He complained about delayed boarding, you complained about a designer deciding fifteen minutes before a campaign shoot that he no longer liked the original styling direction, and somehow twenty minutes disappeared before either of you realized you’d both reached your destinations.
That became the rhythm of the following weeks. He called from hotel rooms that all looked vaguely identical no matter which country he happened to be in. You answered from backstage corridors, quiet taxis or empty office kitchens long after everyone else had gone home. Sometimes you talked about work. More often you talked about absolutely nothing.
One night he spent almost fifteen minutes trying to convince you that cereal counted as a perfectly acceptable dinner after ten o’clock. “It absolutely doesn’t,” you insisted, balancing your phone between your shoulder and your ear while searching your apartment for clean pajamas.
“It does if you’re tired.”
“That’s not how nutrition works.”
“It does for me.”
There was something strangely comforting about those conversations. You’d never imagined that spending so much time talking to someone who wasn’t physically there could make them feel even more present in your everyday life. You started recognizing the sounds in the background before he mentioned where he was, could tell whether he was tired just from the way he said hello, and without consciously trying, both of you began remembering the smallest details about each other’s days.
By the middle of the second month, it felt unusual not to hear his voice. Which was precisely why your eyebrows lifted when his name appeared on your screen one Tuesday afternoon while you were standing outside a showroom in Paris. You answered almost immediately. “Hi.”
“Hi.” There was a pause. “Are you busy?.”
“I little.”
“So am I.”
You smiled. “Then why did you call?”
“Why did you answer?”
“Touché,” you giggled a little. “I’ve been working nonstop for this fashion week events. But I don’t know what’s worse the people or the heat in Paris—”
“Wait, wait…” His voice changed completely, a little hurried and surprised. “You’re where?”
“Paris.”
“Right now?”
You frowned. “…Yes?”
He stumbled into his words. “I’m in Paris.”
You stopped walking. “…No, you’re not.” You blinked at absolutely nothing. “I thought you were in Amsterdam.”
“That was yesterday.”
“I’ve completely lost track of your schedule.”
“I think I have too.”
You laughed. “So you’re actually here?”
“I’m literally looking at the Eiffel Tower.”
“No way.”
“What about you?”
“I’m near Place Vendôme.”
He laughed, he sounded happy. “I can’t believe we didn’t know. How long are you going to be here?”
“I leave the night after tomorrow.”
“So do I.” There was a small pause, one that somehow felt different. “Do you have any free time?”
You smiled before he had even finished asking. “I actually do.” You checked your calendar. “I’ve got one meeting tomorrow morning, then I’m free after lunch.”
“So am I.”
“…Seriously?” You laughed. “That’s almost suspicious.”
“I know.” He hesitated for just a second. “So… Do you want to hang out?”
Your answer came so quickly that it surprised even you. “Yeah.”
“I was thinking maybe Versailles?”
You looked down the street, smiling to yourself. “I haven’t been since I was seventeen.”
“Perfect. I’ll meet you there then
The rest of the afternoon disappeared in a blur of meetings you barely remembered.
The following day was one of those rare Paris afternoons where the sky seemed almost impossibly blue, the late summer sun soft enough that walking outside actually felt pleasant instead of exhausting. By the time your train pulled into Versailles, you had changed out of your work clothes and into something far more comfortable— a simple summer dress, comfortable enough for hours of walking but still presentable enough that your professional instincts didn’t entirely panic.
You arrived first, for the first time ever. You wandered toward the entrance, watching groups of tourists gather beneath colorful umbrellas held high by guides speaking half a dozen different languages. Families posed for photos in front of the gates, children complained about the heat, and somewhere nearby someone was playing violin badly enough that it somehow added to the charm rather than taking away from it. You checked your phone.
Jin: Two minutes.
You smiled. Exactly three minutes later, you spotted him. He was walking across the courtyard with one hand tucked into the pocket of a pair o white summer linen pants, an oversized white linen shirt shifting gently in the breeze as he looked around searching for you. A pair of sunglasses rested on top of his head, pushing his dark hair back from his forehead, and for one completely unfair moment you simply stood there watching him weave through the crowd. He was just so pretty you wanted to eat him whole.
It wasn’t until he caught sight of you that you started walking again. His face brightened immediately.
“There you are.” You both laughed at saying exactly the same thing.
For a second, neither of you seemed entirely sure what people who had spent two months talking almost every day but hadn’t actually seen each other in person were supposed to do. Then you stepped forward first and hug him, he held you back with easy, his hands wrapping around your shoulders and pushing you a little too hard to his chest. You giggle a little from the action, his broad shoulders and back feeling too good against your body and arms.
The hug lasted just a fraction longer than a polite greeting without either of you acknowledging it. “You look tired,” he said as you pulled away, taking his time to look at your face without fully taking his arms off of you.
“I was going to say the same thing.”
“I’ve been rehearsing.”
“I’ve been surviving Fashion Week.”
“So we’re both victims.”
“I think we are.”
You smiled. “I’ve missed you.”
The words were so simple that they slipped past you very easily. Your heart gave one completely unreasonable thud when he answered immediately. “I’ve missed you too.” For a second, all the noise around you seemed to fade into the background. Then someone brushed past with a stroller, breaking whatever strange little bubble you’d accidentally stepped into. Jin cleared his throat lightly. “So…” He held up two tickets. “I may have already bought the audio guides with translation.”
You laughed. “You came prepared”
“You said one time that you actually like listening to museum tours.”
“I do,” you smiled softly, your heart beating so loud you almost thought he would be able to hear it. “Thanks for remembering.”
“Of course.” He handed you one of the devices. “Although I figured we’d probably spend half the time talking anyway.”
“You know us surprisingly well.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly. “I would hope so.”
And somehow, within less than five minutes of seeing each other, it already felt like no time had passed at all.
The palace unfolded around you one room at a time, each grander than the last, but after the first few minutes you realized you were paying remarkably little attention to the gold ceilings or painted frescoes the audio guide seemed so determined to explain. Not because they weren’t beautiful, they absolutely were. It was simply difficult to concentrate on eighteenth-century French history when Jin was walking beside you after two months apart, occasionally stopping to look at a painting with the kind of genuine curiosity that always made him tilt his head ever so slightly, as though he was trying to understand not just what he was looking at, but why someone had chosen to create it in the first place. He looked like an angel every time your eyes wandered to his figure.
“Do you understand what they’re saying or I’m just that bad at the language?” he asked after removing one side of his headset.
You looked at him with amusement. “I’ve listened to several words… I heard ‘Louis.’”
He laughed. “I don’t think that narrows it down.”
“There were numbers too.”
“You’ve learned nothing.”
“I’ve learned the ceilings are expensive.”
You smiled to yourself. Talking to him still felt exactly the way it had over the phone, except somehow easier. There was no delay before one of you answered, no crackling signal, no wondering whether the other person had gotten distracted by work or simply lost reception. Every joke landed immediately, every smile came without having to imagine it on the other end of the line, and every now and then one of you would point at something entirely ridiculous just to hear what the other would say about it.
“I think I’d get lost in here,” you said as you stepped into another enormous gallery.
“You absolutely would.”
“You agreed with that a little too quickly.”
He laughed at you but didn’t say anything else, and the sound echoed faintly through the room before dissolving beneath the quiet voices of the other visitors. The more you walked, the more obvious it became that something had shifted between you over the last two months. The conversation no longer needed a beginning. There was no catching up in the traditional sense because neither of you had really disappeared from the other’s life. You already knew how rehearsals had been going, which city had unexpectedly become his favorite stop on tour, how exhausted you’d been during Milan Fashion Week and even what you ate last week. Instead, you filled in the little gaps. The expressions that texts couldn’t capture, the stories that were funnier in person, the tiny details that somehow never made it into phone calls. And at one time you laughed so hard you had to steady yourself against his arm for a second before realizing what you’d done. Your hand lingered for the briefest moment against the fabric of his sleeve. His bicep was surprisingly strong and warm. You pulled it back almost immediately.
“Sorry.”
“For what?”
“I practically used you as furniture.”
“I don’t mind.”
He said it so casually that it almost made it worse. You nodded once, pretending to be far more interested in the next doorway than in the fact your pulse had suddenly become embarrassingly noticeable.
The palace gradually gave way to the gardens, where the afternoon sun spread across endless stretches of perfectly trimmed hedges and fountains that glittered beneath the light. Compared to the crowded galleries inside, everything outside felt slower. There was more space between people, more room to wander without constantly stepping aside for another tour group. You fell into step beside him and somewhere along the gravel path your shoulders brushed. Neither of you moved away. You kept talking and he did too. It happened again a few minutes later when the path narrowed between two rows of hedges, your fingers moved a little trying weakly to catch his so he would take the hint. But again, nobody acknowledged it.
It was ridiculous how aware you had become of every tiny point of contact. You wondered if he noticed, and you also wondered if he didn’t. He had made time for you despite living on the opposite side of the world half the year. He called, he listened, he laughed at jokes that weren’t particularly funny simply because you were the one telling them. And yet… He’d never crossed that invisible line, not once. Which left you trapped in the world’s most exhausting guessing game. Maybe he was just wonderful and charming with all people... which, honestly, you didn’t like.
As you rounded another corner, he reached out without thinking and lightly touched the middle of your back, guiding you aside as a large tour group swept past in the opposite direction. “There you go.”His hand disappeared almost as quickly as it had arrived. You tried not to think about the fact you could still feel it. You thought how his fingers would feel around your waist or touching your bare skin.
“This place is busier than I remembered,” you managed.
“It’s because everyone had the same idea we did and decided to come on the nicest afternoon of the week.”
“This was poor planning.”
“It was.”
You smiled. “I’d still choose today.”
He looked at you. “Me too.”
You looked away before your face had the chance to betray you.
By late afternoon the palace had begun to empty, the crowds thinning just enough that you could finally stop lingering behind slower groups. You’d walked for hours without really noticing it, your conversations interrupted only occasionally by the audio guide insisting on explaining another room or another portrait neither of you had been paying enough attention to appreciate.
Your feet, however, had started protesting. “I need five minutes,” you admitted with a laugh as you sat down on a stone bench overlooking one of the fountains.
“Tired?”
“I’ve been standing in heels for all week.”
“You’re wearing sandals.”
“For the first time all week.” Jin smiled quietly before sitting beside you. For a few moments neither of you said anything. Not because there wasn’t anything left to say, quite the opposite, the silence had simply stopped needing to be filled. You watched families wander through the gardens, children racing one another across the paths while parents unsuccessfully attempted to keep up. “I forgot how nice this is,” you said. “I’m glad we came.”
He turned slightly toward you. “So am I.”
Something about the way he said it settled softly in your chest. He looked at you for a second longer in silence and you wondered if he was really thinking the same as you. Eventually you stood again, deciding to make your way back through the palace before heading toward the station. But halfway there you stopped abruptly.
“I need the bathroom.”
He nodded immediately. “I think there was one near the entrance.”
“There was.” You looked ahead. “Okay seemed like everyone else also wanted to use the bathroom.” The line stretched embarrassingly far down the corridor. You sighed. “Of course.”
“I’ll wait.”
You glanced at the queue again before groaning. “This is going to take forever.” Jin looked around thoughtfully, his eyes wandering down a quieter side hallway. “What?”
“I might know another one.”
“You do?”
“I saw a staff sign earlier.”
“You think you saw one?”
He smiled. “Come on.”
Before you had the chance to question him further, he reached for your hand almost absentmindedly, weaving your fingers together with his as he led you down the quieter corridor. Your entire brain stopped functioning. He was holding your hand. Just like that. As though it were the most natural thing in the world. As if you hadn’t been throwing hints all those hours so he would do it.
You stared at your joined hands for half a second before looking back up, praying he couldn’t somehow hear your heartbeat. “You realize,” you said, trying very hard to sound normal, “if we get caught wandering through staff corridors, we’ll be in big problems.”
“Isn’t that more fun?”
You both started giggling out of nowhere, trying —and failing— to keep your voices down as you wandered through the quiet hallway. He checked one door that was locked. Then another one that was a storage. “This is going well.”
“Just trust me.” He looked at you with a grin that made it impossible not smile. A few steps later he stopped in front of another door. “This has to be it.”
“You’ve said that twice.”
“I feel better about this one.”
“You’ve become overconfident.” He reached for the handle, still locked. You shook your head before laying back in the door. “I would be already in the front of the line.”
“I was close with this one.”
“You were nowhere near.”
You were still smiling when he looked back at you. His smile slowly fading as he saw you against that door. Suddenly you were seeing a face of him that you haven’t seen ever. Your smile slowly faded too as he took a step closer. The hallway around you had gone unexpectedly quiet, the distant sounds of the palace reduced to little more than an indistinct murmur somewhere beyond the walls. Neither of you spoke. “I’ve missed your face,” Seokjin admitted in a low voice.
The words were so quiet that, for a second, you almost wondered if you’d imagined them. You looked up at him, and for the first time since you’d met him, you weren’t trying to figure him out anymore. It was all there, written across his face so plainly that you almost laughed at yourself for every hour you’d spent wondering whether he liked you or whether he was simply the nicest man alive. He looked at you the way you’d been looking at him for months. Like you were the only person in the room, like he couldn’t quite believe you were standing there. His thumb absentmindedly brushed against the back of your hand, still intertwined with his, as he took another small step closer until there was barely any space left between you. “I’ve…” He smiled to himself, almost embarrassed by what he was about to admit. “I’ve been dreaming about doing something all day after months of not seeing you.”
You tilted your head. “What?”
His eyes dropped, just for a second, to your mouth. Then back to your eyes. Your entire body forgot how to function. “…This.” Your heart lurched so violently you were convinced he had to hear it. It wasn’t beating anymore, it was galloping. Somewhere in the back of your mind you thought, completely irrationally, this is it. This is actually how you’re gonna die. You’re gonna drop dead if he kissed you.
He hesitated for only a heartbeat, giving you every opportunity to move away. Instead, you found yourself closing the last inch between you. His lips met yours softly, almost carefully, as though he’d imagined this moment so many times that he was afraid reality wouldn’t live up to it. But it did, it definitely did. The second you kissed him, every thought that had been racing through your head for the last two months simply… disappeared. There was no overthinking, no wondering if he liked you anymore, not trying to read between the lines of every text message or every smile. There was only him, his warm hands sliding from your cheeks to every part of your body until they settled on your waist. The man you’d spent months convincing yourself not to fall too hard for was kissing you back with the same certainty, pressing you against a bathroom door that couldn’t be open. Like he wanted nothing else to do that for the rest of his life.
When you finally pulled away, it was only enough to catch your breath before he smiled— that same shy smile you’d loved from the very beginning. You didn’t say much, you giggled into each others mouth, the sound echoing softly through the empty corridor, before he kissed you again. This one was slower and less hesitant. As though the first kiss had answered every question either of you had been too afraid to ask.
Your fingers found the front of his linen shirt almost without thinking, bunching the fabric lightly as he smiled against your lips. His hand romearirng around your body like he couldn’t push you any closer to him. “I think,” you whispered while he kissed your jaw, “we should— we should probably leave before someone catches us.”
“Probably.” Neither of you moved. “…Definitely.” Still neither of you moved. Seokjin laughed quietly. “I don’t really want to.”
“Neither do I.”
He bit down your neck and your hands sinked into his hair to push him a little so you could see his pretty face. You gave him little pecks on his big lips as his eyes narrowed, dark pupils looking at you brightly. But he still looked at you with that same soft expression he’d been wearing all afternoon.
“You should come back to the hotel with me.” Your stomach immediately filled with butterflies. He continued before you had the chance to answer. “You don’t have to leave tonight if you don’t want to.” His smile widened just a little. “Honestly… you should spend the night there.” He paused, looking almost amused by his own train of thought. “And the next hotel if you want.” You raised an eyebrow. “And the one after that.”
You couldn’t help laughing. “Jin…”
“I’m serious.” He kissed your lips again. “I like having you around.” He shrugged as though that explained everything. “I think I’d like having you around in every city.”
For a moment, you simply stared at him. If he kept talking like that, you really were going to end up following him across Europe and staying with him… well, forever. You forced yourself to recover just enough to tease him. “Hm…” You pretended to think about it. “I don’t know.”
He frowned slightly. “No? Too fast?”
“I think…” You smiled innocently. “you’d have to ask me on a date first.”
He looked genuinely confused. “…A date?” You hummed and for the first time he took a little step back to looked better at your face, hands still over your sides. There was a beat of silence before he blinked, really unsure. “I thought we were dating.”
You stared at him confused. “What?”
“I mean…” He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly looking adorably uncertain. “We call each other every day.”
“I call all my friends.”
“We’ve been having dinner together.”
“With friends.”
“I walked you home.”
“I thought you liked to walk.”
“I really don’t.” He looked at you as though the conclusion was obvious. “I thought we’d been dating for weeks… Or, at least, I don’t know, seeing each other.”
You looked at him so deadpan your face almost froze. “Are you stupid?”
His expression softened into a grin. He took your hand again, squeezing it gently. “Okay, okay. My bad. Let me start again… Would you like to go on a date with me?”
You looked at him, at the man who had somehow turned months of stolen conversations and phone calls into the easiest love you’d ever known, even when distance could have been an end. So you just smiled so widely your cheeks already hurt.
He was actually really stupid. “I thought we already were in one.”
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