Bumble

Bumble here! (20sF) this is where I collect all my hyper fixations :) BTS, 5SOS, F1, NHL (go stars), funny memes, whatever else graces my feed.

Hope you enjoy! Inbox is open✨

—————————————————————

Bumble’s MASTERLIST

My 2 year old was sick and she gave it to me so now I feel like I’m dying 💀🤧 I’m working on the next parts, I promise

SUMMARY: Performance specialist, Mina Seo has made a career out of taking care of everyone else. As BTS throws themselves into comeback preparations, she spends her days managing injuries, recovery plans, and the impossible task of keeping seven overworked artists healthy. What nobody realizes is that she’s becoming increasingly skilled at hiding her own struggles. When an unexpected connection with Jimin begins offering relief neither of them fully understands, it slowly becomes part of their routine. Late-night conversations, shared silences, and a comfort that grows easier to rely on with every passing week. But while Jimin is getting better, Mina isn’t. And sooner or later, someone is going to notice.

WARNINGS: chronic illness, overwork injuries, some medical scenes, slight cursing, eventual smut scene—This story contains a realistic depiction of chronic illness, including rheumatoid arthritis, pain flares, fatigue, hospitalization, and the emotional impact of long-term health conditions.

Masterlist

———————————-

The recovery block began twenty minutes after lunch, once production had finished resetting for the afternoon and the members had scattered through the house with the temporary freedom of people who had been told they were not needed on camera yet. Mina used the gap to return to the small office she had claimed the night before.

By daylight, the room looked even more like hers than it had when she left it. The desk beneath the window held her tablet, a notebook, and the small stack of forms she had already reviewed before breakfast. Resistance bands hung neatly over the back of the chair. The portable treatment table had been angled into the only open stretch of floor, a folded towel placed at one end and the mobility tools arranged beside it within easy reach. The TENS unit was charging near the outlet, exactly where she had left it. It was not a clinic, but after one evening of Mina’s organization, it had stopped being an office.

She checked the afternoon schedule, adjusted one note beside Namjoon’s name, and had just finished setting out fresh tape when he knocked lightly on the open doorframe.

“Come in,” Mina said without looking up from the tablet. “You’re early.”

“I thought that would earn me praise.”

“It has earned you cautious suspicion.”

He laughed as he stepped inside, ducking his head slightly out of habit despite the doorway being perfectly tall enough for him. He took in the rearranged office with a faint smile, the kind he usually wore when he found something quietly impressive but did not want to make a spectacle of it.

Namjoon sat where she pointed, stretching one leg out while she pulled the stool closer. His ankle had been better over the last few days, but Mina did not like the way he had compensated during the morning relay, especially outside on the deck where the wet boards had forced him to adjust his weight more carefully than he probably realised. He answered her questions honestly, which she appreciated. Pain level, stiffness, stability, whether he had felt it catch during the basket station, whether the uneven path outside had bothered him.

He did not try to make himself sound better than he was. That alone put him among her favourite patients.

Mina palpated around the joint with practiced care, watching his face more than the ankle itself. He looked out the window while she worked, occasionally glancing back when she asked him to flex, rotate, resist pressure, relax. The house hummed around them beyond the closed door, softer here than in the kitchen, though they could still hear voices from the living room whenever someone laughed loudly enough.

“It’s not worse,” she said after a few minutes, reaching for a resistance band. “But it’s not nothing either.”

“I was hoping for better than that.”

“That was better than what I could have said.”

Namjoon accepted this with a thoughtful nod. “Should I be worried about the afternoon filming?”

“That depends entirely on whether production’s definition of ‘light outdoor activity’ matches mine.”

His mouth twitched. “Historically?”

“Historically, no.”

She looped the band around his foot and guided him through the first set, counting under her breath while he followed the movement with careful concentration. He was the sort of person who asked questions not because he intended to argue, but because understanding made him more likely to comply. Mina did not have to tell him twice to slow down. She did not have to remind him that controlled movement mattered more than pushing through. If anything, he sometimes became so focused on doing something properly that she had to tell him to stop thinking so hard before he invented a new problem.

By the time they finished the last exercise, the stiffness around his ankle had eased enough that she was satisfied, though not enough for her to remove the extra precautions she had already planned.

“No unnecessary running,” she said, tearing a strip of tape.

Namjoon looked mildly offended. “I don’t unnecessarily run.”

Mina glanced up.

He sighed. “Fine. I don’t intentionally unnecessarily run.”

She taped the ankle with enough support for the afternoon without restricting him more than necessary, then added a note to her tablet about checking him again before dinner. Namjoon watched her type for a moment, his expression shifting into something quieter.

“You really are keeping track of all of us.”

“That is quite literally my job.”

“I know.” He looked around the office again, at the equipment, the careful setup, the schedule waiting on her screen. “Still. It’s a lot.”

Mina finished the note before answering. “Seven bodies. One comeback. A week of filming. It would be irresponsible not to track it.”

Namjoon laughed, standing when she waved him up. He tested the ankle once, then twice, and gave her a small nod when it held steady.

“Good?” she asked.

“Better.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

He paused at the door. “Thank you.”

Mina looked up. There was no joke attached to it, no dramatic gratitude, no attempt to make the moment larger than it was. Just sincerity, given quietly in the doorway of a borrowed office.

She softened despite herself. “You’re welcome.”

Namjoon left a moment later, nearly colliding with Yoongi in the hallway.

Mina heard the brief exchange outside the door, the low murmur of Namjoon saying something, Yoongi answering with what sounded like one syllable and somehow enough meaning to count as a full conversation. Then Yoongi appeared in the doorway with his hands in the pockets of his sweats, his expression calm in the way that usually meant he had already decided exactly how much cooperation he intended to offer.

Mina pointed at the treatment table, “Don’t make that face. You’re next.”

Yoongi looked at the table, then at her. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t need to.”

He gave the smallest huff of amusement and came inside.

Working with Yoongi was different from working with Namjoon. Namjoon wanted information. Yoongi wanted efficiency. He listened, but he did not fill the space with questions unless something genuinely needed clarification. He sat where she told him, moved when she asked, and only made a face when she tested the range in his shoulder and found exactly the tightness she had expected to find.

Mina caught it immediately, “There.”

Yoongi looked away. “It’s fine.”

“Mm.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I believe you think it’s fine.”

That earned her a brief glance. She did not smile. After a second, Yoongi looked back toward the window. “That’s different.”

“Very.”

The old shoulder had been behaving well enough recently, but behaving well enough was not the same as healed, and Mina did not trust the combination of filming, travel, choreography preparation, and Yoongi’s long-standing ability to make discomfort look like a personal opinion. She worked carefully through the surrounding tension, checking where the stiffness had gathered, loosening what she could without pushing him into irritation. He tolerated it with the weary patience of someone who had spent too many years negotiating with the same injury.

For several minutes, neither of them said much. The quiet suited them. Outside the office, the house remained alive with movement, but here the atmosphere narrowed into the familiar rhythm of treatment: Mina’s hands assessing, Yoongi’s breathing changing when she found a difficult spot, the occasional adjustment, the scratch of her stylus against the tablet when she made a note. She had always liked this part of the work, not because pain itself interested her, but because bodies were honest in ways people rarely were. A person could insist they were fine. A shoulder could not—Yoongi knew that too. That was the problem with him. He knew too much about hiding pain to be fooled by other people doing it.

“You’re quiet today,” he said eventually.

Mina kept her attention on his shoulder. “I’m often quiet when I’m working.”

“Not like this.”

Her hands paused for only a fraction of a second before continuing, “Are you reviewing my personality now?”

“I have time.”

“You have a shoulder that is one bad decision away from making my afternoon difficult.”

“Then I’ll be careful.”

“That would be a refreshing development.”

His mouth curved, but he did not let the subject go as easily as she hoped. He waited until she moved around the table to test his range again, then watched her face rather than the movement.

“You’re good at telling people what pain means.”

“That is also my job.”

“I know.” He rolled his shoulder when she released him, testing the difference. “You’re also good at talking about it like something that can be managed if people just follow the right steps.”

Mina looked down at the tablet and entered a note more carefully than necessary. “Usually it can be managed better than people think.”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

No, it wasn’t.She knew that.

Yoongi leaned back slightly, his gaze steady in a way that did not feel intrusive, though it came closer than most people managed. “Some people learn management because they’re responsible. Some people learn it because they have no choice.”

Mina’s fingers stilled over the screen. The room remained quiet around them.

She could have deflected. There were several easy routes available, and she knew all of them well enough to choose one without thinking. She could remind him that they were discussing his shoulder, not her. She could ask whether he was planning to do the mobility work properly or continue narrating her clinical approach. She could make a dry comment, something sharp enough to end the conversation without sounding defensive.

Instead, she looked at him. Yoongi did not look smug. That helped. He looked tired in a way she recognized. Not physically, necessarily, though there was always some of that with him. This was older than the afternoon, older than the retreat, older than the comeback schedule waiting for them in Seoul. His own shoulder had taught him things he had probably never wanted to learn, and whatever he saw in her now came from that place rather than curiosity.

“You’re very annoying,” Mina said at last.

Yoongi’s mouth twitched. “I’ve been told.”

“Frequently, I imagine.”

“By people who care about me.”

“That makes it worse.”

He gave a quiet laugh, then let the conversation breathe for a moment before speaking again, “I’m not asking.”

She understood what he meant—He was not asking what hurt. He was not asking why Jin sometimes watched her too carefully or why Jimin had begun doing the same in a less practiced way. He was not asking what she managed when nobody was looking.

He was simply telling her that he had noticed the shape of it. Somehow, that was both better and worse.

Mina reached for the resistance band and handed it to him. “Then do your external rotations.”

Yoongi accepted the band without complaint, which was how she knew he had decided to be kind.

He worked through the set with steady control while she watched his form, correcting only once when he tried to move faster than his shoulder was ready for. The conversation shifted after that, not because the earlier subject had disappeared, but because both of them allowed it to settle without needing to name it further. She adjusted his next set, made him repeat the slow movement twice more, then checked the shoulder again and found enough improvement to satisfy her.

“For the afternoon, no unnecessary strain,” she said, updating his notes.

“Define unnecessary.”

“Anything you only do because someone says it would be funny on camera.”

“That eliminates most of the show.”

“Then suffer creatively.”

Yoongi laughed under his breath and stood, rolling his shoulder once with more ease than when he had arrived. He gave the room a brief glance before heading for the door, and for a moment Mina thought the conversation was finished.

Then he paused, “You know,” he said, not turning fully around, “being good at pain doesn’t mean you have to be loyal to it.”

The words landed quietly. Mina looked up from the tablet.

Yoongi did not wait for an answer, which was fortunate because she did not have one ready. He only gave her the faintest nod and left the office, disappearing back into the noise of the house as if he had not just reached into the middle of her and touched something carefully hidden.

Mina remained where she was for several seconds after he left, stylus resting against the screen, the afternoon schedule open in front of her. Then she let out a slow breath and added one final note beneath his shoulder program—Compliant when watched.

After a moment, she added another—Annoyingly perceptive.

—————————

By late afternoon, production seemed to accept that the house did not need another structured mission.

The official schedule called it free time, though the cameras remained in place, tucked into corners and mounted near the windows, watching the members settle into the kind of unscripted afternoon that was probably closer to the point of the retreat than any game could have been. Staff stepped back, conversations loosened, and the house shifted into a quieter rhythm as people drifted in and out of the living room without anyone telling them where to stand or what to do next.

Mina understood the theory of free time. She had never been particularly good at practicing it.

After finishing Yoongi’s shoulder notes and adjusting Namjoon’s ankle check for later, she made her way back into the main room with her tablet tucked under one arm, intending to sit somewhere unobtrusive and finish updating the recovery schedule before dinner. The living room was already occupied. Yoongi had claimed one end of the sofa with the air of a man who had found his territory and did not intend to surrender it. Namjoon sat on the floor near the coffee table, scrolling through his phone with a book open beside him that he had clearly intended to read before everyone else became more interesting. Jin was leaning back against the couch cushions with a snack bowl balanced dangerously close to his knee, while Hoseok and Taehyung were arguing over music at the speakers. Jungkook had stretched out on the carpet as if furniture were a concept he had chosen not to support.Jimin was sitting near the middle of the room, one arm draped loosely over his knee, listening more than speaking.

Mina took one look at the available space and chose the armchair near the window. It was, in her opinion, the sensible choice. It lasted less than five minutes. Jungkook noticed first. He lifted his head from the carpet, looked at the distance between her chair and the rest of the group, and frowned as though she had personally offended the layout of the room.

“Why are you over there?”

Mina did not look up from her tablet. “Because this is where the chair is.”

“There’s space here.”

“I can see that.”

“So come here.”

She glanced at him then. “That was not a request. That was a sugarcoated command.”

Jungkook grinned, entirely unashamed. “Did it work?”

“No.”

Hoseok looked over from the speakers, clearly catching only the end of the exchange but immediately deciding to support it. “Mina, come sit with us. You can’t hear from there.”

“I can hear plenty.”

Taehyung, without turning away from the playlist he was scrolling through, added, “You can’t complain about our Korean if you sit too far away to hear it.”

Mina lowered her tablet, “That is an outrageous argument.”

“It’s true,” Namjoon said mildly.

“You as well?”

“I’m only saying there is a practical element.”

Jin nudged a cushion with his foot until it slid across the carpet toward the space beside the coffee table. “There. Your practical element.”

Mina stared at the cushion. Then at Jin, “You lot have rehearsed this, haven’t you?”

“We don’t need rehearsal,” Jin said. “We’re naturally persuasive.”

Yoongi made a low sound from the sofa. “That’s one word for it.”

The room immediately turned on him, three people asking at once what other word he would use, and Mina lost the next several seconds to rapid Korean, overlapping laughter, and at least one comment from Jungkook that made everyone react while leaving her with absolutely no idea what had happened. She looked from one face to another, waiting for the conversation to slow enough for her to rejoin it…It did not.

Jimin glanced over and saw the exact moment she gave up, “They’re arguing about whether annoying people into compliance counts as persuasion,” he explained, keeping his voice low enough that it did not interrupt the others.

Mina looked at him. “Of course they are.”

“Hobi hyung says yes.”

“Naturally.”

“Yoongi hyung says only if the person gives in.”

“That sounds legally concerning.”

Jimin smiled, and the expression was warm enough that Mina found herself standing before she had fully decided to. She collected her tablet, crossed the room, and lowered herself onto the cushion Jin had provided, still close enough to the edge that she could pretend she had not entirely joined them.

Jungkook immediately looked pleased.

Mina pointed at him. “Do not look too happy.”

“I’m not.”

“You are smiling too much.”

“You came over.”

“Under social pressure.”

“That still counts.”

The argument earned enough laughter that Mina felt some of the awkwardness ease from her shoulders. She set the tablet beside her knee but kept one hand resting on it, a small anchor to the version of herself that knew what she was doing. Sitting in the middle of them with no task to justify her presence felt stranger than she wanted to admit. She had spent years around BTS, but usually there was a reason. A treatment. A schedule. A problem to solve. Here, the reason seemed to be that they wanted her within reach of the conversation, which was both kind and deeply inconvenient to her usual understanding of where she belonged.

The music finally changed. Hoseok reacted first, lifting his head sharply as an older track filled the room. Jungkook sat up so quickly that Mina suspected muscle memory had moved before thought. Taehyung made a sound of recognition and immediately pointed at Hoseok, who was already laughing as he stood.

“No,” Yoongi said from the sofa, without looking up.

Nobody listened to him.

“This one?” Jin asked, leaning forward.

Hoseok had already moved into the open space near the windows, testing a few counts with his shoulders before his feet followed. “You remember this part?”

Jungkook pushed himself off the floor. “Of course.”

“You always say of course,” Namjoon said. “Then you remember the wrong version.”

“I do not.”

“You do,” Jin said.

“You especially cannot say that,” Jungkook replied, turning on him. “Hyung, you change the move every time.”

Jin looked offended. “That is called artistic development.”

Mina leaned slightly toward Jimin. “Are they arguing about choreography or history?”

“Both.”

“Mm,”

The conversation accelerated again once Hoseok started counting. Jungkook disagreed with the arm placement. Taehyung insisted the formation had faced the other direction. Namjoon tried to clarify which performance they were talking about, which somehow made Jin remember a different stage entirely. Yoongi remained seated, offering corrections with the minimal effort of someone who claimed not to care while remembering far more than was convenient for his argument—Mina followed perhaps half of it.

The Korean itself was not the problem. She understood the words well enough when one person spoke at a time. The difficulty came from the speed, the interruptions, the years of shared context packed into unfinished sentences. They referred to old stages by city, by outfit, by something that had happened backstage, by a mistake someone made once in rehearsal and apparently never lived down. Every reference opened another door she had not known existed.

At one point, three members began speaking at once and Hoseok demonstrated a count over all of them.

Mina looked at Jimin. “I understood ‘left,’ ‘wrong,’ and someone’s honour being questioned.”

“That covers most of it.”

“Brilliant.”

“You’re keeping up.”

“I am absolutely not keeping up.”

“You’re keeping up enough.”

“That is not the compliment you think it is.”

He laughed quietly, then leaned in just enough to murmur the missing context when Jin accused Jungkook of remembering a later tour version instead of the original choreography. Mina nodded as if that helped, though the distinction seemed to matter far more to them than to anyone outside the group.

What she did understand was the feeling. The room had changed.

It was not just nostalgia, though there was plenty of that. It was the way they gravitated toward one another when a memory caught, the way one person’s movement unlocked another’s, the way laughter rose whenever someone’s body remembered something their mouth had denied knowing. They had spent so long apart in pieces, that pushed each of them into separate versions of themselves. Now, for a few minutes, they were not trying to prove anything. They were simply remembering what it felt like to be seven people in a room with music playing.

Mina watched Hoseok correct Jungkook’s timing with a light tap to his arm, watched Taehyung exaggerate the expression so dramatically that Namjoon lost his place, watched Yoongi finally give in enough to mark the movement from the couch with one hand while everyone immediately shouted that he clearly remembered. The teasing came fast, too fast for her to catch all of it, but she found herself laughing anyway.

Jin noticed, “You understood that?”

“Not even slightly.”

“Then why are you laughing?”

“Because Yoongi looks personally betrayed by his own muscle memory.”

That translated well enough on its own. Yoongi looked at her over the top of his cup. “I thought you were on my side.”

“I was never on anyone’s side. I’m staff.”

Jungkook turned immediately. “You played two missions with us.”

“Against my will.”

“You cooked with Jimin hyung.”

“For survival.”

“You’re sitting here now.”

Mina opened her mouth, then closed it again because she did not have a quick enough answer for that.

Jimin did, unfortunately. “He has a point.”

She turned to him. “Don’t you start.”

His smile appeared before he could stop it. The others were still laughing when the conversation shifted again. Someone played another old track from a phone, and this one caused a different kind of reaction. Namjoon leaned back with a groan. Jin covered his face. Hoseok clapped once, delighted. Taehyung started mouthing along immediately, while Jungkook demanded that Yoongi prove he remembered the rap.

Yoongi refused. Then he muttered half a line under his breath—-The room exploded.

Mina missed several of the comments that followed because everyone spoke at once, but she did not need all the words to understand the affection inside the noise. This was not performance for the cameras, even though the cameras were still recording. This was what happened when people who had spent years building a life together relaxed together.

She must have been watching too openly, because Jimin’s attention shifted toward her again.

“Do you remember any of yours?” he asked.

Mina looked at him. “Any of my what?”

“Choreography.” His voice stayed casual, but his eyes did not. “From when you danced.”

If the question had remained between the two of them, Mina might have found a way around it. She could have given him one of the vague answers she used whenever the conversation moved too close to something she did not want examined. She could have shrugged, made a joke, redirected him back toward the members and their argument about which tour version of the choreography was correct.

Unfortunately, Jimin had said the word danced. And Jungkook heard it.

His head turned immediately. “You danced?”

Mina closed her eyes for the briefest second.

Hoseok looked over from where he had been sitting near the sofa, interest sharpening across his face in a way that made her feel far more exposed than Jungkook’s surprise. “Wait, seriously? What kind of dance?”

Taehyung leaned forward. “When?”

“How long?” Namjoon added, sounding curious despite the careful way he asked.

Mina looked around the room and found every face turned toward her, each of them wearing a different version of the same discovery. Not suspicion. Not pressure, exactly. Just genuine surprise that there had been an entire part of her life sitting beside them all this time without any of them knowing what shape it had taken.

Jin, who did know enough to be dangerous, had suddenly become very interested in the snack bowl near his knee.

Mina narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re enjoying this.”

“I’m eating.”

“That is not what I meant.”

Yoongi’s mouth curved faintly from the end of the sofa, but he offered no help whatsoever.

Jungkook sat up properly now, the old choreography argument forgotten. “No, wait. You danced? Like actually danced?”

Mina gave him a look. “What does ‘actually danced’ mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I absolutely do not.”

“Like trained.”

The word settled differently than the others. Mina could feel Jimin looking at her, quieter now than the rest of them. He already knew that part, or at least the outline of it. She had told him in his apartment that she used to dance, that she had wanted it professionally, that her life had changed direction. What she had not told him was how much of herself still reacted to the word trained as if it were both accusation and memory.

She adjusted the tablet beside her knee, though she was no longer looking at it.

“Probably,” she said.

A pause followed.

Jungkook blinked. “Probably what?”

“I probably remember some.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“I’m aware.”

Hoseok laughed softly, but he did not let her escape. “How long did you train?”

“Long enough.”

“That is not an answer,” Jungkook said.

“It is absolutely an answer.”

“It is an avoidance.” Yoongi supplied.

Mina pointed at him. “And yet you understood it perfectly, so clearly it communicated something.”

Taehyung looked delighted by that, which was the opposite of helpful. “What style?”

Mina considered lying, then discarded the idea immediately because she had the terrible feeling Jin would betray her with one facial expression, “Classical, mostly.”

Hoseok’s eyebrows lifted. “Ballet?”

Mina shifted, suddenly aware of the cameras again, of the quiet attention in the room, of Jimin sitting a few feet away with that careful stillness he got whenever he was listening more closely than he wanted people to realize. “Yes,” she said, because there was no graceful way around it now. “Ballet.”

Jungkook’s expression changed at once, surprise giving way to fascination. “Show us.”

“No.”

The answer came so quickly that several of them laughed.

“Just one thing,” he insisted.

“No.”

“You said you remember.”

“I said probably, and I am now regretting that deeply.”

“You can’t tell us you did ballet and then not show anything.”

“I didn’t tell you. Jimin did.”

Jimin looked immediately apologetic and not nearly sorry enough. “I asked one question.”

“You opened a door.”

“I didn’t know everyone would run through it.”

“You know exactly who you live with.”

That made Namjoon laugh, and even Jimin had the decency to look as though she had a point.

Jungkook, however, remained completely unmoved. His curiosity had settled in now, bright and earnest and almost impossible to argue with because there was no cruelty in it. He was not trying to embarrass her. He simply wanted to see. That somehow made it worse.

Mina looked around for a sensible person. Jin looked away. Yoongi took a drink. Hoseok smiled as if to say he was interested but willing to pretend otherwise if she needed him to. Taehyung did not even pretend to be sensible.

Mina sighed, already knowing she was losing. “You lot are impossible.”

Jungkook grinned. “That means yes.”

“It is not the same thing.”

But she was already setting her tablet aside, and the room seemed to understand the surrender before she said anything else. Cushions were moved. Someone shifted the coffee table a few inches. The cameras adjusted with quiet interest from the corners of the room, and Mina stood with the resigned expression of someone who had intended to spend the afternoon safely outside the centre of attention and had somehow ended up exactly there.

“This is going to be incredibly underwhelming,” she warned.

Jungkook leaned forward, eyes bright. “We’ll decide.”

“Brilliant,” Mina muttered. “That’s hardly terrifying at all.”

“I’m not doing idol choreography.”

Jungkook blinked. “I didn’t ask for idol choreography.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I was thinking show us something.”

“That is worse.”

Taehyung leaned forward. “Classical, then.”

Mina stared at him. He smiled as though he had offered a perfectly sensible solution.

Mina stood in the open space between the sofa and the windows and immediately became aware of far too many things at once.

The cameras were obvious now that she was no longer tucked safely among the group. So were the members’ faces, all turned toward her with varying degrees of curiosity, amusement, and anticipation. Even the room itself seemed to have shifted around her, the coffee table moved aside, cushions scattered near the edge of the carpet, the afternoon light catching against the glass and making the floor look more exposed than it had any right to.

For one irrational second, she felt sixteen again. Studio floor beneath her feet. Someone watching from the mirror. The quiet pressure of being expected to prove that the years had meant something.

Then Jungkook leaned forward, looking so genuinely interested that the old nerves loosened just enough for her to breathe around them.

Mina shook her head once, mostly at herself. “I’m doing one thing.”

“You say that now,” Jin said.

She pointed at him without looking away from the space in front of her. “You are dangerously close to losing speaking privileges.”

A few of them laughed, and the sound helped more than she wanted to admit. It reminded her that this was not a studio. No one here was grading her turnout. No one was deciding whether she had a future. They were sitting in a living room after lunch, surrounded by cameras and snack bowls and the familiar disorder of people who had spent the day turning rest into content.

Mina let her arms fall naturally at her sides. She did not prepare dramatically. That would have made it worse. Instead she took a breath, found her weight, and let her body return to a language it still remembered even if she had spent years refusing to speak it aloud.

She chose something simple enough that she could control it and familiar enough that her body would not have time to argue.

A battement first, clean and lifted, the line of her leg sharper than she expected after years of not asking her body for that kind of precision. She lowered with care, let the movement carry into a pas de bourrée, and found fourth position almost before she thought about it. For one suspended breath, the room disappeared behind the old rhythm of placement and balance, the quiet internal count returning as naturally as breathing. Then she turned.

The double pirouette was not perfect, and she knew it before anyone else could. Her preparation was smaller than it would have been once. Her landing was more cautious. There was a fraction of control where there used to be ease. But it was clean.

She finished balanced, still, and deeply aware of the silence that had settled over the living room.

Hoseok reacted first, not loudly, but with the kind of appreciation that came from someone who understood what training looked like even when it had been compressed into a few seconds.

Jungkook’s face had gone bright with fascination, “That was not underwhelming.”

Mina stepped out of the position quickly, smoothing a hand down the side of her trousers as though she could brush off the attention. “It was one turn.”

“It was 2 and It was a good turn.”

“It was a turn I have done approximately ten thousand times.”

“That makes it better,” Hoseok said.

Mina looked at him, betrayed. “You were supposed to be sensible.”

“I am being sensible. That was clean.”

The compliment landed differently from Jungkook’s enthusiasm. Hoseok was not impressed because she had surprised him. He was recognizing the work inside it, and that made it harder to deflect without sounding ungrateful.

Jimin had not said anything. That was somehow worse.

He sat near the edge of the group, one hand resting against the floor, watching her with an expression that was not quite surprise and not quite understanding. He already knew she had danced. He had heard the outline in his apartment. But knowing something in conversation was different from seeing it exist in someone’s body, even briefly, even years later.

Mina looked away first.

Jungkook, unfortunately, had not finished being Jungkook, “Show another.”

“No.”

“Just one more.”

“No.”

“That was too short.”

“That was the point.”

“You can’t show us ten seconds and then stop.”

“I can. Watch me.”

She reached for her tablet, fully intending to retreat before curiosity became excavation, but Jungkook’s interest only sharpened. The others were watching too, less insistently but no less intrigued. It was not the kind of attention she could dismiss as teasing anymore. They had seen something they had not expected from her, and now they wanted to understand the shape of it. Mina recognized the danger a second too late.

“Most of what I trained for wasn’t solo work,” she said, hoping the explanation sounded final enough to close the subject. “So unless someone has a ballet company hidden upstairs, that’s it.”

For a moment, she thought it had worked.

Then Jungkook sat up straighter, “So you need a partner.”

Mina closed her eyes. The room reacted as if Jungkook had solved a problem rather than created one. Hoseok looked immediately amused. Namjoon made the thoughtful face of someone who saw the logic and knew better than to say so too quickly. Yoongi’s mouth curved around the rim of his cup, which Mina considered a personal betrayal.

“That is not what I said,” she replied.

“It is what you implied.”

Mina stared at him. Jungkook looked back at her with the unbearable confidence of someone who believed he was being helpful.

Taehyung, who had been watching this unfold with growing interest, turned his head toward Jimin as if the answer had been sitting in the room all along. “Jimin can do it.”

The suggestion changed the atmosphere, though not in a way anyone could have explained without giving too much away. It made sense. That was the problem. Everyone knew Jimin had trained before BTS, knew enough about his background to understand why Taehyung had chosen him rather than offering someone at random. If Mina needed a partner who could follow a line, understand weight, and not treat the whole thing like a joke, Jimin was the obvious choice. Which made refusing much harder.

Jimin looked at Taehyung first, then at Mina. There was amusement in his expression, but he did not move immediately. He waited, and the waiting undid her more effectively than eagerness would have. He gave her the space to say no in front of everyone, which meant she could not pretend she was being forced.

Mina folded her arms. “You’re all enjoying this far too much.”

“Only a normal amount,” Jin said.

“There is nothing normal about this group.”

“That’s hardly news.”

Jimin finally stood, brushing his hands lightly against his trousers as he stepped into the cleared space. He did not come too close. Not yet. He simply stopped a few feet away, angled toward her with the familiar looseness of a dancer waiting for direction.

Mina hated how quickly her body recognized that. Not him specifically. The readiness. The quiet attention. The sense that another person was offering weight and timing and trust before the first count had even begun.

“You remember any partnering?” she asked, keeping her voice as neutral as possible.

“A little.” The answer was modest enough that several members objected at once.

Mina caught only half of it because they all started speaking over each other, but she understood enough to know they were accusing him of understatement. Jimin looked mildly embarrassed and entirely too pleased.

She gave him a look. “A little?”

“I remember enough not to drop you.”

“That is the lowest possible standard.”

“It’s an important one.”

She wanted to be annoyed. Unfortunately, he was right.

The others laughed, and Mina used the sound as cover to step closer. She did not choose anything difficult. She was not reckless enough for that, and whatever softness had settled into her joints throughout the day did not mean she trusted her body blindly.

“Is your hip alright for this?” The question quieted the room more effectively than any warning from production could have done.

Jimin’s expression softened. “It’s fine.”

Mina did not move.

“I mean it,” he said, lower this time, meant for her more than the cameras. “I wouldn’t say yes if it wasn’t.”

“That is exactly what people say before making my job difficult.”

His mouth curved, though the smile did not quite reach the rest of him. After a brief hesitation, he stepped closer and reached for her wrist. His fingers settled lightly around it, thumb resting over the place where her pulse immediately betrayed her, and the familiar shift answered beneath her skin before she could prepare for it. The ache she had been carrying at the edges of her joints softened, not disappearing entirely but loosening enough that her breath caught in spite of herself.

Jimin felt it too. She saw it in the small change in his eyes.

Instead, she looked down at his hip again, then back at his face. “One try.”

“One try,” he agreed.

“And you tell me immediately if it pulls.”

“I will.” The answer came softly enough that it took some of the fight out of her. Mina exhaled, then moved closer before she could talk herself out of it.

She placed him with the same practical focus she used in the treatment room, though nothing about the moment felt remotely clinical. One of his hands settled low at her waist, close enough to her hip to take her centre without dragging her upward through the ribs. The other she guided beneath the line of her thigh, where he would catch her weight once her foot left the floor. He let her adjust him by fractions, his attention fixed on her hands, her posture, the direction of her weight.

“From here,” she said quietly. “Wait for my timing.”

Jimin nodded once.

The room around them had gone almost unnervingly still, but Mina refused to look at anyone else. If she looked at Jungkook’s curiosity or Hoseok’s sharp dancer’s attention or Jin’s too-soft expression, she would lose her nerve before she even began.

So she looked at Jimin. He was waiting. Steady. Ready.

Mina stepped into position and allowed the old mechanics to arrange themselves through her body. The preparation was smaller than it would have been once, more careful, but when her leg lifted behind her into arabesque, the line rose higher than she expected. Her back lengthened, her hips found the placement almost before she had finished thinking about it, and for a brief, startling second she felt the room understand.

A normal person could not have made that shape so cleanly. The height was not simply flexibility. It was strength through the back, control through the standing leg, years of correction living inside muscle and bone. It was not what it once had been, and Mina knew that better than anyone, but it was still there. The training had not disappeared because the career had.

Jimin’s hand firmed at her waist. She gave him the timing with a small breath. Then he lifted.

The floor left her in a smooth, controlled sweep, and Mina let her lower leg fold into passé as his support took her weight fully. Her knee bent, her foot drawing in while her arabesque leg stayed long behind her, and the tilt carried her forward until her torso angled toward the floor and the lifted line reached high behind her. Jimin adjusted with her, one hand secure at her centre, the other supporting her thigh as the movement passed out of her control and into the shared balance between them.

He was carrying her now. Completely. That should have frightened her more than it did.

Instead, what registered first was how carefully he held her. He did not make the lift bigger for the cameras, did not try to turn it into something showier than she had given him. He followed the shape she created and protected it, strong enough to take her weight but disciplined enough not to steal the movement from her.

For a suspended moment, Mina was off the floor, held in a line her body still remembered with painful clarity. Her body had never been weak. It had been trained. Capable. Strong enough to make impossible things look delicate. The loss had never been about whether she could do one beautiful thing once. It had been about whether she could survive doing beautiful, brutal things every day until her body had nothing left to give.

Jimin brought her back when she gave the signal, guiding her slowly through the same path. Her passé unfolded. The arabesque returned. Her foot found the floor again, and only once she was fully balanced did his hands ease away from her waist and thigh.

The room stayed silent. Mina became aware of her breathing first, then the heat in her face, then Jimin standing close enough that the air between them still felt charged with the memory of his hands.

Jungkook exhaled from somewhere near the floor. “You were really good.”

Mina looked down, smoothing one hand over her trousers though there was nothing to fix. The easy answer would have been to make a joke. The safer answer would have been to shrug it off until the moment became small enough to survive.

Instead, with Jimin still beside her and the room watching as if they had finally seen something real, Mina let herself tell the truth.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I was.” She did not know what he had seen. Only that he had seen enough.

——————————————-

For a few seconds after Mina stepped away from him, Jimin forgot there were cameras in the room. None of it felt important compared to the look on Mina’s face. She had answered Jungkook softly, almost too softly for the room, and the honesty of it seemed to surprise her as much as everyone else.

Yeah. I was.

Jimin had heard pride in it. He had also heard grief.

The two sat together in a way he was not sure he would have understood before seeing her move. He had known she used to dance because she had told him that much in his apartment, late at night, when the room had been quiet and her guard had lowered just enough for him to glimpse the outline of something older. But hearing that she had danced and watching her body remember it were not the same thing. He understood that now. The difference had been there in the height of her arabesque, in the careful strength through her back, in the control she still carried even after years away from whatever studios had shaped her.

She had not looked like someone showing an old hobby. She had looked like someone stepping briefly into a language she had once been fluent in and realizing she still remembered how to speak it.

Then the moment ended, and Mina seemed to realize everyone had seen it. Her expression changed so quickly that Jimin doubted most of the room caught it. The softness closed first. Then the openness. She smoothed one hand down the side of her trousers, glanced toward the tablet she had abandoned near the cushions, and gave the sort of small, practical smile people used when they wanted everyone else to understand that the conversation was over.

“I should check the dinner plan before filming restarts,” she said.

No one stopped her.

Jimin wanted to. The instinct rose before he could decide whether it was fair, his body already shifting as if following her would be the most natural thing in the world. But Mina had not looked at him when she spoke. She had looked toward the hallway, toward escape, and something in the rigid set of her shoulders told him that if anyone reached for her now, she might come apart from the effort of staying composed.

So he stayed where he was.

Mina crossed the room with her tablet tucked against her chest, moving carefully but not painfully, and disappeared down the hallway toward the office she had claimed for recovery work. The living room remained quiet after she left, the kind of quiet that did not usually survive long around them.

Jungkook was the first to break it, “Did we do something wrong?”

The question came out smaller than Jimin expected, stripped of the bright curiosity that had pushed the scene forward only minutes earlier. Jungkook was still looking toward the hallway, brows pulled together, and for the first time since he had asked her to show them something, he seemed to understand that what they had seen had not been simple.

Jin leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His gaze stayed on the hallway a moment longer before he looked back at Jungkook.

“No,” he said gently. “Just give her a minute.”

That answer settled too quickly for Jimin’s liking. It was too calm. Too certain. Jin had not guessed.

Jimin looked at him properly then, and the small details from the last twenty-four hours began arranging themselves into a shape he still could not read. Jin noticing when Mina disappeared the night before. Jin going upstairs before anyone else asked questions. The way Mina had looked at him during the memory task when he made that comment about old habits. The quiet history in their exchange that had passed over everyone else’s heads but had landed directly between them.

Jimin stood before he realized he had decided to move. Jin looked up. For a moment neither of them spoke, but Jimin had known Jin long enough to recognize the expression waiting behind his face. He was already preparing not to answer.

“What do you know?” Jimin asked.

The room shifted around them. Not dramatically, but enough. Namjoon looked down at the floor as if giving the conversation privacy without leaving. Yoongi’s eyes moved between them once before settling on Jin. Hoseok’s smile had faded. Taehyung, who had been sitting quietly near the speakers, stopped pretending not to listen.

Jin did not look annoyed by the question. That made it worse. He looked tired in the way people did when they were holding something carefully because it did not belong to them.

“Jimin.”

“What do you know?” he repeated, quieter this time.

Jin’s gaze flicked toward the hallway again. Jimin followed it despite himself, though Mina was long gone.

When Jin answered, his voice stayed low enough that the cameras might catch the words but not the weight beneath them, “It’s not my story to tell.”

The words were gentle. They still landed like a door closing.

Jimin stared at him, frustration rising sharp and immediate because he did not know what to do with a boundary he understood. Jin was right. Jimin knew he was right. Whatever sat behind Mina’s careful answers, behind the way she spoke about dance as if it belonged to another person, behind the expression that had crossed her face after the lift, it was hers. Not Jin’s. Not his. Not something he could demand simply because he cared. And he did care. That was becoming harder to pretend around.

Jungkook shifted on the floor, looking stricken. “I didn’t know.”

Jin’s expression softened. “I know. She knows too.”

“But she looked—”

“She remembered something,” Yoongi said from the sofa.

The room went quiet again. Jimin looked over. Yoongi was staring at the place where Mina had stood, his cup resting between both hands. His voice had not carried much, but something about it made everyone listen.

“Grief does that,” he continued, not looking at any of them directly. “You think you’re done with it because it stops shouting. Then one day something small brings it back like it was waiting in the next room.”

No one answered immediately.

Jimin thought of Mina in the lift, the way her line had stretched into something beautiful and painful at once. He thought of the way her breath had caught when he touched her wrist before it, of the quiet pact they had been pretending was practical, of how her body had softened beneath the contact and how his own pain had shifted in answer.

He thought of her saying, Yeah. I was—Not I danced. Not I trained. I was.—The past tense had never sounded so alive.

Jin rubbed a hand over his mouth, then looked at Jungkook. “You didn’t hurt her by asking. But let her decide what she wants to say next.”

Jungkook nodded, though he still looked unconvinced of his own innocence. Jimin understood the feeling.

He looked toward the hallway again. Every part of him wanted to follow her. Every part of him knew he should wait. The two instincts pulled at each other until he had to close his hand around the edge of his sleeve to keep himself still.

Across the room, Jin watched him with the same quiet understanding that had annoyed Jimin in the kitchen the night before. This time, Jimin understood why. Jin knew enough to stay back. Jimin was only just learning how hard that could be.

—————————

Please Like, comment, share, reblog!

Comment for taglist :)

Thanks for reading!

Xoxo, bumble

SUMMARY: Performance specialist, Mina Seo has made a career out of taking care of everyone else. As BTS throws themselves into comeback preparations, she spends her days managing injuries, recovery plans, and the impossible task of keeping seven overworked artists healthy. What nobody realizes is that she’s becoming increasingly skilled at hiding her own struggles. When an unexpected connection with Jimin begins offering relief neither of them fully understands, it slowly becomes part of their routine. Late-night conversations, shared silences, and a comfort that grows easier to rely on with every passing week. But while Jimin is getting better, Mina isn’t. And sooner or later, someone is going to notice.

WARNINGS: chronic illness, overwork injuries, some medical scenes, slight cursing, eventual smut scene—This story contains a realistic depiction of chronic illness, including rheumatoid arthritis, pain flares, fatigue, hospitalization, and the emotional impact of long-term health conditions.

Masterlist

—————————

The first thing Mina heard when she opened her bedroom door was Korean moving too quickly for the hour. It carried up from downstairs in overlapping waves, one voice answering another before the first had finished, laughter cutting through the middle of it, someone calling from farther away as if distance had no bearing on whether anyone could follow the conversation. She paused in the hallway for a moment, hand still on the doorknob, listening with the bleary concentration of someone whose brain had not yet fully agreed to participate in the day.

At HYBE, Korean was manageable. Meetings had structure. People took turns, most of the time. Even when schedules became chaotic, there was usually a clear subject, a clear speaker, and enough professional restraint for Mina to follow what was being said without constantly having to translate the rhythm as much as the language…This was not that.

By the time she made it downstairs, the kitchen was already awake. Morning light spilled across the counters, a pan hissed softly on the stove, dishes had begun accumulating beside the sink, and half the island had been overtaken by ingredients that suggested several breakfast plans had been started at once and none of them had been formally agreed upon. The members moved around one another with the casual awareness of people who had shared too many kitchens, dorms, hotel suites, and waiting rooms to require much explanation. Someone reached past someone else for chopsticks. Someone moved a mug two inches to the left without looking. Someone answered a question that had been asked in another part of the room entirely. This was way more chaotic than she was used to. Her mornings started slow and quiet. Alone. In her own apartment (or hotel room). This was the opposite of that.

Mina stopped just inside the doorway and tried to work out whether there was an actual discussion happening or whether she had walked into the middle of seven unfinished thoughts.

Jimin noticed her first. He was standing near the island with a mug in one hand, listening to Namjoon and Hoseok talk across each other while Jungkook attempted to correct a detail from the stove. His gaze shifted toward her, and the slight lift of his mouth was enough to make her feel as though she had been expected rather than merely observed entering the room.

“Morning,” he said.

Several greetings followed, all at once, and Mina lifted a hand in return as she crossed toward the island. “Morning. Is it this energetic every morning?” She laughed a bit, rhetorical question filling the space.

“We’re making breakfast,” Jungkook said, as if that explained the state of the counters.

“You’re making several possible breakfasts,” Mina corrected, looking around the kitchen. “That’s different.”

Jin, who had been searching through a drawer near the sink, glanced over his shoulder. “You’re welcome to take over.”

“I’ve been awake for all of seven minutes. Don’t start.”

That earned a laugh from Hoseok, and for a brief moment Mina thought she might actually be able to settle into the conversation. Then Taehyung said something from the far side of the kitchen, Jungkook answered before Mina had caught the full sentence, Namjoon added a correction, and Yoongi made a dry comment into his coffee that caused three of them to laugh while Mina stood there holding an empty mug and wondering how the topic had moved from breakfast to something involving penalties, a camera crew, and what sounded suspiciously like a complaint about socks.

She waited for the conversation to catch up in her head….It did not.

Instead, the conversation widened around her, quick and familiar and full of references she had no context for. She caught individual phrases easily enough, but they arrived without the surrounding structure she needed to make them useful—Breakfast. Filming. Yesterday. No, not that one. Hyung, you said it first. Why would that count? Someone mentioned the lake. Someone else objected. Jungkook sounded personally betrayed by whatever was being suggested. The details slid past her too quickly to organize.

Mina stared down into her empty mug.

Jimin moved beside her and reached for the coffee pot. “You missed an argument.”

“I gathered that much.”

“It started as a breakfast argument.”

“Naturally.”

“Then it became a filming argument.”

“Of course.”

“Now I think it’s about whether Jungkook can be trusted near water before lunch.”

Mina looked up. “Can he?”

Jimin considered this with visible seriousness. “Probably not.”

“I heard that,” Jungkook said from the stove.

“You were meant to,” Jimin replied.

Mina accepted the coffee Jimin poured for her and took a grateful sip before turning back to the room. “Right. I need one person to tell me what’s happening, because I understood breakfast, lake, and socks, and I’m not convinced those belong in the same sentence.”

There was a brief pause before the kitchen erupted in laughter.

Jungkook pointed at Namjoon. “He started it.”

Namjoon looked genuinely wronged. “That is not an explanation.”

“It’s the truth.”

“It is not even close to the truth.”

Mina raised her mug slightly. “One at a time, please. You lot speak like subtitles are optional.”

That made Taehyung laugh into his coffee, and even Yoongi’s mouth twitched as he leaned back in his chair. Namjoon, perhaps out of mercy, started again at a slower pace, explaining that production had sent over a revised outline for the morning’s filming. The members were supposed to cook breakfast together on camera later in the week, but someone had suggested doing a practice run before filming began, which had then somehow become a debate about whether practicing ruined the natural chaos production was hoping to capture.

“That,” Mina said after listening carefully, “is the most ridiculous professional concern I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s valid,” Hoseok said.

“It is not.”

“It might be,” Jimin said, though his expression gave him away before he finished speaking.

Mina turned toward him. “Don’t you start as well.”

“I’m being neutral.”

“You are absolutely not being neutral. You’re enjoying this.”

He smiled into his mug, making no attempt to deny it.

The conversation resumed after that, though with slightly more effort made to keep her inside it. Namjoon slowed down when he caught himself speaking too quickly. Hoseok repeated something when Taehyung interrupted over him. Jungkook leaned across the island to clarify a word Mina had missed, only for Jin to correct his explanation because, apparently, Jungkook had misunderstood the original point as well.

It should have been frustrating. In some ways, it was…But it was also strangely comforting to realize that nobody treated her confusion like failure. Nobody looked surprised when she asked for something to be repeated. Nobody made her feel as though professional fluency required her to keep up with seven people speaking over one another before breakfast. They simply adjusted, sometimes badly, sometimes with unnecessary commentary, but with enough ease that Mina found herself relaxing into the mess of it.

At some point, Taehyung slid a plate toward her without pausing his conversation with Jin.

Mina looked down at it, then over at him. “Is this mine?”

He nodded as though the answer should have been obvious.

“I didn’t ask for food.”

“You were going to forget.”

“I was drinking coffee.”

Several members objected at once.

Mina pointed at the room with her chopsticks. “See, this is exactly what I mean. One accusation at a time.”

Jimin laughed beside her, and when she glanced over, he was already looking at her with that expression she had started noticing more often lately, as though he was quietly entertained by the way she handled them and far more interested in watching than joining in.

“What’s that look?” she asked.

His eyes widened with exaggerated innocence. “What look?”

“That one.”

“I don’t have a look.”

“You absolutely have a look.”

Jin spoke without glancing up from his plate. “He has many.”

“Hyung.” jimin protested with no real bite.

“What? She’s right.”

Mina smiled despite herself and turned back to her breakfast before Jimin could defend himself. Around them, the kitchen continued moving in its own peculiar rhythm. People ate standing up, sat down, got back up again, stole pieces of food from plates that were not theirs, corrected each other’s memories, and restarted conversations everyone else thought had already ended.

It was nothing like a staff breakfast. It was nothing like a meeting. It was not even particularly restful. But as Mina sat there with coffee warming her hands and the morning unfolding messily around her, she began to understand that living with BTS was going to be far more complicated than working with them.

The front door opened before she could think much further on it, and the sound of production staff arriving shifted the room almost immediately. Chairs scraped back. Someone checked the time. Someone else asked where the call sheet had gone. Namjoon stood, already reaching for the version of himself that led rooms with cameras in them, and the loose domesticity of breakfast began reorganizing itself into the first official filming day.

Mina took one last sip of coffee and watched the change happen in real time. The retreat had begun.

—————————

By the time production finished setting up, the house no longer felt entirely like a house. The breakfast dishes had been cleared away, the counters wiped down, and the easy disorder of the morning had been pushed to the edges of the room to make space for camera equipment, lighting cases, wireless microphones, and staff moving through the living area with the quiet efficiency of people who had done this hundreds of times before. The change was subtle. A place that had felt lived in twenty minutes earlier now carried the familiar tension of a set waiting to begin.

Mina stayed near the kitchen island with her tablet tucked against her side, close enough to hear the briefing but far enough away that she would not accidentally end up in the middle of filming. It was a position she knew well. Available if needed. Invisible if not. Unfortunately, the members had never been particularly respectful of invisibility.

Jungkook noticed her standing apart within seconds and frowned as though she had broken some rule everyone else had been told about. Before he could say anything, Taehyung glanced over and patted the empty space beside him on the couch without interrupting whatever he had been saying to Hoseok. The gesture was so casual that Mina almost ignored it on principle, but then Jimin looked back as well, his attention catching hers briefly before he shifted to make more room.

Mina sighed under her breath.

“You lot are very difficult to avoid,” she muttered, crossing the room.

Jin, who was seated at the end of the couch, looked entirely too pleased. “We’re charming.”

“That is not the word I’d use.”

The producer began speaking before anyone could argue, which was probably for the best. The concept for the first day was simple enough. The morning would begin with a team-based mission around the property, something light and domestic rather than aggressively athletic, because the retreat was supposed to feel like rest even if everyone involved knew filming was still filming. The points earned during the mission would decide which ingredients each team could use for lunch. After lunch, the schedule would pause for recovery blocks, individual interviews, and downtime before the afternoon segment.

Mina listened carefully, her attention sharpening at the mention of the recovery window. That was where her day truly began. Namjoon’s ankle needed checking before any outdoor filming. Yoongi’s shoulder program had to stay consistent. Jimin still had hip work scheduled, including TENS later in the day, and the others would need mobility and soft tissue maintenance if production insisted on turning relaxation into content.

The producer’s Korean was clear and measured, easy enough to follow even while she added notes to her tablet. The members were less helpful.

The second questions opened, the room filled with overlapping voices. Someone wanted clarification on teams. Someone else wanted to know whether ingredient trades were allowed. Hoseok asked a sensible question that immediately got buried beneath Jungkook objecting to a hypothetical rule violation that had not yet happened. Namjoon tried to reorganize the discussion and accidentally gave three more people an opening to speak at once.

Mina stared at her tablet, then at the room, then back at her tablet.

Beside her, Jimin leaned slightly closer without taking his eyes off the producer. “They’re asking if stealing ingredients counts as strategy.”

Mina blinked. “That’s what this is about?”

“Partly.”

“What’s the other part?”

“I think Jin hyung is arguing that bad cooking should count as a penalty.”

Mina took a second to process that, then nodded. “That one I support.”

Jimin’s smile appeared quickly, private enough that it did not interrupt the briefing. “I thought you might.”

Production eventually regained control, though Mina suspected it had less to do with authority and more to do with everyone running out of breath. Teams were announced, filming routes explained, and microphones adjusted. The room shifted again as the members stood, stretching and joking while staff moved around them.

Mina remained seated for a moment longer, reviewing the recovery schedule she had already built into the gaps between filming. The retreat, she was beginning to understand, was not going to be less work. It was simply going to be work with more witnesses.

When she looked up, Jimin was waiting near the edge of the living room. Not hovering. Not obviously. Just waiting.

Mina lifted an eyebrow. “What?”

He nodded toward the front doors, where the others were already gathering for the first mission. “You coming?”

She gave him a look. He smiled as if he had won something. Mina stood, tablet in hand, and followed him toward the rest of the group as the cameras began rolling.

——————————

The first mission was explained with the kind of optimism only production staff seemed capable of maintaining around BTS. The rules, at least, sounded simple at the beginning—The members would divide into pairs for a telepathy-style game designed to test how well they knew one another after years of living, working, travelling, performing, arguing, and apparently misremembering the same stories in seven different ways. Each pair would sit back-to-back with small whiteboards. Production would ask a question. Both people would write an answer. Matching answers earned points, and points would later be exchanged for lunch ingredients.

Mina thought it was a good concept. Safe, first of all, which immediately made it better than anything involving running, climbing, jumping, throwing, or allowing Jungkook to interpret the phrase “light activity” with the enthusiasm of a man who considered moderation a personal insult.

It was also practical from a filming perspective. The members were funny when left to talk their way into problems, and this game seemed designed almost entirely to let them do exactly that.

Most importantly, it did not require her. She remained near the edge of the living room with her tablet in one hand, reviewing the recovery blocks she had scheduled after lunch..

Then one of the producers said, “We’ll have four teams.”

Mina looked up. So did several members. There was a brief silence while everyone arrived at the same mathematical problem—Seven members. Four teams. One missing person.

Mina glanced toward the production staff, expecting them to explain that one member would rotate through rounds or act as host. That was usually how these things worked. Somebody would sit out, complain loudly about sitting out, then become far too invested in everyone else’s answers.

Before the producer could clarify, Jungkook turned around and pointed at her, t“I’ll take Mina.”

The room shifted around her. Mina blinked, “I beg your pardon?”

Jungkook looked genuinely confused by her confusion. “For the team.”

“I understood that part.”

“Then why do you look like that?”

“Because I’m not playing.”

“You’re in the house,” he said, as if that settled the matter.

Several members immediately began talking at once. Jin objected on the grounds that Jungkook did not get to claim people before teams had been assigned. Hoseok wanted to know whether Mina counted as a member for scoring purposes. Taehyung seemed mostly interested in whether she would be allowed to use medical knowledge against them, which Mina found flattering and mildly concerning. Namjoon attempted to bring the conversation back to the actual rules while simultaneously asking production whether staff participation had been approved.

Yoongi, from his place on the couch, looked at Mina over the rim of his coffee and said, “You should run while you can.”

“I was planning to.”

“It’s too late now.”

Unfortunately, he was probably right. Mina looked toward the producer, hoping for intervention from the only people in the room still operating under the assumption that production schedules mattered. The producer glanced between Mina and the members before smiling in the careful way people smiled when they realised unexpected content had just been handed to them for free.

“If Mina is comfortable participating, we can include her.”

Seven faces turned toward her.

Mina stared back at them, “Absolutely not.”

Jungkook’s face fell with such immediate disappointment that it felt unfair.

Jin leaned forward. “It’s only the first mission.”

“That is not the compelling argument you think it is.”

“You’ll be with one of us.”

“That is also not reassuring.”

Taehyung lifted his hand. “I vote yes.”

“You don’t get a vote.”

“Then why did you ask us?”

“I didn’t.”

The conversation might have continued indefinitely if Namjoon had not quietly pointed out that including Mina made the teams even and would avoid having one member sit out for the first filming segment. It was the sort of reasonable explanation she disliked because it made arguing feel petty, particularly when the producer added that she could step out after the first round if she preferred.

Mina looked down at her tablet, then at the recovery schedule she had already rearranged twice that morning, then back at the room full of men watching her with varying degrees of hope, amusement, and badly concealed anticipation.

“You lot are exhausting,” she said eventually.

Jungkook grinned in victory.

“That isn’t a yes.”

“It sounded like a yes.”

“It sounded like me being bullied.”

Production accepted that as consent. Teams were drawn from a small bowl a few minutes later, because apparently allowing the members to choose partners would have taken the rest of the morning and possibly ruined several friendships. Names were called one by one. Jin ended up with Namjoon, which produced immediate concern from both of them for entirely different reasons. Yoongi and Hoseok were paired together and looked quietly pleased with the efficiency of it. Jungkook drew Taehyung, prompting both of them to declare victory before understanding the questions.

Then the producer unfolded the final slip, “Jimin and Mina.”

The room reacted before Mina did. Jin looked down at his board with a smile he did not bother hiding quickly enough. Jungkook made a pleased sound under his breath. Hoseok glanced between them and then immediately looked away, which was somehow worse. Mina chose to ignore all of them. Jimin, to his credit, only shifted on the couch to make space beside him.

“You okay with this?” he asked quietly. The question was low enough that the microphones might not catch it cleanly beneath the noise of everyone else getting settled.

Mina glanced at him. There was no teasing in his expression now, only a kind of careful attention that made her want to look away before she gave too much of herself back.

“It’s a game about knowing people,” she said. “You lot have known each other for half your lives. I’m about to embarrass myself on camera.”

“You know more than you think.”

“That sounds dangerously optimistic.”

“It’s one of my better qualities.”

She gave him a look, and he smiled as though he had been aiming for exactly that.

They settled back-to-back on the floor in front of the couch, whiteboards balanced on their knees while production adjusted the camera angles. Mina could feel the warmth of him through the thin space between their shoulders, close enough that every small movement registered. It should have been distracting for obvious reasons. Instead, what unsettled her most was how quickly the position felt familiar.

The first question placed Mina as the subject:

If Mina could choose any breakfast, what would she pick?

Mina stared at the board and nearly laughed. This, at least, was easy. She wrote her answer quickly, while Jimin, behind her, made a thoughtful sound that immediately made her suspicious.

“Don’t overthink,” she warned.

“You don’t know what I’m writing.”

“I know you’re overthinking.”

His laugh moved through his back into hers. When production called time, Mina revealed her board.

Tea and toast.

Jimin lifted his a second later.

Tea. Toast. Something boring.

The room erupted. Mina turned halfway around, offended despite the fact that they had technically matched. “Boring?”

Jimin looked entirely unrepentant. “Am I wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have picked something exciting?”

“That is hardly the point.”

Jin leaned over to read the board and laughed. “He gets the point.”

“I should get extra for accuracy,” Jimin said.

“You should get deducted for attitude.”

Production awarded them the match. Mina did not thank them.

The next round switched subjects, and Jimin had to write his own answer while Mina guessed. The question:

what he would do first on a completely free day with no schedules, no cameras, and no responsibilities.

The room immediately became noisy with opinions. Mina capped her marker and thought about it longer than she expected to. There was the obvious answer, the one most people might give because it fit the version of Jimin they saw from a distance. Sleep. Dance. Eat. Call someone. Go shopping. Visit the members.

But she thought of his apartment instead, of the way he had talked late into the night without seeming to notice the time passing, of how often he sought people out without making it look like need. She thought of the way he had admitted missing the members on his solo tour, not dramatically, not as a confession, simply as a truth that had shaped the experience of standing alone.

She wrote carefully.

Find someone to spend it with.

When the boards turned, Jimin’s answer read:

See the members. Or someone comfortable.

For a moment, the room made the kind of noise people made when an answer landed a little closer than expected. Jimin glanced over his shoulder.

Mina lifted an eyebrow. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That is not a nothing face.”

“You got it right.”

“I’m very talented.”

“I noticed.” The comment was quiet enough that it could have passed as part of the game, but Mina still looked away first.

The questions continued from there, growing increasingly specific and increasingly designed to provoke arguments.

Who would your partner trust to cook dinner without supervision?

What item would your partner forget when travelling?

Which member does your partner scold most often?

That last one caused immediate shouting. Mina did not need perfect Korean to understand that every single member believed he had been wrongfully accused of something.

This time Mina was the subject again, which meant she had to write the true answer while Jimin guessed. She sat with her marker hovering above the board as six conversations happened around her at once. Jungkook was objecting to being named by two different teams. Jin was insisting that scolding and loving guidance were not the same thing. Namjoon attempted to ask whether professional scolding counted, which made everyone turn toward Mina as though she were personally responsible for the category existing.

Mina looked at Jimin over her shoulder. “What did Namjoon just ask?”

“Whether your work scolding counts.”

“Of course it counts.”

Jimin’s mouth curved. “Then the answer is everyone.”

“That won’t fit on the board.”

“Write Jungkook.”

“Why Jungkook?”

“Because statistically it’s safest.”

She considered this for half a second, then wrote Jungkook in English because she did not trust herself to spell quickly in Korean while everyone was still arguing over the moral definition of being told to stretch properly. Behind her, Jimin wrote something. When the boards flipped, his answer matched hers. Jungkook stood up.

Mina immediately pointed at him. “Don’t start. You proved us right by standing.”

That ended the argument for approximately three seconds before everyone began laughing, including Jungkook, who sat back down with the deeply wounded dignity of someone who knew the accusation was fair.

The game became easier after that, not because Mina suddenly understood every reference or because the members slowed down consistently enough for her to catch everything, but because Jimin began quietly filling in the gaps without making a performance of it. A phrase here. A name there. A murmured explanation when an inside joke clearly belonged to a decade she had not been present for. He never made her feel as though she had missed something obvious. He simply handed her the missing piece and let her place it herself.

By the fifth question, Mina realised they were doing better than she had expected.

By the sixth, she realised Jimin was enjoying himself immensely.

By the seventh, she was enjoying herself too.

The final category appeared on the monitor: When overwhelmed.

Mina felt the shift in the room before anyone spoke. The other questions had invited teasing, complaints, and arguments over technicalities. This one invited observation, which was far more dangerous. The producer explained that each team would answer twice. First, one partner would write what they did when overwhelmed while the other guessed. Then they would switch.

Mina was the subject first. She uncapped her marker slowly.

The obvious answer came to her immediately because it was the truth she let people see. She worked. She organised. She found something useful to do with her hands until the rest of her had somewhere to put itself. So she wrote: Keep busy.

Behind her, Jimin remained quiet. The silence lasted long enough that Mina became aware of it.

When production called time, she lifted her board. Jimin raised his a second later. Pretends she isn’t.

The room quieted around them in a way that did not feel staged. The answers did not match. Not technically. Production moved on after a moment, awarding no point, but nobody rushed to joke over it the way they had with the earlier questions. Mina looked at Jimin’s board longer than she meant to, the black marker letters sitting there with uncomfortable accuracy—Pretends she isn’t.

It was not the answer she had written. It was not wrong either.

Behind her, Jimin shifted slightly, and she could tell without looking at him that he had realised the same thing. The producer cleared their throat gently and moved to the second half.

Now Jimin was the subject. Mina stared at the blank board in her lap.

She had already answered this in another form, earlier in the game, but the wording made it feel different now. What did Jimin do when he was overwhelmed? She thought of the apartment again, of the quiet after midnight, of his voice when he talked about solo touring and how strange it had been to stand backstage without the members nearby. He did not always say he needed people. Sometimes he made it look like checking in. Sometimes he made it look like curiosity. Sometimes he simply drifted toward the places where someone else was already sitting.

Mina wrote: Finds people.

When production called time, Jimin lifted his board.

Look for the members.

This time the room responded warmly, several members laughing in recognition while Hoseok reached over to pat Jimin’s shoulder. The answers matched easily enough for the point, but Mina barely heard the producer announce it.

Jimin turned slightly, just enough to look at her. Their shoulders brushed. Neither of them moved away. For once, Mina did not have anything clever to say.

The final scores were counted while the room reorganised around them. Jimin and Mina had earned enough points for vegetables, rice, and one decent protein option, which was apparently considered respectable for a team that included someone who still did not understand three of the questions.

The others began arguing about ingredient strategy almost immediately.

Mina capped her marker and set the board aside. Jimin leaned closer as everyone else shifted toward the next part of filming.

“You did well.”

She looked at him. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

His smile came quickly, but there was still something thoughtful beneath it, something left over from the final question. Mina saw it. So did he. Neither said anything about it.

Instead, she stood and brushed invisible dust from her trousers while Jungkook shouted from across the room asking whether rice could be traded for meat, and the entire group was swallowed back into the noisy, ridiculous business of trying to earn lunch.

———————-

The second mission began with ingredient cards spread across the coffee table and seven members taking lunch far more seriously than Mina had expected. To be fair, production had made the stakes sound dramatic. Each team would keep the basic ingredients they had earned during the telepathy game, but the second mission would determine whether those ingredients became an actual meal or something everyone would spend the rest of the day pretending to enjoy for the sake of the cameras.

The new game was called the Household Relay, though Mina suspected that title had been chosen mainly because it sounded more organized than whatever was about to happen.

The rules were sounded simple: Each team would move through three stations set up around the house, earning bonus cards at each one. Those cards could be exchanged for sauces, side dishes, better cuts of protein, additional vegetables, or cooking privileges. Production emphasized that the relay was not athletic, which Mina appreciated, though the warning seemed aimed mostly at the members who had already begun stretching as if table setting required hamstring preparation.

Jungkook, to his credit, was not one of them. He had gone quiet in the way he sometimes did when a task clicked into place for him, crouched near the coffee table with Taehyung while sorting their cards into categories. Mina had seen that focus before in training rooms and rehearsal footage, the way playfulness could fold away when he decided something was worth doing properly. He was still smiling, still answering Taehyung’s occasional comments, but his attention kept returning to the cards, already calculating which ingredients could become something workable. Mina found herself watching for a second longer than she meant to.

“You look impressed,” Jimin said beside her.

“I’m always impressed when people take food seriously.”

“Jungkook takes winning seriously.”

“He also knows what he’s doing.”

Jimin followed her gaze to where Jungkook had begun explaining something to Taehyung with a level of detail that made the younger man’s enthusiasm look almost dangerous.

“That too,” he admitted.

Mina looked back at their own cards and tried to decide whether rice, vegetables, chicken, and whatever dignity remained after being pulled into a Run BTS mission could reasonably become lunch. Jimin crouched beside her, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers when he reached for one of the cards.

“We need seasoning,” he said.

“We need seasoning, something with fat, and ideally another protein option if we don’t want everyone stealing from Jungkook’s team by noon.”

“You think they’ll win?”

“I think he’s already planned three meals and a backup.”

Jimin laughed quietly, and Mina allowed herself a small smile before production called the first teams forward.

Their first station was set up in the kitchen, where covered bowls had been lined along the island. Each pair had to identify five ingredients by smell alone and then choose two to keep as bonus cards. It sounded easy until the first team stepped up and immediately began arguing over whether one bowl contained garlic, onion, or something that had once stood near garlic emotionally.

Jin and Namjoon went first. Jin identified sesame oil before the cloth had fully lifted. Namjoon took longer with the second bowl, not because he was wrong, but because he seemed determined to justify his answer with enough context to turn dried kelp into a philosophical inquiry. By the time they finished, Jin had earned their team two seasonings and a headache.

Yoongi and Hoseok moved through the station with quiet efficiency, conferring in low voices and wasting almost no time. Mina watched them earn soy sauce and chili flakes with the sort of calm competence that made the entire process look suspiciously easy.

Jungkook and Taehyung were next, and if anyone expected chaos, Jungkook ruined it by being annoyingly good. He leaned over each bowl, identified the ingredients with quick certainty, and listened when Taehyung caught something he had missed. The two of them earned ginger and sesame oil without much difficulty, though Taehyung did spend several seconds insisting that one mystery bowl had “a suspicious personality,” which production seemed delighted by.

When Jimin and Mina were called forward, the kitchen still carried traces of everyone else’s guesses. Soy sauce, chili, ginger, oil, dried seafood, garlic. The scents layered together in a way that made the challenge harder than it should have been.

Mina leaned over the first bowl and closed her eyes.

Jimin watched her. “You look very serious.”

“This is the most important thing I’ve done all morning.”

“The telepathy game meant nothing to you?”

“The telepathy game did not decide whether I have to eat under-seasoned chicken on camera.”

He laughed but focused when she lifted the first cloth. They worked better together than Mina expected. Jimin caught the soy sauce immediately. Mina identified ginger and sesame oil. They disagreed over one bowl long enough for Hoseok to start laughing behind them, but when Mina finally realized it was doenjang, Jimin accepted the correction with the solemnity of someone narrowly avoiding public disgrace—They chose sesame oil and gochujang as their bonus cards.

“Now we have lunch,” Mina said as they returned to the others.

Jimin looked far too pleased with himself. “We had lunch before.”

“We had ingredients. Those are not always the same thing.”

The second station was outside on the deck, where production had set up a long table covered with items for a filming-day basket. Teams had to choose eight things they believed would be useful during an afternoon outdoor shoot. Some were obvious: water bottles, sunscreen, wet wipes, towels, a portable battery. Others seemed designed purely to cause arguments, including a frying pan, a decorative lantern, three different hats, a blanket too small for more than one person, and a single sock nobody wanted to touch.

Mina understood the trick immediately. The challenge was not about choosing the most amusing items. It was about thinking past the next ten minutes.

She reached for water first, then sunscreen, wet wipes, towels, and the portable battery. Jimin selected the blanket, then hesitated over the first-aid kit at the same time Mina did.

Their hands nearly met above it. Only nearly. Still, both of them paused for a fraction of a second, long enough for Mina to become aware of how careful they had become with each other in small, unspoken ways. Jimin withdrew first, letting her take it, and the moment passed quickly enough that the cameras probably caught only two people reaching for the same object in a practical game. Mina placed the kit into the basket.

“Always prepared,” Jimin murmured.

“That is literally why I’m here.”

His smile softened at the edge, though he wisely did not comment on it.

Their final item became a portable speaker after Jimin argued that morale counted as practical. Mina disagreed, then allowed it anyway because his argument was delivered with enough confidence to be irritatingly persuasive.

Jin inspected their basket when they passed, “No food?”

“We are earning food.”

“You should always bring emergency food.”

“That is exactly the sort of thing you would say.”

“It is also correct.”

Mina looked at their basket, then at Jimin. Jimin looked back at her. They both turned to the table and swapped the speaker for protein bars.

From the other side of the deck, Jin looked deeply satisfied.

“I hate that he was right,” Mina muttered.

“He usually is about food.”

By the final station, everyone had stopped pretending the relay was casual. The dining room had been rearranged while they were outside, the long table cleared except for a tray placed carefully at one end. On it sat a full lunch setting: bowls, chopsticks, spoons, folded napkins, small dishes of sauce, a water glass, a plate angled slightly toward the camera, and several side dishes arranged with the kind of precision that made Mina immediately suspicious.

Production explained that each team would have ten seconds to study the tray before it was covered. After that, they would have to recreate the arrangement from memory using identical items from a second table. Accuracy would earn ingredient upgrades.

The members reacted with immediate confidence. Of course they did.

Years of choreography, stage marks, camera blocking, and formation changes had made all of them sharper than most people would expect at remembering placement. Mina watched Jin and Namjoon go first, both of them arguing softly over the exact position of a spoon while somehow managing to score well despite disagreeing through most of the task. Yoongi and Hoseok were quieter, splitting the tray between them with the efficiency of people who understood each other’s strengths without needing to discuss them. Jungkook and Taehyung moved quickly when their turn came, Jungkook remembering the practical layout while Taehyung caught two visual details that had slipped past everyone else.

By the time Mina and Jimin stepped forward, she could feel the room expecting the members to have the advantage. She understood why. She also found it faintly amusing.

The tray was uncovered. Ten seconds began. Mina looked once and let the image settle.

She did not try to memorize it as a list. Lists were too slow. Instead she took in the shape of it: the balance of the bowls, the diagonal line from glass to plate, the slight turn of the chopsticks, the distance between the red sauce dish and the folded napkin. It was not so different from learning spacing in a studio, from marking where a shoulder should angle, where a foot should land, where another dancer’s arm would be in relation to her own when the music changed.

Her body remembered that kind of seeing, even if it no longer let her use it the same way. The way she would make shapes in the mirror all those years ago in the studio.

The tray was covered. Jimin leaned closer as they turned toward the second table. “Sauce dishes at the top?”

“Red one slightly left of centre,” Mina said, already reaching for it. “Dark one above the spoon, but not in line with it.”

He paused. Mina placed the first dish, then adjusted it half an inch.

“The plate was angled,” she continued. “Not straight. Toward the camera.”

Jimin followed her instructions, his expression shifting from concentration into something more openly surprised when she corrected the chopsticks before he had even finished setting them down.

“You got all that?”

“Most of it.”

“Most?”

“The napkin fold was facing the wrong way on the example table.”

He stared at her.

Mina glanced up. “What?”

“You noticed the napkin fold?”

“I spent most of my childhood being told my left foot was three centimetres too far forward. A napkin fold is hardly going to defeat me.”

The sentence slipped out before she had time to think about it, carried by concentration rather than intention. Mina was ready reaching past him to move the spoon closer to the bowl, her attention fixed on the table in front of them, so she missed the way Jimin’s expression changed.

Jimin looked at her for a moment longer than the task required. He knew she had danced. She had told him that much in his apartment, curled into the corner of his couch with her knees tucked beneath her, speaking about it as though it belonged to another lifetime. She had admitted wanting it professionally, admitted the career change, then carefully stepped around the rest of the story before he could ask too much.

This was the first time he had heard the shape of it in her voice. Not the fact of dancing, but the discipline of it. The years of correction. Not just a childhood fantasy. The precision. The kind of childhood where three centimetres could matter enough to be remembered years later. Mina did not seem to notice what she had revealed.

‘What?”

“The spoon,” she said, still focused. “It was closer than than.”

Jimin looked at the spoon, then back at her, then back at the table.

Whatever question had risen to the surface stayed there, unanswered, because Mina had already moved on to the water glass, “There.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He didn’t question her after that.

They worked quickly after that. Jimin remembered the items she had not focused on, filling in the practical gaps while she adjusted spacing and angles with a precision that made one of the camera operators laugh quietly behind the lens. When he hesitated over the placement of the water glass, Mina reached past him and shifted it closer to the upper corner.

When production checked their arrangement against the original, the room grew louder almost immediately. They had missed the spoon by less than an inch, but everything else was close enough that the producer awarded them the highest score of the station. For a moment Mina only looked down at the table, surprised by the small, ridiculous rush of satisfaction that moved through her.

Then Jungkook called out from across the room , accusing them of brings professional experience into a household challenge.

Mina folded her arms and looked at Jungkook. “Are you accusing me of being good at the game?”

“Yes.”

“Terrible argument.”

“I know.” At least he sounded honest about it.

Jin, who had been watching from beside Namjoon glanced at the recreated tray and then at Mina with a look she recognized immediately, “Centimeters still matter, then?”

Mina’s smile faltered for half a second before she recovered, she hadn’t meant to say that comment earlier, “Oh don’t start.”

Jin lifted both his hands innocently. The exchange passed quickly, swallowed almost immediately by the others arguing over final point s, but Jimin caught it. He caught the way Jin’s comment had landed differently than Jungkook’s teasing, the way Mina understood it without needed explanation, the way her answer sounded less like confusion and more like a warning. Her caught enough of it to understand that Jin had heard something he hadn’t. Or rather, Jin had understood something Jimin only partly knew.

The final ingredient totals were announced while the room was still laughing. Their accuracy at the memory station earned them an upgrade from chicken to beef and an extra vegetable card, which Mina considered a respectable outcome for someone who had begun the morning fully intending to stand behind the cameras with a tablet and avoid being perceived.

Jimin gathered their cards from the table and handed them to her, “You realise we might actually make something good now.”

Mina looked over the ingredients, then toward the kitchen where everyone would shortly become far too invested in lunch. “That depends entirely on whether you lot follow instructions.”

His smile appeared before he could hide it. “Your instructions?”

“Obviously.”

“Then we have a chance.”

She tried not to enjoy that as much as she did.

—————————-

The cooking segment began with considerably more confidence than the ingredient cards deserved. Production moved everyone into the kitchen, where the fixed cameras in the corners were joined by handheld cameras near the island and stove. The teams spread their ingredients across every available surface. The house had been noisy all morning, but the kitchen gave the noise somewhere to land. Cabinets opened and closed. Water ran at the sink. Someone asked where the extra bowls had gone. Someone else answered from the wrong side of the room.

Mina stood beside Jimin at the end of the island, looking down at their ingredients—Rice. Beef. Vegetables. Sesame oil. Gochujang. Protein bars they had not meant to earn but were now quietly grateful for.

“This is workable,” she said.

Jimin glanced over. “That sounded almost positive.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

He smiled and reached for the rice. “Yes, chef.”

Mina gave him a look. “Absolutely not.”

The cameras were close enough to catch him laughing, though the moment disappeared quickly into the general movement of the kitchen. Across from them, Jungkook had already settled into the kind of focused competence that made Mina suspect his team would produce something annoyingly good. He and Taehyung discussed their ingredients in low voices, Taehyung offering suggestions while Jungkook adjusted them into something practical. Jin and Namjoon had taken over a corner near the stove, with Jin explaining a process and Namjoon listening intently enough that Mina briefly wondered whether he was memorising the recipe or preparing to cite it later. Yoongi and Hoseok worked with little fuss, dividing tasks so naturally that they barely needed to speak.

It was oddly satisfying to watch. Not because everyone was perfect in the kitchen. They were not. There were too many people, too many cameras, and too many opinions for anything to happen cleanly. But nobody was helpless. They were perfectly capable adults making lunch badly, well, and loudly in their own ways, and for once she let herself simply be part of it.

Jimin turned out to be easy to cook with. That surprised her more than it probably should have. He listened when she suggested balancing the gochujang with sesame oil. She stepped aside when he reached for the pan without either of them needing to make room deliberately. He passed her the vegetables before she asked. She handed him the plate when he looked for it. Their movements found a rhythm quickly, the kind of quiet coordination that should have taken longer between two people who had not cooked together before.

At some point, he reached behind her for a bowl and his hand brushed lightly against her waist to warn her he was there. Mina shifted without thinking. A few minutes later, she leaned past him for the cutting board and his shoulder pressed briefly against hers. Neither of them commented.

The kitchen was too busy for anyone to make much of it. Touch happened naturally in crowded spaces. People passed behind each other, reached over counters, moved around open drawers and hot pans. The practical intimacy of it should have meant nothing at all. Yet with Jimin, every small contact seemed to settle somewhere under Mina’s skin before fading.

They plated their lunch with only one disagreement about whether Jimin had added too much sauce, which he had, and whether Mina was being overly strict, which she was not. When production called time, the teams presented their dishes with varying levels of pride and defensive explanation. Jungkook and Taehyung’s dish looked infuriatingly good. Jin and Namjoon’s was simpler but clearly reliable. Yoongi and Hoseok had produced something clean, balanced, and quietly smug. Mina and Jimin’s chicken bowl earned approving noises from several people, which Jimin accepted with far too much satisfaction for someone who had argued with her over sauce three minutes earlier.

“You look pleased with yourself,” Mina murmured as they sat down to eat.

“I contributed.”

“You did.”

His expression softened into something more genuine. “You sound surprised.”

“I’m adjusting my assessment.”

“Upward?”

“Moderately.”

“I’ll take it.”

She tried not to smile and failed. The meal itself stretched longer than the cooking segment. Production collected reactions while the members tasted from each other’s plates, traded bites, argued over whose ingredients had been most unfairly limited, and accused one another of hiding better cards during the relay. Mina followed most of it, though when everyone began talking at once she gave up on understanding the full conversation and focused instead on eating while the food was still warm. Jimin noticed after a minute and leaned closer, murmuring enough context to keep her from being completely lost without making her feel as though he was translating for an audience. She appreciated that more than she said.

When filming paused, the room loosened almost immediately. Staff began resetting for the afternoon. The members scattered in the natural aftermath of being fed. Jungkook and Taehyung took their plates toward the sink still discussing seasoning. Namjoon disappeared briefly to check something on his phone. Yoongi claimed a chair near the windows, and Hoseok followed him with the easy intention of someone who meant to sit for five minutes and would probably end up talking for twenty. Jin stayed near the kitchen long enough to make sure leftovers had not been abandoned irresponsibly, then allowed himself to be pulled into a conversation near the living room.

Mina waited until the cameras shifted focus toward the next setup before returning to the island. The fixed cameras were still there, small red lights glowing from the corners, but after a morning of being surrounded by equipment, they had become part of the furniture. Mina was aware of them in the same distant way. Present, but not demanding her attention. Her attention was on the tablet.

She opened the nutrition sheet she had built before the retreat and began updating the lunch column for each member. Not guesses, not vague impressions, but actual intake based on what she had watched them eat. Protein. Carbs. Vegetables. Sodium. Who had eaten enough. Who had picked around half their meal because they were distracted. Who would need something more substantial before the afternoon activity. Who would crash before dinner if she did not plan a snack window between filming and recovery.

This was the part of her work nobody tended to think about. The visible parts were easier to understand. Stretching. Soft tissue work. TENS. Rehab exercises. Taping an ankle. Checking a shoulder. Telling someone to stop pretending a limp was a personality choice.

Nutrition was quieter. Less dramatic. More constant. It mattered anyway.

Mina leaned one hip against the counter and entered the last of the lunch notes. Namjoon would need more carbohydrates before the outdoor segment, especially with the ankle still recovering. Jungkook had eaten well enough but would need a planned snack rather than relying on whatever he found later. Yoongi had done better than she expected, though dinner would need to account for the fact that he tended to under-eat when schedules stretched too long.

Jimin—She paused. Jimin had eaten well. Could use another portion later, but that wasn’t what her mind was stuck on.

He had moved well all morning. Better than she had expected. So had she. The realization arrived slowly enough that she almost missed it. Her wrists were not stiff. Not entirely pain-free, but quieter than they usually were by this point in the day. Her knees did not feel as locked as they often did after a busy morning. Even the familiar heaviness that came from standing too long had stayed muted, present at the edges rather than pressing insistently for attention.

Mina stared at the tablet without reading it. She thought back over the morning—The telepathy game, sitting back-to-back with Jimin for longer than either of them had seemed to notice. The relay, shoulders brushing at the station tables, fingers nearly colliding over the first-aid kit. The kitchen, the constant passing behind one another, his hand briefly at her waist, her shoulder against his, their arms touching as they plated lunch. Touch after touch after touch, none of it planned, none of it dramatic enough to think about at the time.

A shadow fell across the counter. Mina looked up. Jimin stood on the other side of the island, holding two bottles of water. He placed one near her tablet without comment and glanced down at the screen, “Working again?”

“I was always working.”

“I’m starting to understand that.”

His tone was light, but his eyes moved over her face with the same quiet attention that had unsettled her more than once over the past few weeks. Mina looked back at the tablet before he could read too much.

“I’m updating your intake for the rest of the day.”

“My intake?”

“All of you. You still have filming, recovery blocks, and whatever production has planned this afternoon. If you lot eat like this was the only meal that matters, I’m going to have seven dramatic men on my hands by dinner.”

“We’re not that bad.”

Mina glanced up.

Jimin reconsidered. “Some of us are that bad.”

He smiled, but it did not last long. His gaze dropped briefly toward her hands resting on the tablet, then back to her face.

“You moved better today,” he said eventually.

Mina’s fingers stilled against the edge of the tablet. The comment was quiet enough that it did not feel like he meant it for the room, but the kitchen was not private. Staff passed through the far end with equipment. Someone laughed in the living room. The cameras continued watching from their corners, indifferent to whether a conversation mattered.

“I was cooking lunch, Jimin.”

“I know.”

“Not exactly a medical assessment.”

“I wasn’t assessing you.”

That made her look at him. He held her gaze for a second before glancing down at the bottle between them, “You just seemed easier. During the game, and then in the kitchen. Like it wasn’t hurting you as much.”

Mina knew what he meant before she wanted to. The pact had started as something practical, or at least that was the explanation they had both agreed to use because neither of them had been ready to call it anything else. Touch helped. Contact shifted pain into something less unbearable. They did not fully understand it, but they had accepted enough of it to build rules around it, to make it sound manageable, to make it sound like a choice.

Only today had not felt like a choice. Today it had simply happened. Small, ordinary contacts folded into the movement of the day so naturally that she had not counted them until now. And he was right. Her wrists were quieter. Her knees had not stiffened the way they usually did after a morning on her feet. The pain was still there, held somewhere beneath the surface, but it had softened around the edges until she had almost forgotten to brace for it. Almost normal.

The thought made her grip the tablet a little tighter. Jimin noticed, because of course he did, but he did not push.

“I think it helped,” he said.

Mina let out a careful breath and looked toward the living room, where the others were beginning to gather again, “We were touching all morning.” The words sounded different once she said them aloud.

Jimin’s mouth curved slightly, not quite a smile and not quite teasing. “That was my observation as well.”

“Don’t make it sound like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re pleased with yourself.”

“I’m not.”

“You absolutely are.”

His smile appeared properly then, quick and warm enough that she had to look away before it did something inconvenient to her chest.

For a few seconds they stood on opposite sides of the island with the water bottle between them and the knowledge of the morning settling into place. It was quiet enough to ignore if she tried hard enough, but obvious enough that pretending would take effort.

Jimin nudged the bottle a little closer. Mina reached for it at the same time he let go. Their fingers touched—Briefly. The ache in her wrist eased another fraction. This time she did not imagine it.

Jimin’s eyes lifted to hers, and the small shift in his expression told her he had felt something too. Neither of them moved for a second, caught between the ordinary noise of the house and the impossible thing sitting quietly between their hands.

Then someone called for Jimin from the living room. He let go first.

“I should go.”

“Yeah.” Mina’s voice came out quieter than she intended.

Jimin stepped back, then paused near the edge of the kitchen. “Don’t forget yourself in the schedule.”

She looked up sharply. He did not wait for her to answer. By the time she found something to say, he had already turned toward the others, leaving Mina with the tablet, the water bottle, and a wrist that hurt less than it had any right to.

———————————

That was a long one 🫣 hope you like it tho:)

Like, comment, reblog, share please!!

Xoxo, bumble

SUMMARY: Performance specialist, Mina Seo has made a career out of taking care of everyone else. As BTS throws themselves into comeback preparations, she spends her days managing injuries, recovery plans, and the impossible task of keeping seven overworked artists healthy. What nobody realizes is that she’s becoming increasingly skilled at hiding her own struggles. When an unexpected connection with Jimin begins offering relief neither of them fully understands, it slowly becomes part of their routine. Late-night conversations, shared silences, and a comfort that grows easier to rely on with every passing week. But while Jimin is getting better, Mina isn’t. And sooner or later, someone is going to notice.

WARNINGS: chronic illness, overwork injuries, some medical scenes, slight cursing, eventual smut scene—This story contains a realistic depiction of chronic illness, including rheumatoid arthritis, pain flares, fatigue, hospitalization, and the emotional impact of long-term health conditions.

Masterlist

——————————

Jimin’s apartment was calm, peaceful, quiet. Not the night she had planned, but one she was enjoying more than she wanted to admit.

The conversation continued long after either of them intended it to. Topics came and went without much structure. They talked about old injuries and terrible dance instructors, about the members’ increasingly predictable habits, about London and Seoul and the strange experience of building a life in a city that still didn’t quite feel like home. Occasionally the conversation drifted into something more serious before naturally finding its way back again. The hours passed unnoticed. Neither seemed particularly interested in checking the time.

For the first time in weeks, Mina wasn’t thinking about work. No emails. No recovery schedules. No rehearsal notes waiting for her attention. Just the quiet hum of the television and the comfortable rhythm of a conversation that never seemed to require effort. It was strange. Not because she and Jimin talked easily. That part had stopped surprising her some time ago. What felt strange was how little energy it required. Most people expected something from her. Advice. Solutions. Decisions. Reassurance. Jimin didn’t…He asked questions because he genuinely wanted answers, listened when she spoke, and somehow made silence feel just as comfortable as conversation. The realization settled quietly somewhere in the back of her mind.

Across the couch, Jimin had gradually abandoned any attempt to sit properly. One arm was stretched along the back cushion, his head tilted toward the television despite paying only marginally more attention to it than she was. The apartment felt warm. Comfortable. Safe. The thought arrived unexpectedly. Mina couldn’t remember the last time she’d used that word to describe a place that wasn’t her own home.

By the time she finally glanced toward the clock, the numbers startled her….It was nearly two in the morning. A laugh escaped before she could stop it. Jimin followed her gaze and looked equally surprised. Neither of them moved. The sensible thing would have been to leave. Instead, the conversation continued for another twenty minutes. Then thirty. Eventually the pauses between topics became longer. The television remained on. The city outside grew quieter. The exhaustion both of them had been carrying all day finally began catching up with them.

Mina felt it first in the heaviness behind her eyes. The effort required to keep them open seemed increasingly unreasonable, especially when the couch beneath her was far more comfortable than it had any right to be. Across from her, Jimin wasn’t doing much better. His responses became slower. His attention drifted more often. Several times she caught him staring at the television with the unmistakable expression of somebody who had completely lost track of whatever was happening on screen. Neither acknowledged it. There didn’t seem much point.

At some stage, Mina shifted slightly closer so she could rest her head more comfortably against the back cushion. At some stage after that, Jimin adjusted his position too. The movements were small. Absentminded. The sort of thing people did when they stopped paying attention to where they ended and someone else began.

Eventually conversation gave way to silence entirely. Not awkward silence. Not even particularly noticeable silence. Just the natural quiet that settled between people who had run out of things they needed to say. The last thing Mina remembered was the soft glow of the television reflecting across the apartment ceiling and the steady warmth beside her. Then she fell asleep.

———————

The first thing Mina became aware of was warmth. The second was that she had absolutely no idea where she was. For a few disoriented seconds she remained still, caught somewhere between sleep and wakefulness while her brain attempted to make sense of the unfamiliar ceiling above her. Then memory returned—The apartment. The couch. Jimin.

Mina’s eyes opened….Very slowly. Sunlight spilled across the living room through the large windows, painting pale rectangles across the floor. The television had long since shut itself off during the night, leaving the apartment wrapped in the quiet stillness of a day that hadn’t properly begun yet. She became aware of her position a second later. And immediately froze. Sometime during the night, the careful distance they had started with had disappeared completely. Jimin was asleep beside her, one arm draped loosely across the back of the couch and his head tilted slightly toward hers. Meanwhile, she had somehow ended up tucked against his side. Comfortably. Completely curled into his warmth, as though she belonged there. The thought sent a rush of alarm through her chest. Not because of the position itself. Because of her immediate reaction to it….She didn’t want to move.

Mina stared at the ceiling. Then closed her eyes, briefly. Because that was a problem. A significant problem, actually. Over the last few months she had become accustomed to a great many things. Long rehearsal days. Chronic pain. The increasingly strange arrangement she and Jimin had somehow developed. What she had not become accustomed to was waking up feeling rested. Yet that was exactly what had happened. The familiar ache in her knees was quieter than usual. The stiffness that normally greeted her every morning felt muted, pushed far enough into the background that she wasn’t immediately calculating how much it would hurt to stand. Even the exhaustion seemed less overwhelming. The difference wasn’t dramatic. It was almost worse than that. Subtle enough to feel precious. Rare enough to make her want to stay exactly where she was. Which was ridiculous…Entirely ridiculous.

Beside her, Jimin shifted slightly in his sleep. The movement pulled her attention away from her increasingly unhelpful thoughts. For a moment she found herself studying him. The relaxed expression. The messy hair. The complete absence of the carefully controlled image he carried through most of his professional life. He looked younger like this..Softer. Human in a way very few people ever had the opportunity to see.

A few seconds later, Jimin stirred. His brow furrowed. Then his eyes opened. For a moment he simply blinked at the ceiling…Then he looked down…Then at her. Neither spoke. Both clearly processing the situation.

Finally Jimin let out a long breath, “Good morning.”

The normalcy of it caught her completely off guard. A laugh escaped before she could stop it, “That’s your reaction?”

“What reaction should I have?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

That made her laugh again. The sound seemed to wake him up fully. A small sleepy smile appeared…Dangerously charming. Mina looked away immediately. The knock at the door arrived before either of them could say anything else—Both froze…A second knock followed.

Then a familiar voice echoed faintly through the apartment, “Jimin?”

Mina closed her eyes, “No.”

Across from her, Jimin groaned. The sound of a man who already knew exactly who was standing outside.

Another knock….More insistent this time.—“Jimin.”

Mina buried her face in her hands, “Oh, this is terrible.”

A laugh escaped Jimin despite himself, “It’s his day off too.”

“Exactly.”

That was, unfortunately, all the explanation either of them needed. Jimin stood and ran a hand through his hair before making his way toward the door. Mina remained exactly where she was. Partly because she still wasn’t entirely convinced her legs wanted to cooperate. Mostly because she wanted to see what happened next.

The apartment fell silent for a moment after the door opened then: “…Oh.” Jin stood there in the door way looking at the scene in front of him.

Mina immediately dropped her head back against the couch. There was only one person capable of putting that much meaning into a single syllable.

A few seconds later, she heard Jimin sigh, “Hyung.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

The amusement in Jin’s voice carried easily through the apartment. When the two of them finally appeared in the living room, Jin’s gaze moved from Jimin to Mina and then briefly to the couch. The corners of his mouth twitched. To his credit, he resisted the obvious joke…Barely. What surprised Mina was what happened next.

Instead of teasing them, Jin looked directly at her. And frowned, “You look better.”

The observation caught her completely off guard. For a moment she simply stared at him. Because she knew exactly what he meant. Jin had spent weeks watching her grow more exhausted. Watching her sit whenever she had the opportunity. Watching her insist she was fine when she very clearly wasn’t. And this morning? For the first time in a long time, she actually looked rested. His expression softened immediately. The concern didn’t disappear. But it changed. As though seeing her smile without forcing it had eased something in him. Mina wasn’t sure whether she found that comforting or terrifying…Probably both.

——————————-

Monday came too fast for anyone’s liking. Mina was halfway through a recovery session with Yoongi when Jin appeared in the doorway. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy. Jin had a habit of wandering into rooms he had no reason to be in, usually armed with a snack, an opinion, or both. Over the years, Mina had learned that resisting this behavior was largely pointless. What caught her attention was the expression on his face. He looked pleased…Not happy. Not amused…Pleased. The specific expression people wore when they knew something you didn’t.

Mina immediately became suspicious, “Absolutely not.”

Across the room, Yoongi looked up from the treatment table. Jin looked offended, “I haven’t even said anything.”

“You haven’t needed to.”

The smile widened. Which made everything worse. Yoongi sighed and leaned his head back against the table, “I don’t know what’s happening,” he said, “but I feel like I’m about to become collateral damage.”

“Probably.” Mina sighed.

“Definitely.” Jin didn’t sound remotely apologetic.

The treatment room settled briefly into silence. Mina returned her attention to Yoongi’s shoulder, guiding his arm carefully through a range-of-motion exercise while mentally reviewing the notes she’d made from his previous session. Progress had been steady. The kind that came from consistency rather than breakthroughs. Across the room, Jin remained seated…Waiting…Watching…Entirely too patient. Mina hated it because it reminded her of the members when they were collectively planning something. Years of experience had taught her that BTS operated much like a flock of intelligent birds. Individually, they were manageable. Together, they became deeply concerning.

“What did you do?”

“We didn’t do anything.” The use of we immediately set off alarm bells.

“There should never be a ‘we’ in that sentence.”

Yoongi laughed. Jin remained entirely unapologetic. A knock sounded at the door several minutes later…Then another... Then suddenly Namjoon, Hoseok, Taehyung, and Jungkook were standing in the hallway. Mina stopped what she was doing. Slowly. Very slowly, “Why are there so many of you?”

“That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Jungkook walked into the room first, looking entirely too excited for someone who wasn’t actively causing problems. That should have worried her. Instead she made the mistake of looking at Namjoon. The leader immediately avoided eye contact. Which was perhaps the most suspicious thing of all.

Mina sighed….Deeply, “Tell me now.”

Nobody moved. Nobody answered. Unfortunately, several of them smiled.

“What are we telling her?” Yoongi asked.

Six heads turned toward him simultaneously. The room fell silent. Then Jin smiled, “Excellent question.”

Mina closed her eyes, because she already knew she wasn’t going to enjoy whatever happened next. She just didn’t know why.

—————⸻

The answer arrived twenty minutes later in the form of a planning meeting that Mina had somehow been escorted to against her will. Which, she was increasingly convinced, was how BTS got away with most things. The conference room overlooked the Han River, sunlight spilling across the long table while staff members moved through presentation slides. A producer stood at the front of the room explaining filming logistics while managers reviewed schedules and accommodations. Mina paid attention for approximately thirty seconds.

Then the words “week-long retreat” appeared on the screen. She immediately sat up straighter.

A mountain property appeared next. Followed by photographs of cabins, hiking trails, outdoor activity spaces, lakeside filming locations, and enough recreational opportunities to make Mina suspicious. Because whenever somebody described something as relaxing, it inevitably required more work than advertised. The presentation continued—Content filming. Team activities. Recovery periods. Creative workshops. Group meals. Downtime.

The company described the retreat as an opportunity to recharge before the next stage of preparations began. Choreography still needed refining, music videos still needed filming, and nobody had even started discussing tour concepts yet. If anything, the busiest part of the comeback still lay ahead of them. The concept itself wasn’t unreasonable. In fact, it was probably a good idea.

The members had spent weeks moving between choreography rehearsals, photoshoots, recording sessions, concept meetings, interviews, and creative planning. Everybody looked tired. Some hid it better than others, but the exhaustion was there if you knew where to look. Mina certainly did.

The next slide appeared—Recovery and Medical Support. And suddenly she understood why she was in the room. A list populated the screen: Jimin’s ongoing hip rehabilitation, Yoongi’s shoulder maintenancel, Namjoon’s ankle recovery, Regular mobility sessions, Soft tissue work, Nutritional monitoring, Recovery programming, Preventative treatment.

The manager presenting looked directly at her, “We’d like you to attend.”

Mina blinked….Then blinked again. For a moment she wondered if everyone else had heard the same thing. Apparently they had. Nobody looked surprised. Which meant they already knew.

“You already manage these programs,” the manager continued. “Bringing someone unfamiliar with everyone’s treatment plans would create unnecessary complications.”

Professionally speaking, the explanation made perfect sense. That was the problem, because it left very little room for argument. Mina looked back at the slide, then at the itinerary, then at the seven members seated around the table. Jimin’s hip still required monitoring. Yoongi’s shoulder would probably require maintenance forever. Namjoon’s ankle was improving, but not enough that she wanted him spending a week hiking through the mountains without supervision. Hoseok’s hips and lower back regularly needed attention during heavy dance periods. Jungkook had somehow transformed exercising into a competitive sport against himself….The list continued. The more she thought about it, the more reasonable the request became. Which was deeply irritating.

“You can say no.”—The comment came from Namjoon.

Mina looked up. His expression was calm. Honest. The kind that suggested he genuinely meant it. And that made the decision more difficult. If they had pressured her, she could have been annoyed. Instead they were giving her a choice. A real one—How rude of them.

“Though,” Namjoon added carefully, “I think it would be good if you came.”

Several heads nodded….Immediately….Suspiciously. Mina narrowed her eyes. Across the table, Jin was actively trying not to smile. Jungkook wasn’t trying at all. His big bright smile was beaming at her.

Why are all of you looking at me like that?” She questioned.

“No reason.”

“There is absolutely a reason.”

“There are several reasons.” The honesty came from Taehyung.

Jimin laughed. The sound drew her attention immediately. For a brief moment their eyes met across the table. Something warm settled unexpectedly in her chest. Not because he said anything. Because he looked hopeful. The realization caught her off guard. And perhaps that was why the answer left her mouth before she’d fully decided on it.

“When do we leave?”

Jungkook actually cheered. Hoseok laughed. Jin looked victorious. Namjoon visibly relaxed. Even Yoongi, who had spent most of the meeting pretending not to care, looked mildly satisfied.

Mina sighed, “That reaction is making me reconsider.”

“It is too late.” “That’s not how decisions work.” “You can’t take it back” several protests were shouted before she could counter them.

The room dissolved into laughter. Somewhere beneath the amusement, beneath the schedules and logistics and professional justifications, Mina found herself feeling something she couldn’t quite name. For weeks she had told herself she was being invited because she was useful, because she had expertise, because she filled a role nobody else could. Sitting there, surrounded by people who looked entirely too happy about her answer, she experienced the uncomfortable suspicion that usefulness might not be the only reason—The thought lingered long after the meeting ended.

—————————

The drive took just under two hours. By the time the vans finally turned off the main road, conversation had mostly died down. Several members had fallen asleep at various points during the journey. Others had spent the drive rotating between music, phones, and staring out the window. Mina had spent most of it reviewing treatment notes. Old habits.

When the property finally came into view, even she looked up. The house sat on a large piece of countryside property surrounded by trees, tucked far enough away from Seoul that the city felt like a different world. Large windows reflected the afternoon sunlight, and a wide deck stretched across the back of the building overlooking a lake in the distance. It looked less like a filming location and more like somewhere people actually lived. Which, she suspected, was the point.

The moment the vans stopped, everyone began moving. Jungkook was the first out. Taehyung wasn’t far behind. Hoseok immediately started commenting on the view. Namjoon looked pleased enough that Mina suspected he was already planning a walk. The atmosphere shifted the second they arrived. The tension that seemed to permanently follow comeback preparations loosened almost immediately.

As luggage was unloaded, staff began organizing equipment near the entrance while managers distributed room assignments. Mina accepted the packet without paying much attention. Her focus remained firmly on practical concerns—Treatment equipment. Recovery supplies. Portable TENS unit. Resistance bands. Soft tissue tools. The increasingly ridiculous amount of medical equipment she apparently traveled with these days.

“Mina.”

She glanced up. One of the managers pointed toward the assignment sheet, “Here’s your room assignment.”

“Oh.” Right. She looked down. Then frowned. Then looked down again. Because she was fairly certain she had misunderstood something.

Room Three. Second Floor. House A.

Mina blinked, “There’s a mistake.”

The manager didn’t even glance at the paper, “There isn’t.”

“There definitely is.”

“There definitely isn’t.”

Mina pointed toward the assignment, “I’m in House A.”

“Yes.”

“The BTS house.”

“Yes.”

Mina frowned at the room assignment in her hand, “Why am I in the house?”

The manager barely looked up from his clipboard, “Because you’ll be there all day anyway.”

That wasn’t entirely unreasonable. Recovery sessions alone would take up several hours.

“The staff are staying over there.”

Jungkook appeared beside her before anyone else could answer, “We wanted you here.”

The words were delivered with such casual certainty that she blinked. As though there was nothing unusual about the statement. As though the decision had already been made weeks ago. Jungkook pointed toward the front door, “Come on.” Then he picked up two bags and started walking.

Mina stared after him, “He does realize that’s not actually an explanation, right?”

“No,” Namjoon said, “He does not.”

A laugh escaped despite herself. With a resigned shake of her head, she grabbed her suitcase and followed the others inside.

———————

The house settled into chaos almost immediately. The ordinary sort that happened whenever too many people arrived somewhere at once and everyone had a slightly different idea of what should happen next. Within minutes, luggage occupied half the entryway. Someone had misplaced a room key. Somebody else was already arguing that the room assignments should be renegotiated despite having agreed to them less than an hour earlier. Mina wasn’t entirely sure who had started that particular discussion. Only that it had somehow become Jin’s problem to solve.

A producer stood near the front door attempting to explain the filming schedule while three separate conversations unfolded around him. Nobody appeared to be listening. Mina found herself smiling despite herself. The atmosphere felt noticeably different from HYBE. Not because anyone was behaving differently. Because they weren’t working. There were no rehearsal rooms waiting downstairs. No meetings scheduled in thirty-minute increments. No managers hovering outside conference rooms reminding everyone where they needed to be next. For the first time in weeks, people seemed content simply existing in the same space. That was strangely refreshing.

By the time Mina carried the first box upstairs, most of the house had already begun settling into a rhythm. Earlier, one of the producers had pointed out a small office tucked away near the back of the second floor and asked whether it would work for treatments during the week. Mina had taken one look at the room and immediately claimed it. The space wasn’t particularly large. A desk sat beneath the window. Bookshelves lined one wall. Somebody had thoughtfully added an armchair in the corner. By the end of the afternoon, however, it would probably contain enough recovery equipment to qualify as a small clinic.

Voices drifted through the open floor plan. Someone laughed upstairs. A door opened and closed. Footsteps crossed overhead. The sort of ordinary sounds that made a place feel lived in. Mina set the box on the foldout treatment table and immediately began unpacking. The process was familiar enough that she barely needed to think about it anymore. A week’s worth of preparation for people who were entirely incapable of sitting still long enough to qualify as resting.

She had only unpacked half the first box when a shadow appeared in the doorway, “You started already.”

Mina glanced up. Jungkook stood leaning against the frame, looking around the room she’d already begun converting into a temporary workspace. Resistance bands were stacked neatly beside the desk. The TENS unit sat charging near an outlet. The office was beginning to look significantly less like an office.

Mina looked back down at the supplies, “Somebody has to.”

For a moment Jungkook didn’t answer. He simply watched her continue organizing equipment.

The silence stretched long enough that she eventually looked up again, “What?”

“You always do that.”

The comment caught her off guard, “Do what?”

“Take care of things before anybody asks.”

Mina blinked. Because that wasn’t what she’d expected him to say.

Jungkook shrugged slightly. As though the observation was obvious, “As soon as we got here, everyone started looking around the house.”

His gaze drifted briefly toward the hallway, “You started making sure everything was ready for work.”

The words settled somewhere unexpectedly uncomfortable. For a moment neither spoke. Then Jungkook looked around the room again, “We really are glad you’re here.” There was no teasing in his voice. No hidden agenda. Just simple honesty. The kind that always seemed to come easiest to him.

Mina looked down at the resistance bands in her hands, “You’re glad somebody’s making sure you actually do your rehab.”

“That too.” The answer made her laugh. Jungkook smiled. But when he spoke again, his voice remained serious, “Not just that.”

The room fell quiet. Mina found herself looking at him. Really looking at him. And suddenly she understood that he meant it. Not because she was useful. Not because she had a job to do. Because they wanted her there. The felt strangely difficult to hold. But before she could figure out what to do with it, someone shouted Jungkook’s name from downstairs. Immediately followed by another voice. Then another.

Jungkook sighed, “They found a problem.”

“They’ve been here twenty minutes.”

“Exactly.” A moment later he pushed away from the doorway, “I’ll see you downstairs.”

Then he was gone. Leaving Mina alone with the room and a thought she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with. Because for the first time, she found herself wondering whether she might be the only person still thinking of herself as staff.

—————————-

By the time Mina finally left the office she had claimed for treatments during the week, the house had settled into a comfortable rhythm. The frantic energy that had accompanied everyone’s arrival had begun to fade. Suitcases had disappeared upstairs. Staff had finished most of their setup for the following day’s filming. The constant stream of people moving through the front door had slowed to a trickle.

For the first time since they arrived, the house felt occupied rather than busy. Voices drifted from downstairs as Mina made her way toward the kitchen. Someone laughed. A second voice immediately disagreed with whatever had been said. A third joined the conversation despite clearly having missed the beginning of it. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she found herself smiling.

The kitchen and dining room occupied one large open space overlooking the lake. Takeout containers covered most of the table, the result of a collective decision that nobody wanted to cook on the first night. Most of the seats were already occupied. Conversations overlapped in every direction. Namjoon was in the middle of a story. Jungkook was arguing with him. Hoseok was attempting to mediate despite being responsible for at least half the confusion. Across the table, Yoongi looked like he had stopped trying to follow the conversation ten minutes ago.

Mina lingered near the doorway for a moment. Not because she felt unwelcome. Because she wasn’t entirely sure where she was supposed to sit. At HYBE, these things were obvious. The members ate together. Staff ate elsewhere. Even on tour, schedules and logistics usually made the boundaries clear. Here, nobody seemed particularly concerned with boundaries.

Before she could decide what to do, Taehyung looked up. Their eyes met briefly. Then he reached over and tapped the empty chair beside him. The gesture was so casual that it took her a second to process it. He didn’t stop talking. Nobody announced her arrival. The conversation simply continued while an empty seat waited beside him.

Mina found herself crossing the room before she’d fully decided to. A plate appeared in front of her shortly afterward. She looked up to find Jin returning to his seat, “Eat.”

Mina glanced down at the food and then back at him, “Was that a request?”

Jin looked genuinely offended, “No.”

A laugh escaped her, “Thought so.”

Satisfied, he resumed his conversation as though the matter had been settled. Which, apparently, it had. The meal unfolded without much structure. Stories gave way to arguments, which gave way to different stories. Nobody seemed capable of finishing a memory without three other people interrupting to correct details.

At one point Namjoon spent several minutes attempting to explain something that had happened years earlier. By the end of it, four different versions of the same story existed. Each person appeared convinced theirs was the correct one. Jungkook, in particular, seemed personally invested in defending his recollection. Nobody appeared convinced. Least of all Jin. The conversation eventually moved on before any conclusions were reached.

Beside her, Taehyung leaned slightly closer, “I remember exactly what happened.”

Mina glanced over, “You seem very confident.”

“I am.”

“Should I trust you?”

His expression remained serious for nearly two seconds, then he shook his head, “No.”

The honesty caught her off guard enough that she laughed.A cross the table, Jimin looked up. For a brief moment his attention shifted away from whatever conversation he had been having with Hoseok. The smile that appeared looked less polished than the expressions she had seen on stage or in interviews. It arrived too quickly for that, as though hearing her laugh had triggered the reaction before he had a chance to think about it. Then Namjoon said something that pulled everyone’s attention back to the discussion, and the moment disappeared.

Dinner lasted far longer than the food did. Nobody seemed interested in leaving the table. People remained seated long after they had finished eating, allowing conversations to wander wherever they pleased. Stories about old apartments turned into stories about terrible roommates. Someone mentioned military housing. Someone else brought up trainee dorms. The topic spiraled from there.

Mina spent most of it listening. Occasionally contributing. Mostly observing. She had spent years around BTS, but most of those years existed within the structure of work. Rehearsals. Tours. Recovery sessions. Schedules. This felt different. Not because anyone was acting differently. Because she was seeing them in a setting where nobody needed anything from her. Nobody was injured. Nobody required treatment. Nobody was waiting for advice. They were simply sharing a meal.

By the time people finally began standing and gathering empty containers, darkness had settled outside the windows. Almost automatically, Mina pushed her chair back.

Jimin noticed immediately, “Leave it.”

She looked up. He was already reaching for several containers stacked near the center of the table, “You’ve been working all afternoon.”

“So have you.”

“Not the same thing.”

Before she could respond, Jungkook grabbed another armful. Hoseok followed. A few seconds later Namjoon joined them. The kitchen filled with movement. Music started somewhere in the background. A new debate immediately began over who had chosen the playlist. Mina found herself standing there with absolutely nothing to do. An unusual experience.

Across the table, Taehyung watched her for a moment, then smiled, “You’re trying very hard not to help.”

Mina narrowed her eyes, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His expression suggested otherwise. Unfortunately, she suspected he might be right.

—————————

The cleanup took considerably less time than Mina expected. The kitchen gradually emptied as dishes disappeared into the dishwasher and takeout containers found their way into trash bags. Conversations continued uninterrupted throughout the process, drifting from one topic to another without much concern for structure. Nobody seemed particularly interested in ending the evening. Which, Mina supposed, made sense.

The house felt different after dark. The large windows reflected the warm lights inside while the lake beyond them disappeared into darkness. Without staff constantly moving through the rooms and schedules dictating where everyone needed to be next, the retreat finally began feeling real. For the first time since arriving, there was nowhere anyone needed to be. The realization seemed to affect everyone. Nobody rushed upstairs. Nobody disappeared into their rooms. Instead, people gradually migrated toward the living room. The space occupied the center of the house, anchored by an enormous sectional couch that looked capable of seating twice as many people as necessary. Within ten minutes, every seat was occupied anyway.

Mina ended up in one corner of the couch with a glass of water she didn’t remember acquiring. Across from her, Jungkook was stretched across an alarming amount of furniture. Namjoon had somehow found a blanket. Yoongi looked significantly more comfortable than he had all afternoon. The conversations broke apart and reformed continuously. One moment everyone was discussing the following day’s filming schedule. The next they were debating something entirely unrelated.

The topics changed too quickly to follow. Mina found herself relaxing despite her best efforts. The house felt warm. Lived in. Comfortable in the way places only became when people stopped worrying about appearances.

At some point, somebody produced a game. Mina never learned who. Only that a box suddenly appeared on the coffee table and several people immediately became invested. Rules were explained.,,Then challenged.,,Then modified.,,Then challenged again. Which seemed to be the natural life cycle of every game involving BTS. Mina stopped trying to understand approximately five minutes in. The game continued anyway.

———————-

At first, Mina didn’t notice. The game had long since stopped resembling whatever the original rules had been. Cards sat scattered across the coffee table while half the room argued about scoring and the other half argued about whether the scoring system mattered in the first place. The debate had somehow become surprisingly competitive. Mina wasn’t entirely sure how…Then again, she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d become invested either. One moment she had been watching. The next she had been defending her position with the same determination as everyone else.

The first warning sign arrived as a dull ache in her knees. Nothing unusual. Nothing alarming. Just enough discomfort that she shifted slightly on the couch. The conversation continued around her. A second wave followed several minutes later. This time her hands. A familiar stiffness settled into her fingers, making it uncomfortable to fully close them.

Mina frowned. Subtly. Trying to stretch her hand without attracting attention. The movement helped, only a little. The realization settled slowly. Then all at once—Oh. Her stomach dropped..Medication. The answer was immediate. Embarrassingly immediate.

She glanced toward the clock mounted on the wall. Then closed her eyes briefly. Twelve hours. Almost exactly. She was supposed to have taken her next dose hours ago. Instead she had gotten distracted…Dinner. Conversation. The game. The simple novelty of enjoying herself enough to forget. Now her body was reminding her. The pain wasn’t unbearable. That wasn’t how it worked. It simply became harder to ignore. Every movement required a little more effort. Every position became uncomfortable more quickly. The stiffness spread gradually through joints she normally managed well.

Mina hated it. Mostly because she knew it was her own fault. A dose missed by an hour was annoying. A dose missed by several hours was something else entirely. She needed to go upstairs. Now. The problem was that standing up sounded increasingly unpleasant. The second problem was that everyone would notice.Not because they were paying particular attention to her. Because they were all sitting in the same room.

The house had settled into that comfortable late-evening closeness where people naturally became aware of one another’s movements. If she stood, somebody would ask where she was going. If she hesitated, somebody would ask if she was okay. If she limped—No. Absolutely not. Mina pushed that thought away immediately.

Across the room, Jungkook was attempting to defend a decision that nobody else supported. The argument had become loud enough that several people were laughing too hard to participate—Perfect…This was her chance.

Mina shifted forward slightly. Preparing to stand. Immediately—“Wait.”

She froze. Across the coffee table, Taehyung looked up, “You haven’t answered yet.”

Mina stared, “What haven’t I answered?”

The expression on his face suggested she had just proved whatever point he was making. Several people immediately agreed. Apparently she had missed a question. Or a rule. Or an entire section of the game. Mina honestly couldn’t tell. Five minutes later she was still sitting on the couch. The pain in her knees had worsened enough that she found herself carefully adjusting her position again. The movement drew a brief flicker of discomfort across her face before she could stop it.

Nobody appeared to notice….At least, nobody except Jin. Mina caught him watching her from the opposite end of the couch. Not openly. Not obviously. Just enough. She knew that look. Unfortunately. Years of friendship had made him impossible to fool—The clock. The shifting. The distraction. The increasingly obvious attempts to leave. Jin didn’t need an explanation. He already had one.

Sure enough, less than two minutes later, during a brief lull in the conversation, Jin set down his drink, “Mina.”

She looked up.

“Can you help me with something upstairs?”

Relief arrived so quickly she almost laughed, Instead she nodded, “Sure.”

The game continued uninterrupted. Nobody questioned it. Why would they?

Mina pushed herself to her feet. The motion sent a sharp pulse of protest through both knees. Not enough to make her stumble. Enough that she hated it. She smoothed her expression before anyone could notice. Then followed Jin toward the stairs. Halfway across the room, she became aware of someone watching—Jimin. He wasn’t looking at her. Not exactly. His attention seemed fixed on the space she’d just vacated. The same expression she had seen countless times over the last several weeks whenever something caught his attention. For a moment she wondered what he’d noticed. Then decided she didn’t want to know.

The second-floor hallway was noticeably quieter than the living room below. The sounds of conversation softened the moment they rounded the corner. Jin waited until they were alone before speaking, “You forgot.” Not a question.

Mina groaned, “I know.”

“You were supposed to take it after dinner.”

“I know.”

“And yet, you didn’t.”

Despite herself, Mina laughed. The sound came out more tired than amused. Jin’s expression softened immediately. The irritation disappeared, replaced by familiar concern. Not the kind that demanded answers. The kind that came from already knowing them, “How bad?”

Mina leaned briefly against the hallway wall…Considering, “Not terrible.”

Jin raised an eyebrow.

She sighed, “It’s getting there.”

“That’s better.”

“You’re impossible.”

“You’re the one convincing yourself you’re perfectly healthy.”

“That is absolutely not true.”

Jin simply looked at her.

Mina lasted approximately three seconds, “Okay, maybe .”

His expression made it clear he had several examples prepared. Mercifully, he kept them to himself. Instead he handed her a bottle of water from the small refrigerator tucked into the hallway kitchenette. Jin waited until she had taken the medication before speaking again. The hallway had fallen quiet around them, the sounds from downstairs softened by distance until they blended into an indistinct hum of laughter and conversation. Somewhere below them, someone was still arguing passionately about something that almost certainly didn’t matter, and the familiarity of it made the corners of Mina’s mouth twitch despite herself.

“You know they wouldn’t judge you.”

The comment arrived so casually that she almost missed it. Her grip tightened slightly around the water bottle, “That’s not the point.”

Jin leaned one shoulder against the wall and regarded her with an expression that told her he already knew exactly what she was going to say. Unfortunately, years of friendship had made him difficult to fool. He had seen too many versions of this conversation, even when neither of them had been willing to name it out loud, “Then what is?”

Mina stared past him toward the staircase. The easiest answer would have been that she didn’t want people worrying about her, but that wasn’t entirely true. Or rather, it wasn’t the whole truth

“The second people know there’s something wrong with you, they start looking at you differently.” She let out a slow breath. “They don’t mean to. Most of the time they’re trying to help. They think they’re being considerate.”

The words came more easily once she started.

“They ask if you’re okay all the time. They start paying attention to things they never noticed before. If you’re tired, there’s a reason. If you’re having a bad day, there’s a reason. If you sit down instead of standing, or leave early, or seem distracted, suddenly everything becomes connected to whatever’s wrong with you.”

Jin listened without interrupting. Mina was grateful for that.

“It stops being one part of your life and starts becoming the thing people see first.”

The hallway fell quiet again. For a moment neither of them spoke. Jin understood more than most people because he had watched her build the life she was talking about. When he first met her during the PTD tour, she had been young enough to think nobody noticed how hard she was trying. Looking back, he sometimes wondered how any of them had missed it. She had worked constantly. She volunteered for every extra task. She stayed late whenever she could find an excuse to stay late and seemed strangely reluctant to return to the hotel at the end of the night. At the time he had assumed she was simply ambitious..

Later, he had understood. She had been trying to outrun grief. Every night she stood just offstage while dancers performed routines she would once have given anything to be part of. Every morning she showed up smiling, prepared, and determined to be useful. She spent so much energy taking care of everyone around her that it became easy to forget how much she had lost herself. Or perhaps she had simply become very good at making sure nobody noticed.

“I remember thinking you were one of the most stubborn people I’d ever met.”

The comment earned him a look, “That says more about your judgment than it does about me.”

A laugh escaped him, “Maybe.”

Mina shook her head, but some of the tension eased from her shoulders. For a few moments they stood there in companionable silence. Then she looked down at the bottle in her hands, “I finally have a life that feels like mine.”

The admission was quiet enough that he almost missed it, “I have a career I love. I can travel. I can work. I can do the things I want to do without asking permission from doctors or wondering whether somebody is going to tell me I shouldn’t.”

She swallowed, “I know they wouldn’t judge me, the members aren’t the problem.”

“Then what is?”

For a moment she struggled to find the words. Not because she didn’t know the answer. Because she had spent years avoiding it.

“When I stopped dancing, it wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough.”

The sentence hung between them…Heavy.

“I wasn’t the most talented dancer in the world, but I was good. I worked hard. I trained. I did everything I was supposed to do.”

Her laugh was brief and humorless, “I did everything right.”

Jin stayed quiet.

“I could have accepted not making it because somebody else was better than me.”

The words came easier now. Sharper. More honest.

“I could have accepted failing.” She looked away, “What I couldn’t accept was being told I never really had a chance because my body wasn’t capable of keeping up.”

The hallway felt smaller suddenly. The memories closer. The years between then and now collapsing into nothing.

“I spent years watching people look at me like I was something fragile.” Her fingers tightened around the bottle, “Like I was somebody who needed limitations.”

The anger surprised her. Not because it existed. Because after all this time it still did, “I hated it.”

Jin understood that. Probably better than anyone. Not because he knew what it felt like. Because he had watched the aftermath. He had watched a young woman arrive on tour carrying a grief she never spoke about and a determination so fierce it bordered on self-destruction. He had watched her rebuild herself from the ground up. Career. Identity. Confidence…Everything.

“I don’t want people looking at me and seeing weakness.” The confession finally emerged. Simple. Painfully honest, “Every time I need help, every time I can’t do something, every time my body decides it isn’t cooperating, it feels like I’m right back there again.”

She swallowed, “Like it won.”

The words barely rose above a whisper. For a moment neither of them spoke. Because there it was. The truth. Not fear of judgment. Not fear of pity. The lingering grief of someone who had spent years trying to prove she was stronger than the thing that took her first dream away.

The words hung in the air between them. Jin could have argued. He could have pointed out all the reasons she was wrong. He could have reminded her of everything she had accomplished, of how many people admired her, of how much stronger she was than she gave herself credit for. But he had known her long enough to understand that none of those things would matter right now.

So instead he simply nodded, “I know.” Jin pushed away from the wall a moment later and glanced toward the staircase, “I should probably go downstairs before they start another argument.”

A reluctant smile appeared, “That’s optimistic. It implies they ever stopped.”

“Good point.”

He took a few steps toward the stairs before looking back, “Take your time.”

There was no hidden meaning in the statement. No advice. No attempt to continue the conversation. Just permission. The sort that old friends gave each other without thinking. Mina watched him disappear downstairs before letting her head rest briefly against the wall behind her. The medication would start working soon. The stiffness would ease. Tomorrow she would get up and do what she always did. For now, though, she allowed herself a few quiet minutes before returning to the life waiting downstairs.

————————-

By the time Jin came downstairs, the house was beginning to quiet. The game had fallen apart sometime during the last half hour, abandoned in favor of smaller conversations and the gradual migration toward bed. A few lights had already been turned off. Someone upstairs closed a door. From the living room came the low murmur of voices and the occasional burst of laughter.

Jin stopped in the kitchen for a bottle of water. As he closed the refrigerator door, he realized he wasn’t alone. Jimin stood on the opposite side of the island, leaning against the counter with a bottle of water in one hand.

“Still awake?” Jin asked.

Jimin smiled, “It’s not even midnight.”

“Details.”

The smile lingered for a moment before fading. Jimin unscrewed the cap from his bottle and took a drink. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked, “Where’s Mina?”

The question was casual enough that it might have passed unnoticed in any other conversation—Jin caught it anyway, “Upstairs.”

Jimin nodded. A brief pause settled between them. Outside, the windows reflected the lights from the house, turning the dark glass into mirrors.

Jin took a drink of water. Jimin’s attention drifted toward the hallway, then the staircase, before returning to the counter. It wasn’t anything remarkable. Most people wouldn’t have thought twice about it—Jin did.

Eventually Jimin spoke again, “She seemed tired tonight.”

Jin set the bottle down, “Long day.”

“Yeah.”

The answer came easily enough, but something thoughtful remained in Jimin’s expression. Not concern exactly. More the look of someone trying to make sense of an impression he couldn’t quite explain.

After a moment he shook his head and laughed softly at himself, “Maybe I’m imagining it.”

Jin didn’t answer. The truth was that he had known Mina long enough to recognize the signs when she wasn’t feeling her best. The other truth was that none of that information belonged to him. A floorboard creaked overhead. Both men glanced up. A few seconds later footsteps crossed the hallway above them. Jimin lingered on the sound for a moment before looking back down. Jin said nothing.

A minute later, Mina appeared in the doorway. Her hair was still slightly damp around her face, and she looked more rested than she had when she’d disappeared upstairs. The moment she stepped into the room, something in Jimin relaxed. Not in a way that would have attracted anyone’s attention—But Jin caught it. The tension that had shadowed him all evening eased almost immediately.

Mina followed his attention and frowned, “What?”

“Nothing.” The answer came too quickly.

She narrowed her eyes. Jimin turned away first. Jin reached for his water bottle to hide a smile… interesting.

————————

Like, comment, reblog, share!

Thanks for reading!

Xoxo, bumble

SUMMARY: Performance specialist, Mina Seo has made a career out of taking care of everyone else. As BTS throws themselves into comeback preparations, she spends her days managing injuries, recovery plans, and the impossible task of keeping seven overworked artists healthy. What nobody realizes is that she’s becoming increasingly skilled at hiding her own struggles. When an unexpected connection with Jimin begins offering relief neither of them fully understands, it slowly becomes part of their routine. Late-night conversations, shared silences, and a comfort that grows easier to rely on with every passing week. But while Jimin is getting better, Mina isn’t. And sooner or later, someone is going to notice.

WARNINGS: chronic illness, overwork injuries, some medical scenes, slight cursing, eventual smut scene—This story contains a realistic depiction of chronic illness, including rheumatoid arthritis, pain flares, fatigue, hospitalization, and the emotional impact of long-term health conditions.

Masterlist

——————————

By the third camera operator, Mina knew something was wrong. She stepped out of the elevator balancing a tablet, a cup of tea, and the increasingly unrealistic expectation that she might have a quiet morning, only to find the entire floor transformed. Production staff occupied every available corner of the hallway. Equipment cases lined the walls. Audio technicians moved between rooms carrying headsets and cables while assistant producers hurried past with the particular expression worn by people attempting to organize seven members of BTS and several dozen staff members simultaneously. For a moment she simply stood there taking it in.

Comeback preparation had already consumed most of the building over the previous month, but this felt different. Less structured. More chaotic. The sort of chaos created when filming schedules collided with entertainment schedules and everyone involved underestimated how complicated that combination would become.

A production assistant nearly walked into her before catching himself at the last second, “Sorry.”

“What happened?”

The assistant looked genuinely confused by the question—“Run BTS.”

Mina stared at him. He stared back. Then he hurried away without elaborating. Which, unfortunately, explained enough.

The closer she moved toward the main filming studio, the worse it became. Cameras seemed to multiply around every corner. Staff members she vaguely recognized from previous content shoots crossed paths with performance teams, producers, writers, and managers until the entire floor felt like an organized collision of departments that normally occupied different parts of the company. By the time Mina reached the studio entrance, she had already abandoned any hope of accomplishing meaningful work before lunch.

Inside, the members were gathering around a long table while production staff completed final preparations. The atmosphere felt noticeably lighter than it had during rehearsals. Over the past several weeks, most of Mina’s interactions with BTS had happened in recording studios, recovery rooms, choreography meetings, and conditioning sessions. Everyone had been focused. Productive. Occasionally exhausted.

This was something else entirely. Jungkook was leaning halfway across the table trying to see the contents of an envelope that did not belong to him. Jin was actively preventing him from succeeding. Taehyung appeared fascinated by a completely unrelated object. Hoseok was laughing at something nobody else seemed to have heard. Namjoon had already picked up a production cue sheet and was reading it despite having absolutely no reason to do so. Yoongi looked like a man who had agreed to attend under protest.

And Jimin—Jimin was talking to one of the producers near the edge of the set. Nothing remarkable about that. Except there was always something slightly fascinating about watching him during filming. Not because he became a different person. Because he became a more visible version of himself. The confidence arrived first. Then the smile. Then the easy charisma that allowed him to move through a room full of strangers as though he had known them for years. Mina had spent enough time around performers to recognize the skill involved. Most people assumed charm happened naturally. In reality, it was work. A different kind of work than choreography or recording, but work all the same.

The cameras hadn’t even started rolling yet and somehow Jimin was already performing. Not dishonestly. Simply directing certain parts of himself toward the room while keeping others private. That stayed with her longer than she expected. Because she had spent the past month getting used to a different version of him. The one who showed up early for recording sessions. The one who argued about mobility exercises. The one who occasionally looked so exhausted she wanted to confiscate his schedule. That version felt very far away beneath the studio lights.

“You’re staring.”

Mina looked up. Namjoon had appeared beside her carrying a cup of coffee and the unmistakable expression of somebody who had witnessed the entire thing.

“I was observing.”

“You were staring professionally.”

“That’s still observing.”

“If that helps you sleep at night.”

Before she could reply, a producer called the members into position. The room shifted immediately. Conversations ended. Staff moved toward their stations. Camera operators adjusted angles while the writers distributed a series of brightly coloured envelopes across the table. The members settled into their seats. For approximately three seconds, everyone behaved normally….Then the missions were announced. Mina watched the transformation happen in real time. Suspicion spread around the table like a contagious disease

“What is this?” Jungkook asked as the envelopes were distributed around the table.

“No spoilers!” one of the writers called immediately.

That instruction lasted approximately three seconds. Jin had already opened his.

“Hyung!” Jungkook looked genuinely betrayed.

“What?”

“You started first.”

“I can read faster than all of you. That’s not cheating.”

“It feels like cheating.”

“It feels like intelligence.”

Across the table, Taehyung was staring at his envelope with increasing suspicion. Mina watched him turn it over. Then turn it over again. Then hold it up toward the studio lights as though the mission might somehow reveal itself through the paper.

“Why are you looking at it like that?” Hoseok asked.

“I think they’re trying to trick us.”

“They are literally trying to trick us.”

“No,” Taehyung said, lowering his voice dramatically. “I think they’re trying to trick us differently.”

Hoseok immediately looked concerned. Unfortunately, so did Jungkook. Within moments, all three of them were examining their envelopes as though national security depended on it. Mina glanced toward the production team. One of the writers had buried her face in her hands. The cameras hadn’t even properly started rolling yet. Meanwhile Namjoon had already opened his mission card and appeared to be reading it with the concentration of someone reviewing a legal document. Whatever instructions he’d received, he was taking them very seriously. Perhaps too seriously.

The director finished explaining the rules—Each member had received a secret mission. Throughout filming, they would attempt to complete those missions without being discovered by the others. Successful missions earned points. Getting caught earned nothing. Simple…At least in theory.

In practice, paranoia settled over the room almost immediately. Everyone knew everyone else had a mission. Which meant every action instantly became suspicious. Jungkook reached for a bottle of water.

Taehyung narrowed his eyes,“Why do you need water?”

“Because I’m thirsty.”

“Or because it’s your mission.”

“What kind of mission would that be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why are you accusing me?”

“Because that’s exactly what somebody with a secret mission would say.”

Jungkook looked genuinely offended,“You’re impossible.”

Across the table, Hoseok had begun watching everyone with the focus of a detective who had consumed entirely too much caffeine. At one point he became convinced Yoongi was attempting to complete a mission. Yoongi had been sitting quietly for nearly ten minutes.

“Hyung.”

Yoongi looked up, “What.”

“You’re being suspicious.”

“I haven’t moved.”

“Exactly.”

Yoongi stared at him, hen slowly looked toward the camera. Mina saw three members start laughing before he even said anything, “That’s called sitting.”

The room dissolved into chaos. Even Namjoon was laughing now. Unfortunately, the laughter caused him to accidentally reveal a word written on his mission card.

The reaction was immediate: “WHAT WAS THAT?”

Namjoon froze. The entire table froze with him.

Jungkook pointed dramatically, “You said something.”

“I didn’t.”

“You absolutely did.”

“It wasn’t important.”

“Then why are you nervous?”

“I’m not nervous.”

“You look nervous.”

“I always look nervous.”

The worst part was that Namjoon wasn’t entirely wrong. Mina felt herself laughing before she could stop it. The atmosphere in the room had changed completely. The tension that had dominated rehearsals and comeback meetings for weeks seemed to evaporate beneath the sheer absurdity of seven grown men attempting to outsmart one another while being filmed from six different angles.

Across the studio, Jimin glanced up. For a brief moment his eyes found hers. Then she watched it happen—The shift. Subtle enough that most people probably wouldn’t have noticed. The easy smile. The bright expression. The effortless warmth that seemed to expand outward toward every camera pointed in his direction. Mina had spent enough time around performers to recognize the skill involved. Most people assumed charisma happened naturally. In reality, it required timing. Awareness. Precision. Jimin made it look effortless. Which was probably why people underestimated how good he was at it.

A few minutes later, he attempted to bribe Jungkook with snacks in exchange for information. Unfortunately for him, three separate cameras captured the entire transaction. Jungkook accepted the snacks, Then exposed him immediately. The betrayal was instantaneous. The outrage was spectacular. And as Jimin protested his innocence to absolutely nobody’s satisfaction, Mina found herself smiling again. The polished version of Park Jimin was impressive. The version currently losing an argument over contraband snacks was significantly more entertaining.

——————-

For the first hour, Mina remained pleasantly uninvolved. Which was exactly how she preferred it. She stayed near the production staff, occasionally answering questions when someone needed clarification about a rehearsal schedule or recovery appointment, but otherwise watched the disaster unfold from a safe distance. The keyword being safe.

At least until Taehyung appeared, “Mina.”

She looked up from her tea. Taehyung stood in front of her wearing the expression that usually preceded either an excellent idea or a terrible one. Experience suggested there was rarely a difference.

“Yes?”

He tilted his head slightly, “Who do you think is the most trustworthy member?”

Mina frowned. The question felt random enough to be suspicious, “That’s your mission, isn’t it?”

The disappointment on his face was immediate, “You figured that out too quickly.”

“Taehyung.”

“Right.”

Without another word, he turned and walked away. Mina watched him go. Then looked toward the nearest producer. The producer was laughing…That felt ominous.

⸻

Ten minutes later, Jungkook appeared. Unlike Taehyung, he did not bother pretending the interaction was natural, “Mina.”

“No.”

“I haven’t asked anything yet.”

“You’ve got the same face Taehyung had.”

“I do not.”

“You absolutely do.”

Jungkook looked genuinely offended. Then immediately abandoned the argument, “Okay, but hypothetically—”

“No.”

“You don’t even know the question.”

“I don’t need to.”

He sighed dramatically. The sigh was suspiciously familiar…Mina realized with horror that he had learned it from Jin, “You’re making this difficult.”

“You’re welcome.”

Jungkook narrowed his eyes before wandering away in search of easier targets. Unfortunately, there did not appear to be any.

⸻

The third attempt arrived courtesy of Hoseok. By then Mina was prepared. Or so she thought. Hoseok approached carrying a completely unrelated conversation. That should have been the warning sign, “How’s the comeback schedule looking?”

“Busy.”

“Everyone healthy?”

“So far.”

“Good.” A pause. “Would you describe me as graceful?”

Mina stared at him. Hoseok smiled. The smile of a man who absolutely knew how suspicious that question sounded, “No.”

His jaw dropped. The producer nearest them nearly choked laughing.

“Hoseok…You dance for a living.” Mina paused, “You are one of the best dancers in the world.”

“Correct.”

“Graceful wasn’t the first word that came to mind.”

The betrayal in his expression was profound, “I’ll remember this.”

“I’m sure you will.”

⸻

By lunchtime, Mina had begun to suspect something was very wrong. Not with the members. With the missions. Specifically, the number of missions apparently involving her. She was discussing recovery scheduling with a production coordinator when Namjoon wandered over. The fact that Namjoon wandered anywhere during filming was suspicious on its own, “Question.”

Mina immediately sighed, “Oh no.”

“That’s hurtful.”

“It’s accurate.”

Namjoon laughed. Then, with considerably less subtlety than she expected from him, asked: “Would you say I’m intimidating?”

Mina closed her eyes. The production coordinator beside her physically turned away to hide a smile, “Absolutely not.”

Namjoon looked offended, “You didn’t even think about it.”

“I have known you for years.”

“Still.”

“Namjoon.”

“What?”

“You once apologized to a chair.”

“I bumped into it.”

The coordinator completely lost composure. Namjoon stared at both of them for a moment before shaking his head and walking away.

⸻

It wasn’t until an hour later that Mina finally discovered the truth. The members were gathered around the main filming area while producers reviewed scores. Mina happened to be passing behind one of the monitors when she caught sight of a mission card. A completed mission card.

MISSION:

GET MINA TO CALL YOU COMPETITIVE

FAIL

Mina stopped walking. Then she spotted another.

MISSION:

GET MINA TO CALL YOU GRACEFUL.

FAIL

A third.

MISSION:

GET MINA TO DESCRIBE YOU AS INTIMIDATING

FAILED

Mina stared at the monitor. Slowly. Very slowly. Understanding arrived. Across the room, seven members noticed at exactly the same moment. Jungkook immediately started laughing. Taehyung physically doubled over. Hoseok looked delighted. Namjoon looked guilty.

Mina pointed toward the monitor, “I thought I wasn’t involved in this, You tried to use me.”

The room erupted. “Tried, you’re hard to break,” Jungkook corrected.

Across the room, Jimin looked entirely too pleased with himself.

Which immediately made Mina suspicious, “What was yours?”

His smile widened. That was never a good sign. One of the producers clicked forward. The screen changed.

MISSION:

MAKE MINA LAUGH THREE TIMES.

SUCCESS.

The room went quiet. Mina blinked….Slowly. Then looked toward the members. Most of them were already staring at Jimin.

“Oh no,” Taehyung said immediately.

Jungkook’s eyes widened, “No way.”

Jin looked delighted. Absolutely delighted.

The producer started the replay:

Earlier that morning, Jimin had been caught attempting to trade snacks to Jungkook in exchange for information about his mission. The negotiation itself had lasted less than thirty seconds. The betrayal had lasted considerably longer. On screen, Jungkook accepted the snacks. Then exposed him immediately.

The replay cut directly to Mina laughing from the sidelines. A large graphic appeared—LAUGH #1

The room erupted. Jimin buried his face in his hands.

“Already?” Hoseok wheezed.

“We’ve only seen one.”

The second clip appeared: a dance battle that had taken place earlier in one of the practice rooms—Taehyung and Hoseok took one side of the room while Jungkook and Jimin claimed the other, the challenge becoming less about points and more about seeing who could make everyone else lose composure first. The opening rounds were impressive enough, a reminder that even when they were messing around, they were still some of the best performers in the world.

Then the seriousness disappeared. Taehyung threw himself into exaggerated performance. Jungkook answered with infuriating confidence. Hoseok encouraged the chaos from whichever side happened to be winning at the time.

By the time Jimin stepped forward again, the battle had stopped pretending to be about dancing. He began with a few sharp counts that looked almost respectable before abruptly abandoning dignity altogether. One shoulder rolled. A hip popped. Then he launched into an absurdly dramatic strut across the floor, complete with an exaggerated hair flip despite not having enough hair for one, finishing with a look over his shoulder so outrageously sassy that Hoseok immediately doubled over laughing. The commitment was what made it devastating. Jimin performed the entire thing with the confidence of someone headlining a stadium rather than deliberately embarrassing himself .

Mina lasted all of two seconds. Then she folded forward laughing, one hand pressed over her face as the room erupted around her. When she finally looked up again, Jimin was already grinning. Not because he had won. Because he had gotten exactly the reaction he wanted.—LAUGH #2

The studio lost all remaining composure. Jungkook had doubled over. Namjoon looked incapable of speaking. Even Yoongi was laughing now, “Hyung, this is embarrassing.”

“It gets worse,” Jin announced.

The producer nodded, “It gets worse.”

Jimin groaned.

The final clip appeared on the monitor: For a moment, Mina couldn’t remember what she was looking at. Then she recognized the challenge—Midway through filming, the members had been divided into teams and given a series of increasingly ridiculous tasks worth varying numbers of points. The latest one involved convincing an impartial third party that their strategy was the best…The words impartial third party had apparently been interpreted very loosely.

On screen, Mina sat at one of the side tables reviewing recovery schedules while the competition unfolded around her.—She remembered this. At the time, she had been attempting to work. The members had interpreted this as a personal attack: Jungkook had arrived first. Then Taehyung. Then Jin. All three had attempted to recruit her to their team. All three had failed.

The replay fast-forwarded: A few moments later, Jimin appeared.

The reaction in the studio was immediate. “No.” Mina groaned.

Jin was already laughing, “Yes.”

“Hyung.” Jimin buried his face in his hands.

On the monitor, he crossed the room and stopped beside Mina’s chair. She didn’t look up. The replay helpfully zoomed in, “Mina.”

“No.”

The studio erupted. “She didn’t even wait.”

On screen, Jimin looked mildly offended,, “You don’t even know what I’m asking.”

“Historically, that hasn’t mattered.”

“I need an unbiased opinion.”

“You need points.”

“Both can be true.”

For the first time, Mina looked up from her tablet. Which turned out to be a mistake. Because Jimin was already smiling. Not the smile he wore around the members. Not the one from recovery appointments or rehearsals. The other one. The camera smile. The one polished through years of interviews and performances and somehow capable of making perfectly reasonable people agree to questionable decisions. The replay zoomed in again…The editors were clearly enjoying themselves.

“If you were forced to choose,” Jimin said, “which team would you support?”

Mina stared at him. Then at the camera following behind him. Then back at him. she set her tablet down, “You’re flirting for points.”

The studio exploded. Absolutely exploded. Jungkook disappeared beneath the table. Taehyung was physically falling sideways. Hoseok looked incapable of breathing.

The replay continued. Jimin didn’t miss a beat. His expression remained completely serious, “Is it working?”

The laugh escaped Mina before she could stop it. Clear enough that the editors had isolated the audio. A bright graphic appeared across the monitor—LAUGH #3

MISSION SUCCESS.

The room dissolved into chaos.

“No way.”

“He admitted it!”

“That’s evidence!”

Jimin looked horrified, “It was a joke.”

“It doesn’t sound like a joke.”

“It was obviously a joke.”

“Is it working?” Taehyung repeated dramatically.

The room got louder. Across the studio, Mina found herself laughing again.

Jimin immediately pointed at her, “Four.”

“Oh, absolutely not.”

“Four.”

Across the studio, the producers were laughing just as hard as the members.

Slowly, Mina turned toward Jimin, “That was your mission?”

Jimin looked as though he regretted every decision that had led him to this moment. Unfortunately for him, nobody was prepared to let it go.

“Three laughs?” Jungkook shouted.

“You counted?”

“I didn’t count.”

“You absolutely counted.”

“I had to know if I completed it.”

The answer only made things worse.

Jin pointed dramatically, “You were monitoring her reactions.”

“I was monitoring my mission.”

“Same thing.”

“Not the same thing.”

Jimin looked toward the producers for support. The producers immediately abandoned him. One of the writers was laughing too hard to help.

Beside him, Taehyung had somehow recovered enough to join the attack, “How many smiles were there?”

“There wasn’t a smile mission.”

“But you know, don’t you?”

“There wasn’t a smile mission.”

“That’s not an answer.”

The questioning continued. Jimin’s suffering intensified. Mina found herself watching the entire thing with growing amusement. The mission itself wasn’t what surprised her. The surprising part was how perfectly it fit. Of course Jimin’s mission hadn’t involved strategy. Or manipulation. Or tricking people into saying specific words. It had involved paying attention.

Across the room, Jimin caught her looking. For a brief moment, the chaos around them faded into the background. Then he pointed toward the monitor, “See?”

Mina narrowed her eyes, “See what?”

“I am funny.”

The statement was so absurdly self-satisfied that another laugh escaped before she could stop it. The entire room erupted again.

Jimin immediately pointed at her, “Five.”

“Oh, that’s unbelievable.”

“Five.”

————————

The first time they used it intentionally felt almost embarrassingly practical. There was no dramatic conversation. No discussion about what was happening between them. No acknowledgement that meeting another person in an empty conference room for the sole purpose of sharing pain should probably feel stranger than it did.

Instead, it started with a text message.Mina was halfway through reviewing choreography workload projections when her phone buzzed.

Jimin.

How busy are you?

Mina stared at the message for a moment. Then typed back.

Depends.

A response appeared almost immediately.

Hip hurts.

Despite herself, she smiled. Straight to the point.

A second message followed before she could answer.

Your wrists?

The smile faded slightly. Mina looked down at her hands resting against the conference table. The ache had been present since she woke up that morning. Not unusual. Three straight days of choreography workshops had turned the building into controlled chaos. Choreographers were developing formations. Creative teams were finalizing concepts. Stylists were preparing photoshoots. Managers were juggling schedules that seemed to change every hour. Everyone wanted something. Most of them wanted it immediately. Her hands had started hurting before breakfast. Her left knee hadn’t been much better.

Conference Room 4B. Twenty minutes.

⸻

The room was empty when she arrived. One of the smaller conference rooms tucked away from the main rehearsal areas. Large enough for meetings. Quiet enough that nobody used it unless they had a reason. Mina settled into one of the chairs and opened her laptop. She attempted to work. Attempted being the important word. Her attention kept drifting. Toward the door. Toward the clock. Toward the increasingly ridiculous reality that she was waiting for Park Jimin to arrive so they could sit in a conference room and feel less awful together. The thought remained absurd. Unfortunately, it was also true.

The door opened exactly twenty minutes later.Jimin stepped inside carrying a water bottle and an expression that suggested his hip had indeed been bothering him.

The moment he saw her, his gaze dropped automatically toward her hands.

Mina noticed. Of course she noticed, “So.”

Jimin pulled out the chair across from her, “So.”

“The hip?”

“The wrists?”

She narrowed her eyes, “The hip.”

“The wrists.”

“The hip.”

“The wrists.”

For several seconds they simply stared at one another. Then Jimin laughed. Mina followed a second later. The tension eased immediately. Not disappearing. Just becoming manageable. Much like everything else.

“You know,” Jimin said as he settled into the chair, “most friendships don’t involve arguing over whose pain gets priority.”

Mina considered that, “I think you’ll find most friendships don’t involve this at all.”

“True.”

The room fell quiet again. Outside, footsteps moved through the hallway. Somewhere farther down the corridor, a door opened and closed. The building continued operating around them completely unaware of the increasingly strange arrangement developing inside Conference Room 4B. Neither seemed eager to acknowledge it directly. Eventually Jimin rested his forearm on the table. The movement was small. Ordinary. Mina understood the invitation immediately.

For a moment she hesitated. Then she placed her hand over his wrist. The relief arrived gradually. Different from the sharp shock of discovery. Different from the uncertainty of the first experiments. This felt familiar already. Dangerously familiar. The ache in her hands softened first. Not disappearing. Never disappearing. Just easing enough that she could breathe around it.

Across from her, Mina watched some of the tension leave Jimin’s shoulders. The subtle shift was immediate. The slight guarding she had noticed during rehearsals over the past week relaxed. His hip was getting better. Actually better. That part mattered. The mobility work was working. The strengthening program was working. The recovery plan was working. This wasn’t magic. This wasn’t healing. The touch helped with pain. The work was what fixed the injury. Which was exactly how it was supposed to happen.

For several minutes neither spoke. The silence felt comfortable. Almost peaceful. Mina hadn’t realized how much energy she had been spending simply functioning until some of the pain receded.

Across the table, Jimin flexed his fingers absently..Thinking.Eventually he frowned. Just enough that she noticed, “What?”

Jimin looked down at their joined hands before looking back up. For a moment he seemed to be searching for the right words Then: “I thought it was your wrists.”

The statement landed quietly. Mina felt something uncomfortable tighten in her chest. Not because he sounded suspicious. Because he sounded confused.

“The wrists are the worst part?” Again, not really a question. More like somebody trying to solve a puzzle.

Mina understood immediately. When this first started, he had mostly felt her wrists. The stiffness. The aching. The pain that followed long days. It had been easy to assume that was the entire problem. Today hadn’t felt like that. Today had felt broader. Heavier. The sensation hadn’t settled in one place. It moved. Through fatigue. Through joints. Through something far more complicated than simple overuse.

Mina looked away first. The movement answered more than she intended. Across from her, Jimin went quiet. Not pushing. Not demanding explanations. Just thinking. The realization seemed to settle behind his eyes piece by piece. The fact that he knew she hurt. The fact that he suddenly wasn’t sure where. Or how much. Or for how long.

The silence stretched. Mina hated it. Because she knew exactly where it led. Questions. Questions she wasn’t ready to answer. Questions she had spent years avoiding. Finally she pulled her gaze back toward him, “The hip is getting better.”

The change of subject was obvious. Deliberate. Jimin noticed immediately. For a moment she thought he might push anyway. Instead he leaned back in his chair and looked down at the table, “Yeah.”

His voice sounded thoughtful. Distracted. Like part of him was still caught on the previous conversation. Because now that he’d noticed it, he couldn’t unnotice it. The same way Mina couldn’t unnotice how much easier it had become to sit there. The pain hadn’t vanished. Neither of them were healed. But the relief was enough to make the room feel difficult to leave. Enough to make this seem reasonable. Enough to make it feel necessary.

Outside, choreography meetings continued. Photoshoot planning continued. Comeback preparations continued accelerating toward deadlines that never seemed far enough away. Inside the conference room, neither moved for a long time.

Eventually Jimin glanced at the clock. “We should probably go.”

The statement sounded remarkably similar to the one Mina had made in the recovery room weeks earlier. Neither seemed particularly enthusiastic about it. Still, Mina stood first. Professional habits winning as they usually did. Jimin followed a moment later. The relief had already begun fading. Slowly. Gradually. The reality of that settled heavily between them. Because both of them knew exactly what it meant. This worked. And that was becoming a problem. Neither said it aloud. Neither needed to. Some truths announced themselves without words.

——————-

The cafeteria was unusually quiet for the middle of the afternoon. Most of the members were scattered across different parts of the building. Choreography rehearsals had ended an hour earlier, but concept meetings were still running, stylists were preparing for upcoming photoshoots, and managers seemed to be operating under the assumption that sleep was optional. Mina had claimed a table in the corner with every intention of eating lunch. The untouched container in front of her suggested otherwise.

Instead, she had spent the past twenty minutes reviewing rehearsal notes and making adjustments to conditioning schedules for the following week. Adding a shoulder rehab day for Yoongi, monitor Namjoon’s foot. Schedules never ending

A shadow fell across the table. Without looking up, she assumed it was another staff member needing something, “What happened now?”

The chair opposite her scraped against the floor, “That’s a concerning way to greet people.”

Mina looked up. Jin smiled as he settled into the seat across from her, carrying a tray loaded with enough food to feed several people.

“I assumed it was work.”

“You should assume better things.”

She snorted softly and returned her attention to the report in front of her.

For a while they sat in comfortable silence. Jin worked steadily through his lunch while Mina continued alternating between emails, rehearsal notes, and the increasingly unrealistic intention of eventually eating the food sitting untouched beside her laptop. It wasn’t unusual. At least not to her. The past few weeks had blurred together into a cycle of choreography meetings, conditioning reviews, concept discussions, photoshoot planning, and recovery appointments. Every day seemed to end with another list of things that still needed to be finished.

Eventually she noticed Jin was watching her. Not staring. Just paying attention in the way he always seemed to when something was bothering him, “What?”

The question made him smile, “Nothing.”

“That’s never true.”

His smile widened slightly, “I was wondering if you planned on eating lunch.”

Mina glanced at the container beside her, “I was getting there.”

“You’ve been getting there for twenty minutes.”

She sighed. Unfortunately, he wasn’t wrong. Across the table, Jin took another bite of food before setting his chopsticks down. For a moment, she thought the conversation had ended. Then he asked quietly, “How are you doing?”

The question felt ordinary enough. People asked it all the time. Managers asked it. Staff asked it. The members asked it. Most of the time nobody actually meant it. They were asking whether she was busy. Whether she was stressed. Whether a schedule had changed. Jin wasn’t asking any of those things. Mina knew that immediately.

“I’m fine.” The answer came automatically.

Jin leaned back in his chair. Still watching her. Still entirely unconvinced, “No, you’re not.”

There wasn’t any judgment in his voice. No challenge. No accusation. Just certainty.

Mina laughed softly and shook her head, “That’s a very confident answer.”

“I’ve known you too long.”

The response was simple. Matter-of-fact. As though that explained everything. Maybe it did. Because Jin had known her long enough to notice things other people didn’t. Long enough to remember what she looked like when she was well. Long enough to recognize the difference, “You’ve looked exhausted lately.”

Mina opened her mouth. Jin held up a hand, “And before you tell me everybody’s exhausted, I know.”

That earned the reluctant smile he’d been aiming for., “I work with BTS.”

“That’s fair.”

“I know what tired looks like.”

The smile faded gradually. Not because she was upset. Because she understood what he was saying. Jin wasn’t talking about long days or comeback schedules. He was talking about her.

“I’ve seen you fall asleep in airports,” he continued. “I’ve seen you work twenty-hour days during tours and somehow still have enough energy to yell at Jungkook for doing something reckless.”

“I don’t yell.”

Jin gave her a look. Mina laughed despite herself, “Fine. Occasionally.”

“My point is that this feels different.”

The words settled quietly between them. For the first time since the conversation started, Mina found herself looking away. Toward the window. Toward the hallway. Anywhere except directly at him. Because there was something deeply uncomfortable about being seen that clearly. After a moment, Jin spoke again. His voice was softer now, “You sit down whenever you get the chance.”

Mina’s gaze returned to him.

“You don’t stay standing between rehearsals anymore. You look for the closest chair in every room.” He shrugged lightly, “Most people probably wouldn’t notice.” The small smile that followed was gentle, “I do.”

Something tightened unexpectedly in her chest. Not because he was wrong. Because he was right. And because he had noticed without her ever telling him. For a few seconds neither spoke. The noise of the cafeteria drifted around them, filling the silence without quite interrupting it. Finally Jin asked, “Are you okay?”

This time she couldn’t answer immediately. The question wasn’t really about physical pain. Or exhaustion. Or schedules. It was about her. And that made it harder. Eventually she managed a small smile. One that felt more honest than the others, “I will be.”

Jin studied her for a moment before nodding. Not because he believed the answer. Because he understood it. There was a difference. And somehow that felt even worse. Or maybe better. Mina wasn’t entirely sure.

———————

Mina remained at the table for several minutes after Jin left. The cafeteria had grown busier while they were talking. Staff moved between meetings carrying laptops and coffee cups. Conversations drifted through the room. Somewhere near the entrance, a manager was attempting to coordinate three different schedules at once. Normally, Mina would have already been mentally back at work. Instead she found herself staring at the container of food Jin had practically ordered her to eat. The conversation lingered longer than she wanted it to. Not because Jin had said anything particularly dramatic. Because he hadn’t. He’d simply noticed. And somehow that felt worse. The realization that someone had been paying attention for long enough to see the changes she was trying so hard to hide was deeply uncomfortable. She was so distracted by the thought that she didn’t notice someone approaching until a familiar voice spoke beside her.

“That looked serious.”

Mina looked up. Jimin stood there holding a bottle of water, his expression caught somewhere between curiosity and amusement. Neither emotion surprised her, “How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough.” The answer arrived far too quickly. Jimin pulled out the chair Jin had vacated and sat down without waiting for permission. A habit that seemed to be spreading among the members. For a moment he glanced toward the cafeteria entrance before looking back at her, “Jin looked concerned.”

Mina laughed softly, “You know how he gets.”

The response seemed to surprise him. Because concern wasn’t unusual. Jin worried about everyone. The members. Staff. Dancers. Managers. Half the company on a good day. Yet something about the conversation had clearly struck Jimin as different.

“You two are close.” This time it wasn’t phrased as a question. Just an observation.

Mina considered the statement for a moment before nodding, “I suppose we are.”

The answer felt almost too simple. Because explaining her friendship with Jin required explaining years of history that existed before most of the members had ever thought of her as anything more than another member of the tour staff. Back then she had been younger. Quieter. Determined to prove she belonged there. Jin had taken one look at her tendency to skip meals, work through injuries, and insist she was fine when she clearly wasn’t, and apparently decided she was his problem. Not in a bad way. Just in a very Kim Seokjin way.

“I met him before I knew most of you,” she said. “During PTD.”

Understanding crossed Jimin’s face, “That makes sense.”

“He checked on me constantly.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as the memories resurfaced, “He was convinced I wasn’t taking care of myself.”

Jimin laughed, “Was he wrong?”

Mina looked at him.

Jimin immediately started laughing harder, “Okay. Bad question.”

The conversation settled into something easier after that. Familiar. Comfortable. Yet every so often she caught him looking at her with the same thoughtful expression he’d worn when he first sat down.

Eventually she sighed, “What?”

Jimin blinked, “What?”

“That look.”

“What look?”

“The one where you’re thinking too hard.”

His smile appeared immediately. For a moment he rolled the water bottle between his palms before speaking, “I think I just realized there’s a lot about your life I don’t know.”

The honesty of the answer caught her off guard. Because it wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t possessiveness.It wasn’t even really about Jin.—It was curiosity. The simple realization that there were pieces of her history that existed long before he became part of it.

Mina smiled, “There are a lot of things about your life I don’t know either.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

Jimin opened his mouth…Paused. Then closed it again. Because he didn’t actually have an answer. The silence that followed was brief, but it was enough. Enough for Mina to understand what he was really asking. Enough for Jimin to realize she understood.

A faint smile appeared on Mina’s face, “Oh.”

Immediate regret flashed across Jimin’s expression. “No.”

Mina smile widened, “No?”

“No.”

“There is definitely an ‘oh.’”

“There is not.”

“There absolutely is.”

Jimin dropped his head back against the chair. For a moment he looked genuinely offended by the entire direction of the conversation. Unfortunately for him, that only made it funnier. Mina laughed. The sound came easier than it had all afternoon. Eventually the laughter faded enough for her to speak. For a moment she studied him across the table, still looking vaguely betrayed by the situation.

“Don’t worry.”

The words immediately made him suspicious, “What?”

“Jin is basically my big brother.”

The relief was instantaneous…Subtle. But there. Jimin realized it a second too late. Mina saw it immediately. And smiled.

Across the table, Jimin looked away and took a drink from his water bottle, “Mhm.”

The sound made Mina laugh, “Yeahhh..”

“I was curious.”

“Of course you were.”

“That’s all.”

“Sure.” The amusement in her voice made it abundantly clear she believed approximately none of that.

———————

By the time Jimin texted her, Mina had already spent nearly an hour pretending she was about to stop working. The laptop remained open on her kitchen counter, surrounded by a collection of recovery schedules, choreography notes, and emails that seemed to multiply every time she answered one. Outside, the city had settled into the quieter rhythm of late evening, but her brain was still operating somewhere in the middle of the workday. The comeback had reached the stage where every department suddenly needed everything at once, and although she had long ago accepted that chaos was part of the job, there were nights when she felt as though she spent more time reacting than actually planning.

Tonight was one of those nights. The fatigue had settled heavily across her shoulders hours ago, and the dull ache in her knees had become difficult to ignore each time she stood up. Normally she would have taken that as a sign to call it a night, but normal had become a surprisingly flexible concept over the last few weeks.

Her phone buzzed against the counter.

Jimin

Still working?

A smile appeared before she could stop it. The message was followed almost immediately by another.

My hip is being annoying.

There was something strangely comforting about the predictability of it. Jimin never seemed interested in disguising the reason he was texting her. No elaborate excuse. No attempt at casual conversation before eventually arriving at the point. Just an honest admission that something hurt.

Mina typed back before she could overthink it.

How bad?

The answer came quickly.

Bad enough that I thought about texting you for twenty minutes before actually doing it.

That made her laugh.

A few weeks ago the exchange would have felt strange. Now it felt familiar enough that she barely questioned it. Somewhere between recovery appointments, choreography rehearsals, and those increasingly frequent moments when the connection between them offered relief neither fully understood, they had slipped into a routine. Not a dramatic one. Not even an intentional one. Just the quiet habit of reaching for the other person when the day became difficult.

The next message appeared before she could respond.

Come over.

For a moment she stared at the screen. Then another arrived.

I’ve got ice cream.

Mina shook her head. Only Jimin would treat a late-night pain-sharing arrangement like an invitation to raid his freezer.

And yet, twenty-five minutes later, she was standing in the elevator of his apartment building wondering why none of this felt particularly unusual anymore. Not because there was anything remarkable about the apartment itself, but because seeing it felt less significant than it probably should have. The place was comfortable, lived-in, and unmistakably his. Music played quietly from somewhere in the background, a half-finished puzzle sat abandoned on a side table, and there was a blanket draped across the couch that looked as though it had been claimed permanently. It looked like a home. Not Park Jimin of BTS…Just Jimin.

“You’re staring.”

Mina glanced toward him,“I’m judging your decorating choices.”

“You haven’t even seen most of it.”

“I’ve seen enough.”

His laughter followed them into the kitchen, where he immediately began arguing that ice cream qualified as a reasonable late-night snack. Mina disagreed on principle, though she accepted a bowl anyway, and before long they had settled onto opposite ends of the couch discussing everything from choreography revisions to Jungkook’s latest attempt to convince everyone that additional gym sessions counted as a hobby.

The conversation wandered naturally, occasionally interrupted by comfortable silences that neither of them seemed particularly eager to fill. At some point their shoulders brushed, and the familiar easing of tension followed almost immediately. Mina felt the stiffness in her knees soften enough that she could finally stop thinking about it, while Jimin shifted slightly beside her and released a breath that sounded suspiciously relieved. Neither commented on it. The novelty had worn off weeks ago.

Eventually Jimin stretched his legs out in front of him and said, almost absently, “I think I’m actually getting better.”

The comment caught Mina’s attention immediately. Not because she disagreed…Because she didn’t. Over the past month she had watched his movement patterns change. The compensation she used to see during rehearsals had largely disappeared, his mobility had improved, and the constant irritation that once followed him through every practice seemed to have faded into the background. For the first time since she’d started treating him, she could honestly say his recovery was progressing exactly the way she had hoped.

“You are,” she admitted.

The smile that crossed his face was unexpectedly satisfying to watch, “I knew it.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“It’s close enough.”

Mina laughed and shook her head, but the conversation lingered with her longer than she expected. Because while Jimin’s improvement felt obvious to her, the assumption he made next felt considerably more complicated.

“You seem better too.” The words were offered casually, without any real thought behind them. Which was exactly why they landed so hard.

Mina looked down at the melting ice cream in her bowl and suddenly understood how this must appear from his perspective. Every time they met, both of them left feeling better than they had before. Every time they used the connection, the pain eased enough to make the following hours manageable. To someone on the outside, it probably looked like they were recovering together—The problem was that they weren’t.

Jimin’s body was healing because that was what injuries were supposed to do. The work mattered. The exercises mattered. Time mattered—Her situation was different. Tomorrow morning she would wake up and discover that the relief had stayed behind in his living room. And for the first time since this arrangement had started, Mina wondered whether she should tell him that.

————————-

The conversation drifted long after the ice cream was gone. At some point, the television had been turned on, though neither of them was paying much attention to whatever show was quietly playing in the background. The volume remained low enough that it blended into the apartment rather than filling it, becoming little more than noise occupying the silence between conversations. Mina had lost track of how much time had passed. An hour, maybe two.

The exhaustion that had followed her from HYBE had settled into something softer now. The sharp edges had disappeared. Her knees still hurt, and she knew they would hurt again tomorrow, but for the moment they had faded far enough into the background that she wasn’t thinking about them every few minutes. That alone felt like a gift.

Beside her, Jimin stretched one arm across the back of the couch. The movement was casual. Unthinking. The sort of thing people did when they were comfortable. Mina barely noticed it. At least not immediately. The conversation had wandered toward old stories somehow, as conversations often did when people spent enough time together. Most of the members had a habit of asking about London whenever the subject came up. About what she missed from home, whether British weather was truly as miserable as everyone claimed, and how someone who drank that much tea had somehow survived working with seven men who treated coffee like medical necessities. About the strange collection of jobs Mina had somehow accumulated before ending up back at HYBE.

Jimin, however, tended to ask different questions. Questions that felt less like curiosity and more like genuine interest, “What did you think you’d be doing?”

Mina glanced over, “What do you mean?”

“When you were twenty.”

A laugh escaped her, “Definitely not this.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

Jimin smiled, “What was the plan?”

Mina considered the question. Not because she didn’t know the answer…Because she hadn’t thought about it in a long time. The version of her that had existed before everything changed sometimes felt like a different person entirely, “I danced.”

Jimin blinked, “You danced?” The surprise in his voice was immediate.

Mina looked offended, “I still dance.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It sounded like what you meant.”

His laughter filled the apartment, “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

The smile lingered for a moment before softening, “I wanted to dance professionally.”

The admission felt strange. Not difficult. Just unfamiliar. She didn’t talk about it often. There usually wasn’t a reason to.

Across from her, Jimin’s expression grew thoughtful, “Really?”

Mina nodded, “I danced through high school. Through college. Competitions. Training. The whole thing.”

“What happened?”

The question was gentle. Not invasive. Just curious. Mina looked toward the television for a moment. The answer sat easily on her tongue. A dozen other answers waited behind it. Those stayed where they were, “I changed my mind.”

The statement wasn’t entirely true. It wasn’t entirely false either. Jimin seemed to recognize that immediately. But to his credit, he didn’t push. Instead he nodded slowly. As though filing the information away for later. As though he understood there was more to the story..

“What about you?” Mina asked.

The redirection was obvious. Jimin let her have it anyway, “What about me?”

“The military.”

For the first time all evening, he looked genuinely surprised. Most people asked about music. Performances. Albums. Nobody asked about the military. Not really.

“What about it?”

Mina shifted slightly against the couch. Without thinking, she leaned back into the cushion. Without thinking, Jimin shifted too. The space between them disappeared by degrees rather than all at once. Neither seemed particularly aware of it.

“What was it like?”

The question hung in the air. For a moment, Jimin didn’t answer. When he finally did, his voice sounded quieter, “Different than people expect.”

Mina waited. And because she waited, he kept talking—He told her about routine. About structure. About waking up before sunrise. About being surrounded by people who didn’t particularly care that he was Park Jimin from BTS. About missing the members more than he had expected. About discovering that four years was a very long time to disappear from an industry that never stopped moving.

The conversation wandered easily after that. One story led to another, then another after that, until neither of them seemed particularly concerned with where it was going. The television remained on in the background more out of habit than interest, providing enough noise to fill the silences without demanding attention. At some point Jimin had stretched out across his end of the couch, and Mina had gradually abandoned any attempt to sit properly.

The change happened so slowly that neither of them noticed it. At first they had been sitting on opposite ends of the couch with bowls of ice cream balanced on their knees. Then one of them had shifted closer to hear something over the television. Later, Mina had tucked her feet beneath her and turned sideways so the conversation felt easier. Somewhere along the way the space between them disappeared entirely. Not intentionally. The simple reality was that both of them had stopped paying attention to where the other person was sitting.

By the time the conversation turned toward his solo tour, Mina was curled comfortably against the corner cushion while Jimin sat beside her with one arm stretched across the back of the couch. Her shoulder rested lightly against his side. Neither seemed aware of it.

Or perhaps they were aware of it and simply didn’t find it worth mentioning. Either way, nobody moved.

“What about the solo ?”

The question seemed to surprise him. Mina wasn’t entirely sure why. Maybe because most people wanted stories about performances. About cities. About crowds. She wasn’t particularly interested in any of those things. She was interested in what it had felt like.

For a moment, Jimin looked down at his hands. Then he smiled. A small one, “The first music video was strange.”

“Strange?”

“I kept waiting for somebody else to walk in.”

The answer made her laugh.

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

The smile lingered, then softened, “When you’ve spent most of your adult life performing with six other people, your brain gets used to it.”

As he spoke, Mina found herself listening more closely than she expected. Not because the story was dramatic. Because it wasn’t. It was honest. Jimin rarely talked about himself in the way people assumed he did. He talked about experiences. About the people around him. About moments that mattered. Even now, describing a solo tour, he somehow spent most of his time talking about BTS.

His gaze drifted toward the television. Not really watching it—Remembering, “If something goes wrong, somebody’s there.”

Mina nodded. Because she understood exactly what he meant. Not the stage. The certainty. “The members cover for each other,” she said.

“Exactly.”

As he shifted against the couch, the movement nudged her shoulder lightly. Neither reacted. The contact had become background noise hours ago.

“People think performing alone means you have more freedom.”

His shoulders lifted slightly, “And maybe it does.”

Then he laughed, “But it also means if something goes wrong, it’s just you.”

The honesty in the statement made her really look at him. There was no self-pity in his voice. Just truth.

“I remember standing in the room before the first choreography rehearsal and realizing there wasn’t anyone else coming... just me.” The apartment fell quiet. “When BTS is there, I know what everyone else is doing. I know how Namjoon is going to start. I know exactly when Jungkook is going to do something unpredictable. I know when Jin hyung is going to make everybody laugh.”

The fondness in his voice made her smile, “I know where everyone is.” He paused. Then added quietly, “For the first time, I didn’t.”

Mina understood then. It wasn’t fear of the audience. It was the absence of something he had relied on for over a decade. The absence of six people who had always been there. Without thinking, she let her head rest briefly against his shoulder. The gesture felt less like a decision and more like an extension of the conversation. A silent acknowledgment that she understood.

Jimin didn’t react. At least not outwardly. He simply remained where he was, continuing the story as though nothing had changed. Which somehow made the moment feel even more significant. Because neither of them seemed to find it strange anymore.

————————————

Ohh they are getting comfortable with each other! :) i really wanted to do a true slow burn and not a soulamte BAM you’re together. So i hope you’ll stick with me through this!

Like, comment, reblog, share!

Xoxo, bumble

SUMMARY: Performance specialist, Mina Seo has made a career out of taking care of everyone else. As BTS throws themselves into comeback preparations, she spends her days managing injuries, recovery plans, and the impossible task of keeping seven overworked artists healthy. What nobody realizes is that she’s becoming increasingly skilled at hiding her own struggles. When an unexpected connection with Jimin begins offering relief neither of them fully understands, it slowly becomes part of their routine. Late-night conversations, shared silences, and a comfort that grows easier to rely on with every passing week. But while Jimin is getting better, Mina isn’t. And sooner or later, someone is going to notice.

WARNINGS: chronic illness, overwork injuries, some medical scenes, slight cursing, eventual smut scene—This story contains a realistic depiction of chronic illness, including rheumatoid arthritis, pain flares, fatigue, hospitalization, and the emotional impact of long-term health conditions.

Masterlist

———————————

Three days passed before either of them addressed what had happened in the recovery room. Not because they had forgotten. That would have been impossible. If anything, the problem was that neither of them seemed particularly eager to acknowledge it.

Life had continued moving at its usual relentless pace, and comeback preparations left very little room for sitting down and discussing impossible phenomena. Meetings multiplied. Rehearsals stretched later into the evening. Netflix production meetings appeared on calendars with alarming frequency. Every day seemed to introduce another schedule adjustment, another choreography revision, another reminder that six months suddenly felt much closer than it had a few weeks ago. Through all of it, one fact followed Mina around with increasing persistence…Her wrists hurt less.

The improvement wasn’t dramatic enough to feel miraculous, which somehow made it harder to ignore. The pain hadn’t disappeared. It still lingered beneath the surface, familiar and stubborn as ever. But the stiffness that usually greeted her every morning had eased enough that she noticed the absence. Opening medication bottles no longer required planning. Holding treatment notes through an entire rehearsal block no longer left her fingers aching by lunchtime. Some mornings she made it halfway through her tea before realizing she hadn’t reached automatically for her compression sleeves. And every single time she noticed, she thought about Jimin. Which was deeply irritating.

By the third day, Mina had become reasonably certain that Jimin was having a similarly unproductive week. Not because he’d said anything. Because she knew him.

Five years ago, during the Permission to Dance tour, they had settled into an easy rhythm without either of them really noticing when it happened. Jimin spent most of that tour insisting he wasn’t injured while actively limping in front of her, and Mina spent most of that tour threatening to report him to senior medical staff if he continued ignoring treatment plans. Somewhere between recovery sessions, rehearsal days, and late-night arguments about mobility work, familiarity had quietly developed.

When she’d returned to Seoul for Arirang preparations, they’d fallen back into that dynamic almost immediately. Which was why the last three days had felt so ridiculous. Nothing about Jimin was unfamiliar to her. She knew the way he rolled his shoulders when stressed. She knew the particular smile he used whenever he was attempting to avoid a difficult conversation. She knew exactly how many times he would insist an injury was fine before admitting it actually hurt. The problem wasn’t that he had suddenly become important. The problem was that something about their relationship no longer felt quite the same.

Mina stood near the edge of the main rehearsal studio reviewing schedule changes on her tablet while organized chaos unfolded around her. Dancers stretched across the floor. Production staff moved equipment between camera positions. One of the assistant choreographers was attempting to explain a formation adjustment to three increasingly confused dancers. Somewhere near the back of the room, two managers appeared to be debating whether a filming schedule violated several international laws—Normal. Comfortingly normal.

Mina scrolled through recovery plans, updated hydration targets, and reviewed the latest conditioning schedules before looking up. Unfortunately, her eyes found Jimin immediately. He stood near centre floor listening to one of the choreographers explain a transition change while absentmindedly rolling through his right hip. Testing it. The realization arrived before she could stop it. The same way she had been testing her wrists all week.

Mina immediately looked back down at her tablet. Professional. Normal. Entirely unaffected. The illusion lasted approximately thirty seconds.

“You’ve been reading the same page for five minutes.”

Mina looked up. Namjoon stood beside her holding two schedules, a coffee, and the expression of a man carrying the weight of several continents, “What?”

“The recovery schedule.” He pointed toward her tablet. “You haven’t actually changed anything.”

Mina glanced down. He was annoyingly correct, “I was thinking.”

“A dangerous hobby.”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

A faint smile appeared before Namjoon’s attention shifted briefly toward the rehearsal floor. Toward Jimin. Then back toward her. Mina immediately disliked that sequence of events. Fortunately, Namjoon said nothing. Unfortunately, leaders noticed things. Before either of them could continue, Hoseok clapped loudly from centre stage, “Places!”

The rehearsal floor immediately came alive. Music thundered through the speakers. Dancers moved into formation. Choreographers grabbed notebooks and headsets. The room shifted from preparation into execution so quickly it almost felt rehearsed itself. For the next several hours, Mina successfully buried herself in work…Or tried to.

She updated conditioning targets for the week after noticing recovery scores dropping across nearly the entire group. Jungkook’s cardiovascular workload got reduced for the third time despite his ongoing campaign to convince everyone he needed more gym sessions, not fewer. Namjoon’s mobility program had to be adjusted around an old ankle issue that kept resurfacing whenever rehearsals became particularly dance-heavy. Yoongi’s shoulder remained on her watch list, which meant another conversation about recovery work was waiting somewhere in her future whether he liked it or not.

By mid-morning she had already reviewed hydration logs, modified two recovery sessions, and sent a message to one of the strength coaches reminding him that preparing for a world tour did not require treating seven men in their thirties like Olympic decathletes. Useful problems. The kind she understood. The kind she could solve…What she could not solve was the increasingly irritating fact that every time she looked up, she somehow knew exactly where Jimin was. And judging by the number of times she caught him glancing toward the treatment area, she had a growing suspicion the problem wasn’t entirely one-sided.

—————————-

By the end of the day, Mina’s wrists hurt again. Not enough to stop her working. Not enough to concern anyone else. Just enough to remind her that whatever relief she’d felt earlier in the week hadn’t lasted. The ache settled back into both joints gradually throughout the afternoon, creeping in during meetings and lingering through rehearsals until even holding her tablet felt irritating. She wasn’t surprised. Disappointed, maybe. But not surprised. Nothing about rheumatoid arthritis had ever been predictable enough to reward optimism.

The rehearsal area had mostly emptied by the time she finished updating the following week’s conditioning plans. The dancers had left nearly an hour ago. Most of the production staff had disappeared into various meetings scattered throughout the building. Somewhere upstairs, Netflix executives were probably still discussing camera angles while managers quietly questioned their life choices.

Mina sat alone near the edge of the rehearsal floor with a tablet balanced across her knee, reviewing recovery recommendations for the fifth time despite knowing perfectly well they didn’t need reviewing. Her attention wasn’t really on the document. It hadn’t been for a while.

The practice room doors opened behind her, “Mina?”

When she looked up, Jimin stood a few feet away with one hand resting against the back of his neck. His expression was familiar enough that she immediately understood why he was there—The hip. Just bad enough that he’d finally decided to admit it wasn’t improving on its own.

“The hip?” she asked.

His mouth twitched slightly, “That obvious?”

“You’ve been limping since lunch.”

Jimin sighed. For a moment neither moved. Ordinarily, this would have been automatic. He would complain. She would tell him to sit down. He would complain about that too. Then she’d spend twenty minutes fixing whatever new problem he’d created for himself—Simple. Except suddenly it wasn’t. The hesitation lasted barely a second, but it was there. Long enough for both of them to notice. Long enough for Mina to realize that the past three days had changed something she hadn’t expected. Not their friendship. Not their trust. The ease.

Five years ago during PTD, Jimin had become one of the people she never had to think about. Conversation had come naturally. Recovery sessions had become routine. When she’d returned to Seoul for Arirang, they’d fallen back into that rhythm almost immediately. Now she found herself aware of him in a way she never had before. The awareness was deeply inconvenient. Jimin seemed to reach the same conclusion at exactly the same time.

His gaze dropped briefly toward her hands before returning to her face. Neither acknowledged it. Neither needed to.

Finally, Mina closed the tablet and stood, “Recovery room.”

Relief flickered briefly across his face before he hid it, “You’re very bossy.”

“You came looking for me.”

“That’s not a denial.”

“No, it isn’t.”

The familiar exchange eased some of the tension immediately. Not all of it. Enough. They walked toward the recovery room together. The conversation stayed comfortably shallow at first. Rehearsal notes. Choreography adjustments. A debate about whether Hoseok’s latest conditioning plan qualified as athletic preparation or a human rights violation. Safe things. The kind of conversation they’d always had. The problem was that both of them seemed aware of the parts they weren’t talking about.

By the time they reached the recovery room, the silence felt heavier again. Mina set her tablet on the counter before turning toward him, “How bad?”

Jimin lowered himself onto the treatment table, “Six.”

Her eyebrow lifted.

“A real six or a Jimin six?”

“That’s offensive.”

“It’s a legitimate question.”

He considered it, “A real six.”

“That’s worse.”

“See? This is why people lie to medical professionals.”

“Lead performance specialist.”

“What?”

“You keep calling me medical staff.”

“You are medical staff.”

“I’m many things.”

“You’ve become difficult.”

Mina fought a smile. “You said that five years ago.”

“Because it’s true.”

For the first time since entering the room, something relaxed between them. The conversation found its footing again. Familiar. Easy. Mina reached automatically for the glove box beside the treatment table. The movement was so familiar she barely thought about it. Then she noticed Jimin watching. For a moment neither spoke.

Looking back, the answer seemed almost embarrassingly obvious. During PTD she had worn gloves through nearly every treatment session. She’d been one of several therapists floating through recovery rooms packed with dancers, staff, and members coming and going at all hours. Back then she hadn’t been responsible for managing the members’ conditioning plans, recovery schedules, nutrition targets, and injury prevention programs. Most of her work had happened on the edges of things. Her and Jimin never really had moments of close contact. Now she spent more time with BTS in a week than she sometimes had during an entire month of PTD.

She stepped closer and began working through the assessment, guiding him through a series of movements while monitoring the joint. The hip was tighter than she’d hoped. Not alarming. But enough to confirm what she’d already suspected—Too many rehearsals. Too much impact. Too little recovery.

Jimin watched her while she worked. Not unusual. Except lately she seemed aware of it. “You know,” he said eventually, “most people don’t look disappointed when they turn out to be right.”

“I’m not disappointed I’m right.”

“You look disappointed.”

“I’m disappointed you’re injured.”

Something shifted briefly in his expression. Gone almost immediately.

Mina ignored it and continued the assessment, “You skipped the mobility work again.”

“I modified the mobility work.”

“You didn’t do it.”

“I thought about it.”

“That’s not exercise.”

“It should count for something.”

“It doesn’t.”

A quiet laugh escaped him. The sound lingered in the room longer than it should have. Then Jimin looked down at her hands. The conversation they had both been avoiding finally arrived. Neither seemed particularly enthusiastic about it, “My hip was worse today.”

Mina’s movements paused. Only briefly, “So were my wrists.” The admission settled between them. Honest. Simple. Impossible to misunderstand.

Jimin nodded slowly, “I figured.”

“You figured?”

“You stopped opening bottles with your left hand.”

Mina stared at him, “What?”

He looked mildly uncomfortable now, “You’ve been doing it all month.”

The explanation did not help. “You noticed that?”

Jimin looked genuinely confused by the question, “Of course I noticed.”

For reasons she couldn’t entirely explain, the answer stole her breath for half a second. Not because it was romantic. Not because it was significant. Because she’d spent years watching everyone else. Monitoring everyone else. Paying attention to everyone else. The realization that someone had been paying attention right back felt unexpectedly vulnerable.

The room grew quiet. Outside, distant music echoed faintly through the walls as another rehearsal room continued working late into the evening. Inside, neither seemed eager to break the silence.

Eventually Jimin leaned back slightly against the treatment table, “We can’t keep pretending it’s not happening.”

Mina laughed softly, “I don’t think we’ve been particularly successful at pretending.”

“Fair.” For a moment he stared up at the ceiling. Thinking. Then: “I have an idea.”

Mina immediately became suspicious, “That sentence has never ended well.”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s worse.”

A smile appeared briefly. Then faded. “I’m serious.” Something in his voice made her listen. Jimin sat forward slightly, “We don’t know what this is.”

“No.”

“We don’t know why it’s happening.”

“No.”

“And neither of us can exactly avoid the other for the next six months.”

That was unfortunately true—Netflix. Recording. Dance rehearsals. Conditioning sessions. Media training. World tour preparation. Their schedules practically guaranteed daily contact.

“So?” Mina asked.

Jimin shrugged one shoulder, “So maybe we stop treating it like a problem we’re trying to solve.”

She frowned, “What does that mean?”

“It means…” He hesitated briefly. “You spend all day making sure everyone else gets through comeback preparation.”

Mina didn’t like where this was going, “And?”

“And nobody makes sure you get through it.”

The room went unexpectedly still. Jimin looked away first. Almost embarrassed by the honesty. Then he continued, “You help me with the hip. The conditioning. The things I’m apparently incapable of managing myself.”

“Accurate.”

That earned the smallest smile before he continued, “And I help make sure you’re taking care of yourself too.”

Mina stared at him. The proposal was so simple it took her a moment to process. Not a solution. Not an explanation..Just support. A partnership. Two people surviving the same impossible thing together, “You want accountability.”

“Exactly.”

She considered it. Then considered the past month—The missed meals. The worsening flare. The way she’d hidden every symptom while lecturing everyone else about recovery.

Jimin watched her quietly, waiting.

Finally, Mina nodded once, “Fine.”

Relief crossed his face immediately. Far more relief than the situation warranted. Which probably meant he needed this agreement as much as she did. “Fine?” he repeated.

“Don’t make me say it twice.”

A grin appeared, “There she is.”

Mina rolled her eyes. But for the first time all week, something felt settled. This thing still existed. The questions still existed. Neither of them understood any of it. But six months suddenly felt a little less impossible than it had an hour ago.

—————————

The first indication that the pact might actually be working arrived at seven-thirty on a Tuesday morning. Mina had been at HYBE for nearly ninety minutes already. The building was only beginning to wake up around her, staff filtering in with coffees and laptops while the day’s schedules gradually came to life across a dozen departments. She sat alone in the recovery room reviewing conditioning reports from the previous week, making notes on training loads and recovery targets while a neglected breakfast sat beside her laptop. The yogurt had been opened. The banana remained untouched. She planned to fix that eventually.

The recovery room door opened before she got the chance. Mina glanced up automatically and then paused. Jimin stood in the doorway. For a moment she simply stared at him. Then she looked at the clock. Then back at him.

Jimin narrowed his eyes immediately, “Why do you look concerned?”

“I’m trying to determine whether somebody replaced Park Jimin overnight.”

His expression shifted toward offense, “I attend appointments.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

“You attend approximately forty percent of appointments.”

“That’s still attending.”

“That’s failing in most educational systems.”

A reluctant laugh escaped him as he stepped inside and dropped his gym bag beside the treatment table. The exchange felt familiar in a way that caught her slightly off guard. Comfortable. Easy. Like they had simply resumed a conversation interrupted several years earlier rather than spending all that time living separate lives.

Mina closed her laptop and stood. “Well,” she said, glancing toward the counter, “I suppose I eat breakfast later.”

Jimin followed her gaze. The yogurt. The banana. Then back to her, “You haven’t eaten yet?”

The question carried enough genuine confusion that she looked at him again. “No.”

“You’ve been here since six.”

“Correct.”

“And you do this every day?”

Mina shook her head immediately, “No. Hoseok shows up.” A beat passed. “Hoseok has attended every mobility session since I arrived.”

Jimin looked personally betrayed by this information, “You compared me to Hoseok.”

“I compared your attendance records.”

“That’s somehow worse.”

“It should motivate you.”

His expression suggested otherwise. Mina found herself smiling despite her best efforts.

A month ago, she would have expected him to skip the session entirely. Now he was standing in front of her on time, carrying his own resistance bands and looking mildly annoyed about being compared to Jung Hoseok…Progress came in many forms.

By the time Jimin had finished complaining about the comparison to Hoseok and Mina had finally convinced him to get onto the treatment table, the recovery room had begun filling with the usual early-morning activity. Staff moved through the hallway outside carrying coffees and clipboards while somewhere down the corridor somebody was already arguing about rehearsal schedules. Mina barely noticed any of it.

She had spent enough years working with dancers and performers to know that recovery rarely happened in dramatic moments. Most injuries revealed themselves through patterns. A slight hesitation before a movement. A shift in weight that wasn’t supposed to be there. Muscles working harder than they should because another part of the body had quietly stopped doing its job. Jimin’s hip had become exactly that sort of problem.

She guided his leg carefully through its range of motion, one hand supporting beneath the knee while the other stabilized the joint. The restriction she’d been tracking over the past several weeks was still there, but not as pronounced as it had been at the start of rehearsals. The hip flexor released more easily. Internal rotation had improved. Most importantly, the protective tension that had been pulling him out of transitions during choreography was beginning to ease.

Mina worked methodically, adjusting the angle of the joint and feeling for resistance rather than watching for it. The assessment blended naturally into treatment. Assisted mobility became targeted release work. Release work became movement retraining. Years of experience had taught her that bodies rarely responded well to force. They responded to patience. Which was why the improvement immediately made her suspicious. Enough performers had promised they were doing their exercises while very obviously not doing their exercises that she had developed a healthy distrust of good progress. Yet every change she found pointed toward the same conclusion…He was actually following the program. The realization remained mildly offensive.

When she finally stepped back to compare the movement against her notes from the previous week, the difference was impossible to ignore. The inflammation had settled. The compensation patterns she’d been documenting during rehearsals were becoming less frequent. Even the surrounding muscle tension felt different beneath her hands. Whatever else was happening, Jimin had started taking recovery seriously. The hip was improving. She adjusted the angle of his leg one final time before setting it carefully back onto the table and reaching for her notes.

Beside her, Jimin pushed himself up onto his elbows, “You look disappointed.”

Mina continued writing, “I’m suspicious.”

“Because the exercises worked?”

“Because performers lie.”

“That feels targeted.”

“It is.”

His laugh followed her across the room while she updated the week’s treatment recommendations. The sound settled easily into the quiet atmosphere of the recovery room. Outside, the building had fully come to life. Footsteps passed through the corridor. Somebody rolled equipment down the hall. A manager’s voice drifted faintly through the partially open doorway before disappearing again. Mina barely noticed any of it. She was already mentally adjusting training loads and recovery targets for the rest of the week when she glanced back toward the treatment table. Something still looked tight.

“Sit up.”

Jimin obeyed without argument, which was perhaps the most alarming sign of progress so far.

Mina stepped closer and moved around behind him, one hand settling lightly against his shoulder while the other traced the line of tension running through the side of his hip and lower back, slightly moving his shirt out of the way to feel the muscle. Years of working with dancers had taught her that the source of a problem was rarely the place that hurt. Bodies compensated. Adapted. Redistributed strain until entire movement patterns changed around a single irritated joint.

She could feel some of that lingering now. Not much. Enough. Concentrating, Mina pulled off one glove and used her bare hand to assess the tissue more accurately. The contact was brief and entirely professional, the sort of thing she did dozens of times a day without thinking about it.

This time she felt it immediately—Exhaustion…Not her own. The sensation arrived so suddenly it stole the next breath from her lungs. Long rehearsals. Endless meetings. Recording sessions running late into the evening. The pressure of returning after years away. The quiet determination to make this comeback worthy of the wait.

The weight of it settled over her for one disorienting second before fading again. Mina’s hand stilled.

In front of her, Jimin went equally motionless. Because at the same moment something had moved in the opposite direction. Not the ache in her wrists. Not even the stiffness that had followed her through most of the week.

Fatigue. The kind that lived beneath everything else. The exhaustion she had become so accustomed to carrying that she rarely noticed it anymore.

Slowly, Jimin turned his head. Mina looked down at him. Neither needed to ask. The exhaustion lingered at the edges of the bond for a moment before fading, leaving behind an uncomfortable amount of understanding. Mina had spent weeks noticing the signs in him without fully appreciating what they added up to. The late nights. The extra rehearsals. The constant pressure. The way he carried responsibility until it became indistinguishable from habit. Across from her, Jimin was studying her with the same expression. Like he had finally noticed something too.

“You’re exhausted,” Mina said. The observation escaped before she could stop it.

Jimin’s mouth twitched slightly, “That’s interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

“I was about to say the same thing to you.”

And somehow that made it worse. Jimin stared at her. Mina stared back. Then both of them groaned.

“Oh, that’s irritating.” She huffed.

The laugh escaped Jimin first. Mina held out for approximately three seconds before giving up and laughing too. Because of course that was what they noticed Not the hip. Not her wrists. The fact that both of them were exhausted.

“I am sleeping,” Jimin argued.

“You’re practicing choreography alone at nine o’clock at night.”

“You saw that?”

“You were in a room made entirely of glass.”

His expression suggested that was a disappointing flaw in the architecture. “And you’re one to talk,” he shot back. “You answered emails at midnight.”

“How do you know that?”

“You replied to mine.”

Mina paused. That was unfortunately true.

Jimin pointed at her triumphantly, “Exactly.”

“That proves nothing.”

“It proves you’re a hypocrite.”

“It proves you shouldn’t be emailing people at midnight.”

“It was about recovery schedules.”

“It could have waited.”

“So could your response.”

For a moment they simply looked at each other. Then, despite themselves, both started smiling again. The realization settled quietly between them. Whatever was happening between them wasn’t limited to injuries. It wasn’t limited to pain either. Somehow it seemed intent on exposing every bad habit they were trying to hide from everyone else. Which, unfortunately, might have been worse.

————————————

Ugh they are too cute!

Like, comment, reblog, share!

Comment for taglist!

Xoxo, bumble

SUMMARY: Performance specialist, Mina Seo has made a career out of taking care of everyone else. As BTS throws themselves into comeback preparations, she spends her days managing injuries, recovery plans, and the impossible task of keeping seven overworked artists healthy. What nobody realizes is that she’s becoming increasingly skilled at hiding her own struggles. When an unexpected connection with Jimin begins offering relief neither of them fully understands, it slowly becomes part of their routine. Late-night conversations, shared silences, and a comfort that grows easier to rely on with every passing week. But while Jimin is getting better, Mina isn’t. And sooner or later, someone is going to notice.

WARNINGS: chronic illness, overwork injuries, some medical scenes, slight cursing, eventual smut scene—This story contains a realistic depiction of chronic illness, including rheumatoid arthritis, pain flares, fatigue, hospitalization, and the emotional impact of long-term health conditions.

Masterlist

———————————-

For several seconds after their hands separated, neither of them spoke. The recovery room remained unchanged around them. Equipment continued charging along the far wall. Rain still tapped softly against the arena roof overhead. Somewhere beyond the closed door, staff moved through the corridors beginning another day of rehearsals. Everything was exactly the same. Except it wasn’t.

Mina stared down at her hands, flexing her fingers slowly as if repetition might reveal an explanation she had somehow missed the first time. The stiffness that had settled into her wrists over the past week had eased so dramatically that the absence felt almost as noticeable as the pain itself. She could still feel it lingering at the edges, a familiar ache beneath the surface, but it no longer dominated every movement.

Across from her, Jimin shifted his weight. Immediately. Instinctively. The same way he always did when evaluating an injury. His expression tightened. Not because something hurt. Because something had changed.

Mina watched him carefully, “What happened to your hip?”

The question came out before she could stop it. Professional habit. If something didn’t make sense, she gathered information first and worried later.

Jimin considered the question for a moment, “I’m not sure.”

“You know more than that.”

A faint smile appeared despite the confusion, “You always this persistent?”

“When people avoid answering me, yes.”

That earned the smallest laugh from him before his attention returned to the problem at hand.

For a moment he tested the movement again, rolling carefully through the joint, “It feels better.”

The answer should not have unsettled her as much as it did. Instead, her stomach dropped. Because that was exactly what she had experienced. Not recovery. Not healing—Relief. Temporary and immediate.

Mina rotated one wrist experimentally before looking back up, “Mine too.”

The admission hung between them. Neither looked particularly comforted by it. She had spent years studying anatomy, rehabilitation, conditioning, performance science, and pain management. She understood inflammatory conditions. She understood compensation patterns. She understood exactly how the body responded to injury. Nothing in her education accounted for this.

Jimin seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. The easy humour that usually surfaced whenever conversations became uncomfortable had disappeared entirely. He looked thoughtful now, focused in a way she normally only saw during rehearsals when he was trying to learn new choreography.

“What did you feel?” she asked.

This time he answered immediately, “My wrists hurt.”

Mina froze. Jimin noticed. Of course he did.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“No.”

“You didn’t mention the pain.”

“No.”

The room felt suddenly smaller. Because that was the part she couldn’t explain away. Pain improving was impossible enough. Pain being identified by someone who had no reason to know it existed was something else entirely.

For the first time since the touch, uncertainty crept across Jimin’s face, “I know it sounds strange.”

“It sounds impossible.”

“That’s probably more accurate.”

Despite herself, Mina almost smiled. The response felt absurdly normal given the circumstances.

For a moment neither spoke. Mina crossed toward the counter and picked up her tea, more because she needed something to do with her hands than because she wanted it. The mug had cooled enough to drink now. Behind her, she could feel Jimin still thinking.

Eventually he asked, “How long have they been hurting?”

The question caught her off guard. Not because of the subject. Because of the sincerity. Most people asked out of concern. Others asked because they felt obligated to. Jimin sounded curious; genuinely trying to understand what he had felt.

“About a week,” she admitted.

Jimin nodded slowly, as through filing the information away somewhere, “a week..”

“It’s not unusual.” —The answer arrived automatically. The same practiced response she’d given colleagues, performers, and occasionally herself for years.

Jimin’s expression shifted slightly, “you say that the same way I say I’m fine.”

Mina stared at him. For a second, neither spoke. Then, despite herself, she laughed, “thats deeply irritating.”

One concerned of his mouth lifted, “I’ve heard that before.”

Then, after a brief hesitation, he said, “That explains why you’ve been rubbing your wrists during rehearsals.”

Mina stared at him, “What?”

Mina stared at him. She genuinely couldn’t remember doing that in front of him. Which probably meant he was telling the truth.

“You do it when you think nobody’s looking.”

The statement was delivered so matter-of-factly that she almost laughed. Almost. Instead she felt something far more unsettling. Because he was right. She did. The fact that he had noticed at all left her strangely speechless. For weeks she had been monitoring his hip, his gait, the way he compensated during transitions, the subtle changes in movement that revealed pain long before performers admitted it existed. Apparently he had been paying attention too. The thought lingered longer than it should have.

Jimin looked away first, shifting his weight again.Immediately Mina noticed it. Not because she was watching for it. Because she couldn’t seem to stop. This time, however, something else caught her attention. As he shifted his weight, Mina felt a dull ache settle unexpectedly into her own right hip. The sensation wasn’t severe. In fact, compared to the stiffness that usually accompanied her flare-ups, it barely registered. The problem was that it wasn’t hers. Mina frowned and instinctively adjusted her stance.

Across the room, Jimin had gone very still. For the first time since the impossible exchange at the counter, neither of them seemed focused on what had improved. They were focused on what had appeared.

Slowly, Mina looked down at her own hip before lifting her gaze back to him. Nothing about this made sense. Her wrists felt better. His hip felt better. And yet the brief ache she’d felt hadn’t belonged to her. She knew that with a certainty she couldn’t explain.

Which was a problem. Mina trusted evidence. Mina trusted anatomy. Mina trusted things she could measure. This was none of those things.

Across the room, Jimin had gone still. Not frightened. Just thinking. Which somehow felt more dangerous. Mina looked at him. Jimin looked back. For the first time since their hands had touched, neither of them seemed interested in pretending they had an explanation. And somehow that unsettled her more than the pain.

——————————

For several seconds neither of them spoke. Mina found herself staring at Jimin across the recovery room, her mind cycling uselessly through every explanation she had ever learned and discarding each one almost immediately. There were conditions she could explain. Injuries she could explain. Pain patterns, compensation patterns, recovery timelines, inflammation markers, treatment plans. This wasn’t any of those things. Whatever had just happened between them existed completely outside her understanding. Which, unfortunately, did not stop the rest of the day from continuing.

Somewhere out in the arena, she could already hear staff beginning preparations for morning rehearsals. Doors opened and closed in the corridor. Equipment cases rolled across concrete floors. Voices drifted faintly through the walls. Life, annoyingly, was moving on.

Mina glanced toward the clock mounted above the recovery room sink, “We’re supposed to be in rehearsal in twenty minutes.”

The statement sounded absurdly normal given the circumstances. Jimin looked at the clock too before letting out a quiet breath, “Right.”

Neither moved immediately. Both of them seemed reluctant to leave the room. Not because they wanted to stay. Because stepping back into normal life felt significantly more difficult now. Eventually Mina picked up her tablet from the counter.

“We’re not telling anyone.” The decision arrived before she consciously made it.

Jimin looked up, “Because they’ll think we’re insane?”

“Because I think we’re insane.”

That earned a genuine laugh from him. The sound eased some of the tension that had settled over the room…Some. Not all.

“We don’t know what happened,” she continued. “Until we do, there’s nothing to tell.”

Jimin considered that for a moment before nodding…Reasonable. Which was perhaps the only reasonable thing that had happened all morning.

Together they left the recovery room and headed toward the rehearsal arena. The moment they stepped through the doors, normality reasserted itself. Music blasted through speakers overhead while dancers stretched across the floor. Production staff moved between equipment stations carrying clipboards and headsets. Choreographers discussed formation changes near the stage while managers compared schedules beside the lighting controls—Chaos. Familiar chaos. The kind Mina usually appreciated because it left very little room for overthinking. Today it wasn’t helping.

She crossed toward the treatment area near the edge of the rehearsal floor and immediately buried herself in work. One dancer needed a shoulder checked. Choreographer wanted advice on when Jin could be used for choreo block. Another manger wanted to know if Namjoon could be schedule through lunch for a wardrobe fitting (no). A production assistant had somehow strained his back lifting equipment the previous evening—Normal problems. Comfortingly normal problems.

For nearly an hour she succeeded in focusing entirely on them, then she looked up. Jimin was across the arena. Nothing unusual about that. Except somehow her attention found him immediately. He stood near centre floor listening to one of the choreographers explain a transition adjustment while absentmindedly rolling through the right hip. Testing it. The thought arrived before she could stop it. He was checking the injury. The same way she had been checking her wrists all morning. Mina looked back down at her notes.

Unfortunately, it happened again twenty minutes later….And again after that. Each time she caught herself looking in his direction, she immediately found a perfectly reasonable explanation—He was injured. She was monitoring him. That was her job. The fact that she seemed incapable of locating anyone else in a room containing nearly a hundred people was entirely unrelated.

Across the arena, Jimin appeared to be having a similarly unproductive morning. At least, that was the conclusion Mina reached after catching him looking toward the treatment area for the third time. The first time could have been coincidence. The second time was questionable. The third time felt suspicious. When their eyes met briefly across the rehearsal floor, Jimin looked away first. Mina felt absurdly victorious. She wasn’t entirely sure why.

The morning continued. Music started and stopped. Formations shifted. Corrections were made. And for a while, normality almost managed to re-establish itself…Almost. Near midday, Mina crouched beside one of the dancers to check an ankle that had been bothering him. The movement should have been familiar. Automatic. Instead she paused halfway through standing. Not because something hurt. Because it didn’t. For a second she remained still. Thinking. Her knee had been bothering her for days. Long enough that she had unconsciously begun bracing before standing. Long enough that the movement had become habit. Yet she had just stood up without thinking about it at all.

Before she could examine it further, a familiar voice appeared beside her, “Better day?”

Mina looked up. Jin stood there holding a bottle of water and watching her with the mild expression of someone who had already noticed far more than he intended to say aloud.

Immediately she understood what he meant. Not the knee. Her. Jin had spent years quietly monitoring her health in the same way she monitored everyone else’s. Small changes rarely escaped him.

Mina straightened, “It’s fine.” The answer came automatically.

Jin’s eyebrow lifted. Neither of them acknowledged the irony. After a moment he handed her the water bottle, “You look less tired.”

The observation landed uncomfortably close to the truth. Mina accepted the bottle.

“And you’re getting old.”

Jin looked genuinely offended, “That’s a terrible answer.”

“Still accurate.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. He didn’t push further. Didn’t ask questions. Didn’t demand explanations. He simply nodded once before heading back toward the members. Which somehow worried Mina more than if he had interrogated her. Because Jin never forgot things he noticed.

————————

For most people, the day was over. For Mina, it usually wasn’t. She sat near the treatment area with a tablet balanced on one knee, finishing treatment notes while the arena gradually emptied around her. The habit had started during PTD and never really left. If she waited until she got back to the hotel, she would only end up staying awake another two hours finishing paperwork anyway. Around her, the crowd thinned steadily. A few dancers stopped to ask questions before leaving. One of the choreographers wanted an update on an ankle issue. Somebody from production needed clarification about recovery scheduling.

By the time she finally looked up again, most of the members had already disappeared toward the locker rooms. Most.

“Mina?”

She froze. The voice had become instantly recognizable over the past few weeks. Jimin stood a short distance away, one hand resting against the back of his neck. His expression looked familiar. Mildly annoyed. Slightly tired. The look performers wore when an injury had become impossible to ignore.

“The hip?” The question escaped before she thought about it.

Jimin’s mouth twitched slightly, “That obvious?”

“You’ve been limping since lunch.”

“Yeah.” He’s sighed

The exchange felt normal. Almost reassuringly so. Until neither of them moved— The recovery room. The shared pain. The impossible thing neither of them understood. Mina had spent most of the afternoon successfully pretending it wasn’t sitting between them. Pretending she could return to treating him exactly the same way she had the day before. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Jimin seemed to be thinking the same thing. His gaze dropped briefly toward her hands before returning to her face. For a second, neither spoke. The arena continued emptying around them completely unaware of the problem unfolding in the silence.

Ordinarily, this would have been simple. He was injured. She was responsible for keeping him healthy enough to make it to the comeback tour. The solution involved mobility work, recovery sessions and approximately twenty minutes of complaining from both parties.

Instead Mina found herself hesitating. The pause lasted less than a second. Long enough—Jimin noticed.

Treatment meant contact. Contact meant whatever had happened that morning. Neither of them knew whether repeating it was a good idea. Neither knew whether avoiding it was possible.

Mina looked away first. Not because she felt uncomfortable. Because she needed to think. The problem was that thinking wasn’t helping. Tomorrow she would still be monitoring that hip. The day after that too. And the day after that. This wasn’t ending. Whatever this was wasn’t disappearing.

Eventually she closed the treatment folder resting in her lap. Professional habit won…It usually did.

“Recovery room,” she said. “Ten minutes.”

Every instinct she possessed told her to investigate. Unfortunately, every professional instinct she possessed told her to do her job first.

Jimin held her gaze for a moment before nodding once. No argument. No joke. Then he turned and headed out of the practice room. Mina remained where she was for several seconds after he disappeared. Around her, the last of the staff continued packing equipment while conversations echoed through the gradually emptying building. None of it registered. Because for the first time since beginning her career, she wasn’t entirely certain what would happen when she put her hands on someone she was responsible for. And for reasons she couldn’t fully explain, that frightened her far more than the impossible thing that had happened in the recovery room that morning.

——————————

The recovery room was empty when Mina arrived. Not unusual. Most people preferred to leave the building as quickly as possible after a long rehearsal day. The dancers disappeared almost immediately. Production staff retreated into meetings. Managers migrated toward schedules and logistics and whatever fresh disaster required solving before tomorrow morning.

Mina preferred the quiet. At least she usually did. Tonight she found herself reorganizing treatment supplies for the third time in ten minutes. The resistance bands were already sorted. The tape rolls were already sorted. The treatment table hadn’t moved. None of that stopped her. Eventually she gave up pretending she was accomplishing anything and opened Jimin’s treatment notes instead: Hip irritation. Likely overuse. Worse after prolonged rehearsal blocks. No significant improvement despite modifications. All perfectly ordinary. Which only made the rest of the day feel stranger.

The knock came exactly ten minutes later. Mina looked up. Jimin stood in the doorway.

“How’s the hip?” The question sounded normal. That was something.

Jimin stepped inside and closed the door behind him, “Still attached.”

“An encouraging start.”

“Glad to hear it.”

The exchange eased some of the tension immediately. Not all of it.

Mina gestured toward the treatment table, “Sit.”

Jimin obeyed, settling onto the edge of the table while she reached automatically for her assessment notes.

For several minutes, the appointment proceeded exactly as it always would have. Questions. Answers. Movement testing. Observations. The familiar rhythm settled between them naturally.

Mina glanced down at the notes before looking back up, “When does it catch?”

Jimin thought about it for a moment, “SWIM.”

She nodded immediately, “Second chorus?”

A look of mild suspicion crossed his face, “You already know the answer.”

“The drop into the kneeling transition loads the right side every time.”

That earned a reluctant admission, “Yeah.”

Mina made a note, “Anywhere else?”

“Run BTS.”

This time she answered immediately, “The travelling sequence.”

Jimin pointed at her, “See, that’s concerning.”

“What is?”

“You know that far too quickly.”

“I spent three weeks watching you cheat the same movement.”

A laugh escaped him, “I wasn’t cheating.”

“You shortened the stride on the right side every single rehearsal.”

His expression told her she was correct.

Mina continued writing, “Worse after full runs?”

“Third run.”

That tracked. One performance wasn’t usually the problem. The problem was spending an entire afternoon cycling through SWIM, Run BTS, and IDOL before repeating sections again for camera blocking and stage adjustments. Tour prep wasn’t for the weak. It required repetition of old choreography while learning new dances. Testing stamina. Remembering staging of old songs while trying to learn new ones. Eventually the body stopped negotiating.

Jimin leaned back slightly against the treatment table, “You make rehearsals sound dangerous.”

“I work in sports medicine.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only answer you’re getting…Sharp pain?”

“Sometimes.”

She looked up, “Sometimes isn’t a measurement.”

A faint smile appeared, “It’s the best you’re getting.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“It really is.”

There…That felt normal. Comfortingly normal. For almost five entire minutes, they managed to behave as though nothing impossible had happened that morning. Then Mina stood. The illusion ended immediately. Because the next part required contact. Mina reached for a pair of gloves like she always did.

The latex snapped softly against her wrist. Professional. Routine. Safe. At least in theory, “Lie back.”

Jimin shifted onto the treatment table. The assessment began exactly the way every other assessment had. Mina moved carefully through the range of motion testing while mentally cataloguing every response. Joint mobility. Muscle tension. Compensation patterns. The gloves created a familiar barrier between clinician and patient, allowing her to focus entirely on the mechanics of the injury. Nothing obvious happened. No sudden shift. No immediate relief….Which was almost more frustrating..

Across the treatment table, Jimin noticed it too. The realization lingered quietly between them as the assessment continued. Several minutes passed. Mina guided him through another movement. Still nothing. Eventually she stepped back. For a moment neither spoke.

Then Jimin looked at her hands. Mina followed his gaze automatically—The gloves. Understanding arrived almost simultaneously.

“That’s annoying,” Jimin said.

Despite herself, Mina laughed, “Professionally speaking?”

“Professionally speaking.”

The answer eased some of the tension that had been building all evening. Some. Not all. Because now they had another piece of the puzzle. Whatever connected them wasn’t triggered by proximity. It wasn’t triggered by intention. And it apparently wasn’t triggered by latex.

Mina pulled one glove off slowly. Neither of them commented on the fact that they were both curious. Or on the fact that they both wanted confirmation. Scientific curiosity was easier to accept than the alternatives.

“Give me your hand.”

Jimin stared at her, “really?”

“Do you want answers or not?”

“Fine.” He held out his hand.

For a second nothing happened. Then Mina felt the familiar stiffness in her wrists ease slightly. Across from her, Jimin’s posture changed. Not dramatically. Just enough that both of them noticed. Relief spread through her joints like warmth. Just enough to lighten it. Her wrists hadn’t felt that good in months. That realization unsettled her more than the impossible connection itself. Jimin inhaled sharply. His shoulders relaxed. At the same time, he flexed his fingers. Something had changed…Again. The explanation remained frustratingly absent.

Slowly she pulled her hand away. The relief faded. The ache slowly returned. But still eased enough to notice. Neither of them looked surprised anymore. Concerned, maybe. Thoughtful. But not surprised. It wasn’t proof. But it was the strongest pattern either of them had seen all day.

Eventually Mina reached for the discarded glove and pulled it back on. Professional habits reasserting themselves. The barrier felt strangely significant now. Not because of what it did. Because of what it prevented. For a moment neither spoke. Then Jimin slid off the treatment table and tested the hip again—Better. Not healed. Better.

“So,” he said.

Mina already knew what he was going to ask, “We don’t tell anyone.”

He nodded. “Agreed.”

“We keep paying attention.”

“Agreed.”

“And we act normal.”

That earned the first genuine smile she’d seen from him all evening, “That one might be difficult.”

Unfortunately, he was right. Because tomorrow she would still be responsible for his recovery. And the day after that. And the day after that… Whatever had happened between them wasn’t disappearing. It was simply becoming part of their lives . And Mina had a feeling neither of them fully understood what that meant yet.

————————-

The first thing Mina noticed about album recording season was that nobody slept enough. The second was that everybody lied about it.

By the second month of comeback preparations, the HYBE building had settled into a strange rhythm that seemed to operate independently of normal time. Lights stayed on long after midnight. Producers moved between studios carrying laptops and coffee. Managers lived off schedules that changed every six hours. The members were somehow expected to exist inside all of it.

Mina arrived shortly before eight and immediately regretted opening her email—Three schedule changes. One meeting request. Two questions from management. And an updated recording timetable that somehow expected Namjoon to be in three places at once…Normal. She stepped into the conference room five minutes later and found exactly what she’d expected—Exhaustion. Not dramatic exhaustion. The quieter kind. The kind people carried professionally.

Namjoon sat at the end of the table reviewing production notes. Yoongi was staring at a laptop screen with the expression of someone who had been awake far longer than recommended. Jungkook was eating breakfast. (Which immediately improved Mina’s opinion of the morning, Slightly.

“Good,” she said.

Jungkook looked up, “Good morning?”

“You ate.”

His expression became suspicious, “I always eat.”

“You absolutely do not.”

Jungkook looked toward Namjoon, “She’s been here thirty seconds.”

“That’s actually generous,” Namjoon said without looking up.

The room settled back into conversation. Mina took a seat near the middle of the table and opened her tablet. The meeting lasted nearly two hours. Most of it had nothing to do with her—Album timelines. Recording schedules. Promotional planning. Netflix filming dates. Tour preparation discussions that still felt far enough away to seem theoretical. Mostly she listened. Observed. Made notes. Occasionally interrupted when somebody suggested something medically questionable, which happened more often than it should have.

When the meeting finally ended, the members scattered toward various studios throughout the building. Namjoon headed toward production. Yoongi disappeared toward another recording room. Hoseok left for choreography planning. Jungkook somehow acquired a second breakfast—Mina decided not to investigate. Some mysteries were better left unsolved.

———————

The vocal recording studio felt quieter than the rest of the building. More focused. The atmosphere changed the moment somebody stepped into a booth. Everything narrowed. Every word mattered. Every note mattered. Perfection became the goal. Mina spent most of the morning in the observation room reviewing recovery plans while recording sessions continued around her. It gave her a chance to watch. Something she was very good at.

Jin recorded first. Professional. Reliable. Experienced enough to know when to stop chasing perfection.

Taehyung experimented constantly. Different deliveries. Different emotions. Different phrasing. Even when the original version was already good.

Yoongi recorded like somebody solving a problem. Methodical. Precise. Focused.

Then Jimin arrived. And Mina finally understood why producers loved working with him. Because he never seemed difficult…Even when he was.

The first take sounded excellent. The second sounded excellent too. The producer seemed happy. Everyone seemed happy.

Jimin listened quietly through the playback. Then shook his head, “I can do it again.”

Nobody argued. Another take….Then another….Then another. Not because he was missing notes. Not because anything sounded wrong. Because he kept hearing something nobody else could.

Mina watched him through the studio glass. Hours earlier she had seen him laughing in a meeting. Talking easily with staff. Smiling at cameras filming comeback content. Comfortable. Effortless. The version people expected. This felt different. More private. More serious.

The smile disappeared when he worked. The focus remained. The pressure remained.

Eventually the producer pushed back from the console, “Jimin.”

Jimin looked up.

“It sounds good.”

A brief silence followed then: “I know.”

The answer surprised Mina. Not because it sounded arrogant. Because it didn’t. It sounded frustrated.

The producer seemed to understand immediately, “What are you hearing?”

Jimin hesitated…Searching. Trying to explain something that clearly existed in his head, “The emotion isn’t there yet.”

The producer stared at him. The take already sounded emotional…Mina thought so. Everyone else seemed to think so. Jimin didn’t.

Eventually the producer sighed, “One more.”

The smile that appeared on Jimin’s face looked relieved. As though somebody had granted him permission to keep trying.

The producer finally approved the take sometime after three in the afternoon. The room relaxed immediately. Chairs moved. Conversations restarted. Someone joked about finally escaping the studio before midnight.

Jimin smiled politely. Thanked everyone. Then sat back down and listened to the recording again. Nobody asked him to. Nobody even seemed surprised.

The producer caught Mina watching, “He always does that.”

“Listens again?”

The producer nodded, “Every time.”

The track played softly through the speakers. Jimin’s attention never wavered.

“Looking for mistakes?” Mina asked.

The producer smiled, “No.”

That surprised her, “What then?”

For a moment the producer watched through the studio glass too. Then he said quietly, “He’s trying to figure out whether it feels honest.”

Mina looked back toward Jimin. The answer stayed with her much longer than she expected.

——————————-⸻

Lunch happened several hours later. Or rather, lunch happened for most people. By the time Mina finally looked up from the recovery reports she’d been reviewing since mid-morning, the cafeteria had already filled with staff escaping meetings, dancers grabbing food between rehearsals, and managers attempting to consume entire meals while answering emails at the same time. Normal comeback behavior.

She balanced a container of food on one knee while scrolling through conditioning notes from the morning, making small adjustments as she went. Two dancers needed workload modifications before the end of the week. Jungkook’s cardio volume still sat firmly above where she wanted it. Yoongi’s shoulder remained on her watch list despite his continued insistence that nothing was wrong with it.

The members were scattered throughout the room, each occupying whatever rare pocket of downtime their schedules allowed. That was when she noticed Jimin. He sat alone near the far wall with earbuds in, one hand resting against his phone while something played quietly through the screen. Reviewing choreography, probably. Or vocal notes. Or one of the dozens of things currently competing for his attention….What he wasn’t doing was eating.

Mina watched for a moment before glancing down at the untouched extra meal sitting beside her. Then she stood. Jimin looked up as she approached. His eyes dropped immediately to the container she placed in front of him before returning to her face.

“You appear to be missing lunch.”

A smile appeared almost instantly, “I was getting to it.”

“No.”

“I was.”

“You weren’t.”

The smile widened. Mina had the distinct impression that he found her predictability entertaining. Unfortunately, he wasn’t wrong.

Eventually he pulled the container toward himself and peeled back the lid. Satisfied, Mina started to leave, “Thank you.”

The words stopped her. Not because they were unusual. Because they sounded sincere. When she glanced back, Jimin had already started eating. No argument. No negotiation. Just compliance—A small victory. Still a victory.

The afternoon disappeared quickly after that. Meetings blurred into consultations. Recovery plans turned into performance reviews. Choreographers needed guidance on training loads. Managers wanted to know how much additional rehearsal time certain members could realistically handle before performance quality started suffering. Questions seemed to multiply the longer the day went on.

By five o’clock, Mina had retreated into one of the smaller conference rooms with a stack of performance reports and the increasingly unrealistic goal of finishing them before she went home.

A knock sounded against the open door. She looked up. Namjoon stepped inside carrying two drinks.

“Here,” he said, holding one out. “Tea.”

Mina accepted it immediately, “You’re learning.”

“I’m trying.”

The exchange settled them into an easy silence. Years ago, during PTD, that silence would have felt awkward. Back then, she had still been trying to prove she belonged in the room. Now it felt comfortable. Namjoon lowered himself into the chair across from her and glanced briefly toward the reports spread across the table,m “You look tired.”

Mina raised an eyebrow, “You’re one to talk.”

“That’s not a ‘no’.”

“Neither was yours.”

A faint smile appeared before disappearing again. Something quieter settled over him then. Thoughtful. Reflective. The version of Namjoon that usually emerged when the noise finally died down and nobody needed him to be BTS’s leader for five consecutive minutes.

“You know,” he said eventually, turning the tea cup slowly between his hands, “everyone was relieved when you came back.”

Mina looked down at her drink, “I’ve heard.”

“I don’t think you believe it.” The observation landed closer to the truth than she would have liked.

Namjoon leaned back slightly in his chair, “When things get busy, people start carrying more than they should.”

Outside the conference room, footsteps moved through the hallway. Doors opened and closed. Conversations drifted past before fading again—Schedules. Deadlines. Meetings. The endless momentum of comeback season.

“You make that easier,” Namjoon continued quietly.

Mina stared at him for a moment. The compliment felt heavier than she knew what to do with. Because she wasn’t entirely convinced it was a compliment. Responsibility rarely felt light. Eventually she looked down at her tea, “That’s a lot of pressure to put on one person.”

Namjoon nodded immediately, “It is.”

Neither spoke for a moment. Then he asked, almost casually: “Who’s looking after you?”

The question caught her off guard. Not because of what he asked. Because of how naturally he asked it. As though the answer should exist. As though somebody should be. For a second she considered answering honestly…Then abandoned the idea.

“A deeply concerning amount of tea.”

Namjoon laughed softly. The conversation moved on. The question sat in the back of her mind.

Later that evening, long after most of the building had emptied, Mina finally packed up her reports and headed toward the elevators. The rehearsal floors had grown noticeably quieter. Most of the staff had already gone home. The remaining few moved through the hallways with the exhausted determination unique to comeback season. As she passed one of the smaller practice rooms, music drifted faintly through the closed door. Mina slowed. Through the narrow window, she could see Jimin inside…Alone. No cameras. No managers. No choreographers. No audience. Just a mirrored room, a speaker system, and another repetition.

Again.

And again.

And again.

He worked through the same section of choreography with relentless focus, stopping only long enough to restart the music before doing it all over again. Watching him suddenly made a lot of things easier to understand—The hip. The exhaustion. The skipped meals. The pressure he carried without talking about it. None of it came from carelessness. It came from this. From somebody who never seemed fully convinced that good was good enough. Mina watched for another moment before continuing toward the elevators. Some things didn’t need commentary.

Her phone buzzed as she stepped into the parking garage. A single message.

Jimin.

How are your wrists?

Mina stared at the screen longer than she meant to. Then a small smile appeared despite herself. Not because of the question…Because he remembered.

———————————

I know its not any exciting chapter, but i like seeing how she fits into their lives :)

Hope you like it.

Like, comment, reblog, share.

Xoxo, bumble

SUMMARY: Performance specialist, Mina Seo has made a career out of taking care of everyone else. As BTS throws themselves into comeback preparations, she spends her days managing injuries, recovery plans, and the impossible task of keeping seven overworked artists healthy. What nobody realizes is that she’s becoming increasingly skilled at hiding her own struggles. When an unexpected connection with Jimin begins offering relief neither of them fully understands, it slowly becomes part of their routine. Late-night conversations, shared silences, and a comfort that grows easier to rely on with every passing week. But while Jimin is getting better, Mina isn’t. And sooner or later, someone is going to notice.

WARNINGS: chronic illness, overwork injuries, some medical scenes, slight cursing, eventual smut scene—This story contains a realistic depiction of chronic illness, including rheumatoid arthritis, pain flares, fatigue, hospitalization, and the emotional impact of long-term health conditions.

Masterlist

———————————

Mina Seo had spent most of her adult life learning how to recognize pain before people admitted it existed.

At thirty, she could read exhaustion in posture, injury in hesitation, and pride in the exact second someone lied through their teeth and said they were fine. Ballet had taught her bodies told the truth. Physiotherapy taught her people usually didn’t. Touring taught her idols were the worst of both.

Which was why returning to BTS for the Arirang comeback cycle felt less like stepping into a job and more like walking back into a room full of old injuries waiting to happen.

Officially, she had been hired to oversee performance recovery and injury prevention during preparations for the comeback and world tour. Unofficially—she suspected management had looked at seven men returning from military service and decided someone needed to stop them from accidentally destroying themselves before opening night.

The rehearsal complex in Seoul smelled exactly the same as it had four years ago. Coffee. Dust from old stage flooring. Hairspray. Overworked air conditioning.

And somehow—even before Mina fully stepped through the practice room doors, her body remembered the rhythm of BTS before her brain caught up to it. Music echoed faintly from somewhere deeper in the building while staff moved quickly through the hallways carrying garment racks, equipment cases, and enough coffee to medically concern several countries. Preparations had officially begun. The album was written but only half the songs had been recorded. The choreography wasn’t finalized. The tour existed mostly in planned documents and ambitious promises.

Mina adjusted the strap of her duffel bag higher onto her shoulder before pulling her rolling case behind her down the corridor. The overnight flight from London still sat unpleasantly in her joints despite the compression braces hidden beneath her loose black joggers. Long flights always did that.

Her right knee protested sharply when she turned the corner too quickly. Mina ignored it automatically. Old habit.

A production assistant nearly collided with her two seconds later before stopping abruptly, “Oh my god—Mina?”

Mina blinked once before recognizing him.

Junseo, Lighting crew, Permission to Dance Tour. He looked older now. Everyone did.

“Still alive unfortunately,” she answered dryly.

His startled laugh echoed through the hallway immediately, “You came back!”

“That does appear to be what the contract implies.”

“You sound exactly the same.”

“That’s devastating news.”

Junseo grinned before quickly taking the suitcase handle from her hand without asking. “Everyone’s been talking about you coming back all week.”

“Im not sure if that’s supposed to be comforting…?”

“It should.”

Mina sighed softly through her nose as he started leading her farther into the rehearsal wing.

The building looked busier than she remembered from PTD preparations. Bigger too. Or maybe the pressure surrounding Arirang simply made everything feel tighter somehow. Post-military comeback. Global press. First world tour together again.

The expectations surrounding Arirang already felt enormous and half the project didn’t technically exist yet. Some songs needed to be finalized. Some songs needed to still be recorded. Some songs needed to be written. Music videos still needed filming. Netflix cameras would be arriving soon. Half the choreography existed only as rough workshop versions. And somehow the entire industry already expected history.

A familiar voice suddenly echoed loudly down the corridor.

“If you tear another pair of rehearsal pants before the first week, management is billing you personally.”—Jin.

Mina barely had time to process the sound before he appeared around the hallway corner holding an iced coffee and arguing with Jungkook, who looked deeply unbothered by whatever crime he’d apparently committed.

“I told you it was choreography-related,” Jungkook defended.

“You were standing still.”

“I move passionately.”

“You move like expensive problems.”

Then Jungkook noticed her. His entire face lit up instantly, “Mina noona!”

Before she could react properly, he crossed the hallway in three long strides and wrapped both arms around her carefully enough that she almost laughed…Almost.

“You’re squeezing my spine,” she informed him.

“You disappeared for like four years.”

“You enlisted for most of them.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s an important distinction.” She let out a small laugh.

Jungkook grinned against the top of her head before finally letting go.

And suddenly Jin was there too, “Mina.”

His voice softened slightly beneath the dramatics in a way that caught her off guard for half a second. Then: “You abandoned me with these children.”

“There are seven of you.”

“And somehow I suffered most.”

“That seems statistically unlikely.”

Jin looked genuinely emotional for approximately one second before immediately pointing toward her face accusingly, “You still dont look British.”

Mina stared at him, “…What does that even mean?”

Before Jin could answer, another voice drifted lazily from farther down the hallway.

“It means you look like you should be in a K-drama, not Bridgerton.” —Taehyung.

Mina turned just in time to see him leaning against the studio doorway in an oversized hoodie and black beanie, expression completely serious despite the amusement sitting quietly in his eyes. Or maybe not serious…With Taehyung it was honestly difficult to tell sometimes.

“You disappeared to Paris for fashion week twice and suddenly you think you understand British people?” Mina asked.

“I understand vibes.”

“That’s somehow worse.”

Taehyung pushed off the doorway and walked toward them slowly, hands shoved into his hoodie pockets. He looked different too. Softer around the hair now that it had grown out slightly again. Broader through the shoulders after enlistment. Calm in a way she didn’t remember from before.

But the moment he reached her, his expression shifted almost imperceptibly. Warmer.

“You’re really back,” he said quietly.

The teasing disappeared from his voice completely for that one sentence.

Mina felt something unexpectedly fond tug in her chest, “Contractually, yes.”

“That’s a very unromantic answer.”

“You asked the wrong person.”

“Hm.” Taehyung tilted his head slightly like he was evaluating that statement seriously. “Still sounds like you though.”

Then, without warning, he reached out and flicked the sleeve covering her taped hand lightly, “You look tired, are you injured already?”

“Jet lag isn’t an injury.”

“You say that every tour.”

“I’ve been on one tour withh you..”

“A long tour,” Jin muttered.

Taehyung nodded thoughtfully, “You always look like you’re judging the weather.”

Jungkook burst out laughing.

“That is unbelievably specific,” Mina said.

“And accurate,” another voice added calmly—Namjoon.

Mina turned automatically toward the end of the corridor where he approached carrying a tablet and what looked like three separate production schedules tucked beneath one arm. Leader mode already fully activated. Some things apparently never changed.

Namjoon stopped in front of her and smiled properly then—warm, relieved, genuine.

And suddenly PTD came rushing back unexpectedly hard—Late-night rehearsals. Arena runs. Recovery rooms. Pre-show chaos. Watching seven exhausted men hold themselves together through one of the strangest periods of their careers while she stumbled through apprentice physio work pretending she knew what she was doing.

Back then she’d mostly hovered at the edges: wrapping dancers’ ankles, resetting ice stations, shadowing senior therapists, trying not to embarrass herself professionally.

Back then the members hadn’t even realized she was Korean at first. Which honestly had been fair. Between: the London accent, blue eyes inherited from her British mother, her Korean father gave her the dark hair and facial features, and the fact that she’d spent most of PTD speaking careful professional English around senior staff—everyone had just collectively assumed she was another foreign apprentice physio. To be fair, she was still only half Korean and she had only spent a few summers in Korea with her father growing up so their judgement seemed reasonable until she answered one of Yoongi’s questions in Korean halfway through rehearsals one day.

The silence afterward had apparently become legendary.

Jungkook nearly dropped a water bottle.

Taehyung had stared at her for a solid ten seconds before asking, completely serious, “Wait…you ARE Korean?”

“Korean-British,” Mina had corrected cautiously.

“You hid that for like three weeks,” Jin accused immediately.

“I didn’t realize it was classified information.”

Namjoon had looked genuinely fascinated. “We were all so confused by you.”

“Thank you?” Mina had answered dryly.

Even now she could still remember Hobi looking personally betrayed for the rest of the rehearsal day because apparently he’d spent two weeks carefully simplifying his Korean around her for no reason.

Now there was no hesitation anymore. Well—less hesitation. Mina still didn’t think her Korean was particularly good despite everyone insisting otherwise. She’d spent most of her life in London with her mom, and the years she remembered clearly were all in English. Korea mostly belonged to childhood memories with her dad now—small fragments more than anything else. Fast conversations still lost her sometimes, especially once multiple people started talking over each other, and when she got tired her accent thickened enough that British phrases slipped out unintentionally.

During PTD, she’d once called Jungkook “cheeky” after he stole someone else’s protein drink from the recovery fridge.

The entire room had paused.

“Is cheeky good or bad?” Jungkook had asked immediately.

Mina had opened her mouth. Paused. Then closed it again because honestly the answer depended entirely on tone.

Namjoon translated eventually while laughing under his breath, and Taehyung spent the next week calling everyone “cheeky” regardless of context.

Even now, certain words still came to her in English first. Especially when annoyed. Or tired. Or in pain…But unlike PTD, she no longer felt delayed inside conversations. Back then she’d translated every sentence carefully in her head before speaking. Now she just…spoke. Another thing that had changed while nobody was looking.

Now Namjoon looked at her like someone essential had finally arrived.

“We missed you,” he said simply.

The honesty in his tone hit harder than she expected.

Mina cleared her throat lightly before defaulting toward humor automatically.

“Emotionally or because your stretching habits are catastrophic?”

“Yes.”

That startled a laugh out of her before she could stop it.

And from farther down the hallway— someone looked up immediately at the sound.

Jimin stood near the entrance of one of the larger rehearsal studios with Hobi beside him, both still dressed in workout clothes from what looked like an earlier dance session.

For a second neither of them moved.

Then Hobi’s entire face lit up. “MINA.”—Oh no.

Mina barely had time to brace herself before Hoseok crossed the hallway at terrifying speed and pulled her into a hug dramatic enough to threaten structural damage.

“You came back,” he said like he still couldn’t quite believe it.

“You’re crushing several internal organs.”

“You survived.”

“Questionable.”

Hobi pulled back only long enough to look at her properly, “You cut your hair.”

“You noticed that immediately?”

“You think I don’t notice things?” He looked deeply offended. “I’m literally in charge of details.”

“That explains the eye twitch.”

“It’s from stress.”

“It’s from perfectionism.”

“Same thing.”

Mina laughed softly again while Hobi launched immediately into rapid-fire updates about rehearsal schedules, choreography workshops, production delays, filming Plans, and how nobody stretched properly when she wasn’t around.

The conversation blurred comfortably around her after that. Familiar voices. Familiar chaos of BTS settling back around her shoulders like muscle memory.

And through all of it— Jimin stayed quieter than everyone else. Not distant. Just watching.

Mina noticed him fully once Hobi finally paused long enough to inhale oxygen again.

He looked older than PTD. Not drastically. Not sadly. Just…different. Broader somehow. More settled. More tired around the eyes.

Military service had changed all of them in small ways, but on Jimin it looked subtler. Less visible externally. More like something had sharpened quietly beneath the surface.

He stepped closer finally.

“Hi,” he said softly. Simple. But somehow it felt different from everyone else’s greeting.

Mina adjusted the strap of her duffel bag slightly against her shoulder, “Hi.”

For half a second the hallway noise faded strangely around them.

Then Jimin’s gaze dropped automatically toward her right hand where faint kinesiology tape disappeared beneath the sleeve of her hoodie. Still noticing too much apparently.

“You’re wearing finger tape already,” he said. Not judgmental. Just observant.

Mina flexed her hand once instinctively before tucking it deeper into her sleeve, “Eight-hour flight.”

His expression shifted slightly at that. Concern maybe. Then hidden again just as quickly.

Hobi clapped loudly once beside them before the moment could settle into something stranger.

“Okay, enough emotional reunions. We have exactly six months before opening night and several people here are already physically concerning me.”

“Rude,” Jungkook said immediately.

“You did a backflip off rehearsal stairs yesterday.”

“It was one time.”

“Gravity doesn’t care.”

Namjoon sighed like this was already exhausting him spiritually.

Jin grabbed Mina’s suitcase again before she could protest.

“You’re coming to production briefing first. Then we’re forcing you to evaluate everyone’s terrible posture.”

“I’m not evaluating anything until I’ve had caffeine.”

“You still drink tea instead of coffee like a grandmother.”

“I’m English.”

“You’re Korean too.”

“And yet somehow still committed to tea.”

Jin looked genuinely disappointed in her choices.

The hallway erupted into overlapping conversation again after that while everyone started moving toward the larger rehearsal studios together. Mina walked beside them quietly for a moment, absorbing the noise and movement and familiar energy settling back into place around her.

Five years ago she’d entered this world as an apprentice trying desperately not to fail inside rooms filled with people far more experienced than her. This time, she was one of the people responsible for making sure non of them broke before opening night.

Now, staff nodded toward her automatically. Choreographers smiled in recognition as she passed. Managers already looked relieved she’d arrived. Somewhere along the way, this place had stopped feeling temporary.

The members looked happy to see her. The managers looked relieved. Which, Mina suspected, had significantly less to do with affection and significantly more to do with the fact that comeback preparations tended to break people.

Keeping BTS healthy enough to survive the next 6 months was, unfortunately, her responsibility.

Ahead of her, rehearsal music suddenly exploded through the main studio speakers loud enough to shake the hallway walls slightly.

Hobi immediately accelerated toward the sound like a man being personally summoned to battle. Jungkook followed while laughing. Jin complained loudly about his knees. Namjoon was already reading schedules again.

And Jimin slowed slightly beside her instead. Just enough to match her pace automatically when her knee stiffened briefly near the studio entrance. Mina noticed.

Unfortunately, she notices herself noticing.

——————-

One week into comeback prep, the recovery room had already stopped belonging entirely to Mina.

People wandered in for ice packs and stayed because it was quiet. Managers sat on treatment tables with coffees they absolutely shouldn’t have been surviving on while somebody from wardrobe inevitably slept in a corner beneath a pile of jackets by midnight.

The room, tucked behind the main rehearsal arena at HYBE, had slowly became chaotic. Familiar, but chaotic..

By 9:30 that morning, it already looked like a small war zone. Ice packs filled one counter beside rows of compression sleeves while treatment schedules covered the whiteboard near the entrance in Mina’s handwriting. Portable stim units sat charging beside resistance bands and unopened tape rolls. Half the overhead lights still remained off, leaving the room washed in soft gray morning light from the narrow windows near the ceiling…Quiet. For now.

Mina sat sideways on one of the treatment tables with one knee loosely pulled upward while wrapping kinesiology tape carefully around her wrist. The joint ached more than usual this morning. Not alarming. Just irritating.

Seoul’s weather had shifted overnight, damp cold settling into the city hard enough for her body to notice before she’d even opened her eyes.

She flexed her fingers experimentally once after finishing the tape. Manageable. Good enough.

A mug of tea sat beside her laptop already going lukewarm while rehearsal schedules glowed across the screen—Seven members. A rotating choreography team. Two assistant physios. Three (for now) music videos shoot days on the schedule. Two ‘Run BTS’ filming blocks. One Netflix camera crew already asking too many questions…Normal.

The recovery room door opened quietly behind her, “Mina?”

One of the assistant physios stepped inside carrying a tablet against his chest.

“Morning.”

He crossed toward the whiteboard automatically now, scanning the updated treatment rotations she’d finalized before sunrise.

“Do you want me handling their mobility assessments or conditioning reviews today?”

“MobiIity first,” Mina answered while reviewing the schedule beside him. “And switch with Hana after lunch because she’s better at conditioning reviews.”

“Got it.”

He hesitated briefly before adding, “Management also asked if Jungkook can add the extra harness rehearsals tonight.”

“No.”

The answer came instantly.

Yejun snorted softly like he’d expected it already, “He’s going to argue.”

“He always argues.”

“And if he says he feels fine?”

Mina capped the marker in her hand. “Then he’s lying.”

That pulled a laugh from him before he disappeared back into the hallway.

A few years ago interactions like that would’ve unsettled her. During PTD, she’d jsut been the apprentice, the shadow. Now managers asked for her recommendations before approving rehearsal schedule.

The recovery room door swung open again harder this time.

Hoseok entered already dressed for rehearsals despite it not even being eight in the morning, energy somehow fully operational while the rest of humanity still struggled toward consciousness.

“Mina.”

“That tone suggests problems.”

“Jungkook did extra runs after rehearsals again.”

“Of course he did.”

“And Jimin’s pretending the hip isn’t getting worse.”

“That one I already know.”

Hobi exhaled dramatically before leaning one shoulder against the doorway.

“I leave for one military enlistment and suddenly everyone’s bodies are thirty.”

“You are thirty.”

“Rude.”

Mina smiled faintly into her tea.

That was more accurate to the actual dynamic of preparing 7 performers for the most demanding schedule of their careers. The members cared obsessively about performance quality, but now—older, post-military, carrying years of injuries behind them—they also noticed the physical cost more.

Hobi especially. Perfectionism had simply evolved into protectiveness.

“You need to watch Yoongi during choreography today too,” Hobi continued. “He keeps rolling his shoulder afterward like it’s tightening up every time he moves.”

Mina frowned immediately.

“Why is this the first time I’m hearing that?”

“Because he told me not to tell you.”

“And you listened?”

“Its Min Yoongi.”

Before Mina could answer, the recovery room door opened again and Jungkook walked in carrying enough iced coffees for an entire production department.

“Morning.”

“It’s too early for your energy level,” Mina informed him.

“It’s nine-thirty.”

“That proves nothing.”

Jungkook grinned and handed Hobi a drink before stopping near Mina’s treatment table.

“You taped your wrist again.”

Mina looked down briefly, “It’s cold.”

“That’s not an explanation.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

Jungkook looked unconvinced but let it go. Mostly because the room had started filling rapidly around them. Wardrobe staff appeared looking for blister tape after concept shoot fittings. Managers wanting options on filming schedule and safety. Choreographers argued about rehearsal loads while waiting for someone to tell them no. The preparations were already taking shape.

Mina moved through it automatically.

One of the assistant physios updated Jungkook’s recovery load from additional conditioning session while another waited beside the treatment counter for her approval on recovery metrics form the previous day. Routine…Like the entire tour had quietly reorganized itself around her judgment while she wasn’t paying attention.

“Did Mina clear this?”

“Ask Mina first.”

“She said no impact repetitions today.”

“Wait until Mina sees it.”

The recovery room door opened again while Mina adjusted compression tape around someone’s shoulder.

Jimin stepped inside carrying a black hoodie over one shoulder. Fresh from morning rehearsals already. And still limping slightly.

Mina noticed immediately. Unfortunately, so did he.

“You’re doing it again,” Jimin said.

“Doing what?”

“The observing thing.”

“You’re still guarding the hip.”

One of the managers nearby looked up automatically.

“You’re injured?”

“No,” Jimin answered too quickly.

Mina didn’t even glance up from the tape she was smoothing into place.

“He is.”

Betrayal crossed his face instantly, “That feels deeply unprofessional.”

“You walked into a medical room limping.”

“I was walking normally.”

Hobi pointed immediately from across the room.

“That’s exactly what I told him.”

Jimin sighed like everyone here personally exhausted him.

Mina finished securing the tape before finally straightening fully, “Sit.”

The word came automatically. Not harsh. Not hesitant either.

Jimin looked at her for one second before obeying without argument. That didn’t go unnoticed by anybody in the room.

One of the managers muttered quietly, “That’s terrifying actually.”

“Correct,” Jungkook agreed immediately.

Mina ignored both of them and stepped in front of Jimin instead, while slipping on a pair of nitrile gloves for examination.

Up close, the stiffness through the right side looked worse today. Too much rehearsal load too quickly after military conditioning adjustments probably. Idol choreography demanded sharper transitions and harder floor impact than most people thought; than most standard workouts ever did.

“Pain level.”

“Manageable.”

“That’s not a number.”

“A stylish seven?”

“That’s unfortunately still a seven.”

A smile tugged briefly at the corner of his mouth despite himself.

Mina crouched slightly to evaluate the movement pattern through the hip while maintaining professional distance in the crowded room around them.

“Show me the rotation.”

Jimin shifted experimentally through the joint. Lifting his leg in front of his body then trying to open his knee to the side once before stopping when it caught halfway.

“There,” Mina said immediately.

“You always sound delighted when you’re correct.”

“I’m never delighted about paperwork.”

That earned a quiet laugh from him.

Around them, the recovery room continued moving at full speed. People talking. Ice packs rotating. Schedules changing. Music echoing faintly from rehearsals deeper inside the arena.

But Jimin’s attention stayed entirely on Mina now. Focused. Like he was trying to understand how she saw things other people missed.

“You caught this before it really hurt properly,” he said quietly.

Mina adjusted the compression wrap around the joint carefully, “You didn’t do Dynamite full out earlier.”

“That was one time.”

“That was enough.”

He studied her for another second.

Then: “You notice everything, don’t you?”

The question landed strangely. Because yes. She did. Thats her job but that had always been the problem.

——————

The first indication that something was wrong arrived halfway through a production meeting. Mina wasn’t even looking at Jungkook. She was reviewing conditioning reports while one of the performance directors discussed filming schedules for an upcoming music video when a number on her tablet made her pause.

She frowned. Then looked again. The room continued talking around her while she scrolled through the previous week’s data—Recovery load. Conditioning volume. Training logs. A familiar sense of irritation began building behind her eyes.

Across the table, Namjoon noticed immediately, “What?”

Mina looked up, “Where’s Jungkook?”

The question prompted several people to glance around automatically.

“He left about twenty minutes ago,” Hobi answered.

“Why?”

“He said he was going to work out.”

Mina lowered the tablet slowly. The room went quiet. Not because anyone thought that sounded unusual. Quite the opposite. Everyone understood exactly why that expression had appeared on her face.

Namjoon sighed first, “Oh no.”

“What?” Taehyung asked.

“Mina found something.”

“I didn’t find something.”

The pause that followed suggested nobody believed her.

Mina turned the screen around, “His conditioning volume is already higher than what I scheduled for this week.”

Nobody looked particularly alarmed. Unfortunately, that was part of the problem. Jungkook exercising more than necessary had become so normal that most people barely registered it anymore.

“He likes training,” Taehyung offered.

“That’s not training.”

“What is it?”

“Jungkook deciding recovery is a personal insult.”

A laugh escaped Yoongi from the far end of the table.

Namjoon covered his face briefly, “You’re going after him, aren’t you?”

“I am absolutely going after him.”

“Good luck.”

Five minutes later, Mina found him exactly where she expected.

The gym sat one floor below the rehearsal studios and looked nearly empty except for a trainer organizing equipment near the far wall.

Jungkook, meanwhile, appeared to be conducting a one-man campaign against the concept of moderation.

He glanced up when she entered. His expression brightened immediately, “Noona.”

Mina stopped beside the rack and folded her arms, “What are you doing?”

The question was so obvious that Jungkook looked genuinely confused, “Working out?”

“That wasn’t rhetorical.”

The trainer across the room immediately became very interested in a stack of resistance bands.

Jungkook rested his forearms on the bar, “I finished rehearsal.”

“Correct.”

“I had free time.”

“Incorrect.”

That earned a grin.

Mina remained unimpressed.

“You’ve already completed every conditioning session on this week’s schedule.”

“I know.”

“You’ve added two extra gym sessions.”

His grin widened, “I know.”

“You slept five hours.”

“It was almost six.”

“That’s not helping.”

Jungkook laughed. The problem was that he genuinely seemed to believe this conversation was amusing.

Mina pulled up the training report on her tablet and held it out, “Your recovery markers are worse than they were last week.”

His smile faded slightly. Not because he disagreed. Because he knew she wouldn’t be saying it if she didn’t have evidence.

“You track all of that?”

“Jungkook.”

“Right. Stupid question.” He accepted that surprisingly easily.

Mina continued scrolling.

“Your resting heart rate is elevated, your sleep has been inconsistent for ten days, and you’ve lost weight since preparations started.”

“I can put the weight back on.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“The point is that we’re six months away from opening night.”

That finally got his attention. The humour faded. The athlete remained.

Mina lowered the tablet, “You don’t need to survive this week, you need to survive 6 months, and then a tour after that.”

Then Jungkook looked away and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I just don’t want to fall behind.”

There it was. Not stubbornness. Not ego. Fear.

Mina had worked with enough performers to recognize the difference. The comeback meant everything to them.

The first album together after military service. The first tour.

The first chance to prove they could still do this at the level people expected.

She understood exactly why he was pushing. That didn’t make it smart.

“No one’s worried about you falling behind.”

Jungkook laughed softly.

“That’s because they’re not looking at what everyone else is doing.”

“I am.”

That made him pause.

Mina met his gaze evenly, “And I’m telling you to go eat lunch.”

A reluctant smile appeared, “That’s your professional recommendation?”

“That’s my final decision.”

He stared at her for another second before finally stepping away from the rack,“Fine.”

Mina narrowed her eyes, “I don’t trust how quickly you agreed.”

“You should be proud of my growth.”

“I’ll be proud when I stop catching you in the gym on rest days.”

Jungkook grabbed his towel, “That’s a very high standard.”

“It should be.”

As they headed back toward the rehearsal floor, Mina noticed the trainer trying—and failing—not to laugh.

Unfortunately, she suspected the rest of BTS would find the entire situation equally entertaining.

Which was deeply unfair considering she was the only person in the building attempting to stop Jungkook from exercising himself into the ground.

Three weeks into Prep work, Mina had developed a system for identifying which member was approaching physical collapse purely from the way they entered a room:

Namjoon got quieter.

Jungkook became restless, physically incapable of sitting still.

Taehyung grew dramatically affectionate whenever exhaustion hit critical levels.

Yoongi stopped speaking almost entirely.

And Jimin deflected…Smiles. Jokes. Easy answers delivered quickly enough that most people stopped looking deeper. Like if he acted normal convincingly enough, his body might eventually believe him too.

Which was exactly why Mina noticed the problem immediately when he walked into rehearsals that afternoon looking perfectly fine…Too fine.

One of the HYBE’s larger rehearsal studios vibrated faintly beneath bass-heavy playback while camera crews, choreographers and performance directors moved between formation markers taped across the floor..

Mina stood near the mirrored wall reviewing mobility notes on her tablet when Jimin rolled once through his right hip before settling immediately back onto the left side. Fast. Practiced. Trying not to get caught.

Unfortunately for him, Mina spent most of her life catching things exactly like that. On her own body and now on others

“You’re compensating again,” she said without looking up from the tablet,

Jimin glanced over from centre formation briefly, “For what?”

“The hip, and before you ask,no, that doesn’t mean you get a fourth run.”

He looked down at himself like this was genuinely new information. “Hm.”

“You’re avoiding the right side again.”

“I’m dancing.”

“You’re shifting out of the floor transitions early.”

“You noticed that from here?”

“You shortened the turn twice.”

“I recovered the timing.”

“You compensated.” She sighed out loud. “and your recovery numbers were worse this morning.”

Jimin frowned. “you track those too?”

“That’s literally my job.”

“That’s unsettling.”

“You slept four hours.”

A small smile appeared at the corner of his mouth then. Calm. Easy, “And yet I survived.”

Jungkook laughed immediately, while Taehyung looked delighted.

Mina remained unimpressed. Because even while speaking, he shifted subtly off the right side again before Hobi called everyone back into formation. Small. Like his body had already adapted around the pain before he consciously admitted it existed.

The music restarted loud enough to shake the arena floor. Bodies moved instantly back into synchronization beneath the lights while Mina stepped farther toward the edge of rehearsals to stay clear of formations. Arirang choreography demanded sharper moves than PTD ever had, with the added pressure of the comeback.

This choreography was lower, heavier, More impact through the joints. And Jimin kept forcing full performance quality every run like his body wasn’t warning him already.

Mina watched the next sequence carefully. Floor transition. Directional turn. Weight shift—There. Again.

The right side tightened every time choreography forced deeper flexion through the hip. Not horrible yet. But repetitive strain rarely announced itself at first. It accumulated slowly.

The music cut sharply.

“Again!” Hobi called from centre stage.

A collective groan rolled across the arena.

Taehyung dropped backward dramatically onto the floor. “I miss military schedules. At least the suffering had structure.”

“You complained the entire time,” Jungkook replied while grabbing a water bottle.

“Correct. Consistently.”

Namjoon laughed quietly into his sleeve while Yoongi sat cross-legged near the mirrored wall rolling tension through one shoulder.

Mina noticed that immediately too. Of course she did.

She crossed the rehearsal floor automatically while staff reset camera positioning near the stage entrance.

“You too?”

Yoongi glanced up slowly.

“Hm?”

“The shoulder.”

“Hoseok talks too much.”

“You keep resetting the joint any time you lift your arm above your head.”

“You notice too much.”

“That’s literally my profession.”

Yoongi sighed quietly through his nose while rotating the shoulder once experimentally. Tight. Not terrible. But heading there.

“You need recovery work tonight and you’re skipping tomorrow’s conditioning block.”

“I have studio sessions.”

“No you don’t.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, “You’ve become difficult.”

“You’re injured.”

“That’s a bit dramatic.”

“You’re one bad lift away from anti-inflammatory medication.”

“That’s more offensive.”

A laugh escaped Jin somewhere behind them while Jungkook nearly choked on his water.

The rehearsal floor buzzed with overlapping noise while staff reset staging cues for another run. Hobi discussed spacing adjustments near centre stage while Taehyung attempted to convince Namjoon that electrolytes counted as emotional support. Normal chaos.

Mina looked back down at her tablet briefly, updating treatment notes from the morning— Monitor Jimin hip progression. Review Tae’s conditioning load. Watch Yoongi shoulder mobility. Adjust recovery schedule after filming. Easy..At least on paper.

“Writing complaints about me?”

Mina looked up automatically.

Jimin stood beside her now holding a towel around his neck, rehearsal shirt dampened slightly beneath the arena lights.

“You’re still limping,” she answered.

“I walked here perfectly.”

“You adjusted twice.”

“I adapted.”

“You compensated.”

He smiled again. There it was. That automatic lightness he used whenever conversations drifted too close to discomfort.

Mina crossed her arms loosely.

“You know avoiding treatment doesn’t make injuries disappear.”

“I’m standing in the recovery area voluntarily right now. That deserves recognition.”

“You’re standing because rehearsals reset.”

“Still counts.”

“No it doesn’t.”

A laugh escaped Jungkook somewhere behind them.

“You’re losing this argument,” he informed Jimin immediately.

“I don’t see a scoring system.”

“You don’t see medical advice either.”

“Different category.”

Mina watched Jimin shift subtly off the right side again while speaking.. Protecting the hip. Too practiced. That concerned her more than the injury itself.

Because performers adapted around pain frighteningly fast once they decided something mattered more than recovery.And Jimin clearly still thought rehearsals mattered more.

“Did you do the mobility work? — and before you answer Jungkook already told me you skipped cooldown” Mina huffed.

Jimin took a sip of water before answering.

“I seriously considered it.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s what I had time for.”

“It was useless.”

That finally pulled a quieter laugh from him. Real this time. Not performative. Not deflecting. Just tired.

Then the choreographer clapped loudly from centre stage again, “Places!”

Everyone immediately started moving back toward formation.

Jimin stepped backward before pausing briefly beside her.

“I’m fine,” he said. Softly this time. Like he’d repeated the sentence often enough that it no longer required thought.

Mina studied him for one second longer than necessary. Then:

“You don’t have to always win against injuries.”

Something flickered briefly across his face at that. Gone almost immediately. Then the smile returned. Easy. Polished. Deflecting.

“Good thing I’m competitive.”

And then he walked back into formation before she could answer.

The music started again. Bodies moved. Lights shifted. Bass rattled faintly beneath the arena floor.

Mina watched the choreography reset automatically while something unsettled quietly in the center of her chest. Because she understood performers like Jimin.

People who learned early that discomfort became easier to survive if you turned it into something manageable. Something smaller. Something easy to laugh through.

But bodies never accepted denial as treatment. Eventually it caught up with them.

—————————————————-

Mina started having problems at eighteen. At first, it was easy to explain away.

Ballet dancers hurt constantly. Feet blistered. Hips clicked. Knees ached. Wrists stiffened from partnering and floorwork and overtraining and the general violence ballet quietly demanded from the body while still insisting on elegance.

Pain was normal. Especially in pre-professional programs where exhaustion got praised almost as often as talent did.

So when Mina started waking up with stiffness crawling through her hands in the mornings, nobody thought much of it. Not even her. Too many rehearsals. Too little sleep. Too much pressure. And Mina had spent most of her life being disciplined.

At seventeen, she’d been on track for the Royal Ballet. Not guaranteed because nothing in ballet ever was. But close enough that teachers started speaking carefully around her future like it had already begun taking shape. Company workshops. Private evaluations. Summer intensives where directors watched quietly from the back of rehearsal studios while students tried not to look nervous.

Mina remembered spending entire train rides home with her pointe shoes balanced across her lap imagining London stages she hadn’t earned yet. Then her body started changing underneath her before she understood why.

And suddenly every plan she’d built her life around became dependent on whether or not her joints cooperated that morning. Then came the fatigue. Not ordinary exhaustion. Not the kind fixed by sleeping for twelve hours after a performance weekend. This felt heavier. Like her body had quietly started resisting itself.

Some mornings she physically couldn’t close her hands properly around pointe shoes ribbons. Other days her knees locked halfway through warmups before loosening again like nothing happened. Unpredictable. Frustrating.

Easy to hide if you were disciplined enough. She pushed through performances. Finished training. Ignored the flare-ups. Ignored the fevers. Ignored the growing realization that her body no longer recovered the way everyone else’s seemed to.

Then, at twenty, she tore through her ankle during rehearsal because exhaustion had slowed her reaction time by half a second.

Career-ending sounded dramatic afterward because she should have been able to come back from that. Others had come back from worse. But ballet rarely survived injuries like that once you’d already started falling behind physically.

The diagnosis came almost a year later—Autoimmune. Chronic. No Cure Manageable, technically. The rheumatologist kept using the word manageable like it was comforting.

Mina mostly remembered staring at her own hands during the appointment wondering when exactly her body had stopped feeling trustworthy.

The career change happened slowly after that. First sports rehabilitation modules. Then physiotherapy courses. Then clinical placements with dancers, gymnasts, and professional athletes where she realized something unsettling: She understood injured dancers frighteningly well, not just injuries.

Everything surrounding them. The way dancers skipped meals when they were stressed. The way athletes hid exhaustion behind routine. The way performers negotiated with pain long before they admitted it existed.

Most clinicians focused on what hurt. Mina found herself paying attention to everything that happened before the injury.

Bodies negotiated before they failed completely. People compensated emotionally long before they admitted pain physically. Performers learned how to smile through damage so automatically most medical staff missed it entirely. Mina didn’t.

That was how she ended up shadowing during the Permission to Dance tour at twenty-three.

Technically she wasn’t supposed to handle much independently yet. In reality, half the touring staff were overworked and sleep deprived enough that Mina simply started helping wherever bodies started breaking down. Tape jobs. Recovery sessions. Mobility tracking. Conditioning reviews. Late-night treatment rooms. Whatever needed doing on any given day.

And all while quietly managing symptoms herself. Compression sleeves beneath hoodies. Painkillers hidden in tea bags. Smiling through flare days because everyone around her already depended on her too much.

By the end of PTD, the members trusted her more than some of the senior staff.

Jin knew more than the rest. Not because she’s outright told him. More because he stumbled into it.

Chicago, near the end of the Permission to Dance tour

The recovery room had finally emptied after a fourteen-hour rehearsal day, leaving Mina alone with treatment notes she still needed to finish, a cup of tea that had long since gone cold, and an ice pack balanced across her left knee.

The flare had been building for nearly a week.

Chicago’s cold weather hadn’t helped, nor had the endless rehearsal schedule or the fact that she had been sleeping far less than she admitted to anyone. The swelling had started as a dull ache she could ignore, then gradually developed into something more persistent. By that afternoon, she could feel the pressure in the joint every time she bent her knee.

It wasn’t severe enough to stop her working. That was the problem.

Pain that stopped you completely was easy. People saw it. They understood it.

Pain that allowed you to continue functioning demanded decisions.

How much could you hide? How long could you compensate? At what point did pushing through become foolish rather than admirable?

Questions Mina had never been particularly good at answering.

She shifted slightly in the chair and immediately regretted it. A sharp pulse of pain traveled through the joint, forcing her to close her eyes for a moment.

Just a minute, she told herself. She would finish the treatment notes, go back to the hotel, sleep for a few hours, and do it all again tomorrow.

The recovery room door opened behind her.

Instinct took over before thought did.

Mina sat up straighter and moved the ice pack aside. Too late.

Jin had already seen it.

He paused just inside the doorway, his attention moving briefly from the abandoned ice pack to her face before settling somewhere in between.

For a moment neither of them said anything.

Then he asked quietly, “How bad is it?”

Not what happened. Not are you okay…How bad is it.

The question caught her off guard because it assumed the injury already existed.

Because somehow he had skipped straight past the polite version of the conversation.

“Bad,” she answered.

Jin’s expression didn’t change.

Mina recognized immediately that he didn’t believe her.

He stepped farther into the room and retrieved the phone he had apparently forgotten earlier in the evening.

“You’ve been limping all week.”

The observation landed harder than she expected. Not because he was wrong. Because she genuinely hadn’t realized anyone had noticed. The dancers hadn’t said anything. The staff hadn’t said anything. Or perhaps they had noticed and simply chosen not to comment.

Either way, she’d assumed she was hiding it better than that.

“You spend all day watching how other people move,” Jin continued. “You didn’t think someone might notice when you started moving differently too?”

There was no accusation in his voice. If anything, he sounded mildly amused. Which somehow made the truth harder to avoid.

Mina looked down at the treatment notes scattered across the desk and felt a familiar wave of exhaustion settle over her.

Not physical exhaustion this time. The deeper kind. The kind that came from carrying something alone for too long.

“I have rheumatoid arthritis.”

The words sounded strangely small once they were spoken aloud.

For so long the diagnosis had existed only in doctors’ offices, medication schedules, and private moments she never shared with anyone else. Hearing it in this room felt unexpectedly vulnerable.

Jin didn’t react immediately.He pulled out the chair opposite hers and sat down, taking a moment to think before speaking.

“When were you diagnosed?”

“Twenty-one.”

His gaze drifted briefly toward her knee. Then back to her face.

“And you’ve been doing all of this while managing that?”

There was no judgment in the question. No disbelief. Just quiet curiosity.

Mina laughed softly.

“When you put it like that, it sounds a bit ridiculous.”

A faint smile appeared at the corner of Jin’s mouth.

“It sounds exhausting.”

For a moment Jin looked at her the same way she looked at everyone else. Like he was cataloguing all the things she wasn’t saying.

For reasons she couldn’t entirely explain, that answer nearly undid her. Not sympathy. Not pity. Just understanding. As though he understood that the hardest part wasn’t the pain itself. It was the constant effort of pretending the pain wasn’t there.

After that, they didn’t discuss the diagnosis very often. They didn’t need to.

Jin just simply noticed.

On days her knee stiffened after long rehearsals, a chair somehow appeared before meetings started. If schedules ran late, a cup of tea found its way onto her desk before she remembered she hadn’t taken a break.

Small things. Easy things to miss if you weren’t paying attention. Mina noticed them because noticing people was what she did for a living.

Which was probably why, years later, Jin remained the first person she looked for on difficult days.

————————————

A month into preperations, the flare settled in properly. Not dramatic enough to stop working. Just persistent and very annoying.

A deep ache through both wrists. Stiffness pulling through her knees every morning. Exhaustion sitting heavier beneath her skin no matter how much sleep she forced herself into getting. Manageable…Probably.

Mina stood near the recovery room counter rotating slowly through one wrist while reviewing schedules on her tablet. The movement hurt. The stiffness refused to release.

She had already stretched twice this morning. Already taken her medication. Already convinced herself it wasn’t going to be one of the bad days…Her wrists disagreed.

She reached automatically for the compression sleeves folded beside the sink before pulling them carefully over both wrists beneath the sleeves of her hoodie.

Hide first. Explain later. High-performance environments rewarded functionality. Nobody cared how difficult something was as long as you could do it.

The recovery room door opened quietly behind her.

Mina looked up automatically.

Jimin stood in the doorway wearing grey sweats and a black hoodie, damp hair curling slightly at the ends like he’d showered recently and stopped caring halfway through drying it.

“You’re limping worse,” she said immediately.

Jimin glanced down at himself briefly before walking farther into the room.

“That’s unfortunate news.”

“The hip tightened overnight?”

“Hm.” Which meant yes.

Mina returned her attention to the treatment schedules glowing across the tablet screen while he moved toward the coffee machine near the counter.

The recovery room stayed comfortably quiet around them. Low equipment hum. Early-morning stillness. Rain tapping faintly somewhere above the arena corridors.

“You still drink tea every morning?” Jimin asked eventually.

Mina glanced up once.

“You say that like it’s surprising.”

“You’re in Korea now.”

“And yet I remain British unfortunately.”

That earned a soft laugh from him before he reached automatically for the kettle instead of the coffee machine.

The movement caught her slightly off guard. Not because it was dramatic. Because it implied he’d noticed. Somewhere between writing session, choreography rehearsal, costume fittings and recording sessions, Jimin had apparently learned how she took her tea.

Mina flexed her fingers carefully beneath the counter while waiting for the stiffness to ease.—It didn’t. Annoying.

“You okay?”

The question came casually enough she almost answered automatically…Almost.

Jimin leaned lightly against the counter now, watching her with the same quiet attention she usually caught him directing toward choreography. Too observant.

Mina pulled the sleeves of her hoodie farther over her wrists instinctively.

“Fine.”

His expression shifted slightly at the answer. Like he knew the word because he used it constantly himself.

“You’re bad at that too,” he said quietly.

Mina looked up, “At what.”

“Making people believe you.”

That pulled a small laugh out of her before she could stop it.

“I work with performers,” she muttered. “None of you know how to answer honestly.”

Something softer flickered briefly across Jimin’s expression at that. Understanding maybe.

Yes. Here’s the same moment rewritten with the pain splitting both ways, but in the smoother style you liked, with less dialogue and more of Mina experiencing the impossibility before either of them can name it.

He handed her the tea carefully, waiting until her fingers had closed around the mug before he let go. Their hands brushed during the exchange, no more than the briefest pass of skin against skin, the kind of accidental contact that should have meant nothing at all. Mina had reached for cups from staff, taken clipboards from managers, guided dancers through stretches, corrected shoulders and hips and knees for years without thinking much about the intimacy of touch. Bodies were part of her work. Contact was practical. Ordinary.

This was not ordinary. The sensation moved through her before she understood what had happened, a sudden shifting beneath her skin that made her grip tighten around the mug. The ache in her wrists, the deep persistent pressure she had been ignoring since morning, loosened so quickly that for one suspended moment she forgot how to breathe around it. It did not vanish completely, but the weight of it changed, as though someone had reached inside her and lifted half of it away.

Relief should have felt simple. Instead, it frightened her. Because in the same breath that her wrists eased, something else settled into place. A low, unfamiliar ache drew itself through her hip, deep enough to make her aware of the joint in a way she had no reason to be. It was not the scattered stiffness of her own condition, not the hot, grinding protest she knew too well from her hands or knees after a difficult day. This pain had a different shape. A different history. It felt used, overworked, threaded through with repetition and strain. It felt lived in. It did not feel like hers.

Mina stood perfectly still with the mug caught between both hands while the kitchen carried on around them. The kettle clicked softly as it cooled. Rain moved against the windows in a steady hush. Somewhere down the corridor, a laugh rose and faded again, ordinary life continuing only a few rooms away as if the world had not just shifted beneath her feet.

Across form her, Jimin went still. He had not stepped back or made a sound, but the change in him was immediate enough that she saw it. The ease had gone out of his posture. His attention dropped to her hands, then returned to her face with a kind of startled focus that made her stomach tighten. He looked pale around the mouth, not in the way people did when they were embarrassed or surprised, but in the way they did when their own body had suddenly become unfamiliar to them.

Mina knew then that he had felt something too. Not because he said it. Because there was no other explanation for the way he was looking at her.

Her wrists still held the echo of relief. Her hip carried an ache that did not belong there. Jimin’s eyes remained fixed on hers, and in the silence between them was the impossible awareness that something had passed through both of them at once, rearranging pain as if it were something that could be divided and handed over.

Mina flexed her fingers carefully around the mug. Jimin’s gaze followed the movement. The ache in her wrists was lighter than it had been a moment ago. The ache in her hip remained, foreign and intimate and terrifying in its specificity.

She did not know what to call it. She only knew that Jimin had gone still for the same reason she had. Whatever had just happened, it had not happened to her alone.

——————————-

Yall im still baby army (toddler? Army). I apologize if my timeline (pre military) is ever off. Please tell me and I’ll fix it. :)

But anyway, let me know what you think! Sorry, it’s taken so long to get this out! I have a sick toddler and my husband is deployed. TT

Like, comment, reblog,share please!!

Xoxo, bumble