The Things We Carry | PJM pt 3
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
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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.
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Ugh they are too cute!
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