#bst

You twisted the sleeve of your sweater around your fingers. “If this goes badly—”

“It won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” she admitted. “But I know they stopped a complaint from being filed. I know they asked to see you again. And I know at least one of them looked like he was about two seconds from following you out the door last night.”

Your head turned. “What?”

She smiled a little. “I’m saving details for later.”

“That’s evil.”

“It’s leverage.”

The SUV slowed.

Outside, the restaurant looked ordinary enough from the street. Warm brick, polished windows, discreet signage. The kind of place you might’ve walked past in another life without thinking twice.

Except today there were bodyguards half-pretending not to be bodyguards and staff members half-pretending not to be waiting for you.

Your driver was directed around back. The alley entrance made the whole thing feel faintly criminal. “I feel like contraband,” you muttered as you unbuckled.

Elle laughed softly. “You kind of are.”

“Not helping.”

She caught your hand before you reached for the door.

When you looked at her, her expression was gentler than usual. Serious.

“You don’t have to have everything figured out by the time you walk back out.”

You swallowed. That helped more than every other pep talk you’d had in your 21 years on the planet combined.

“Okay,” you said, sliding out of the car.

A staff member guided you through the back entrance, through a spotless kitchen fragrant with garlic and sesame and something sweet you couldn’t name, through one swinging door and then another.

Voices drifted toward you before the room came fully into view.

Laughter. A burst of something that sounded like bickering. The scrape of a chair. Then you stepped into the dining room and every head at the table turned.

For one suspended second, nobody moved. Seven pairs of eyes on you. Seven men who might have your name written on their skin. Seven impossible answers waiting in a rented-out restaurant in Seoul. You tightened your grip on your bag strap and tried not to turn around.

“Hi,” you said, because apparently your brain had abandoned eloquence entirely.

Hoseok was the first to smile. Then Namjoon stood.

And just like that, there was no going back.

“Hi,” he said, and there was something careful in it. Something warm. “You came.”

It was such a simple thing to say, but it eased your nerves still.

“Yeah,” you managed. “I, uh. I did.”

Hoseok was smiling already, bright and relieved in a way that made it impossible to mistake what he was feeling. Taehyung looked like he was barely resisting the urge to spring up and cross the room. Jungkook sat up straighter so fast it almost looked like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Jin’s expression softened with obvious approval, while Jimin watched you with a gentler sort of curiosity than he had the night before, almost like he was trying to gauge whether you were about to bolt again.

And Yoongi—

Yoongi was looking at you like he’d been worried. Not startled. Not confused. Worried. The force of it nearly stopped you in your tracks. You’d expected awkwardness. Maybe tension. Maybe some lingering discomfort over the fact that you had, in fact, fled their building mid-interview like a Victorian heroine in the grip of consumption.

You had not expected concern that looked that naked.

“Come sit down,” Jin said, standing halfway out of his chair and gesturing to the empty seat at the head of the table. “You’re making it look like we invited you here to execute you.”

Taehyung snorted.

“That was not the vibe,” Hoseok said, trying to reassure you that you weren’t freaking them out.

“It was a little the vibe,” Jungkook muttered, earning himself a look from Namjoon.

You let out a nervous laugh before you could help it, and several of them visibly relaxed at the sound.

“Sorry,” you said automatically, moving toward the table. “I didn’t mean to make this weird.”

“You didn’t,” Namjoon said at once.

“Not even a little,” Hoseok added.

Jimin tilted his head. “Well. A little little.”

“Jimin,” Jin warned.

“What?” Jimin held up both hands. “I’m being honest. It got weird. But she didn’t make it weird on purpose.”

You stopped beside the empty chair, fingers tightening on your bag strap. “I really am sorry about last night.”

“Y/N.”

The voice was low, rough around the edges, and it slid right through the room and into your chest with humiliating ease. Yoongi hadn’t moved, but everyone else had. Just slightly. Enough that you could tell they’d all heard it too. He looked up at you from beneath the edge of his beanie, expression steady.

“You do not have to apologize for panicking.”

The room went very quiet.

You swallowed. “I kind of abandoned an interview.”

“You also looked like you were about to faint,” he said. “Or throw up. Or both.”

A tiny, helpless smile tugged at your mouth.

“That is unfortunately accurate.”

“Then you left because you needed to,” he said, like the matter was settled. “That’s not something I’m going to be upset about.”

“I don’t think any of us are,” Namjoon said gently.

“Definitely not,” Hoseok said. “We were worried, not offended.”

“Very worried,” Jungkook added, nodding hard enough to make Taehyung grin at him.

“You should sit,” Jin said, softer now. “Please. You look like you’re one loud noise away from passing out.”

“I’m okay,” you lied.

Yoongi’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was the closest thing to one you’d gotten from him so far.

“No, you’re not.”

That should have embarrassed you. Instead, it made your shoulders drop by a fraction. You sat.

Immediately, Jin reached for the water pitcher at the center of the table and poured a glass for you, sliding it into your hands without a word. You took it, murmuring a thank you that came out more sincere than you’d intended.

“Do you want us to have everyone else leave?” Namjoon asked. “The staff, I mean.”

You blinked.

There were only a couple of employees hanging near the far end of the restaurant and one man moving quietly in and out from the kitchen, but still. The fact that he’d thought to ask at all hit you somewhere tender.

“Would that be okay?”

“Of course it would,” Jin said.

Namjoon was already glancing toward one of the staff members. A few quick words in Korean later and the room emptied even further, leaving only the eight of you and one waiter tucked discreetly through the kitchen doors.

The silence that followed wasn’t tense, exactly. Just fragile. You wrapped both hands around your water glass to keep them from shaking. Taehyung leaned forward first, elbows on the table, face open in a way that would’ve been dangerous if you weren’t already in so deep you were considering emigrating.

“I’m really happy you came back,” he said.

There was no cleverness in it. No performance. Just plain truth.

Jungkook nodded immediately. “Me too.”

“Same,” Hoseok said. “Last night was…” He exhaled through his nose and grimaced. “A lot.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Jimin said.

“I mean it,” Hoseok insisted, looking at you again. “We were scared that maybe we’d overwhelmed you so badly you’d get on a plane and disappear.”

You stared at him over the rim of your water glass. Because that had, in fact, briefly been the plan. Elle would have been so smug if she were here to hear that.

“I considered it,” you admitted. That earned a collective reaction.

Taehyung’s eyes went huge. Jungkook made a faint, wounded sound. Hoseok clutched dramatically at his chest. Jin looked deeply offended on behalf of fate itself. Jimin laughed in disbelief.

Only Yoongi and Namjoon didn’t immediately react. Namjoon because he was watching you too closely. Yoongi because something in his face had gone strangely still.

“You really thought about leaving?” Namjoon asked quietly.

You looked down at your hands. “For a minute.”

“A long minute?” Jimin asked.

“A very long minute,” you muttered.

Hoseok slumped back in his chair. “That’s terrible.”

“It’s understandable,” Yoongi said.

Several of the others turned to look at him. He didn’t seem to notice. His gaze was still on you, dark and unreadable in a way that made your pulse trip.

“If I were you,” he said, “I probably would’ve done worse.”

You let out a quiet breath. “That’s weirdly comforting.”

“It’s meant to be.”

Something about the steadiness in his tone made it easier to speak. So you did.

“I just…” You licked your lips and glanced around the table. Seven faces. Seven impossible faces. Seven men who had apparently spent the last twenty odd hours not angry with you, but concerned. “I’ve spent my whole life assuming there was something wrong with me.”

The words were out before you could stop them. No one interrupted. No one even shifted. You looked down at your wrist, still hidden beneath the cuff of your sweater.

“People have one soulmate,” you said. “Sometimes two. Every once in a while some article pops up about someone with three or four and everyone acts like it’s the end of civilization. And I had…” You laughed once without humor. “This.”

Your free hand gestured vaguely at your arm.

“Doctors never knew what to say. People looked at me like I was a mistake. My mom spent years telling me I’d understand it one day, but I stopped believing that when I was a teenager.” You swallowed. “So when Seokjin told me his birthday, and then Yoongi, and then Hoseok—”

You broke off and looked up. Every single one of them was staring at you like you’d said something awful. Not because of them, but because of what you’d been carrying alone.

Jin’s brows had drawn together so tightly he looked ready to pick a fight with the universe. Hoseok’s eyes had gone soft with immediate sympathy. Jungkook looked heartbroken in a way that made him appear much younger than he had the night before. Even Jimin, who seemed naturally inclined toward teasing, had gone still.

Namjoon leaned his forearms on the table and said, very gently, “You thought you were a mistake.”

It wasn’t a question. “More or less.” You gave a small shrug, because admitting it plainly now felt pathetic.

“That’s not pathetic,” Yoongi said.

You hadn’t realized you’d spoken aloud. Or maybe you had. You couldn’t tell anymore.

Yoongi’s expression hadn’t changed much, but his voice had. It was quieter now. “I know what that feels like.”

Your eyes snapped to his.

For the first time since you’d walked in, he looked almost... exposed. Not in some dramatic, messy way. In the way people did when they were deciding to tell the truth and hated every second of it.

“I didn’t have as much as you did,” he said. “But I had enough.”

None of the others spoke.

You got the sense they were used to that by now—used to Yoongi picking his moments and everyone else letting him have them.

“When I was younger, I kept mine covered all the time,” he continued. “Always. Long sleeves, wristbands, anything. People notice. They always notice. And when they do, they start making assumptions about your life like they know you.”

You nodded before you could stop yourself.

His gaze stayed fixed on yours.

“I hated it,” he said. “I hated people looking at me like I was defective. Or too much. Or something they didn’t know how to explain. Didn’t want to explain.”

Your throat tightened.

“I thought…” He let out a breath and glanced away for a second, jaw flexing. “I thought if that was what fate had planned for me, then maybe fate just had a terrible sense of humor.”

That startled a soft laugh out of you.

“There it is,” Jimin murmured, smiling faintly. “He’s comforting you and insulting destiny at the same time.”

Yoongi shot him a flat look. “Do you mind?”

Jimin lifted both hands and leaned back in his chair with obvious delight.

“You can continue.”

A few of the others smiled, the tension easing just a little.

Yoongi looked back at you.

“What I’m trying to say,” he said, slower now, “is that you didn’t do anything wrong last night. If you spent years thinking those marks meant you were alone, and then suddenly three of them start answering to names in front of you under studio lights…” He huffed once, almost incredulous on your behalf. “Of course you ran.”

You stared at him. Then down at your water. Then back at him.

“Thank you.”

He gave a small nod, like that was enough.

It wasn’t, not really. Not with the way your chest was behaving. But it was enough for him, apparently, which you suspected might become a recurring issue.

Namjoon cleared his throat softly, drawing your attention back to the full table.

“I think,” he said, “before we say anything else, we should make one thing very clear.”

He looked around at the others, and when they all nodded, he turned back to you.

“We don’t think you ruined anything.”

Every word landed carefully and deliberately. Like he wanted to leave no room at all for you to doubt it.

“Not the interview, not this, not any chance we might have had to get to know you,” he continued. “If anything, last night just confirmed what we’d already started to suspect.”

“You know,” Hoseok added, pointing gently between you and then the group, “that this is real.”

Your pulse kicked again. You looked down. Then, because there was no point pretending anymore, you pushed your sleeve slowly up to your elbow and turned your wrist over on the table.

They were quiet.

It was different than the silence the marks had drawn from doctors or family or strangers.

Those silences had always felt clinical. Curious. Sometimes pitying. This one felt reverent. Seven pairs of eyes dropped to the ink on your skin and stayed there.

Hoseok inhaled sharply.

Taehyung actually smiled.

Jungkook’s lips parted and then stayed that way, like he’d forgotten what he’d been about to say. Jin closed his eyes for the briefest second before opening them again with obvious effort. Jimin looked almost unbearably tender.

Namjoon sat back in his chair and let out a breath that sounded like something he’d been holding for years.

And Yoongi—

Yoongi looked at your wrist, then up at your face, then back down again like he was making himself believe it.

“Can I?” he asked quietly.

You blinked.

He lifted one hand, palm up, not touching you. Just hovering slightly over the table. Giving you every possible chance to say no.

It took you a second to realize what he meant.

“Oh.”

Your heart beat in your throat.

“Yeah,” you said, and your voice came out softer than you meant it to. “You can.”

His fingertips barely brushed the inside of your wrist. That was all. Barely anything. And yet every muscle in your body went rigid for one startled second. Not from discomfort. From recognition. It wasn’t electricity. It wasn’t dramatic lightning under your skin or some movie-worthy rush of impossible heat. It was worse. It felt familiar. Familiar, like your body had been waiting for that exact touch longer than your mind could understand.

Yoongi felt it too.

You knew he did because his fingers went still against your skin and his eyes snapped up to yours, something deep and startled flickering there before he smoothed it over.

Jimin saw it immediately. His brows shot up.

Hoseok bit his lip like he was physically restraining himself from making a scene.

Taehyung outright grinned.

You tugged your hand back out of instinct, and Yoongi withdrew just as quickly.

“Sorry,” you both said at the same time.

That broke the room.

Hoseok laughed first, loud and helpless. Jungkook ducked his head with a grin. Taehyung slapped the table once and looked delighted. Even Jin cracked, shaking his head.

Jimin pointed between the two of you. “That was so painful to watch.”

“Agreed,” Taehyung said.

“You’re both so weird already,” Jungkook mumbled.

Yoongi looked like he wanted the floor to open and swallow him. You suspected you looked much the same.

“Can we not?” he said flatly.

“Absolutely not,” Jimin replied.

Namjoon smiled into his water glass. “Maybe let her breathe first.”

“Thank you,” you muttered, grateful for him and resentful of the fact that half of your face felt warm.

“Do you want us to show you ours?”

The question came from Jin, who, despite being visibly entertained by your mutual embarrassment, had the good grace to ask it gently.

You looked at him, then around the table.

Part of you wanted to say no, not because you didn’t want to know, but because you weren’t sure your nervous system had recovered enough to survive seven more confirmations in a row.

The other part of you, the larger and far more reckless one, had been waiting your whole life for exactly this.

You nodded.

“Okay,” you said.

Hoseok was the first out of his chair. He bounced out of it and rounded the table, all bright energy and open delight, rolling up his sleeve and holding out his wrist to you with zero hesitation.

There it was. Your initials. Your birthdate.

Printed just as neatly into his skin as his had been on yours.

You stared.

“See?” he said, almost impossibly soft for someone so full of life. “You’re real.”

Your vision blurred for a second. You blinked hard and looked away before you embarrassed yourself.

Then Namjoon showed you his. Jin after that, with a little half-joke about finally not having to feel crazy anymore. Taehyung held his wrist out like he was presenting treasure. Jungkook did it more shyly, glancing between your face and the ink like he still couldn’t believe you were here to see it. Jimin tilted his arm into the light and watched your expression carefully, almost like he was cataloging every reaction.

By the time Yoongi rolled his sleeve up, your breathing had gone shallow again.

Not because you doubted it. Because now you didn’t.

His wrist looked like the others. Your initials. Your date. Your life, reflected back at you in black ink. You swallowed and looked up at him. He was already looking at you. Not smiling. Not teasing. Just there.

It was unbearable.

And then it became too much. Not in a catastrophic way. Not like last night. More like your emotions had all queued up at once and somebody had finally unlocked the door.

Your eyes stung. Your face burned. You looked down hard enough to make your neck ache, mortified at the thought of crying in front of seven men you had met less than forty-eight hours ago and who were, in a deeply inconvenient twist, apparently cosmically significant to you.

“Hey,” Namjoon said softly.

You shook your head once.

“You’re okay,” Jin added.

“I know,” you whispered.

But your voice cracked on the last word, which thoroughly ruined the performance.

“Oh,” Hoseok said quietly, all joking gone at once. “Oh, sweetheart.”

The endearment hit before you had time to brace for it. You laughed once, watery and miserable. “Don’t call me that or I really will cry.”

“We can call you ‘headache’ instead,” Jimin offered.

That actually got a real laugh out of you.

“Thank you,” you said.

“Anytime,” he replied, smug.

The chair beside you shifted. You looked up. Yoongi had moved. He hadn’t dragged his seat dramatically closer or done anything that might make it look like he was trying to overwhelm you. He had just closed the distance enough to matter.

Enough that when he spoke again, his voice didn’t have to carry.

“Look at me for a second.”

You did.

“Breathe,” he said. There was nothing mystical about it. Nothing grand. Just a simple instruction delivered in a voice so steady your body obeyed before your mind did.

You inhaled.

“Again.”

You did. The room blurred less. Your heartbeat eased, not all the way, but enough.

“There,” he said quietly. “That’s better.”

Across the table, Taehyung was looking at the two of you with an expression that suggested he was one sentence away from saying something unhelpfully perceptive. Jin appeared to notice this too, because he reached over and flicked Taehyung’s sleeve.

Taehyung pouted. You nearly smiled. Yoongi leaned back again, but not far.

“Sorry,” you said to no one and everyone.

Namjoon immediately shook his head. “No.”

Jungkook spoke next, more quietly than the others usually did, which made everyone turn toward him.

“You keep apologizing,” he said, “but you don’t have to.”

His cheeks pinked the second he realized he’d said it out loud in front of everyone, but he pushed on anyway.

“You haven’t done anything bad,” he said. “You’ve just… had a really intense two days.”

“That’s one way to describe it,” you said.

“It’s the correct way,” Jin replied.

“Debatable,” Jimin said. “I’d also accept life-altering, horrifying, and weirdly romantic.”

“Why are you like this?” Yoongi asked him.

“Because God made me charming.”

“No,” Yoongi said. “That’s definitely not it.”

The table laughed again, and this time the sound felt easier. Fuller. Like the room was finally letting itself relax around you.

A waiter appeared then, hesitated, and quietly began setting dishes down along the center of the table. Rice. Stir-fried vegetables. Soup. Small plates of side dishes you couldn’t even fully name before Taehyung was already reaching for one and Jin was slapping his hand away on principle.

“Wait until everyone’s served.”

“I was helping myself emotionally.” Taehyung pouted.

“You were helping yourself greedily.”

“It can be both.”

The absurd normalcy of it was maybe the strangest thing so far. That and the fact that none of them seemed interested in rushing you. The food arrived. Nobody pushed. Nobody demanded explanations.

Jin filled your plate before you could protest, muttering something about you looking underfed. Hoseok asked if you liked spice levels in food “like a normal person or like Jungkook,” which spiraled into a whole argument about what constituted normal spice tolerance. Taehyung asked if New York pizza was really as life-changing as movies made it seem. Jimin wanted to know whether American reporters always asked such boring first-round questions or if you were just strategically saving the good ones.

“I was being professional,” you said.

“You were being restrained,” he corrected.

“Maybe I was both.” You smirked.

Jimin blinked. “That was kind of hot.”

“Jimin,” Namjoon sighed.

“What? It was.”

Yoongi muttered something into his glass that made Hoseok choke on his water.

“What did he say?” you asked, suspicious.

“Nothing,” Yoongi said immediately.

“Horrible liar,” Taehyung sang.

“He said you arguing with Jimin was kind of hot,” Hoseok supplied, delighted.

The room exploded.

Jungkook folded in on himself laughing. Jin looked deeply entertained. Jimin made a scandalized noise like his job was being stolen from him. Namjoon pinched the bridge of his nose.

Yoongi stared murder at Hoseok.

“I hate all of you.”

Your face flamed so fast you felt it down your neck.

“You absolutely said that?” Jimin asked, beyond pleased.

“I said,” Yoongi replied through clenched teeth, “that her being that calm after realizing three birthdays in a row matched the inside of her wrist was impressive.”

Hoseok grinned. “And hot.”

Yoongi looked ready to launch himself across the table.

“I’m leaving,” he announced.

“You’re seated,” Jin said mildly.

You were trying very hard not to laugh. And failing.

Yoongi heard it. His head turned toward you so quickly it was almost accusatory. You met his eyes over the table and finally, finally let yourself smile fully.

His expression shifted. Enough for you to see the fight go out of it. Enough for something warmer to move quietly into its place. He looked down first. That did something terrible to your heart.

Conversation settled again after that, flowing more naturally now. Less like a summit meeting and more like eight people trying to figure out how to be in a room together when fate had apparently played an unhinged long game.

Namjoon told you how he’d met Yoongi first, how seeing the same sequence of marks on another person’s skin had felt like the world tilting under his feet. Yoongi corrected half the story under his breath and admitted, reluctantly, that Namjoon had looked less panicked than he had. Hoseok chimed in about arriving after them and deciding almost immediately that destiny had excellent taste because at least it had paired him with people who were interesting.

“Annoying,” Yoongi corrected.

“Interesting and annoying,” Hoseok allowed.

Jin described joining later, eyeing the three of them like they were a social experiment gone wrong.

“I thought maybe I’d hallucinated the whole thing,” he said. “Then I saw Namjoon’s wrist and nearly walked out.”

You looked up from your food. “You almost ran too?”

“Of course I almost ran,” he said. “I’m very handsome, not stupid.”

That made you laugh into your rice.

The younger three had their own stories. Taehyung had apparently been the least alarmed by the entire situation, mostly because he found the odds “romantic in a dramatic way.” Jungkook admitted he’d been too shocked to speak for almost an hour after the reveal. Jimin, unsurprisingly, had gone straight into interrogation mode and demanded everybody compare marks immediately.

“That sounds right,” you said.

He smiled. “Thank you.”

Through all of it, you found your gaze drifting toward Yoongi more often than it should have.

Partly because he didn’t talk unless he meant to. Partly because whenever anyone else said something that made you tense, even for half a second, he noticed.

You hadn’t realized how much he’d been tracking you until Jimin casually asked, “So have you dated anyone seriously?” and your entire body went tight in a way you hoped wasn’t obvious.

Apparently it was.

Because Yoongi cut in before you could answer.

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.”

The table quieted.

Jimin looked from him, to you, and then immediately lifted both hands.

“Fair. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” you said, though your voice came out a bit thinner than you wanted. “It’s not exactly a forbidden question.”

Yoongi’s gaze stayed on you, not Jimin. You could feel it like a hand at the center of your back. You looked down at your plate.

“I haven’t dated seriously,” you admitted after a moment. “Not really.”

“Because of this?” Jungkook asked softly, looking at your wrist and then quickly away like he worried that was rude.

You appreciated the awkwardness of it more than you should have.

“Partly,” you said. “Mostly because my life is… a lot. My work doesn’t exactly leave room for stability. And once people started wanting serious conversations, I usually found a way to be elsewhere.”

“That’s bleak,” Jimin said.

“That’s accurate,” you corrected.

Yoongi’s fingers tapped once against the table.

“Did anyone ever know why?”

You looked at him.

“What?”

“Why you left,” he said. “Why you kept things casual.”

The question should have felt invasive. From him, somehow, it didn’t. You thought about it.

“Not really,” you said. “I didn’t know how to explain that I had seven names on my arm and none of them belonged to the person sitting across from me. It seemed… cruel.”

Across the table, several expressions shifted at once.

Taehyung’s softened into something almost painful. Jungkook looked stricken again. Namjoon’s mouth tightened. Jin clicked his tongue once under his breath, clearly displeased by your past on principle.

Yoongi just looked at you long enough that you had to glance away.

“You were alone with that for a long time,” he said.

It wasn’t pity.

That was what made it survivable. You nodded once. “Yeah.”

A beat passed. Then another. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet enough that the others stopped moving. “Not anymore.”

You looked up. Every single person at that table was watching you.

Hoseok smiled first, soft and bright. “Definitely not anymore.”

“You have us now,” Taehyung said.

Jungkook nodded. “If you want us.”

The sweetness of that nearly undid you.

Jin leaned back in his chair. “And before you overthink that sentence into the ground, we don’t mean that in a scary way.”

“We mean it in a very scary way,” Jimin said.

“Jimin.”

“What? I’m kidding.”

“You are not helping.”

Namjoon hid a smile. “What they mean is, there’s no pressure on you to have all your feelings sorted out today.”

“That would be impossible,” you said.

“Exactly,” he replied. “This is… unprecedented, even for us.”

You hesitated, then asked the thing that had been itching at you since last night.

“Did you know I existed?”

It came out quieter than you meant it to. The question shifted something around the table. Not discomfort. Something sadder.

Namjoon answered first. “We knew there was one person left,” he said. “We knew the marks didn’t end with us. But no, we didn’t know who you were.”

“Not until last night,” Hoseok said.

Yoongi looked at his hands for a moment before speaking.

“I knew your initials,” he said. “And your birthday. Same as everyone else. But that doesn’t mean much when you’ve never seen someone’s face.”

He lifted his gaze to yours.

“When you introduced yourself, I thought I’d heard you wrong.”

The admission hit you harder than it should have.

Beside him, Jimin smiled faintly. “Same.”

You looked at him.

“You too?”

He nodded. “The second you said your name in Korean, I looked at Yoongi-hyung because I thought I was losing my mind.”

“I was not helpful,” Yoongi said dryly.

“No,” Jimin agreed. “You looked like you’d been shot.”

That startled a laugh out of you. Yoongi shot him a look… Jimin grinned.

“I’m serious,” he said. “And then when your coworker, Elle…?” You nodded to him, “Well, when Elle read your birthday from your notes…” He let out a low whistle. “The room got very real very quickly.”

You thought back to that moment. To the strange shift in the air you’d barely been able to process because your own body had already gone into full revolt.

“You all knew then.”

“Yes,” Namjoon said.

“Immediately?” you asked.

“Yes,” seven voices replied in some form or another.

That should not have made you feel as seen as it did.

But it did.

Jimin reached for his drink. “For the record, your exit was dramatic.”

You covered your face. “I know.”

“But also justified,” he added.

“Deeply justified,” Hoseok said.

“Cinema-worthy, honestly,” Jin mused.

“Stop encouraging Jimin,” Yoongi muttered.

Taehyung tilted his head. “If it helps, I wanted to run too. Not away. Just after you.”

The sincerity in it caught you off guard.

“You did?”

He nodded. “Yeah. We all kind of did.”

“We couldn’t,” Namjoon said. “There were too many people around.”

“And we didn’t want to scare you more,” Jungkook added.

The image of seven members of BTS trying to follow you out of an interview room because the American reporter fleeing their building happened to be their soulmate was so surreal you didn’t know whether to laugh or dissolve.

Probably both. You took a long sip of water instead.

Jimin, who had been studying you with that too-knowing expression again, suddenly straightened. “Wait.”

Everyone looked at him.

He leaned forward, eyes narrowing at your wrist.

“Can I ask something weird?”

“Given the circumstances, that doesn’t narrow it down at all,” you said.

“That’s fair.”

He pointed toward your arm.

“Do any of the initials look… darker to you?”

The room changed again. Subtly. Namjoon exchanged a glance with Jin. Taehyung’s smile turned amused in a way that made you suspicious. Jungkook bit his lip. Hoseok looked like someone trying not to ruin a surprise. You frowned and looked down. At first, the marks just looked like they always had.

Then you really looked.

And there.

One set.

M.Y.

You blinked.

Then leaned closer.

“They do,” you murmured. No one spoke. You ran your thumb lightly over the letters. “I’ve never noticed that before.”

“They can be hard to catch,” Namjoon said.

“What does it mean?” Your voice came out quieter now, the question hanging in the air between all of you.

This time it was Yoongi who looked away first. Namjoon glanced at him, then back at you.

“There are old studies,” he said. “And some spiritual interpretations. Most people think it means a stronger pull within the bond.”

“A twin flame,” Hoseok supplied.

“That sounds fake,” you said automatically.

Hoseok laughed. “I knew you’d say that.”

“It does,” Yoongi admitted, still not looking at you. “But it’s a thing. Only some of us have it with each other.”

“Only some…?” You ask.

“Yeah. It’s not common,” Namjoon answered. 

“The three of us have it,” Jimin smirked, pointing between himself, Taehyung, and Jungkook.

You looked around the table slowly. Then finally, carefully, to Yoongi.

He was already looking at you now. And unlike the others, he didn’t smile.

He just said, quietly, “Mine is you.”

Your pulse hit so hard it hurt.

No one joked. No one interrupted.

For once, even Jimin had the sense to leave the moment alone.

You looked down at the darker initials on your wrist again.

M.Y.

Then back at him. “How long have they been darker?” you asked.

Yoongi understood immediately.

“Since you first got the mark,” he said.

The room tilted.

“And you-- you noticed mine were darker this whole time?”

He nodded.

You had no idea what your face did then, but it must have been something, because Yoongi’s expression softened in a way that made your stomach drop straight through the floor.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly.

You laughed once in disbelief. “That does not feel okay.”

A tiny smile touched his mouth. “No,” he agreed. “Probably not. But it is.”

“Yoongi-hyung was the worst about it, actually,” Hoseok said, because apparently peace had lasted too long. “He used to act like it didn’t matter and then stare at his wrist like he was trying to threaten it into revealing your address.”

“Oh my God,” Jimin said, delighted. “That’s true.”

Yoongi looked murderous again. “Hoseok.”

“What? It’s romantic.”

“It’s invasive.”

“It’s both,” Taehyung said.

You were trying so hard not to smile. And failing again.

Yoongi noticed again. That might have been the first time you saw him really smile.

It was small. Gummy.

Gone too quickly to be fair.

It hit you like a car.

He seemed to realize that immediately, because the smile vanished and he looked down at his drink like he hadn’t just catastrophically altered your internal chemistry.

Cool. Great.

Fantastic, even.

Namjoon, perhaps sensing that your brain was about to liquefy in real time, gently redirected.

“There’s one more thing we should probably tell you.”

You dragged your attention away from Yoongi with genuine effort.

“What?”

“Why we keep our marks covered,” he said.

You frowned. “I was wondering that.”

He nodded. “At first it was privacy. Then it became strategy.”

“People get weird about soulmate stuff,” Jin said dryly. “And people get especially weird about famous people having soulmate stuff.”

“That’s a very elegant way of putting it,” Jimin muttered.

“We never wanted to go public with any of it unless everyone involved had a say,” Namjoon continued. “Including you.”

The simplicity of that stunned you a little.

“You waited because of me?”

“We waited because whoever you turned out to be deserved it,” he corrected gently. “You deserved the choice.”

You sat very still.

All morning you had been braced for pressure. For assumption. For some unspoken expectation that because fate had apparently thrown your life into their orbit, you would now be expected to fall in line with whatever that meant.

Instead you got this.

Care. Restraint. Permission.

It made your eyes sting again, which was just rude at this point.

“That’s…” You swallowed. “That’s really thoughtful.”

Jin shrugged. “We can be thoughtful and gorgeous.”

“That’s exactly how I’d describe us,” Taehyung agreed.

“You describe yourself like that every day,” Jungkook muttered.

“As I should.”

Laughter broke the moment just enough to save you from crying for the second time in one lunch.

You loved them a little for that already, which seemed irresponsible, but not exactly something you could help.

By the time the plates had been cleared and fresh water brought out, the room felt entirely different than it had when you’d walked in.

Not easy. Easy would’ve been absurd. But open.

You sat a little more comfortably now. Your shoulders weren’t drawn up to your ears. You had stopped checking the nearest exit every few minutes. Taehyung had made you promise, solemnly, that if you ever did flee the country you would at least text first. Jin had asked real questions about New York and your work. Jungkook wanted to know what your favorite interviews had been. Hoseok had decided you had “incredibly stressed but cool older classmate energy,” which Jimin said was inaccurate because you were younger than all but Jungkook and Taehyung, which had somehow led to Taehyung asking if you liked dogs.

Through all of it, Yoongi stayed mostly quiet. Not absent, just watchful. And when he did speak, it was usually to you.

Never performative. Never loud. Never because he needed the room to follow him.

Just because he had something to say.

At one point, while the others were deep in an argument over whether Jungkook counted as clingy, you reached for the water pitcher at the exact same moment Yoongi did. Your fingers brushed.

This time neither of you jerked away. You just both looked at your hands for a second. Then at each other. He slid the pitcher toward you.

“You first.”

“Thanks.”

His eyes held yours a second longer than necessary.

“You doing okay?”

It would have been so easy to lie. You were good at lying about that, especially to people who had no right to call you on it. But he did. Not a right, exactly. A way. So you answered honestly.

“Better.”

Another small nod.

“Good.”

You wanted, very badly, to ask him if he was okay too.

You didn’t.

Mostly because you had the strong suspicion that if you started caring too obviously, too soon, about the man with darker initials on your arm, the rest of the table would never let you live it down.

Also because you were not, in fact, ready to examine whatever was happening inside your chest.

Eventually your phone buzzed in your bag.

Then again.

Then a third time in increasingly offended succession.

You didn’t even need to check to know it was Elle.

You sighed and pulled the phone out.

Across the table, Taehyung leaned to one side. “Is that the friend?”

“Yes.”

“Is she nice?”

“She is when she’s not threatening me through text.”

“What’d she say?” Jimin asked.

You glanced down.

If you are alive, blink twice.

If you are dead, ignore this.

If Min Yoongi is still hot in person, also ignore this. 

You covered your face with one hand.

Jimin made a delighted noise. “Read it out loud.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Coward.”

You shoved the phone back into your bag.

Namjoon smiled. “Do you need to go?”

The question hit harder than you expected, because the answer, embarrassingly enough, was no.

Not really. You didn’t want to. And judging by the shift that ran quietly around the table, they knew it. But you also knew if you didn’t leave soon, Elle was going to assume you’d been kidnapped into a soulmate cult and try to storm the building herself.

“Probably,” you admitted.

The collective disappointment that met that one word was almost comical.

Hoseok actually pouted.

Taehyung slumped dramatically sideways.

Jungkook hid his reaction badly. Jin sighed like a put-upon husband in a period drama. Jimin looked openly aggrieved. Namjoon was at least dignified enough to keep his disappointment contained to the corners of his mouth.

Yoongi just got quieter. That was somehow worse. You stood slowly.

“I’ll see you at the show tomorrow,” you said, because suddenly it felt very important to make that promise aloud.

That perked several of them up at once.

“Yes,” Hoseok said. “Good.”

“We’ll save you a seat,” Taehyung added. “A lucky seat.”

“That’s not a real thing,” Jin said.

“It is in my heart.”

“Please stop talking.”

You laughed, slinging your bag over your shoulder. “Before I go…” You hesitated, then pushed through it. “Can I give you my number?”

The reaction was immediate and ridiculous.

Jungkook nearly fumbled his phone. Taehyung grinned like Christmas had come early. Jimin looked scandalized that you’d had to offer instead of them asking faster. Hoseok was already unlocking his screen.

Yoongi tried, and failed, to act like he hadn’t gone just a little still.

You gave it to them, watching as each saved it with varying degrees of enthusiasm and speed.

Namjoon created a group chat on the spot.

Jimin named it fate’s favorite idiots before anyone could stop him.

Taehyung changed it to will our girl ever return from war?

Yoongi changed it to stop talking less than ten seconds later.

Jungkook changed it back to fate’s favorite idiots.

Yoongi looked at the title, then at you, then muttered, “I hate this group already.”

“No you don’t,” Hoseok said.

“No,” Yoongi replied, and for the first time all afternoon there was no dryness in it at all. “I really don’t.”

That settled over the table in a way no one commented on. You said your goodbyes more slowly than you meant to.

Jin insisted on walking you as far as the kitchen doors. Hoseok made you promise to eat dinner. Jungkook mumbled something shy about being glad you came that made your heart squeeze. Jimin told you next time he’d be asking harder questions and you told him next time you might actually answer some of them.

Taehyung opened his arms like he wanted a hug, then visibly thought better of it and clasped his hands in front of himself instead.

The effort of that touched you more than if he’d just gone for it.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

“For what?”

“For coming back,” he said. “And for not looking at us like we’re crazy.”

You smiled.

“That’d be hypocritical.”

He laughed.

And then you were at the threshold between the dining room and the kitchen, with one hand on your bag strap and your pulse doing something strange and slow and heavy in your chest.

Because you could feel it. Someone behind you. Before you even turned, you knew. Yoongi had followed. Not in a dramatic, possessive, cinematic way. Just enough to catch you before you left.

You turned.

The others were still within sight, but far enough away now to give the two of you a sliver of privacy. The warm restaurant lighting caught the edge of his cheekbone and the dark line of his lashes when he looked down for a second, then back up.

Neither of you spoke right away.

Then he said, “I meant what I said earlier.”

You waited.

“You didn’t ruin anything.”

Your throat tightened again.

“I know,” you said, and this time you did.

He gave a small nod.

Then, quieter: “And if you panic again tomorrow, don’t disappear alone.”

That startled you.

You searched his face, trying to figure out whether he realized how intimate that sounded. If he did, he didn’t show it.

Or maybe he did, and was simply better at hiding than you were.

“Are you offering to escort me through a crisis?”

“I’m offering to make sure you don’t have to have one by yourself.”

There it was again. That unbearable steadiness. That awful, lovely sincerity. You looked at him for so long you forgot you were supposed to say something.

When you finally did, your voice came out almost embarrassingly soft. “Okay.”

Something in his expression eased. He stepped back then, just enough to keep from crowding you. “Text when you get back.”

You raised a brow. “That sounds suspiciously like a request.”

“It’s an instruction.”

“You’re bossy.”

“So I’ve been told.”

The smile you gave him this time came easily.

His eyes dipped to it. Stayed there. Then lifted back to yours.

“Go before they make it weird again.”

You glanced over his shoulder.

Taehyung and Jimin were very obviously pretending not to look in your direction. Hoseok was failing worse. Jungkook ducked his head the second you caught him. Jin looked unbothered by all of it. Namjoon was massaging the bridge of his nose like this happened to him often.

You laughed.

“You’re right.”

“I know.”

You took one step backward into the kitchen. Then another. And because apparently the day had not embarrassed you enough already, you said, “Bye, Yoongi.”

The use of his name did something to his face. Tiny. Visible. Dangerous.

“Bye,” he said.

Then, after the barest pause:

“Y/N.”

Just your name. Nothing else. And somehow that was the worst one yet. You turned before he could see too much on your face and let the staff member lead you back through the kitchen, through the rear door, out into the alley where the SUV waited.

English had gotten you through school. Japanese had gotten you your first internship. Korean had gotten you promoted.

It turned out Americans loved international stars right up until a translator entered the room. Then suddenly the interview lost its spark, its rhythm, its intimacy. Executives hated that. Your boss had seen that. She’d looked at your résumé, all but salivated over the “fluently speaks three languages” bullet point, and hired you before the coffee in your paper cup had gone cold.

So yes, your job was glamorous. It paid well. It gave you stories no one in your family could even pretend not to be impressed by.

It also ate your life alive.

Your friends from college had stopped asking if you were free months ago. Holidays happened without you. Your mother had started looking at your schedule like it was something terminal.

“You’ll never find your soulmate if the only thing you care about is your work,” she’d snapped six months ago, standing in the doorway of her townhouse with her arms crossed.

You’d laughed because crying would’ve been worse.

“I found them already, Mom,” you’d said. “My work is my soulmate.”

A lie. A good one, though.

Because the truth was uglier.

Everyone was born with their soulmate’s initials and birthdate inked on the inside of their left wrist, neat black script like fate had signed its name. Some people had one. Rarely, two. Once, in an article you’d hate-read in a waiting room, you’d seen a woman with four.

You had seven.

Fourteen letters. Twenty-eight numbers. A miserable, impossible string you’d memorized by the time you were ten and learned to resent by twelve.

K.S. M.Y. J.H. K.N. P.J. K.T. J.J.

12.4.92. 3.9.93. 2.18.94. 9.12.94. 10.13.95. 12.30.95. 9.1.97.

Every doctor who’d ever seen it had gone quiet.

Every date who’d ever noticed it had stared too long.

And every year that passed without an explanation made it easier to believe the same thing: that you were some clerical error in the universe. A cosmic typo with a press badge.

“Y/N! Thank God.”

Elle practically body-checked you the second you stepped into the office Monday morning.

You stumbled, laughed despite yourself, and caught her by the elbows. “Good morning to you too, psycho.”

She grinned, all bright lipstick and caffeine-fueled chaos. “I finished editing your BLACKPINK interview. It’ll be live in a couple of hours.”

“That’s amazing.” You slipped your bag from your shoulder and gave her a pointed look. “How much coffee have you had?”

Her smile widened. “Enough.”

“Terrifying answer.”

Elle followed you into your office anyway, chattering while you booted up your computer, set your coffee down, and tried not to think about the ache that always followed weekends. She had a gift for filling silence, for making your life feel inhabited even when it wasn’t.

That was probably why her next sentence hit you harder than it should have.

“Did you hear BTS is doing a mini-tour before their break?”

You glanced up. “No.”

“Well.” She rocked back on her heels. “No one’s been assigned yet, but if the office covers it…”

You narrowed your eyes. “Elle.”

“If you get sent, will you ask Powell if I can go with you?”

There it was.

You sighed, leaning back in your chair. “You know we don’t always get to pick our co-writers.”

“Andrew does.”

Of course Andrew did.

You rubbed your temple. “If there is a story, and if I get it, and if Powell lets me choose, I’ll ask.”

Elle made a noise so high-pitched it probably cracked glass somewhere on the twenty-sixth floor.

“Don’t make me regret this,” you warned.

“Never,” she lied.

Four hours later, after one finished follow-up piece, three coffees, and an entirely unnecessary email from Andrew copied to half the editorial staff, Powell called you upstairs.

Andrew was already in her office when you got there, sitting stiff in his chair with the expression of a man prepared to be deeply irritating.

“Thanks for joining us,” he muttered.

You smiled thinly. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

Powell ignored both of you. “M-Buzz has secured coverage for BTS’s Persona tour in South Korea. Interview access included.”

Your pulse kicked once, hard.

Andrew straightened. You sat still.

“We only need one lead reporter,” Powell continued. “Initially, I considered letting the two of you decide who that would be.”

Andrew made the fatal mistake of opening his mouth.

“With all due respect,” he said, “sending Y/N with me would be redundant.”

Powell looked at him for a long moment.

Then she turned to you.

“Pack a bag. You leave in three days.”

Andrew’s jaw went tight so fast you almost laughed.

Almost.

Instead, you folded your hands in your lap and kept your face neutral while Powell continued rifling through the stack of papers on her desk like she hadn’t just detonated the room.

“You’ll be in Seoul for one week before the tour moves on to Daegu and Busan,” she said. “Hotels are covered. Transportation is covered. Big Hit has offered on-site assistance for all press obligations. You’ll do one sit-down interview the night you arrive, then coverage from there.”

You nodded once, the logistics settling over you slower than the reality of the trip itself.

Seoul. BTS. Three weeks.

Andrew let out a sharp, disbelieving breath through his nose. “You’re serious.”

Powell looked up over the rim of her glasses. “Very.”

“With respect, I’ve been covering political and entertainment crossover pieces for the past year. I’m the better fit.”

“No,” Powell said. “Y/N is.”

It was the casual certainty of it that made something ugly flash across his face.

You stood before he could say anything else. “I’ll do the job well.”

“I’m counting on it,” Powell replied, then waved one manicured hand. “You can bring one junior staffer. Pick someone competent.”

That part came easy.

“Elle.”

Powell nodded. “Fine. HR will send the itinerary by the end of the day.”

The meeting was over, but Andrew clearly hadn’t gotten the memo.

He waited until you were out in the hall, until Powell’s door shut behind you, until the elevator dinged uselessly at the far end of the corridor.

Then he stepped into your path.

“What exactly is your problem?” you asked, because his expression had crossed too far over the line from irritated coworker to actively unhinged.

“My problem?” he echoed, laughing once without humor. “You waltz in here at twenty-one with your little genius act and suddenly everyone thinks you’re the future of the company.”

You stared at him. “I waltzed in?”

He ignored that.

“I’ve spent years building credibility here.”

“So have I.”

“No,” he snapped. “You’ve built novelty.”

That one landed harder than you wanted it to. Not because you believed him, but because it was the kind of insult people only used when they’d run out of cleaner ones. Girl. Young. Languages. Pretty enough to be memorable on camera. To men like Andrew, that all translated to gimmick.

You crossed your arms. “If you want to complain, do it to Powell.”

“I’m talking to you.”

“Well, that’s your first mistake.”

His nostrils flared.

For one ridiculous second, you thought he might actually get louder in the middle of the thirtieth floor hallway like a cartoon villain with a press badge, but when he spoke again his voice dropped instead.

“I worked my ass off for this position,” he said. “I’m not letting some up-and-coming little floozy ruin that for me.”

The word sat between you both like something rotten.

You blinked once.

Then twice.

“What the fuck did you just call me?”

Andrew stepped back, as if he’d surprised even himself, but whatever shame might’ve followed never made it to his face.

“Watch your back,” he muttered. “That’s all I’m saying.”

Then he turned and stalked toward the stairwell, leaving you standing there in stunned silence.

A beat later the elevator doors slid open behind you.

“Did I miss murder?” Elle asked as she stepped out holding two iced coffees and an expression of pure nosy delight.

You turned slowly to face her.

“I got the BTS assignment.”

The coffees shook in her hands. “Shut up.”

“And Andrew just called me a floozy.”

Her mouth fell open. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I need both more and less information immediately.”

By lunch, she’d extracted the entire story from you over ramen, gasping at all the right parts and loudly vowing to key Andrew’s car despite not knowing what his car looked like.

You laughed in spite of yourself, and that was the end of your composure for the day.

Because once the shock wore off, the work started.

Three days to prep for an international assignment.

Three days to build questions, review tour materials, go over performance coverage, coordinate with HR, ignore your mother’s three missed calls, and figure out how to spend nearly a month in another country without losing your mind.

The busyness should’ve drowned everything else out.

Instead, late that first night, long after the office had emptied and the fluorescent lights had started to hum overhead, your attention drifted back to your wrist.

K.S. M.Y. J.H. K.N. P.J. K.T. J.J.

The letters looked no different than they had that morning.

Still foreign. Still impossible. Still there.

You’d made peace with the possibility that they didn’t mean anything years ago, or at least something close to peace. A wary truce. You worked, you traveled, you ignored the looks people gave you when they caught sight of the ink, and in return the universe left you alone.

Mostly.

But that night, for reasons you couldn’t explain, you found yourself tracing the letters with your thumb.

K.S.

M.Y.

J.H.

It was stupid, you told yourself. Pathetic, even.

There were millions of people in the world. Initials repeated. Birthdays repeated. Fate, if it existed, had a sick sense of humor.

Still, you pulled your laptop closer and opened the folder where you’d started compiling background notes on BTS.

Just in case.

You hated yourself a little for it.

Two days later, you and Elle boarded a flight to Seoul.

She was insufferable from the second you hit your seats.

“I’m serious,” she said, already halfway through the airline’s complimentary wine. “If Jimin makes eye contact with me, I may actually pass away.”

“You say that like it would inconvenience me.”

“It would. I’m your co-writer.”

“You’re my liability.”

She clutched a hand to her chest. “Cruel.”

You smiled faintly and opened your notebook, grateful when the cabin lights dimmed enough to discourage conversation.

By the time you landed, your eyes burned from lack of sleep and your neck ached from the angle you’d spent ten hours pretending was comfortable. You’d managed some rest, but not enough to feel human, and the combination of jet lag and nerves made everything feel half a second removed from reality.

Seoul hit you all at once anyway.

The lights.

The traffic.

The sharp coolness of the air outside the airport.

The sense of being somewhere fully alive.

“It’s beautiful,” Elle breathed, staring out the taxi window as the city rushed past.

“It is,” you admitted.

And it was.

Seoul looked electric. Sleek glass and neon, narrow streets opening into wider avenues, signs you could read flickering by in a rush of color. If you hadn’t been running on caffeine fumes and professional dread, you might’ve let yourself enjoy it more.

The hotel made that difficult too.

“This is not a hotel,” Elle said reverently as the taxi pulled up to the curb. “This is a threat.”

You snorted.

But she wasn’t wrong.

The building rose up in polished glass and gold-toned accents, all expensive restraint and quiet power. Inside, it was worse: marble floors, enormous floral arrangements, staff who looked like they’d been trained never to blink too hard in the presence of wealthy people.

You and Elle rode the elevator up in silence, too tired and too stunned to fill it.

Then the doors opened onto the top floor.

There were only two doors in the hallway.

Your room was the one at the end.

“Oh, absolutely not,” Elle whispered as you stepped inside. “There is no world in which M-Buzz paid for this out of pocket.”

You didn’t answer right away.

The suite was obscene.

A real kitchen. A sitting room bigger than your apartment back in New York. floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. White marble countertops, pale walls, dark wine-red accents, a dining table set for four for no apparent reason.

And one bedroom.

One.

You turned slowly to look at Elle.

“She told me one room, two beds.”

Elle opened a door, then another. “Well. She technically got the first half right.”

The bedroom beyond was all dark walls and silk bedding and a bed the size of a small country.

You laughed once in disbelief. “What the hell?”

“We’re sleeping diagonally and respecting nothing.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“And correct.”

Ordinarily, the absurdity of it all would’ve loosened the tightness in your chest.

Instead, it only made the next part feel sharper.

Because you had barely an hour before your first interview.

You showered quickly, changed into your black pencil skirt and pastel blouse, smoothed lavender oil at your throat and wrists to quiet your pulse, and reapplied your makeup with the kind of focus that bordered on ritual.

By the time you emerged from the bathroom, Elle was sitting by the door in a fitted cardigan and skirt, one leg bouncing.

“You look incredible,” she said.

“So do you.”

“That won’t save me if I embarrass myself in front of seven internationally famous men.”

“I’ll list you as a workplace casualty.”

“You’d miss me.”

“Deeply. For at least six business days.”

She grinned, but it faded the second she got a good look at your face.

“You’re doing the thing.”

You stilled. “What thing?”

“The pre-interview spiral.”

“I am not spiraling.”

She raised a brow.

You exhaled. “Maybe lightly corkscrewing.”

“Y/N.”

“I know.”

It was annoying that she knew you this well.

Worse that she was right.

You always got like this before interviews that mattered. It didn’t matter how many you’d already done, how many major names sat in your portfolio, how often people told you that you were good at this. There was always a point beforehand where confidence curdled into nerves and your mind went from sharp to carnivorous.

What if you asked the wrong question.

What if your Korean slipped.

What if your English came off too stiff.

What if you overprepared.

What if you underprepared.

What if—

“You’re going to walk in there,” Elle said, stepping closer, “and turn into Interview Y/N, who is terrifying and charming and annoyingly good at getting people to talk. So enough.”

You looked at her, then smiled despite yourself.

“You’re bossy.”

“You brought me because I’m useful.”

“That is not why I brought you.”

Her expression softened.

You glanced away first. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”

The SUV outside the hotel had your name printed on a card in the front window.

Your driver introduced himself in polite Korean, and you thanked him in the same language, which earned you a quick surprised smile in the rearview mirror.

“The Big Hit building is not far,” he told you as he pulled into traffic.

You translated for Elle automatically, then fell quiet as the city slipped by.

The sun had fully gone down now. Seoul glowed.

A thought came to you then—unwanted and strange.

If your soulmates existed, if those letters on your wrist meant anything at all, then statistically speaking they could be anywhere. In this city. Back in New York. In some tiny town in Norway. Dead, even. Married. Lost. Missing you without knowing they were.

The feeling that followed was so sudden it made you sit straighter.

Grief, maybe.

Or anticipation.

You couldn’t tell.

“Do you think they’re as hot in real life?” Elle asked, because of course she did.

You snorted. “Astounding professionalism.”

“I’m asking as a journalist.”

“You’re asking as a menace.”

She didn’t deny it.

The SUV turned down a broad drive lined with glass and light.

“There it is,” Elle whispered.

Big Hit rose ahead of you, all clean lines and reflective surfaces. It looked less like an office building and more like something designed by people who wanted the future to feel expensive.

Your driver opened the door for you. You stepped out, smoothed your skirt once, and followed a young staffer through the entrance and down into a waiting room bright enough to expose every flaw a person had ever had.

Then you saw them.

Seven men scattered across chairs and couches in jewel tones against a washed-white room.

And for one completely idiotic second, your brain offered up nothing.

Not because you hadn’t prepared.

Not because you didn’t recognize them.

Just because they were, inconveniently, unfairly beautiful.

One of them—black hair, bright smile, sunshine practically radiating off him—straightened immediately.

Another, broad-shouldered and composed, watched you with sharp intelligence.

A blond man with full lips and perfect posture leaned forward with open curiosity.

A pretty one in a bandana looked delighted before you’d even spoken.

The youngest-looking among them smiled so wide it nearly undid you on impact.

The pink-haired one looked at you like he knew something.

And the last—

The last sat slightly apart, dressed in darker colors, his gaze steady and unreadable and somehow the hardest one to meet.

You swallowed.

Then you smiled.

“Hello,” you said, because thankfully professionalism could survive almost anything. “My name is Y/N L/N. I’m a reporter with M-Buzz out of Manhattan.”

A few of them looked politely blank.

Right. English.

You repeated the introduction in Korean.

That changed everything.

It was subtle at first. A lift in posture. A flicker of surprise. Interest sharpening into something much harder to name.

“Woah,” the sunshine one said immediately, grinning. “You’re fluent?”

“Hoseok,” the broad-shouldered one murmured, though he looked amused more than reprimanding.

You smiled. “Enough to embarrass myself less thoroughly.”

That got a laugh.

The introductions began after that, and you were grateful for the routine of it. Names. Bows. Smiles. The familiar rhythm of meeting public figures in a controlled environment.

Hoseok was warm first.

Then Namjoon, all measured charm.

Then Seokjin, handsome and aware of it.

Taehyung, bright-eyed and curious.

Jungkook, shy under the confidence.

Jimin, sweet-faced and harder to read than he wanted people to think.

And finally Yoongi, who only dipped his head slightly and said his name like you were supposed to do something with it.

The interview started clean.

Favorite songs. Tour nerves. Creative growth. What they were hoping fans took from this era of music. You eased into it the way you always did, nerves burning off in the face of momentum. Your questions found their pace. The members relaxed. Elle settled into note-taking beside one of the cameras.

It was good.

Better than good.

And then you made the mistake of feeling comfortable.

“For this next portion,” you said, glancing at your notes, “I thought it might be fun to go in age order and talk a little about your astrology signs. Fans always love hearing how groups fit together personality-wise.”

That earned immediate reaction.

“Dinosaur Jin,” Taehyung said under his breath.

Seokjin looked offended on principle. “I’m twenty-six.”

“Ancient,” Jungkook agreed solemnly.

You laughed, and Seokjin pointed at you like this was somehow your fault.

“Fine,” he said. “Me first.”

You lowered your pen to the page.

“When’s your birthday?”

“December fourth, 1992.”

Your pen stopped moving.

Not dramatically. Not enough for anyone else to clock it.

Just enough for you to feel it.

12.4.92.

The numbers appeared in your mind so clearly it was like someone had written them against the backs of your eyes.

No.

No, that meant nothing.

Lots of people had birthdays. Lots of people existed. You forced a smile.

“So you’re a Sagittarius,” you said, and your voice sounded almost normal. “Fire sign. Ruled by Jupiter.”

Seokjin grinned. “As it should be.”

Everybody laughed.

You looked back at your notes.

The letters on your wrist burned under your sleeve.

“Who’s next?” you asked.

“Yoongi-hyung,” someone supplied.

Yoongi was already looking at you.

Not casually.

Not curiously.

Looking.

You tried to ignore the way it sent a warning shot straight through your ribs.

“And your birthday?” you asked.

A beat.

Then: “March ninth, 1993.”

The room blurred at the edges.

3.9.93.

Your fingers went cold.

The sound of the cameras. The lights. The scrape of fabric as someone shifted in their chair. It all seemed to pull farther away from you at once.

No, no, no.

That still didn’t mean—

Hoseok.

You needed Hoseok.

He was next in age. He had to be next.

If he gave any other date, this whole insane flicker of panic would collapse in on itself and you could laugh later about how jet lag had almost made you lose your mind during a BTS interview.

You looked at him too fast.

He blinked, smile faltering slightly.

“Hoseok?”

“My birthday?” he asked.

You nodded.

“February eighteenth, 1994.”

The air left your lungs.

J.H. 2.18.94.

You heard yourself make a soft sound, not quite a gasp, not quite a word.

Nobody said anything.

Nobody moved.

Your heartbeat slammed so hard it hurt.

The letters on your wrist.

The dates.

The years you’d spent convincing yourself they were meaningless.

The looks from doctors. From strangers. From dates. From family.

The horrible private grief of wondering if you’d been made wrong.

And now—

Now seven men sat in front of you beneath studio lighting and polite smiles, and at least three pieces of the impossible had just turned real.

“Y/N?”

The voice came from far away. Elle, maybe. Or Namjoon.

You stood up so quickly your chair dragged against the floor.

Every head in the room turned.

“I’m sorry,” you heard yourself say, though your mouth felt numb around the words. “I need—I need a moment.”

“Are you alright?” Namjoon asked, already half-rising.

But you couldn’t answer him.

Because if you stayed another second, you were either going to throw up, pass out, or start asking seven members of BTS to roll up their sleeves in front of God and everybody.

And there were cameras.

And your notebook.

And Elle.

And none of that mattered.

You were moving before your brain caught up, out of the chair, past the startled staffer by the door, down the hall, through the lobby, out into the night air that hit you like a slap.

The driver looked up sharply from the SUV when he saw you.

“Hotel,” you said in Korean, too fast, too breathless. “Please. Right now.”

“Miss—”

“Please.”

Something in your face must have convinced him, because he opened the back door without another question.

You climbed in and only realized once the car had already pulled away from the curb that you’d left your notebook behind.

And Elle.

And half an interview.

You pressed the heel of your hand against your mouth and stared blindly at the city lights outside.

There was no way in hell.

No way in hell.

No way in hell that BTS—all seven of them—could possibly be written on your skin.

The ride back to the hotel felt longer than the drive there.

Not because of traffic.

Because now every passing second had room to think.

You sat curled into the corner of the backseat, one hand braced against the door, the other locked so tightly around your phone that your knuckles ached. Seoul moved outside in streaks of white and red and gold, traffic lights smearing across the glass when you blinked too slowly.

K.S.

M.Y.

J.H.

You could not stop seeing them.

Not the letters themselves, but the way they’d slotted into place in your head with nauseating precision the moment Seokjin and Yoongi and Hoseok gave their birthdays. Like tumblers clicking inside an old lock. Like a combination you’d had memorized your whole life without knowing what it opened.

Your driver glanced at you once in the rearview mirror.

Then, politely, looked away.

He’d asked if you were alright exactly one time. You had said yes with enough force to make it clear that you were lying and also that you wouldn’t be elaborating. After that, he left you alone.

By the time the SUV slid up to the hotel entrance, your pulse had not slowed even a little.

You were out before he could come around to open the door. The lobby blurred. The elevator took years. The suite door clicked shut behind you with a soft, expensive sound that nearly made you laugh.

Because this was insane.

The room was still obscene. Still beautiful. Still full of marble and warm lamplight and clean, expensive silence. And you were standing in the middle of it trying not to hyperventilate over a boy group.

No. Not a boy group.

Seven birthdays. Seven initials. Seven impossible answers to a question you’d spent your whole life hating.

You stripped your blazer off and threw it over the back of the couch. Then your heels. Then your earrings, one of which bounced once on the coffee table and skittered to the floor. You didn’t go after it.

Instead you crossed the room, shoved your sleeve up to your elbow, and stared.

K.S. M.Y. J.H. K.N. P.J. K.T. J.J.

The letters looked exactly the same.

Which was somehow worse.

Because if they’d glowed or shifted or moved under your skin, you could’ve blamed stress. Fatigue. Hallucination. Some dramatic break with reality.

But they just sat there.

Neat. Black. Patient.

You crossed to the kitchen island, grabbed the hotel stationery and a pen, and began writing out what you knew.

K.S. — Kim Seokjin — 12.4.92 M.Y. — Min Yoongi — 3.9.93 J.H. — Jung Hoseok — 2.18.94

Your hand froze halfway through the third line.

Your stomach turned violently.

You barely made it to the bathroom.

By the time the worst of it passed, your knees were on cold tile and your hair had fallen half out of its bun and there were tears on your face that you had not consciously agreed to.

“Great,” you whispered hoarsely to no one. “Awesome. Love this for me.”

It was too much. Not because you were afraid of them. Not even because you were afraid of the marks being real. You were afraid of what came after real. Because if those three lined up, then Namjoon’s probably would too. And Jimin’s. And Taehyung’s. And Jungkook’s.

And if all seven of them matched, then the thing you’d built your life around—that careful, lonely acceptance, that hard-edged independence, that identity forged around never expecting to be chosen by fate at all—would split clean down the middle.

It would mean you hadn’t been wrong. Just waiting. And that was almost worse.

Your phone started ringing from somewhere in the living room.

You ignored it.

It stopped.

Started again.

Stopped.

Then, after a pause, buzzed with the relentless machine-gun rhythm of incoming texts.

You stayed on the bathroom floor for a full minute longer before finally forcing yourself upright and stumbling back toward the couch.

Elle.

Of course it was Elle.

There were three missed calls and six texts, each progressively less polite.

Where are you??Y/N pick up your phoneWhat the hell happened?You LEFT MEI had to finish the interview ALONECall me right now before I lose my mind

You stared at the screen, then hit call. She answered on the first ring.

“You left me!”

The volume of it made you wince and hold the phone a fraction away from your ear. “I know.”

“No, don’t ‘I know’ me,” she snapped. “Do you have any idea how insane that was? You stood up in the middle of the interview and vanished like someone had yanked you out with a stage hook. I had to freestyle thirty minutes of questions at BTS while trying not to look like I was also being abandoned by God.”

Despite everything, a hysterical little laugh almost made it out of you.

Elle heard it. “This is not funny.”

“I know,” you said again, quieter this time. “I know. I’m sorry.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then, suspiciously: “Are you crying?”

You wiped at your face and discovered fresh tears there. “No.”

“That sounded like a yes.”

“It sounded like jet lag.”

“Y/N.”

You sank down onto the couch. “I’m at the hotel.”

“No shit.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that like it’s useful.”

You covered your eyes with one hand. “Elle, I’m sorry. I just—something happened.”

Her tone shifted immediately, anger fraying at the edges into concern. “Did somebody say something to you?”

“No.”

“Did somebody touch you?”

“No.”

“Did one of them—”

“No,” you said more firmly this time. “Nothing like that. They were fine. Everyone was fine. I’m the one who wasn’t fine.”

Another pause.

When she spoke again, she sounded wary. “Then tell me what happened.”

You looked at your wrist. Looked at the sheet of hotel stationery with three names written in your rushed, ugly handwriting. Opened your mouth. Closed it again.

How did you say this out loud without sounding insane?

How did you tell your best friend that midway through an astrology icebreaker you’d realized the seven names and dates on your wrist might belong to seven globally famous men currently wondering why an American reporter had fled their building like she was being hunted?

You just couldn’t.

Not over the phone.

“Can you just come back?” you asked instead, and hated how small your voice sounded. “Please.”

Elle went quiet for two long seconds.

Then: “I’m already in the car.”

The relief that hit you was immediate and humiliating.

You curled into the corner of the couch and waited.

When the suite door finally opened, Elle came in looking like she’d been prepared to either kill someone or perform triage. Her hair had started to fall from its clip. Her cardigan was half-buttoned wrong. Her eyes went straight to your face and widened.

“Oh,” she said, all the leftover anger in her voice dying at once. “You look awful.”

“Thank you.”

“You know what I mean.”

She kicked her shoes off and came to sit beside you, close enough for your knees to knock together.

For a moment, neither of you said anything.

Then she held out her hand.

“Show me.”

You frowned. “Show you what?”

“Whatever made you run.”

The room seemed to sharpen around you.

You looked down at your lap. At your sleeve.

Then, very slowly, you shoved the fabric up your arm and turned your wrist over between you both.

Elle stared.

She’d seen it before, obviously. At work. Over lunch. In cabs. In bathrooms while the two of you touched up lipstick before events. The mark wasn’t new to her. But context was.

You used your other hand to point.

“K.S.,” you said. Your voice was barely above a whisper. “Kim Seokjin.”

Her face went still.

You dragged your finger to the first date. “December fourth, nineteen ninety-two.”

She didn’t blink.

You moved to the next set.

“M.Y. Min Yoongi. March ninth, nineteen ninety-three.”

Her mouth parted.

Then:

“J.H. Jung Hoseok,” she finished for you, her voice just as quiet now. “February eighteenth, nineteen ninety-four.”

You nodded once.

Neither of you moved.

Then Elle stood up so fast you startled.

“No.”

You watched her pace two steps away, turn, and pace back.

“No, absolutely not. No. That is not—” She broke off, pointed both hands at your wrist, then at you. “That is not a thing that gets to happen to a person in real life.”

“That is exactly what I said.”

“Oh my God.” She pressed both hands to the top of her head. “Oh my God.”

“Yep.”

“No, because hold on.” She crouched in front of you suddenly, snagged your wrist more gently than the movement suggested, and scanned the rest of the letters. “K.N. Kim Namjoon. P.J. Park Jimin. K.T. Kim Taehyung. J.J.—Jesus Christ—Jeon Jungkook.”

You gave a weak nod.

Elle sat back on her heels and just looked at you.

Then, because she was still Elle even in the face of cosmically rude revelations, she said, “This is actually the funniest thing that has ever happened.”

You stared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, immediately covering her mouth. “I know you’re having a crisis. I am too. But from an outside perspective this is absurd.”

You laughed once, helplessly, and it came out halfway to a sob.

That did it.

Elle moved back onto the couch and pulled you into her side without a word. You let her, too wrung out to pretend otherwise.

For a while the only sound in the room was the hum of the refrigerator and your uneven breathing evening out against her shoulder.

Finally she said, “They know.”

You pulled back enough to look at her. “What?”

“At least some of them.” Her expression had shifted again, sharper now, replaying the night with the kind of precision you usually brought to interviews. “Yoongi and Jimin looked weird the second you introduced yourself in Korean. I thought maybe they were just surprised you were fluent. But then once I told them your birthday—”

“You told them my birthday?”

She winced. “It was in your notebook.”

You groaned and covered your face with both hands.

“I know. I know. But hear me out,” she rushed on. “The second I said it, the whole room changed. Not in a bad way. Just—frozen. Like everyone had suddenly had the same horrible thought at once.”

You lowered your hands slowly.

“They know,” Elle repeated. “Or they suspect. There is no way they don’t.”

The words sent a fresh wave of panic through you.

And, under it, something stranger.

Relief.

Because the worst part of the last two hours had been the loneliness of it. The old loneliness, but sharpened into something frantic. The sense that you’d stumbled into a private apocalypse no one else could see.

But if they knew too—

Then you weren’t alone in it.

That realization should’ve calmed you more than it did.

Instead it left you blinking at the far wall, mind racing ahead into terrifying new territory.

“What if I’m wrong?” you said finally.

Elle turned to you so fast her ponytail slapped her shoulder. “Y/N.”

“I know how it sounds. I know it all matches, but what if—what if this is some insane statistical disaster and not what I think it is? What if only three of them match? What if the others don’t? What if I’m reading too much into it because I’ve spent my whole life wanting this mark to mean something?”

“You did not sprint out of a BTS interview because of statistics.”

“That is not the comforting sentence you think it is.”

She ignored that. “You know what I think?”

You looked at her, motioned for her to continue.

“I think you recognized it because some part of you has been waiting to.” She glanced down at your wrist again, softer now. “And I think the reason it hit you like a truck is because you’ve spent years making peace with being alone. So now that the universe has apparently decided to be dramatic about it, you don’t know what to do.”

That was close enough to the truth to hurt.

You looked away first.

Elle squeezed your knee. “So. New plan.”

“There’s a plan?”

“There’s always a plan. Mine currently involves finding alcohol in this ridiculous penthouse and forcing you to tell me whether each member was hotter in person.”

You let out a tired laugh. “That is not a plan.”

“It’s phase one.”

By the time she came back from the kitchen with two miniature champagne bottles she’d found chilling in a silver bucket, the knot in your chest had loosened by an inch. Not much, but enough.

You sat cross-legged on the couch, still in your interview clothes, and did the thing you’d been dreading.

You finished the list.

K.N. — Kim Namjoon — 9.12.94 P.J. — Park Jimin — 10.13.95 K.T. — Kim Taehyung — 12.30.95 J.J. — Jeon Jungkook — 9.1.97

Seven matches.

Seven.

You and Elle stared at the paper in grim silence for a full ten seconds.

Then she took a very deliberate sip of champagne and said, “So. Congratulations on your seven soulmates.”

You made a strangled sound into your own bottle. “Don’t.”

“I’m being supportive.”

“You’re being insane.”

“I’m adapting.”

That was one of the reasons you loved her. She let you have the panic without drowning in it too. Let it be horrifying and absurd at the same time.

Eventually, when the champagne was gone and you’d changed into one of the hotel bathrobes because the pencil skirt had started to feel like a punishment, the practical concerns finally crept in.

“What happens now?” you asked.

Elle tucked one leg under herself on the couch. “Well, tomorrow either you avoid them for the rest of the trip and spend the next decade wondering, or you talk to them.”

“That is a maliciously simple way to frame that.”

“It’s still true.”

You pressed the heel of your hand to your forehead. “I cannot talk to them.”

“You absolutely can.”

“No, I can interview them. That is not the same thing.”

“They’re still people.”

“Very famous people.”

“Still people.”

“With my life apparently tattooed on their arms.”

Elle considered that. “That’s fair. Slightly worse than people.”

You pointed at her. “Thank you.”

But even as the words left your mouth, you knew she was right.

Avoidance had always been your best skill outside of writing.

Not dealing. Delaying. Deflecting. Keeping your life moving so fast nothing could corner you in it.

Work helped. Travel helped. Loneliness, in a strange way, had helped most of all. It was easier to be alone than uncertain.

But this—

This was already uncertainty.

And whether you liked it or not, you had opened the door.

You barely slept.

When you did, it came in broken flashes. A tangle of dreams full of camera lights and unfamiliar hands and crowded rooms where everyone had your initials written on their skin except you. At one point you woke gasping, convinced you were underwater. At another you stared up at the ceiling for so long the dark outside the windows began to turn gray.

By five in the morning, you gave up entirely.

You padded barefoot into the kitchen, wrapped in your robe, and opened your laptop.

Your search history within the hour became deeply humiliating.

multiple soulmate marks meaningseven soulmatessoulmate initials different thicknesscan soulmate marks be wronghow rare are multiple soulmates

The internet was insultingly unhelpful.

Most articles dealt with one soulmate. A few with two. Three if fate was feeling especially adventurous. Anything beyond that slipped quickly from science into spirituality and from spirituality into women named Celeste selling consultations out of strip malls.

At six-thirty, after finding one forum thread in which a woman claimed she and her four soulmates were all accountants in Ohio, you shut the laptop and put your head down on the kitchen counter.

This was your life now.

At some point Elle joined you, took one look at your face, and wordlessly started making coffee.

“You look like roadkill,” she said ten minutes later, setting a mug in front of you.

“You already used that joke last week.”

“You have seven soulmates now. Sue me.”

That got a snort out of you.

The rest of the morning passed in a strange, suspended hush. You showered. Changed into a cream sweater and jeans. Tried on three different jackets and hated all of them. Ate two bites of toast and nearly gagged. Then forced down more when Elle glared at you until you did.

Around ten, her phone rang.

She glanced at the screen, then at you.

“Big Hit.”

Your stomach dropped all over again.

“Answer it.”

She did, switching immediately into the polished professional tone the office mostly never got to hear because she preferred chaos on principle.

You watched her expression change as she listened.

Surprise first, then relief, then something more thoughtful.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course. That should be fine.”

A pause.

Another.

“Thank you,” she said warmly. “We appreciate that very much.”

When she ended the call, you were already halfway out of your chair.

“What?”

Elle held up both hands. “Before you panic: they’re not filing a complaint.”

You froze.

“What?”

“They’re not filing a complaint,” she repeated. “Apparently the members asked that the incident not be escalated. Their team said you seemed overwhelmed, and they’d prefer to reschedule rather than make it formal.”

You sank slowly back into your seat.

The relief was so sudden it made you dizzy.

Then Elle smiled.

“And,” she added, “they’ve asked if you’d be willing to meet them again. Privately. At a restaurant they’ve rented out this afternoon.”

You stared at her.

“They rented out a restaurant?”

“That was also my first question.”

You looked down at your coffee, and then looked at your wrist. Looked back up.

“No.”

Elle folded her arms. “No?”

“No.”

“You are not moving to Alaska.”

Your head snapped up. “I didn’t say Alaska.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I was thinking Iceland, actually.”

“Worse.”

“I need distance.”

“You need therapy.”

“Probably!”

“Still not Iceland.”

You dragged both hands down your face.

There was a long silence.

Then, quietly: “What if they don’t want me? What if only some of them do?”

Elle’s expression changed.

All the teasing dropped out of her voice when she answered.

“Then you find that out,” she said simply. “And it hurts, maybe. And it’s messy. And you survive it. But hiding from it won’t make it less true.”

That sat between you. Heavy. Inevitable.

You hated when she was wise before noon.