#bts echo

The first time she heard him, she was thirteen years old. Not through a radio. Not through a television. Not through YouTube. —inside her head.

A voice—clear, honeyed, achingly beautiful—slipped into her mind like moonlight through a crack in her bedroom curtains.

At first, Avery Monroe thought she was losing her mind. She sat straight up in bed, tangled in lavender sheets, heart hammering as an unfamiliar boy’s voice sang softly somewhere deep behind her ribs. She didn’t understand the language then, only the emotion.

Longing. Hope. Loneliness so profound it made her chest physically ache. And then—nerves. Sharp and electric. Fear. Determination.

She pressed shaking hands over her ears, but it didn’t help. Because the sound wasn’t outside. It was him. Her soulmate.

“Mom,” Avery whispered the next morning, pale and wide-eyed over cereal, “I think something’s wrong with me.”

Her mother had gone very still. Because in their world, soulmates weren’t identified by matching marks or red strings. They were known through resonance.

A rare bond where one soulmate could hear the other’s strongest expressions—singing, crying, overwhelming emotion—before they ever met. Not everyone had it. Not everyone survived it easily, either.

“Oh,” her mother had said softly, almost sadly. “Baby…” and just like that, Avery’s life changed.

—————————————————

At fourteen, she bought her first pair of oversized headphones.

At fifteen, she never took them off unless she absolutely had to.

At sixteen, dance became survival. —if he sang, she moved. If his emotions crashed through her at night—exhaustion, pressure, desperate ambition—she danced until her muscles burned enough to drown him out.

Studio mirrors became her closest friends. Hip-hop. Contemporary. Jazz. Ballet. Anything loud enough. Anything physical enough. Because somewhere across the world, a boy she’d never met was chasing something massive. And every time he sang, she felt pieces of him.

The bruising perfectionism. The aching need to be better. The crushing weight of expectation. Sometimes joy, too. Rare, bright, golden joy. Those moments were her favorite.

At seventeen, Avery was in her Los Angeles apartment, stretching before class when she heard screaming. Not fear. Fans…so many fans. Then his voice. Older now. Richer. Confident. And suddenly, through his eyes—not literally, but enough to feel flashes—she sensed stadium lights—a stage….thousands….No… tens of thousands.

She ripped off her headphones and stared at the TV where her roommate had left on an awards show replay. Seven Korean men stood under blinding lights. And one of them—

“Oh my God.”

Jeon Jungkook—Golden vocalist. Global phenomenon. The voice she’d heard every night for four years…..Her soulmate was Jungkook.

Avery laughed…then cried…then laughed again because honestly? Of course the universe had a sick sense of humor. Not just a soulmate. A soulmate the entire world belonged to.

——————————————

After that, she told no one. Not her family. Not her best friend. Not even herself, sometimes. Because every year, more delusional people came forward claiming soulmate bonds with BTS. Fake stories. Forged resonance recordings. Public breakdowns. Some wanted fame. Some wanted proximity. Some wanted to own them.

And Avery? Avery wanted nothing. Nothing except peace. So she kept dancing.

———————————

Years passed. She became extraordinary. Not because she wanted fame—but because dance was the only place where Jungkook’s voice became something useful. She built a career from it. Backup tours. Award shows. Music videos….

And then—Military enlistment.

For the first time since she was thirteen…Silence.

No late-night humming. No vocal warmups. No sudden bursts of laughter in Korean she now understood fluently after years of subconscious exposure and deliberate study.

No tidal waves of emotion. The quiet was devastating. Then healing.

Avery hadn’t realized how much of her life had been built around surviving him until he was gone. For two years, she became only herself and she liked herself.

Then came the announcement.

BTS.

Comeback.

Arirang World Tour.

Her headphones went back on the second she saw it. “Absolutely not,” she muttered to herself in her New York dance studio.

But fate, apparently, laughed again. Because three months later, after an international audition with over ten thousand dancers…

“Avery Monroe?” She looked up.

The choreographer smiled, “Congratulations. Welcome to the Arirang Tour.”

————————————————

Seoul hit differently when your soulmate was somewhere in the city. The moment Avery landed, her chest constricted. Not overwhelming. But there. Like a familiar frequency had clicked back online. Jungkook was close.

Older.

Steadier.

Still intense—but no longer drowning.

His emotions now felt controlled, sharpened by experience. And when he sang during the first full rehearsal… Avery nearly missed her count. His voice slammed into her like memory itself—richer, deeper, matured—and every cell in her body recognized him instantly.

She stumbled.

“Hey, you okay?” another dancer whispered.

“Yeah,” Avery lied, adjusting her headphones.

Across the massive rehearsal space, Jungkook paused mid-note. His head turned slightly, like he’d felt something too.

Avery’s blood froze. ‘No…..No, no, no.’ She kept her gaze down. ‘Just dance,’ She told herself. That was all she was here to do.

Dance.

Blend in.

Survive the tour.

Because Jeon Jungkook didn’t need another person claiming him. And Avery Monroe would rather die than become one more burden. Even if every beat of her soul already belonged to him.

——————————————————

From across the stage, Jungkook frowned. For one strange second, above the music, above the noise. He could’ve sworn someone familiar was there. Not visually. Something deeper. A rhythm. A feeling.

Like hearing the first note of a song he’d known his whole life. And somehow…it was coming from one blonde American dancer in oversized headphones who refused to look at him.

———————————