#tae

He’d still been sensitive enough to notice the change, and the very next day you came into the classroom to find a brand new grape-scented gel pen and a notepad with strawberry prints. Not to mention the brand new deskmate in the form of a bowl-cut teenager Tae. 

He’d been handsome and charming even then, but nothing compared to the thirty year old version of him which now sat next to you inside his car. 

“We don't have to stay long, I swear.” you told him from the passenger’s seat, more than a little guilty for making you both miss the movie tonight. “I really forgot I promised May I'd come tonight.”

“Babe, it's fine.” Taehyung chuckled under his breath, following the GPS and taking a smooth right turn. “I didn’t complain once about this.” 

“I know. You never complain.” which somehow made you feel worse. 

“As long as we get to hang out, I don't care.” he shrugged, carefree and gentle as always. 

“Okay.”

“Just relax.” he laughed again, placing his warm palm on your thigh, which did the opposite of relaxing you. “Is this the house?”

You pointed to the next house over through the windshield. “It's the next one, but we can park here and walk up.” 

You could already see a few cars that you knew belonged to your friends and their friends, in front of May’s newly acquired home. Taehyung saw the same parking spot you had noticed and used one hand to parallel park in a way that shouldn’t be as attractive as it was. 

You even had to distract yourself by checking the road, trying to keep busy and useful, with little hints of ‘a little more to the right’ and ‘now two inches ahead’, which he absolutely did not need. But you needed it, because focusing on how his biceps bulged every time he maneuvered and noticing the veins of his forearm would do very little for your mental health right now. 

“Can you reach the flowers in the back?” Taehyung asked as he turned off the engine of the car. 

“I think so.” you unbuckled your seatbelt. 

As you reached through the space between your seat and the driver’s, carefully reaching for the pretty flowers you bought to bring tonight, Taehyung got out of the car and ran to your side to open the door for you. And you knew him long enough to know he’d planned for this.

“And they say chivalry is dead.” you mused, letting him help you hop off with a familiar hand at your waist.  

“‘They’ sound dumb.” Taehyung grinned, proud of himself. 

You let him take the flowers from you, just so you could fix your dress that had moved up during the ride and the hop; it was still a nice dress that didn’t uncover much of your skin if you were standing. Definitely not ‘movies appropriate’, but perfect for a housewarming party such as this one. 

May had promised you that it wouldn’t be a party at all, but a get together so she could show off her new place to her closest friends. Which definitely included you, but maybe not your plus one. 

Even if the man himself looked sinful in simple blue jeans, a white shirt and red jacket with fun patches you knew he’d ironed in during a moment of fashion boredom. It also didn’t help your case that he’d styled his hair tonight in messy little waves that sat away from his forehead, when you told him once this week that you liked that look on him. 

The walk from the car to the right house was a short one, not enough for your feet to hurt in your heels, and much less for you to get lost, but Taehyung still stood next to you like you were about to get too far away from him. 

“Do you think we need to knock?” you asked once you reached the front door, hearing laughs and music from the inside. 

“It's your friend's housewarming, you tell me.” he said, handing you the flowers so you could be the one to deliver them. 

“I think we're good.” you decided. 

You turned the doorknob, finding it unlocked, and let yourself and Taehyung in. The small mountain of shoes at the entrance told you this was a no-shoes new house, and you were thankful for taking off your heels before your feet started to hurt too much. Taehyung was taking off his red sneakers when you heard a squeal. 

“There she is!” May showed up at the entrance of the living room, looking gorgeous with a pink dress that looked like a cloud. 

“Was ‘cotton candy’ the theme for tonight?” you laughed, rushing to meet her and offer her a hug.  

“The theme is ‘this is my new house and I’ll wear whatever the fuck I want’.” she shrugged, taking the flowers with the biggest smile. “You brought me flowers!”

“Your real gift is being delivered later this week.” you told her, as if flowers weren’t an appropriate gift for an achievement like this. 

May was about to wave you off, to tell you not to worry, but then she saw something over your shoulder, which made her jaw drop. At least she had the common sense to whisper her next question: “You brought Taehyung?” 

“Is that okay?” you asked, even if you already knew the answer. 

“Just don't drool on my new carpet.” she teased, pushing past you to hug your friend. “Hey, Taetae, long time, huh? Feel right at home!” 

“Thanks, May-ssi.” Taehyung hugged her back, but his hands still looked for the spaces on her body that were covered by her dress. “I like what you did with the place.” 

“You should see upstairs.” she winked, walking ahead and leading the two of you to where the others were hanging out.  

“Seriously, the spare room is going to see me more often than my boyfriend's couch.” Jimin was sitting on the arm of a chair he was sharing with Seokjin; both men were your friends you met in college.  

“If it has a bed, then it definitely should.” you snorted, wondering which ‘boyfriend’ Jimin meant this time. You hoped it was Hoseok, but the couch mentioned made you guess it was probably Jungkook. “Did we miss the tour?”

“Just the first round, I'll take you around later.” May explained, grabbing you by the wrist and waving Jimin to follow. “We're about to make margaritas in my new blender.” 

“Oh, nice.”

You didn’t feel like separating from Taehyung right now, especially when you knew he’d be the odd man out; even if he’d already been introduced to everyone in the house at least once before and he was the social butterfly out of the two of you. You only let May and Jimin lead you away because Namjoon was already getting up to greet Taehyung in that little half-hug, half-pat on the back that boys do when they are pretending to be more familiar than they actually are. 

The kitchen was definitely a feature area in the house, just a little ahead from the living room, but still close enough that you could see everything. It was much bigger than May’s old one, and everything looked brand new. It made you really proud of the girl, when you knew she had been saving for years after living in a shoe-box apartment so she could splurge like this. 

“Wow, you even have a kitchen island!” you gushed, knowing it had been one of the deal makers for her to get this place. 

“I knoooow, she’s my baby!” May caressed the island with light hands, as if a harsher touch could actually scratch the marble. 

“She’s very pretty.” you entered the kitchen to help out making the drinks. 

May immediately claimed the spot in front of the blender like a mother hen, peeling the plastic off one last button you hadn’t even noticed still had a corner lifting, while Jimin laughed and reached for the bag of ice on the counter. 

You grabbed the limes and started cutting them in halves with the help of a cutting board, the clean citrus smell mixing with the sharp bite of tequila the second May twisted the cap open.

“So you brought Tae, huh?” Jimin didn’t take long enough to bring it up. 

“He's my best friend, it's not weird.” you justified, watching Jimin steal one of the lime wedges only to wince when the juice hit his tongue straight.

“I'm your best friend.” May corrected, spreading salt on a small plate and the ice was dumped into the pitcher.

You rolled your eyes. “He's my boy best friend.”

“Press her once more and she'll use the right word.” Jimin told May with a wiggle of his eyebrows. 

“Stop, it's not like that.” you grumbled, looking out to the living room to make sure no one outside the kitchen was listening. 

“You want it to be.” May said, and you had no arguments for her when she knew too much. “I'm just saying bringing him here tonight is a couplely move.”

“There are plenty of single people here.” you wiped your fingers on a paper towel, passed May the last lime half, and stepped closer when she started adding everything in, all three of you crowding around the blender.

“Looking to hook up with other single people.” May was not only the owner of a new house, but of very good points as well, it seemed. “Just ask Alyssa.”

You wish the mention of the girl’s name didn’t hit you square in the chest like it did. It’s not like you had anything against her, not really… She had been nothing but nice to you ever since you met, the kind of girl that lights up rooms and people write songs about. But she’d also had her eyes on Taehyung every time you brought him around. 

“Alyssa is here?” you asked again, because you hadn’t seen her when you first came in. 

“Worried?” Jimin asked, already knowing the answer when your shoulders dropped. 

You turned around before you could stop yourself, eyes crossing the open space of the living room until they found Taehyung near the wall, one shoulder tipped back against it like he had settled there for only a second and somehow gotten stuck. 

Alyssa stood close enough that it made something in your stomach pull tight, her hand brushing his arm when she laughed, head tilted just a little too prettily, the whole thing carrying that soft, easy kind of flirting girls like her never had to force. Taehyung laughed too, looking down at her with that warm attention that always did dangerous things to your insides, and even from the kitchen you could see how comfortable he looked standing there with her, how natural it seemed, and the sight hit in one clean, ugly wave that sat hot and heavy under your ribs.

May slid the blender pitcher closer to the line of cups and announced that the margaritas were done, Jimin already reaching to help pass glasses around just as Seokjin and Namjoon drifted into the kitchen like they had followed the sound of people having a better time somewhere else. 

There was no big call for everyone to move, no moment made out of it, just the easy shuffle of people grabbing their drinks and heading toward the patio together, talking over one another on the way out. 

You turned on instinct, your own drink already in your hand, ready to ask Taehyung if he wanted to come with you, but stopped when you caught Alyssa handing Taehyung's phone back to him, as if he’d just typed something on it. The thought landed quietly, not sharp enough to make you angry, only enough to make you step back from calling to your best friend. 

Because if something was happening there, if they wanted to keep talking, then you were not about to get in the middle of it.

The backyard looked just as new as the rest of the house, a clean stone patio stretched out from the back doors, stepping down into a small square of trimmed grass bordered by dark rocks and carefully placed shrubs. 

Off to one side, May had already set up a couple of outdoor couches with cream cushions that still looked too untouched, like nobody had fully broken them in yet, while a few lawn chairs were scattered around in a loose circle as if people had started claiming spots before the party even properly settled. There were tall planters near the fence, soft garden lights fixed low along the edges.

You ended up dropping into the space between Jimin and Seokjin on one of the couches, tucking one leg under yourself as you brought the margarita to your mouth for another careful sip. It had way too much tequila for your taste, the kind that burned first and tasted like lime second, so you took it slow and let the cold glass rest against your thigh between sips.

“Too strong?” Jimin asked, one look at your face giving you away.

“May still makes drinks like she was trying to disinfect us from the inside out.” you swallowed and gave the drink a suspicious look.

“That means it’s a good drink.” Seokjin let out a laugh into his own cup. 

“No, it meant she lost count halfway through pouring.” you corrected with a little grimace.

“Same thing.” Jin said with a shrug. 

Jimin leaned forward, whispering conspiratorily: “Give it ten minutes and Namjoon is going to start talking about real estate like he personally helped build the house.”

“I heard that–” Namjoon huffed from one of the lawn chairs where he was lounging.

“I wasn’t hiding it from you.” Jimin shot back.

You smiled into your glass, shoulders loosening a little as Seokjin bumped his knee lightly against yours.

“Remember her old apartment?” Seokjin asked.

“I still have nightmares about that bathroom.” Jimin made a face immediately. “You could brush your teeth while sitting on the toilet.”

“That was an efficient design!” you said, a little defensive even despite your laughs. That bathroom had seen a lot of your hungover mornings and it never told your secrets. 

“That was poverty!” May yelled from across the patio, making all three of you laugh.

“And yet,” Seokjin went on, looking around with exaggerated seriousness, “we all still came over every weekend like we were living the free life.”

“We were twenty-two and stupid.” Jimin said with a raise of his glass.

“We were twenty-two and jobless.” you raised your own glass just to feel young again.

Jimin turned to you with fake offense all over his pretty face: “I had a job.”

“You worked at your uncle’s café two afternoons a week.” Namjoon rebutted with a scoff. 

“It was still employment!” Jimin whined. 

Seokjin nodded. “Part-time nepo baby.”

Jimin gasped, hand to chest, and you finally laughed around the next sip, wincing right after when the tequila hit again:

“To May’s new house.”

“To May’s new house.” you echoed, touching your glass lightly to theirs as the conversation rolled on like it always had, easy and warm and worn in from years of knowing exactly how to pull laughter out of each other.

And then you noticed him almost right away, even with the patio full enough to split your attention. Through the glass doors, Taehyung paused on the other side of the porch light, eyes moving over the backyard like he was searching for someone specific, and your heart gave one small, stupid jump the second his face changed when he found you. 

It was immediate, easy to read even from where you sat. Something in him lit up, softening his whole face before he even stepped outside, and you hated what that one look did to you after everything you had just told yourself in the kitchen.

Jimin noticed too, because of course he did. He cleared his throat beside you and nudged your arm with his elbow in a way that was far too knowing to be innocent, then pushed himself up with his drink and casually abandoned his spot, moving to annoy Namjoon’s personal space. 

By the time you looked back up, Taehyung was already there, catching the open space like it had always been meant to be his. He sat down beside you without hesitation, pulling off his red jacket before you could ask what he was doing, and draped it over your legs in one easy movement, covering your bare thighs and the side of your dress the night air had started getting to. The gesture was so natural it almost felt practiced.

Your eyes lifted on instinct, scanning past his shoulder, almost expecting Alyssa to appear behind him or step out onto the patio a second later, but the glass doors only showed the warm blur of people still inside, moving through the kitchen and living room with drinks of their own. 

“I got this for you.” Taehyung held up a small mandarin between his fingers, and it looked almost ridiculous in his hand, bright and glossy and so much smaller than his palm that it made you smile before you could keep yourself in check. 

Even from that close, you could spot the tiny hot-stamped Jeju sticker pressed onto the peel, the kind that made it obvious this was not just any fruit someone grabbed from a corner store, but from somewhere expensive.

“Where did you find that?” you chuckled, already feeling the rest of the patio blur at the edges as your attention settled fully on him.

“May’s fridge.” he shrugged, like snooping through someone’s kitchen was the most normal thing in the world.

“When she said feel at home, I don’t think that’s what she meant–” 

Taehyung only shrugged, like of course he had stolen fruit out of someone else’s fridge for you, like that did not need any further explanation. Then he lowered his eyes to the mandarin and started peeling it with a care that made your chest feel strangely tight. His thumb pressed into the skin just enough to break it, the peel lifting back in soft strips under his fingers, and each little squeeze released that fresh, sweet citrus scent into the cold air between you. 

You watched his hands more than you meant to, the steady way he worked, unhurried and precise, and it did something unfair to your heart when it should have been the simplest thing in the world. But it was coming from him, which made it feel like more.

With was always more with Taehyung. 

Once the fruit was bare in his palm, he split off one piece and started pulling away the thin white strings clinging to it, taking his time with the same quiet focus. You knew exactly why he was doing it. He had seen you pick at them before, complaining about the texture until only the clean pulp was left.

“Damn, let the girl eat some fibers.” Seokjin said from your other side, amusement easy in his voice.

Taehyung did not even look up. “I like enabling her.”

“You’re the only one.” Seokjin shot back, the kind of teasing that had always belonged to the two of you.

Taehyung’s mouth twitched, but there was something a little firmer under it when he answered: 

“She only needs one, so.” he kept going, stripping the last stubborn bit of white from the piece between his fingers like Seokjin had not said a thing.

One of the girls sitting near May let out a dramatic sound. 

“That’s actually sick. My boyfriend won’t even bring me water, and you’re out here peeling the strings off too?”

Another voice laughed with her, but it all blurred a little at the edges for you. You almost waited for Taehyung to correct it, to say it was not like that, that he was just being nice. He never did. He only looked at you, the peeled piece of fruit held up near your mouth, his eyes steady enough to make your pulse trip over itself. 

When you leaned in and took it with your lips, his gaze stayed there the whole time, fixed on your mouth in a way that made the sweet burst of juice feel secondary to the heat climbing up your neck.

“I’m not always on board with stealing, but this is actually really good.” you said after swallowing, still tasting the burst of sweet juice on your tongue.

Taehyung smiled under his breath like that had been the point all along, already working on the next piece before the first one had barely gone down. The orange peel, the thin white strings, even two small seeds he had picked out rested carelessly on the knees of his jeans, and he did not seem bothered by any of it. 

His hands kept moving with the same quiet patience, making a mess of himself so you would not have to deal with any of it. 

“Alyssa brought them for May.” he said, glancing down at the fruit as he cleaned another segment for you. “As a house gift, I think. She said they came from some farmer’s market near her place that gets them from Jeju Island.”

“Oh.”

“I asked for the guy’s number. If you want more, I can get them for you.” he gave one small shrug, like this had all been obvious. 

Your stomach fluttered again at the mention of Alyssa, but this time it turned on itself almost right away, the ugly little knot loosening as fast as it had formed. You looked at him for a second, then at the fruit in his hand, and the alcohol warming your chest made your mouth move before your pride could stop it: “I thought she gave you her number.”

“Why would I need her number?” Taehyung finally looked up, eyebrows pulling together like the idea had not crossed his mind once. 

“Have you looked at her?” you let out a soft scoff, trying to play it off even as your face felt warmer than it should have. 

He held the next piece up to your mouth before answering, waiting until you leaned in and took it from his fingers. 

“She’s not my type.” he said simply.

Jimin, who had absolutely been listening from his seat this whole time, made a delighted sound like he had just been handed gossip and dessert at the same time. 

“What’s your type, Taehyung-ssi?” the man wanted to know immediately. 

Taehyung did not even hesitate. He kept his eyes on the mandarin in his hands as he peeled away another stubborn string, but the corner of his mouth lifted. 

“Someone who still uses gel pens to write notes and refuses to eat fiber unless it comes from popcorn.”

The reactions that followed stayed soft everywhere but under your own skin. One of the girls let out an immediate, breathy ‘aw’, another groaned like she had just witnessed something unfair, and Jimin’s mouth curved into that deeply satisfied little smile of someone who had seen this coming from ten miles away. 

Beside you, Seokjin lifted his hand toward Taehyung for a high five over the boldness of the words, only to be completely ignored as Taehyung kept working on the fruit like nothing had happened. 

Seokjin looked at his own hand for a second, then slapped it against his other palm himself, and that was what earned the quiet burst of laughter from the group.

“Is there something you didn’t tell us?” May asked from across the patio, narrowing her eyes at the two of you with instant suspicion. “You would tell me if you’re dating, right?”

“We’re not.” Taehyung glanced up at that, then back down to the mandarin in his hands. Something in your chest dipped before he added, just as simply: “I was hoping we would be, after tonight.”

You turned to look at him so fast your shoulder brushed his. “What?”

“Our movie date got cut short.” only then did he lift his eyes to yours, and there was nothing dramatic in his face, nothing played up for the people around you. He just looked at you openly, like this was the easiest truth in the world to say. “Now all I have left is peeling mandarins and hoping you understand what I’m doing.”

For a second, you could only stare at him.

The patio did not go silent. People were still talking around you, May was still laughing somewhere to your left, a chair scraped lightly over stone, and somebody inside the house opened one of the sliding doors just enough for a swell of music to spill out before it shut again. 

But all of it felt farther away now, softened at the edges, like the whole night had folded in around the small space the two of you occupied on the patio couch.

Taehyung, meanwhile, stayed exactly where he was, knee pressed lightly to yours under the weight of his jacket still draped over your legs. He picked a seed from the next segment and dropped it onto his jeans with the rest of the mess, not caring in the slightest what he looked like.

“So,” he said, quieter now, only for you. “Did it get the point across?”

You looked at the fruit in his hand, at the white strings gathered over the blue denim on his knees, at the bright peel curled near his leg, then back at his face. He was watching you with that same open steadiness, like he was not nervous at all, like saying what he meant had never once felt unnatural to him.

Your stomach fluttered so hard it almost hurt.

“Maybe a little.” you murmured.

“A little?” his eyebrows lifted.

“You might have to keep going.” your heart was fluttering like crazy in your chest. 

The grin that spread over his face came slow and warm, lighting him up in a way that made your chest squeeze all over again. 

“That’s fine.” he said, already lifting the next perfect piece to your mouth. “I bought myself at least another five minutes with this one.”

You were full on expecting things to become awkward between you and Taehyung, after the small and blunt, but very honest confession that passed between the two of you, in front of all of your other friends, no less. Instead, even when it was just the two of you inside his car, his fingers smelling of mandarin juice and you smelling of the perfume that clung to his jacket you were now wearing, the mood was light. 

Well, as light as it could be, now that you knew tonight was supposed to be your first date with your best friend. It was all so surreal to you, that you couldn’t find the right words to say, or even any wrong ones, just to break the silence. And Taehyung clearly noticed it, too, when he started driving away from May’s new neighborhood and said: 

“Was I out of line?” his tone was low and calm, so much so that you almost missed the question.  

“Huh?” you looked at him, noticing how both hands on the steering wheel now. You shook your head right away. “No, you were… You. Which, for the record, is how I like you.”

“Careful with that word now, babe.” his shoulders seemed to relax, but just a smidge. “I might think you mean it.” 

“You peeled me an expensive mandarin, of course I mean it.” you chuckled, taking your own leap of faith and resting your hand on his thigh, just like he had done to you so many times before.  

“That’s what did it, huh?” his right hand rested on top of yours, and as much as you’d held hands before, it never felt quite like this.  

“Actually, what did it was you bribing my desk-mate to exchange places with you so you could sit by my side in school.” you told him with a new laugh, feeling the small clench of his fingers around yours. “The mandarin only reminded me you’ve always been like this with me.”

Taehyung let your words sink in, the fact that you had a crush on him for decades now. You watched his small pout disappear just as fast as it appeared, like he wondered, just for a moment, how much time you lost by being young and not knowing any better. But then he took your hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing your knuckles, like he decided no time would be wasted from now on. 

“So am I dropping you off?” Taehyung asked you, and there was a lot more behind those words than you might have been expecting. “Or do I get a little more time tonight?” 

“Can you peel this one for breakfast tomorrow?” you pulled the second mandarin from the jacket’s pocket, making Taehyung laugh so hard it filled the car. 

“I definitely can.” 

The conversation kept flowing as he drove, easy and unforced, moving from one thought to the next with the kind of rhythm that only came from knowing someone for years. 

It was light, familiar, full of the little things that would have sounded meaningless to anyone else, but with him it never felt like filling silence. Your hand stayed in his over the center console, his thumb brushing yours every now and then as the city passed outside in quiet stretches of yellow light.

Nothing about it felt staged or fragile, nothing about it made you nervous in the way new things usually did for you. If anything, it felt like stepping into something that had been waiting for you both for a very long time, and now that you were finally here, there was no awkwardness to it at all. 

The walk from the car to the elevator of his building was quiet, your heels clicking softly beside his sneakers. His red jacket still hung over your shoulders, carrying his warmth and that faint cologne you’d known for years. Taehyung kept one hand lightly at the small of your back, guiding you without any real pressure, like he just needed the contact.

Inside the elevator, the doors slid shut and the soft hum filled the small space. You leaned against the mirrored wall, watching him press the button for his floor. When he turned back to you, the air felt thicker. He stepped closer, not quite crowding you, but close enough that you could see the tiny flecks of gold in his eyes and smell the faint citrus still clinging to his fingers.

“Hi.” he murmured, almost silly after everything tonight.

“Hi.” you whispered back, biting down on a smile.

The elevator dinged far too soon. Taehyung took your hand again as you stepped out into the quiet hallway, his thumb brushing your knuckles the whole way to his door.

He unlocked it with one hand, pushing the door open and letting you step inside first. The familiar scent of his apartment wrapped around you, clean laundry, a hint of sandalwood, and something that was just undeniably him. You kicked off your heels by the door out of habit, toes sinking into the soft rug. Taehyung followed, toeing off his red sneakers and setting them neatly beside yours like they belonged there.

The click of the door closing behind him sounded louder than it should have.

For a second you both just stood there in the entryway, the weight of the night settling around you. Then Taehyung moved.

One hand came up to rest on the door beside your head, the other gently cupped the side of your face, thumb brushing your cheekbone. He stepped in until his body was only a breath away from yours, caging you in without trapping you; tall, warm, and so close you could feel the heat radiating off his chest through his white shirt.

His eyes searched yours, dark and steady, a tiny furrow between his brows like he was holding his breath.

“I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” he said quietly, voice barely above a whisper. “But if it feels wrong… if it’s awkward… we stop. We go back to mandarins and movie nights and I’ll still be the happiest guy in the world just being your best friend. Okay?”

Your heart was hammering so loudly you were sure he could hear it. You nodded, swallowing past the flutter in your throat.

“Okay.”

Taehyung leaned in slowly, giving you every chance to pull away. His nose brushed yours first, soft and tentative. Then his lips touched yours, gentle and warm, testing. The first press was feather-light, almost careful, like he was afraid the years between you might shatter if he pushed too hard.

For one heartbeat it felt like the world held its breath with you.

Then something clicked.

His lips moved against yours with quiet certainty, tilting his head just enough to fit better, and the kiss deepened naturally, sweetly, like breathing. There was no awkwardness, no clash of noses or hesitation in rhythm. Just warmth, the faint taste of mandarin and the way his hand slid from your cheek to the back of your neck, fingers threading gently into your hair.

A soft sound escaped you, half sigh, half relief, and Taehyung answered it with a tiny, involuntary hum against your mouth, like the tension he’d been carrying for years finally unraveled.

When he pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against yours, both of you breathing a little faster, his eyes were shining.

“Fuck.” he whispered, a soft laugh coloring the word. “That didn’t feel like breaking anything.”

“No… it felt like finally starting.” you let out a shaky laugh too, your hands having found their way to his chest at some point, fingers curled into his shirt. 

His thumb brushed your bottom lip, eyes following the motion with open wonder.

“Yeah,” he murmured, voice warm and a little rough. “Yeah.”

He kissed you again, slower this time, deeper, but still unhurried, like he wanted to memorize every second of it. One hand stayed at the back of your neck, the other sliding down to your waist, pulling you gently closer until your bodies pressed together. The kiss stayed sweet, but there was a quiet thrill underneath it now, a spark that made your stomach flip and your fingers tighten in his shirt.

When you finally parted, Taehyung didn’t step back. He stayed right there, caged around you against the door, smiling that small, private smile you’d only ever seen aimed at you.

You let out a soft, breathless laugh: “We just kissed.”

“We did.” he whispered back, eyes crinkling with quiet joy. His thumb brushed your cheek again, like he couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to do that now. “And it was… good. Really good.”

“Really good.” you echoed, feeling giddy and warm all over.

Taehyung pressed one last gentle kiss to the corner of your mouth before finally stepping back just enough to let you breathe. He took your hand, lacing your fingers together, and tugged you gently away from the door.

“Come here.” he said, voice soft and a little shy as he led you down the short hallway into the living room. 

The space was familiar just like the rest of the apartment, the big comfortable couch you’d both fallen asleep on during countless movie nights, the low lamp casting a warm glow that never seemed to be turned off, no matter how much you pointed out his energy bill.

You both dropped onto the couch, knees bumping, and suddenly the giggles hit. Soft, unstoppable little laughs that came from pure relief and disbelief.

“I can’t believe you’re finally my girl.” Taehyung laughed under his breath, and if it was anyone else saying those words, you would have cringed. But it was Tae, so the words landed so sweetly that your chest fluttered hard. 

“Your girl?” you repeated, teasing but unable to hide how much you liked hearing it.

“Yeah.” he sounded almost shy now, the confident Taehyung from the patio giving way to the boy who once bought you a grape gel pen just to make up for embarrassing you. “If you want to be.”

The moment stretched tender and sweet between you until Taehyung’s expression shifted into something more careful, more concerned.

“Hey… you’re not drunk, right?” he asked, brows furrowing slightly. “May’s margaritas are no joke. You said they were strong.”

“I’m fine, Tae. I barely drank half of it.” you shook your head quickly, smiling at how thoughtful he was even now. “The tequila hit hard at first, but I’m perfectly sober, I promise.”

“Okay. But just in case… wait here.” he studied your face for a second longer, then nodded, still looking a little protective. 

Before you could protest, he stood up and headed toward the kitchen, his socked feet quiet on the floor. 

While he was gone, you shrugged off his red jacket, folding it neatly and laying it over the arm of the couch. The cool air of the apartment brushed against your skin now that you were no longer covered by the heavy fabric. Your dress suddenly felt a little shorter, a little more revealing than it had all night, the neckline sitting lower, the hem riding up just enough on your thighs as you sat with your legs tucked under you.

You were suddenly very aware of how much you were showing, and even more aware that Taehyung would notice the second he came back.

The thought sent another flutter through your stomach, nervous, but the good kind.

You heard the fridge door close, the soft clink of a glass bottle, and then his footsteps returning. When Taehyung stepped back into the living room with the cold bottle of water in hand, his eyes did exactly what you expected: they flicked down to your bare shoulders, the curve of your collarbones, the way the dress now clung a little differently without the jacket hiding you.

He paused for half a second, throat working as he swallowed. Then he cleared it softly and continued toward you, handing you the water with a small, warm smile that didn’t quite hide the new heat in his gaze.

“Here.” he said, voice a touch lower than before. “Drink some.”

You took the cold bottle from him, your fingers brushing his in a way that felt more intentional now. The first sip of water was refreshing against the lingering warmth of the margarita and the heat still blooming under your skin from his kisses. Taehyung watched you the whole time, eyes soft but noticeably darker as they traced the line of your throat and then dropped lower.

“You look really pretty like this.” he cleared his throat quietly, a small, shy smile tugging at his lips. 

“Like what?” you asked, teasing even though your cheeks warmed.

“Without my jacket hiding you.” his gaze flicked down again, then back to your face, almost apologetic. “I don’t know where to put my hands now.”

The honest admission made you laugh softly, the sound light and affectionate. You set the water on the coffee table and shifted closer on the couch until your knees pressed together. 

“You can put them on me, Tae.” you told him easily. “We’re not exactly strangers.”

He let out a breath that sounded half-relieved, half-nervous, and reached for you. One warm palm settled carefully on your bare thigh, just below the hem of your dress, while the other came up to cup the side of your neck. His thumb stroked your skin in slow, soothing circles. The touch was gentle, still testing, like he was giving you every chance to guide him or slow him down.

For a moment you just sat there like that, sitting close, breathing each other in, the quiet hum of the apartment wrapping around you. Then Taehyung’s eyes drifted to the side, landing on the second mandarin you’d pulled from his jacket pocket earlier and left on the coffee table.

A small, fond smile crossed his face. 

“I know you said you wanted that for breakfast, but you can have it now, if you’re hungry. We didn’t eat much tonight.” he murmured, voice low and a little rough. “You want me to peel it?”

You nodded, biting your lip to hide how much the simple offer affected you. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

He picked up the fruit with the hand that had been on your neck, but his fingers were noticeably less steady than they’d been on the patio, a faint tremble as he started working the peel. The citrus scent bloomed between you again, sharp and sweet, mixing with the warm sandalwood of his apartment. 

You watched his hands, the way his long fingers pressed into the skin, peeling it back in careful strips. Juice glistened on his fingertips, and every now and then his eyes would flick up to yours, checking, wanting.

When he finally split off a clean segment and began pulling away the thin white strings with the same patient focus as before, you felt the familiar flutter low in your stomach, only stronger now, heavier with everything that had already changed tonight.

Taehyung held the piece up between you, offering it like he had on the patio. But this time, instead of simply taking it with your lips, you leaned forward and closed your mouth around it… and around the tips of his fingers.

The juice burst sweet across your tongue. You let your lips linger for a second longer than necessary, tongue brushing softly against his skin to catch the sticky citrus that clung there. Your eyes stayed locked on his the whole time, wide, warm, and a little daring.

Taehyung’s breath hitched sharply. His whole body went still except for the faint tremor that ran through the hand still resting on your thigh. His pupils blew wide, dark and stunned, as he watched you slowly pull back, lips sliding off his fingers with one last gentle swipe of your tongue.

“You can’t do this to me…” he whispered, voice hoarse and wrecked in the softest way. The words came out almost like a plea, but his eyes were shining with pure want. “Not after waiting this long. Not when you look at me like that.”

The air between you felt heavier now, thicker with the citrus scent still clinging to his fingers and the quiet sound of your breathing. You smiled, a little shy, a little bold, and licked your lips once more just to watch the way his gaze followed the motion.

Before you could say anything, Taehyung’s voice dropped even lower, warm and curious. 

“Let me have a taste too.” he murmured, eyes flicking from your mouth back to the half-peeled mandarin in his hand. “See what all the fuss is about.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he broke off another small segment, but this time he didn’t offer it to you. He popped it into his own mouth first, chewing slowly, juice glistening on his lower lip. Then he leaned in, one hand still resting high on your thigh.

The kiss started soft again, like you were learning he liked, just the press of his lips against yours, but the moment his tongue traced the seam of your mouth, it deepened into something far more sensual. 

He tasted like sweet mandarin and warmth, and he explored you unhurriedly, like he wanted to learn every detail. Taehyung’s teeth caught your bottom lip in a gentle nibble, tugging lightly before soothing it with his tongue. You sighed into him, and he answered by sucking softly on your tongue, slow and drawing another quiet sound from your throat.

Your hands moved on instinct, sliding up into his messy waves, fingers threading through the soft strands and tugging just enough to make him hum against your mouth. The vibration sent a shiver down your spine. Taehyung’s free hand didn’t stay still either, it slipped beneath the hem of your dress, palm gliding slowly up the bare skin of your thigh, stopping just short of where the fabric ended higher up. His thumb stroked lazy circles there, teasing the edge of your underwear without pushing further, like he was still giving you every chance to set the pace.

Tae pulled back just enough to breathe, lips brushing yours with every word: 

“God, you taste even better like this.” he whispered, voice rough and shaky with want. His fingers flexed gently on your thigh, the other hand still tangled in your hair. “Tell me if I’m going too fast, okay? I just… I’ve thought about kissing you for so long. Touching you.”

You answered by pulling him back in, your own hands tightening in his hair as the kiss picked up again, deeper, slower, more exploratory. His palm slid a little higher under your dress, the heat of his touch making your stomach tighten with anticipation, while your fingers scratched lightly at his scalp, earning you another low, pleased sound from deep in his chest.

Everything stayed tender, but the spark from the mandarin moment had ignited into a slow-burning flame that was quickly becoming impossible to ignore.

You pulled back just enough to catch your breath, chest rising and falling quickly. Taehyung’s eyes were dark, lips slightly swollen, hair deliciously messed up from your fingers. His hand was still warm under the hem of your dress, resting high on your thigh, but you wanted it closer.

“Stand up for me?” he asked softly, voice husky but gentle, like he was still checking if this was okay.

You nodded, heart hammering. He helped you to your feet, both of you rising from the couch in one fluid motion. Once you were standing, Taehyung stayed seated for a second longer, looking up at you with open wonder. Then he rose too, tall frame unfolding until he towered over you, broad shoulders and warm presence making the space between you feel smaller in the best way.

His hands found your waist first, steady and warm. 

“Can I…?” he murmured, fingers brushing the zipper at the side of your dress.

“Yes.” you whispered.

He pulled the zipper down slowly, the soft sound loud in the quiet room. The fabric loosened, and with careful hands he eased the dress off your shoulders. It slid down your body and pooled at your feet, leaving you in nothing but your panties. No bra, the cool air kissing your skin, but it was nothing compared to the heat of his gaze.

Taehyung’s breath caught audibly. His eyes dropped to your bare breasts, dark and appreciative, lingering. 

“Fuck… you’re beautiful.” he said, almost under his breath, like the words slipped out before he could stop them. One large hand came up, hesitating just a moment before his palm gently cupped the underside of one breast, thumb brushing over the soft curve. “I didn’t know… God, I didn’t know you were this perfect.”

The size difference hit you then, him standing so close, so much taller, his broad frame making you feel small and cherished all at once. You swallowed, warmth flooding your cheeks and lower belly.

Taehyung seemed to notice the effect too. A small, almost shy smile touched his lips as he looked down at you, one hand still on your breast, the other resting at your waist. “Look at you.” he murmured, voice low, like he knew exactly what to say to undo you. “So small next to me… and still driving me crazy.”

“You’re not exactly small yourself, Tae.” you couldn’t help the soft laugh that escaped, even as your pulse raced. 

His grin widened for a second, warm and affectionate, before he stepped back just enough to reach behind his neck and tug his white shirt off in one smooth motion. The fabric hit the floor beside your dress. Your eyes drank him in; the smooth, tanned planes of his chest, the subtle definition of his stomach, the way his shoulders looked even broader without anything covering them. You had seen him shirtless before, but never like this. Never with permission to stare. Never with the knowledge that you could touch.

For a long moment you simply stood there, staring at each other in the soft lamplight. The tension was thick, palpable, crackling in the silence. His eyes traced every inch of your bare skin; yours did the same to him, the faint trail of hair disappearing into his jeans, the way his chest rose and fell a little faster now, the obvious bulge pressing against the front of his pants.

Taehyung was the first to move. He took your hand and guided you back toward the couch, his touch gentle despite the heat in his gaze. “Come here, my girl.”

He eased you down onto your back, following you so he settled between your parted legs. The couch was wide enough that he could brace himself on one forearm without crushing you, his body covering yours in warm, delicious weight. The moment he lowered himself, you felt the hard line of his cock press against your core through the thin layers of fabric still separating you, denim against lace, hot and insistent.

A soft gasp left your lips at the contact.

Taehyung groaned quietly, forehead dropping to your collarbones. 

“Sorry… you just feel so good already.” he rolled his hips once, slow and lazy, letting you feel him fully. Then he captured your mouth again in a heated, unhurried kiss.

This kiss was lazier than the ones before, deeper and more indulgent. His tongue slid against yours in slow strokes, occasionally pulling back to nibble at your bottom lip or suck gently on your tongue the way you were quickly learning he loved. Your hands roamed freely now, one threading back into his messy waves, the other sliding down the warm, bare skin of his back, feeling the muscles shift under your palms as he moved.

Tae’s own hands weren’t idle. One stayed at your breast, thumb circling your nipple until it tightened under his touch. The other slipped between your bodies, palm gliding up your inner thigh until his fingers brushed the edge of your panties, teasing without rushing. All the while he kept that slow, grinding rhythm against you, his cock pressing and rubbing right where you needed him most through the fabric.

Every roll of his hips sent sparks through you. Every sigh and quiet moan he drew from your mouth seemed to make him hungrier, yet he never hurried, like he wanted to savor every second of finally having you like this.

“Been dreaming about this… having you under me. Feeling you like this.” his voice was low and rough against your lips, every word punctuated by another slow roll of his hips that pressed his cock harder against your clothed pussy. 

You whimpered softly, fingers tightening in his hair, and that seemed to be all the encouragement he needed.

Taehyung kissed you once more, deep and lingering, before he began to trail his mouth downward. He took his time, lips brushing along your jaw, then the sensitive spot just below your ear. When he reached your neck he sucked lightly, then harder, leaving a faint mark that made your breath hitch. Lower still, his mouth found your collarbone, then the swell of your breast.

He groaned the moment his lips closed around your nipple, warm and wet. He sucked gently at first, tongue swirling around the peaked bud, then with more intention in slow, rhythmic pulls that had your back arching off the couch. 

A soft cry escaped you when he grazed his teeth over the sensitive flesh, followed immediately by soothing licks. He switched to the other breast, giving it the same devoted attention, sucking and biting until the skin flushed and bore faint red marks that would bloom later. His free hand kneaded the breast he wasn’t attending to, thumb flicking over the wet nipple he’d just released.

Every pull of his mouth sent sparks straight between your legs. You writhed beneath him, one hand still tangled in his messy waves, the other gripping his shoulder as your hips rolled up instinctively, seeking more friction.

Taehyung hummed in satisfaction against your skin, the vibration traveling through you. He kissed a slow, wet path down the center of your stomach, pausing to dip his tongue into your navel, making you giggle breathlessly before the sound melted into another moan. When he reached the waistband of your panties, he looked up at you through dark lashes, eyes gleaming with heat and quiet awe.

His hand slipped beneath the lace without warning, two long fingers gliding through your folds. The moment he felt how slick you were, a low, pleased sound rumbled in his chest.

“Fuck, you’re so wet already.” he murmured, voice thick with wonder. His fingers teased your entrance, circling slowly, spreading the wetness up to your clit without quite giving you the pressure you craved. “All this for me? Been thinking about me like this too?”

You nodded frantically, hips twitching under his touch. The ache between your legs was almost unbearable now.

He pressed a soft, open-mouthed kiss just above the waistband of your panties, then looked up again, lips curved in a small, teasing smile: “I wonder if you taste even better than those Jeju mandarins.”

The words sent a fresh wave of heat through you. 

“Tae… please. Find out.” you whined, high and needy, fingers tightening in his hair. 

That was all he needed.

You lifted your hips eagerly, helping him as he hooked his fingers into the sides of your panties and slid them down your legs. He tossed the lace aside, leaving you completely bare beneath him. For a moment he just looked, eyes dark, chest rising faster, taking in every inch of you spread out on his couch.

Then he settled lower between your thighs, broad shoulders pushing your legs wider apart. He pressed a trail of wet kisses along your inner thigh, alternating sides, getting closer and closer until you felt his warm breath against your pussy.

The first touch of his tongue was gentle, a slow, flat lick from your entrance up to your clit that had your back arching sharply off the cushions. Taehyung moaned loudly against you, the sound raw and unrestrained, like the taste of you was better than anything he’d ever had.

“God… you taste so fucking good.” he groaned, voice muffled against your folds. He dove back in with the same patient, exploratory focus he’d shown with every kiss and every peeled mandarin. His tongue circled your clit in slow, deliberate strokes, then flattened again to lap at you broadly, savoring every drop. He alternated between long, luxurious licks and gentle suction, humming and moaning like he couldn’t get enough.

When two of his long fingers slipped inside you, curling slowly to find that perfect spot, your moan broke into a shaky cry. He pumped them lazily at first, matching the rhythm of his tongue, then faster as your hips started to rock against his face. His free hand stayed on your stomach, holding you gently in place while he devoured you, wet, obscene sounds filling the living room along with your gasps and whimpers.

Taehyung was lost in it. Every time you clenched around his fingers or tugged harder at his hair, he groaned louder, hips subtly grinding against the couch for his own relief. He sucked your clit between his lips, tongue flicking rapidly, then soothed with broad licks again, completely focused on pulling more of those sounds from you.

You were trembling, thighs tightening around his head, the coil in your belly winding tighter and tighter with every stroke of his tongue and curl of his fingers.

He pulled back just enough to murmur against your slick skin, voice hoarse and dripping with need. 

“That’s it, my girl… let me hear you.” he teased, and then the next words almost did you right then and there: “Want to feel you cum on my tongue.”

Taehyung’s voice was barely more than a growl against your soaked pussy before he dove back in with renewed hunger. His mouth turned starved, tongue flicking rapidly over your swollen clit, then sucking it between his lips with firm, insistent pulls that made your thighs shake. 

He groaned loudly into you, the vibrations shooting straight through your cunt as two long fingers pumped deeper inside you, stretching you open with every thrust.

He was relentless now, lost in the taste of you. His tongue worked faster, alternating between quick, desperate licks and hard suction, while his fingers curled and scissored, always  aiming for that spot that made your back bow off the couch. Wet, filthy sounds filled the living room, the slick slide of his fingers, the obscene noises of his mouth devouring your pussy, your own broken moans growing louder and more desperate.

Your hips rocked frantically against his face, chasing the pleasure as it built unbearably fast. One hand fisted tight in his messy waves, the other gripping the couch cushion like it was the only thing keeping you grounded.

“Tae– oh god, Tae–” you gasped, voice cracking.

He moaned in response, the sound vibrating against your clit as he sucked harder, fingers thrusting faster, stretching your tight cunt around them. The coil in your belly snapped without warning.

Your orgasm crashed over you hard, a sharp cry tearing from your throat as your pussy clenched rhythmically around his fingers. Taehyung didn’t slow down, he kept licking and sucking through every wave, groaning like he was the one coming undone, milking every last tremor from your body until you were trembling and gasping beneath him.

Only when your hips started twitching from oversensitivity did he finally ease up. He gentled his tongue into slow, soothing licks, then carefully withdrew his fingers, replacing them with one last soft kiss to your pulsing clit.

Taehyung climbed up your body slowly, kissing a wet trail up your stomach and between your breasts before burying his face into the crook of your neck. His fingers slid back between your legs, gently pumping into your soaked cunt again, slow, lazy strokes to ease you through the aftershocks. Like now that he had a feel of you, his fingers couldn’t stay away. 

And despite the oversensitivity, you couldn’t get enough of it either.

You wrapped your arms around him tightly, pulling him closer to your chest, one hand stroking through his hair while the other rubbed soothing circles over his bare back. Both of you were breathing hard, skin warm and slightly damp with sweat.

“Fuck, Tae…” you whispered, voice still shaky with pleasure. “Your tongue felt so good. I didn’t know you were that good at it. I’m… honestly surprised.”

He let out a soft, muffled laugh against your neck, but you felt the way his body tensed at the praise, his hips twitching hard against your thigh through his jeans. The reaction was immediate and unmistakable; your words seemed to make him even hornier.

You smiled, pressing a kiss to the top of his head: “I’ve been dying to see you. I know you’re big.”

Taehyung lifted his head just enough to look at you, cheeks flushed, eyes dark but sparkling with shy amusement. 

“Can you tell?” he chuckled, the sound abashed and boyish.

“I’ve seen your morning woods before.” You giggled with the admittance, the sound light despite how wrecked you still felt. His eyes widened in genuine surprise, a dramatic gasp escaping him. “Come on, how many sleepovers did we have?!”

“I still didn’t know you noticed it!” he laughed, that sweet  laugh you’d loved for years in silence, the one that made his eyes crinkle at the corners even now. “At least I guess you know what to expect.”

“Am I going to be able to walk tomorrow?” you teased, sliding one hand between your bodies until your palm cupped the hard, heavy outline of his cock through his jeans.

Taehyung groaned deeply, hips rolling forward to press his bulge firmer into your hand. 

“Why?” he rasped, voice thick with need. “Are you going anywhere?”

You laughed breathlessly, still cupping his hard length through the denim, giving him one slow squeeze that made his hips jerk forward again.

Taehyung groaned low in his throat, then suddenly pulled back just enough to look down at you with dark, hooded eyes. 

“I need you on my bed now.” he rasped, voice rough with want.

He pushed himself up from the couch in one smooth motion, towering over you again. Strong hands slid under your arms and helped you stand on slightly shaky legs. The second you were upright, he turned you gently so your back pressed flush against his front. His arms wrapped around your waist, pulling you tight as he started walking you both toward his bedroom.

The familiar short hallway felt longer than usual when Taehyung couldn’t keep his hands or mouth off you. One palm stayed splayed possessively over your stomach while the other roamed higher, cupping and kneading your breast. His cock, still trapped in his jeans, pressed hot and insistent against the curve of your ass with every step. He leaned down repeatedly to mouth at your neck, open, wet kisses mixed with gentle sucks and the occasional scrape of teeth that made your knees weak.

“Tae… we’re never going to make it if you keep doing that.” you stumbled a little, giggling softly when his arm tightened to steady you. 

“Don’t care.” he murmured against your skin, hips rolling once so you could feel exactly how hard he was. “Been waiting too long to rush now.”

By the time you reached his bedroom doorway, your skin was flushed and tingling everywhere he’d touched. The warm glow of the bedside lamp was already on, casting soft golden light over the big bed and the familiar scattered details of his room.

“Do you always keep that light on, or were you planning on seducing me like this tonight?” you glanced at the lamp, then back at him with a teasing smile as he finally loosened his hold so you could step forward. 

“It’s not the first time I left that on.” he admitted quietly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Can you blame me for hoping?”

The honest confession made something warm bloom in your chest, like it had been happening all night. You laughed softly, the sound light and affectionate, and walked the few steps to his bed. You sat on the edge of the mattress, completely bare, and let your eyes roam over him, eating him up with your gaze.

“Let’s see it, then.” you said, voice sweet but dripping with teasing challenge. You tilted your head, smiling up at him. “Show me what I’ve been missing.”

Taehyung’s expression shifted. The shy, second-guessing boy from earlier melted away, replaced by quiet cockiness and pure confidence. He stepped closer until he stood right in front of you, close enough that you had to tilt your head back to keep looking at his face.

Without breaking eye contact, he reached down and popped the button of his jeans. The zipper came down slowly. He shoved the denim down his long legs and kicked it aside, leaving him in just the black boxers that did very little to hide how hard he was.

Then those came off too.

Your mouth went dry.

He was big alright, longer and thicker than the morning woods or the grinding against you on the couch had ever prepared you for. His cock stood flushed and heavy against his stomach, the head a deep, angry red and already leaking steadily, a glossy bead of precum sliding down the shaft. The sheer size of him made your thighs press together instinctively, a fresh wave of heat pooling low in your belly.

Taehyung watched your reaction with dark, satisfied eyes, one hand casually wrapping around the base of his cock and giving himself one slow stroke. 

“Still think you’ll be able to walk tomorrow?” he asked, voice low and teasing, but the way his cock twitched in his grip told you he was just as affected.

You licked your lips, unable to look away. “I… might need to call in sick.”

He let out a soft, husky laugh and stepped even closer, his free hand coming down to gently cup your chin, tilting your face up toward him.

Taehyung’s thumb brushed gently over your bottom lip, his voice dropping into something raw and needy. 

“Touch me.” he murmured, almost begging. “Please, baby…”

The plea hit you straight in the chest; and lower. Your heart fluttered hard at how desperate he sounded, and a fresh pulse of heat throbbed between your legs, your cunt clenching around nothing at the sound of his voice like that.

You felt a little shy suddenly, despite everything you’d already done tonight. You looked up at him through your lashes, biting your lip as you reached for him. Your fingers wrapped around the thick base of his cock, and the moment you felt the scorching heat and velvet-soft skin, both of you let out a quiet sound.

Your hand looked so small and delicate against him, pretty fingers barely able to close fully around his impressive girth. Taehyung’s cock twitched visibly in your grip, another bead of precum welling at the flushed tip and sliding down slowly.

“Fuck…” he breathed, eyes fixed on the sight. “Look at that. Your pretty little hand looks so tiny on me.”

The awe in his voice made you bolder. You used it against him, voice soft and sweet as you started stroking him slowly from base to tip: “You like that? Like seeing how small I am compared to you?”

“Yes– shit, yes. Love it.” Taehyung groaned, hips jerking forward into your fist.

You spread the leaking precum down his shaft with your thumb, making the slide smoother as you learned every inch of him, the thick vein running along the underside, the way he pulsed hot and heavy in your palm, how he seemed to grow even harder under your touch. Your strokes stayed slow and exploratory at first, twisting gently at the head on every upstroke.

His moans became constant now, low and broken, like he could barely hold himself together. Every sound went straight to your core, making you wetter as you watched his abs tense and his chest rise faster with each pump of your hand.

You kept your eyes locked on his the whole time, refusing to look away even when you leaned forward. Your tongue darted out first, giving the leaking tip a slow lick that tasted salty-sweet. Taehyung’s breath hitched sharply, one hand coming down to gently thread through your hair without pushing.

Then you opened your mouth wider, stretching your jaw to take him in. Your lips wrapped around the flushed head, the sheer size of him forcing your mouth open as you sank down slowly, tongue swirling around the sensitive underside.

Taehyung let out a deep, guttural moan, fingers tightening just slightly in your hair. “That’s it… fuck, your mouth feels so good already. My pretty girl…”

You sank down further, taking more of his thick cock into your mouth until the head nudged the back of your throat. Your lips stretched wide around him, saliva already beginning to coat his shaft as you bobbed your head slowly at first, then with more confidence. The sounds were messy, wet, obscene slurps mixed with your soft hums and his constant, broken moans. Drool slipped from the corners of your mouth, dripping down your chin and onto his balls as you worked him deeper, tongue pressing firmly along the thick vein underneath.

“Fuck… your mouth is so warm, so wet, shit, baby…” Taehyung’s hand stayed gentle in your hair, not forcing, just holding as his hips twitched forward involuntarily. 

You hollowed your cheeks and sucked harder, taking him as deep as you could until your nose nearly brushed his pelvis. Your free hand stroked what you couldn’t fit, twisting slickly with all the spit. Then your other hand slipped between his legs to cup his heavy balls, rolling them gently in your palm.

Taehyung’s entire body jerked. A deep, guttural groan tore from his chest and his cock throbbed hard against your tongue. For a second he looked like he was about to lose it right there, hips stuttering as he fought for control.

You pulled off just enough to giggle around the head of his cock, eyes sparkling up at him with pure mischief.

“Little brat.” he cursed breathlessly, voice strained and fond at the same time. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

Still smiling, you gave his balls one last gentle squeeze before releasing them. Taehyung let out a shaky exhale, then gently tugged you off his cock with a wet pop. His chest was heaving, eyes dark with lust as he looked down at your swollen, shiny lips and the mess of spit on your chin.

“On the bed.” he instructed, voice rough but gentle. “Hands and knees. I need to see that pretty ass.”

You obeyed instantly, heat flooding your body at the command. Turning around, you crawled up the mattress toward the headboard, swaying your hips with every movement. You lowered your shoulders to the sheets, arching your back deeply so your ass was high in the air, knees spread wide, presenting yourself perfectly for him.

Behind you, Taehyung let out a low, strained hum that sounded more like a growl: “You shouldn’t be so good at that.”

“Neither of us are virgins, Tae.” you pointed out softly, cheek pressed to the cool sheet as you glanced back at him. “You met all of my boyfriends–”

The sharp smack of his palm against your ass cut you off, not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to sting deliciously and make you gasp. The possessive edge in the gesture sent a fresh rush of arousal straight to your cunt.

“I’m the only boyfriend you’ll have from now on.” he said, voice low and serious, one big hand rubbing soothingly over the spot he’d just smacked. “The only one who gets to see you like this. Got it?”

“Yes… I only ever wanted you, Tae. Only you.” you moaned at the words, your pussy clenching visibly with how much his possessiveness turned you on. 

“Good girl,” he praised, the words warm and rough at the same time.

He climbed onto the bed behind you, the mattress dipping under his weight. You heard the slick sound of him pumping his cock a few times, then felt the blunt, leaking head press against your dripping entrance. He nudged it up and down your folds, coating himself in your wetness, but he didn’t push inside. Just rested there, hot and heavy, teasing.

You whined impatiently, pushing back against him, but he stayed perfectly still. When you looked over your shoulder, you found him already staring at you, eyes dark, jaw tight, drinking in the sight of you presented so openly for him.

“Show me what you can do, then.” he murmured, voice thick with challenge and barely contained need.

It was your turn not to hesitate.

With a slow, deliberate roll of your hips, you pushed back onto him. The thick head of his cock parted your slick folds and began to sink inside your tight cunt, stretching you open inch by inch. You clenched around him on purpose, sucking him deeper with every backward movement, your walls fluttering and gripping as you took more of his impressive length.

“Fuck… that’s it. Taking me so well already.” Taehyung groaned low and long behind you, hands flexing on your hips. 

You kept going, slow and confident, until your ass finally met his pelvis and he was buried to the hilt inside you. The stretch was intense, he felt impossibly big, filling and stuffing your pussy completely. You stayed perfectly still once he was fully seated, cockwarming him while your walls fluttered and adjusted around his throbbing girth. Both of you breathed heavily in the quiet room, savoring the moment.

Taehyung’s hands roamed patiently over your body even as his cock twitched deep inside you. He spread your cheeks wider with both palms, groaning softly at the sight of where you were connected, your pussy stretched tight around his thick shaft. His hands then slid up your sides, tracing every curve, before gliding down the length of your spine in long, soothing strokes.

“So pretty like this.” he whispered, voice rough with restraint. “So fucking tight and warm around me… Take your time, baby. I’ve got you.”

You stayed like that for a long moment, letting your body get used to the deep, full feeling of him. When your breathing finally evened out and the initial burn melted into pure pleasure, Taehyung’s hand slid up your back and gathered your hair into a loose fist. He gave it a firm, gentle pull, arching your back deeper and making you moan loudly as the new angle pushed him even further inside you.

“Gonna show me what this perfect ass can do or nah?” he teased, voice low and husky, the words laced with that cocky confidence he wore so well now.

You answered by starting to move.

You rocked your hips slowly at first, then began to really fuck him, swaying and swiveling in smooth, deliberate circles, rolling your ass back onto his cock with practiced rhythm. You cocked your hips on every downward stroke, taking him deep and grinding so your pussy clenched and fluttered around every inch of him.

Taehyung’s curses and moans spilled out under his breath, growing louder and more broken the faster you moved. “Shit– fuck, baby…”

His free hand stayed on your hip, gripping tight, while the other kept that gentle pull on your hair, guiding you as you rode him in deep, filthy strokes. He touched you everywhere he could reach, palm sliding up your spine, squeezing your ass, reaching underneath to cup and knead your breast.

“You’re so deep, Tae… God, you’re stuffing my pussy so full. I can feel every inch of you.” you moaned loudly with every thrust, voice breathy and wrecked.

The praise hit him hard. You felt his cock twitch violently inside you, his hips jerking up to meet your movements as another low groan tore from his throat.

“Yeah?” he rasped, voice strained with pleasure. “You like how I fill you up? Like being stretched around my cock?”

“Love it… You’re so big, and you feel so perfect.”  you nodded frantically, pushing back harder onto him, the wet sounds of skin meeting skin filling the room. “Been waiting so long for this– for you to fuck me like this.”

Taehyung’s grip on your hair tightened just enough to make you gasp, his other hand sliding down to rub firm circles over your clit as you continued to ride him with steady, sinful rolls of your hips. His moans were constant now, raw and needy, every praise you gave him making him lose himself a little more.

Suddenly he pulled out with a wet sound, leaving you empty and clenching around nothing. Before you could whine at the loss, his strong hands grabbed your hips and flipped you onto your back in one smooth motion.

You squealed in surprise, the sound turning into a breathless laugh as you bounced lightly on the mattress. Taehyung was already moving, towering over you as he pushed your thighs wide apart. His eyes were dark and hungry, chest heaving.

He didn’t give you time to catch your breath.

With one powerful thrust he shoved his thick cock back into your soaked pussy, burying himself to the hilt in a single stroke. The stretch was sudden and overwhelming, punching a loud moan out of you as your back arched off the bed.

Taehyung caged you in immediately, forearms braced on either side of your head, his broad body covering yours completely. He started fucking you harder, faster, deeper strokes that made the bed creak beneath you. Skin slapped loudly against skin with every thrust, wet and filthy.

“Fuck– yes.” he groaned, voice rough and low. “This is what I needed. Want to see your face while I fuck you.”

He leaned down and latched onto your chest, sucking and biting at the soft skin of your breasts, leaving little marks that made you cry out. Your nails raked down his back, leaving long scratches that only seemed to spur him on. He hissed in pleasure, hips snapping harder into you.

Every thrust was deep and good, the head of his cock dragging against that perfect spot inside your cunt over and over. Your legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging into his lower back as you pulled him even deeper.

“Tae– oh my god, you’re so deep.” you moaned, voice breaking. “Feels so good… don’t stop.”

“Not stopping.” he growled against your skin, biting down on the side of your breast before soothing it with his tongue. “Gonna fuck this pretty pussy until you can’t walk tomorrow. You’re mine now, baby. Only mine.”

Dirty, open-mouthed kisses followed, messy and desperate, tongues sliding together as he kept pounding into you. The wet slap of skin on skin mixed with your shared moans and gasps, filling the warm bedroom. His hips rolled with every thrust, grinding against your clit on the downstroke and making sparks explode behind your eyes.

You were both getting lost in each other, years of quiet longing finally pouring out in every desperate movement. Your hands roamed his back, nails digging in harder whenever he hit that perfect angle. His mouth moved from your breasts to your neck, sucking marks into your skin, then back to your lips for another sloppy, heated kiss.

“Feel how deep I am?” he panted against your mouth, one hand sliding down to grip your thigh and push it higher, opening you up even more for him. “This cunt was made for me. So tight, so wet– fuck, you’re squeezing me so good.”

You whimpered, clenching around his thick cock as another wave of pleasure built fast and hot in your belly. “Tae… I’m close–”

He groaned loudly, pace turning punishing as he fucked you harder, deeper, chasing both your pleasure and his own. 

“That’s it, my girl. Come on my cock. Want to feel you fall apart around me.”

The coil in your stomach tightened unbearably, every brutal thrust pushing you closer to the edge. Taehyung’s forehead pressed to yours, eyes locked as you both spiraled together, moans and gasps mingling in the small space between you.

Taehyung’s thrusts stayed deep and punishing, hips snapping against yours with every stroke. His hand slid between your bodies, two fingers finding your swollen clit and rolling it fast, tight circles in perfect sync with the rhythm of his cock driving into your cunt.

The added stimulation was too much. Pleasure coiled unbearably tight in your belly, then snapped.

You came hard with a broken cry, back arching sharply off the bed as your pussy clenched violently around him. Your orgasm hit in messy, gushing waves, warm slick flooding around his thick cock, soaking his shaft, his balls, and the sheets beneath you. Your walls fluttered and pulsed, milking him relentlessly as you trembled and gasped beneath him.

“Fuck– fuck, baby–” Taehyung cursed loudly, eyes squeezing shut at the feeling of you gushing around him. The wet, obscene sounds grew louder as he kept thrusting through your climax, chasing his own release.

He only lasted a few more strokes.

With a deep, guttural groan he buried himself to the hilt and came hard, thick ropes of cum spilling deep inside your pulsing cunt. He filled you up completely, hot and heavy, his cock twitching with every pulse as he emptied himself. His hips jerked erratically, grinding against you as he rode out the intense waves.

Both of you were left twitching and trembling in the aftermath. Taehyung’s arms gave out and he toppled forward, collapsing on top of you with his full weight, face buried in the crook of your neck. His chest heaved against yours, both of you slick with sweat and breathing hard.

After a long moment of heavy, shared breathing, he mumbled against your skin, voice hoarse and a little sheepish:

“I meant to pull out.”

You let out a soft, breathless laugh, arms wrapping tighter around his back. 

“I’m safe.” you assured him gently, one hand stroking through his damp hair. “And I trust you.”

The tension melted from his shoulders instantly. He exhaled shakily, pressing a lazy kiss to your neck. “God, I love you.”

The words landed warm and certain against your skin. If this had been anyone else, you might have brushed it off as post-sex haze. But this was Taehyung, your Tae, and you knew he meant every syllable.

“I kinda knew that when you peeled that first mandarin.” you smiled, hugging him harder to your chest. He let out a tired, rumbling laugh, the sound vibrating through both of you. You continued softly: “I’ll say it back when you do it again.”

Taehyung pulled back just enough to look at you, eyes sparkling with affection and amusement even through the exhaustion. His messy hair fell over his forehead as he grinned down at you.

“No need for words or mandarins.” he murmured, voice still rough from moaning. “You don’t fuck someone like that when you don’t love them back.”

You laughed softly, reaching up to cup his face. He leaned into your palm, eyes fluttering closed for a second before he dipped down to kiss you, slow, lazy, and full of everything you’d both waited years to say out loud.

“Your pussy!” You hear Jungkook yell in the background, and Taehyung whines pathetically. His hands drop dramatically on the couch as he leans his head back in distress.

“I’m tellin’ yo-ou! Sweetest pu-pussy, always so wet f’me.” He sighs and hiccups, and you’re rendered speechless. “Wa-wanna hold ‘er open- could eat ‘er f’hours.” He goes as far as licking his lips, and you hear another round of laughter from the boys start up.

It’s then that Yoongi sits next to Taehyung; he holds his liquor the best out of all of them, and you don’t miss the gummy grin on his face as he pats Taehyung’s head. “Alright, that’s enough, Taehyung-ah, she’s not here.”

“I FaceTimed her, though!”

Taehyung blinks heavily at that, rubbing his eyes with a big pout. His eyebrows furrow, and he seems to finally notice you on the tiny screen from how his mouth drops, staring at you in awe. “Pretty!” He scrambles for the phone, and you get dropped at some point before you’re seeing his pretty face up close.

You can’t help but laugh. “You having fun, Baby?” You ask, and you can hear him groan lowly, the sound sending a shiver down your spine.

“M-miss you, Pretty. Miss yer’ pretty pussy want you to cum on my mouth again a-and again and a-“ the call ends. You didn’t hang up, even from how hard your cheeks heat up, so you assume it’s from his end by accident.

You shake your head, still in disbelief and also a little curious if he’s going to try and call back - but when he doesn’t, you’re left to go back to sleep thinking about Taehyung’s head between your thighs, a giggle slipping from your lips.

-

When you wake up again, you’re thighs are shaking.

Your body is feverish. So hot that it made your skin break out in a humid layer of perspiration. You felt so hot, you felt like you were melting already. Your eyes blinking dazedly to see the time, you barely register the 4:15 am glaring at you when you feel a filthy French snog planted on your drooling cunt.

Taehyung. His moan is low, guttural, vibrating into your mound like he had tasted the sweetest honey. And your mind whirls, lips parting in surprise as you realize Taehyung was home. And lying in between your thighs, his tongue flattening on your glistening folds like he was a bear trying to suck the honey from a honey jar.

He’s got your plush thighs spread wide for him. Shamelessly parting your slobbering folds with his thick fingers so he could plunge his long tongue deeper into your wet heat. Your toes curl, hips jerking to meet his mouth, “Tae!”

Your boyfriend’s eyes are hooded, blinking heavily, barely lifting his face from your dripping pussy as he looks at you. His smile is sleazily, lazily pointed at you as his tongue licks the slick, dripping all over the lower half of his face. “Oh, you’re awake?” He giggles, and you’re quickly learning he’s still a little tipsy and he’s been home for a while now. You can feel the sheets are drenched underneath you, your sweet juices smeared on your inner thighs, and that your pussy is throbbing with its own heartbeat. “I was wondering when you’d wake up-” Taehyung has the audacity to huff a laugh. His hand came to his face to wipe your slick from his mouth, his tongue sucking it clean and making his eyes flutter.

Your thighs burn; they can’t stop quivering. And you’re trying to figure out how you didn’t wake up sooner. He’d come home, was able to strip you from your pink little panties, and from the looks on his face, had you cum at least twice now. “Wha-”

You’re not able to finish your question before Taehyung presses your knees to your chest, manhandling you into a nasty mating press. Your slobbering cunt completely exposed to his hungry eyes, he purses his lips, a ‘huk-tuh’ echoing as he spits a wad of his saliva on your quivering hole. “I’m not done, Pretty.” His thumb smears his spit, mixing it with your leaking arousal, making a bigger mess of you. “Keep your legs jus’ like this f’me.”

You’re not sure if you’re able to. Not when he dives nose-first into your filthy pussy. He shakes his head side-to-side, his nose catching on your hypersensitive clit over and over again. It makes you mewl, your thighs tensing, stomach flexing as he slurps your cunt like it’s his favorite meal.

And it was. His lips suck, slurp, and lap your puffy wet folds like it might be the last time. Kissing your pretty pussy until it was all glossy, garbling heavy wet squelches that competed with your gasps and whimpers. It was filthy, messy, and euphoric. Your fingers reached for his head, twisting in his curly locks, and pulling his face closer to your cunt.

Your back arched, and the fire in your stomach burned brighter as he moaned pornographically. His fingers dug into your meaty thighs, pulling you even closer, trapping you. And you're helpless, moaning wantonly - forced to take everything he does to you. His tongue slurping, curling deep inside your pulsing hole. The squelches of your pussy resonating loudly, overshadowing Taehyung’s moans of pleasure.

Taehyung laps your sweet juices, feverishly. You’re leaking so profusely, it coats his face all the way down to his neck. Your fingers dishevel his hair with each pull and he could die happy when you drag your pussy over his mouth messily. “Tha’s right, use me, use me, get yourself off, Pretty.” His lips wrap around your puffy clit, sucking harshly while his tongue flicks over the nub fast. He has to dig his fingers into your hips to stop you from running away from him. “No, no, c’mon cum f’me. Make a mess, lemme clean it up. Fuck, taste so gooood!”

Your mouth gapes, your lungs constricting as the knot in your stomach twists. Taehyung sleazily makes out with your cunt with fervor. Licking broad stroke, the noises of his mouth on your cunt echo and make you delirious. “Oh my god, oh my god, Tae!” He spits on your sopping pussy twice, his tongue swirling filthily before his jaw slacks open, wider. 

Your eyes blink the blurry vision from your eyes, and right when you see Taehyung shamelessly rutting into the bed underneath him, you lose it. The hot white heat flashes over your eyes, your tears falling freely from your eyes as you sob his name like a prayer.

Your thighs clamp around his head, trying to squeeze the life out of him, but he’s not having any of it. His tongue is buried deep in your pussy, thrusting in and out of your gushing cunt. He fucks you through it, slurping your sweet honey until you’re weakly pushing on his head. “Too much, too much!”

He’s reluctantly letting go of your  cunt with a wet ‘fwop.’ His body is slowly crawling up your humming one. He waits until you’re blinking up at him, looking beyond fucked-out when he hums lazily. “Thanks, Pretty. Did so well f’me.”

-

A/N: All I am saying is: I wouldn't be upset to see more Tae in my inbox -

As always, love to hear from ya! Comments, kudos, and feedback are welcomed! Come talk to me :)

— Taehyung has always said he really likes his own hands, he would love to keep his hands on you in any way that he can, splaying his large hand and fingers across your back, holding your waist, intentionally placing his hand on your leg, lower back or anywhere just to physically claim you while you two are out. Hands everywhereeee all the time; it's subconscious to him

— he would intentionally lean in extra close to you to speak into your ear or into your face. At parties or surrounded by others, he would pretend like it was too loud for him to hear so that he had an excuse to lean in extra close to you and whisper against your cheek. He loves being super close to your face because he knows it makes you flustered.

— he loves it when you suck on his fingers, another hand thing for him. He would press his large hand into your cheek, caress your face, and feed his thumb into your mouth gently to let you suckle on. It would drive him crazy, not only the sensation of your tongue and inner cheek against his fingers, but also watching you be so obedient to him, even during foreplay.

— he would always find your gaze in a room. Every once in a while, he'd stare at you for long enough until you looked back at him, and then give you a little wink or crinkle his nose and give you a little smile. Just to remind you that even if you weren't next to each other, he was thinking of you.

— he loves doing things for you, even if you're capable yourself. "Baby, let me get that for you," as he reaches up to grab something for you above your head, even though you were fully capable of getting it yourself. "Let me carry that for you," and it's just your purse that weighs nothing, but he is obsessed with taking care of you, even if you don't necessarily need to be taken care of. He loves the idea of doing everything for you because you're his little star.

— sure, he loves handholding, but he LOVES keeping his hands in his pockets as he walks and having you cling to his arm or loop your arm through his. It makes him feel like you're his little angel on his arm, his mademoiselle. He'd just feel so on top of the world to have you on his arm.

— you don't ever touch a door, ever. Car doors, restaurant doors, entrances, anything. If you're with him, he is getting the door for you every single time.

— if you're sitting next to each other on the couch, he always pulls your legs into his lap so that they're draped over his own legs. His hand on your knee, holding your legs so casually as you two watch TV

— when you two get ready to go out for fancy dates, etc., he doesn't want you to watch him get ready. He lets you get ready in peace, and disappears into his own bathroom and puts together his entire look in private before he reveals himself to you because he wants to show you his final look and wow you every time. He'd enter the bathroom in his pyjamas and unwashed hair, spend like forty minutes in there, and then come out so dolled up and gorgeous for you in his stylish little outfit and hair all done with his makeup on

— he likes playing in competitive games, and he tries extra extra hard to win when you're watching, and acts super casual and nonchalant when he does inevitably win, he'll come back to you after winning with a cocky little grin on his face and give you a kiss on the cheek. "Proud of me?"

— even if he prefers getting ready separately so that he can get dolled up in private, he LOVES getting unready together. The two of you taking off your makeup together, washing your faces next to each other, brushing your teeth, everything. He loves the ritual of getting ready for bed together; it's the hardest thing for him to leave behind when you aren't physically together

— he likes bickering with you. Lots of "oh yeah?" or "hm?" when he challenges what you're saying. Done usually with a straight face, unless you make him laugh, then he breaks into that pretty smile and breaks character.

— lots of singing at you, from inside the shower, he'd sing a song extra loud because he knew you could hear him from outside, singing in the car, singing to himself when he's next to you at home, and they are always a song he knows you like.

— a man of few words, he is an amazing listener, he asks you about your day and then props you up in his lap or makes sure you are resting your legs on him on the couch while he takes in every single word you say with genuine interest

— lots of movie watching together, and whatever the two love interests in the movie are doing on screen, he'd mimic with you jokingly on the couch. Hands brush together on screen? He brushes his fingers along yours the same way. The two leads just kissed in the rain? Taehyung would ask, "can I do that with you next time?"

— he loves being out with friends, but the moment he senses that you are tired, he would call it without you having to ask. "I've got an early day tomorrow," he'd always say, but he knew that you were ready for bed, and he was ready to leave with you.

— he loves it when you feed him. snacks, whatever. He doesn't even necessarily want your food; he just wants you to feed him. Same with lip balm, he wants you to share yours and put it on him.

— his hair on the regular is almost always unstyled, just fluffy and cute and kind of in his eyes, and that alone is flirting

— he loves sending selfies to you like all the time. gym? bathroom? in the car? getting his makeup done? on the way to work? doesn't matter. you're getting a photo of him.

— this man loves staying in with you, but when he's in the mood for it, he loooves going out, dinner, anything. He just loves dressing up with you so much

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖· · ─ ·⚜· ─ · ·˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖

“You looked directly at mine,” Jimin said. 

“I looked in your direction,” Taehyung corrected, lips pinched tight to keep from smiling.

“My cards were in that direction.” 

“That isn’t my fault.” 

Jungkook snorted into his drink. Jin sat at the end of the couch with one ankle resting over his knee, watching the argument with the distant satisfaction of someone who had zero intention of helping. “You should both be embarrassed,” he said. 

Jimin turned toward him. “He cheated.” 

“And you still lost.” 

“That isn’t the point.” 

“That sounds exactly like the point, unless I’m completely mistaken?” 

Taehyung reached across the floor and stole a piece of chicken from Jungkook’s plate. Jungkook slapped his hand away without looking. “You have your own.” 

“Yours looked better.” 

“It’s from the same box?” 

“Different energy. Not mine, so I want it more.” Tae shrugged. 

Jin closed his eyes briefly, he had missed this. Not that he would say that out loud. Saying sincere things in rooms like this was typically dangerous. One of them would make it absolutely unbearable within seconds. So he drank from his cup instead.

Three notifications went off almost at once. Jimin looked down at his phone, Taehyung stopped halfway through stealing another piece of chicken, and Jungkook had already unlocked his screen. “Oh,” he said, tongue poking his lip ring.

Jimin sat up more, “she’s live.” 

“What’s she playing?” Taehyung asked. 

Jungkook glanced at his notification again. “Phasmophobia.” 

That was enough to send all three of them into motion. Jungkook reached for the remote, Jimin shifted towards the center of the couch, and Taehyung abandoned his hoarded cards completely. Jin watched them, eyes narrowed in confusion. “Who?” 

No one answered at first, the television lit up as Jungkook navigated towards the streaming app. “Who is live?” Jin repeated. 

“GremlinHours,” Jimin replied. 

The name meant nothing to Jin. “Is that supposed to explain it…?” 

“YN?” Taehyung offered. “You don’t know her?” 

“No.” 

“She streams,” Jungkook said. 

“I gathered that much, Jungkook.” 

“She plays everything,” Jimin added. “Horror games, shooters, Skyrim, Zelda. Whatever she feels like.” 

“And she’s funny,” Taehyung said.

Jin looked at the three of them, unimpressed by their sudden collective attention. “You all receive alerts for this?” 

Jungkook shrugged. “She streams at weird times.” 

“That doesn’t answer my question.” 

The stream loaded before anyone could try. The screen filled with the dark interior of a farmhouse, washed in the green tint of night vision. Several voices overlapped through proximity chat, arguing about equipment and whether someone had already used the cursed object. A smaller camera window sat in the corner. Jin looked at it. Then Jin looked at it again.

A woman sat beneath the cool light of her monitors, headset on, eyes moving between the game and the flood of chat beside it. She was talking over one of her teammates, trying and failing not to laugh while she did it.

Pretty, he thought. The assessment came easily and without much weight. Then she made a face at something in chat, half offended and half amused, and his attention lingered a second longer than intended. Jin reached for his glass without knowing why his attention had lingered.

There were beautiful women everywhere in his life. Younger women, mostly. Women close to the age she appeared to be, though he could not tell exactly how old she was from a small camera window and did not particularly want to guess. The thought itself made him feel foolish. He was only watching a stream because Jungkook had put it on. Nothing more. 

“She always goes back inside alone,” Jimin said. 

“Because everyone else dies,” Jungkook replied. 

“They’re already splitting up,” Taehyung said, deeply disappointed. “They never learn.” 

Jin glanced at the game.

Her character stood near the front entrance while the others disappeared into separate rooms. “That seems stupid,” he said. 

Jungkook nodded. “It is.” 

“Then why are they doing it?” 

“They’re bad at communicating.” 

“They have microphones.” 

“That doesn’t help them.” 

Onscreen, she said something to her team that made Taehyung laugh hard enough to fold forward. Jin smiled despite himself. Small and automatic, and not noticed by anyone else. His gaze returned to her face in the corner. There was an ease to her on camera that he found unexpectedly appealing. Not polished and not careless, either. She seemed aware of the thousands watching without adjusting herself for them every second. 

That was unusual. He wondered how much of it was real. The question came from habit more than any suspicion. Jin knew better than most that cameras created versions of people. Sometimes kinder versions, sometimes louder, and sometimes simpler. 

She laughed again, and leaned towards her screen to read a message. Jin looked away, he was being ridiculous. She was a stranger. A younger stranger, most likely, and one he had been watching for a whopping total of two minutes. Attraction did not have to mean anything, in fact, it often meant nothing at all.

He settled deeper into the couch and listened while Jungkook tried to explain the game. The lights inside the farmhouse began to flicker. 

Jimin’s entire posture changed. “It’s hunting.” 

Her teammates started shouting over one another as her character turned towards the garage.

Taehyung pointed at the screen. “Locker.” 

“She won’t make it,” Jungkook said. 

“She will,” Jimin insisted.

Jin said nothing, but his eyes moved back to her. Not the game. Her. She looked focused now, amusement tightening into concentration as the footsteps grew louder through the dark. Something about the expression caught him again. Not enough to call interest, just enough to make him wonder why he was still looking.

“How is this thing already fucking hunting?” She hissed into her mic, forcing her character to run towards the only visible locker in the garage. “Every single time with you guys! ‘Come play with us, YN! We’ll help you level up, you won’t have to do anything!’ My ass! You guys suuuuuck!”

“She’s already blaming them,” Jungkook chuckled.

“They deserve it,” Jimin said. “Look! None of them are even near her.” 

Onscreen, her teammates dissolved into overlapping excuses through proximity chat. 

“I was getting evidence!” 

“I thought you had a crucifix.” 

“Why would I have a crucifix?” 

“Because you said you did?” 

“I said somebody should have it!” 

Taehyung shook his head in disappointment. “A team with no leadership.” 

“You would be worse,” Jungkook smiled. 

“I would try to establish rules,” Taehyung argued.

“You’d wander off because you heard a piano.” 

“A ghost playing a piano is important evidence, one could argue.” 

Jin let their argument wash over him while his attention stayed on the stream. YN had wedged her character into the locker, the narrow metal slats cutting the garage into strips of darkness. The ghost’s footsteps thudded somewhere nearby, slow and heavy. She glanced toward chat again. 

“Yes,” she sighed. “I could go back to the van, SewerGhoul32, but I still need to find out what kind of cyptid we’re dealing with.” 

“SewerGhoul32,” Jin repeated under his breath.

Jimin heard him and lauighed. “Her chat has the worst names.” 

“The best names,” Taehyung corrected. 

Jin’s mouth twitched. YN had said cryptid with complete seriousness despite playing a game in which the list of possible entities was plainly labeled. He hadn’t seen Bigfoot or Moth Man on the list… He could not tell whether she genuinely used the wrong word or simply enjoyed irritating the people who knew better. 

Probably the latter.

He found that more charming than he should have. 

The locker door rattled, and Jimin gripped Jungkook’s arm. Jungkook proceeded to shove Jimin off while leaning forward himself. Jin watched the small camera window in the corner of the screen. YN had gone still, lips pressed together as though the ghost might somehow hear her through the monitor. The expression changed her face. Not prettier, exactly, but she looked more focused and real. He caught himself studying her and deliberately shifted his gaze back to the gameplay. There was no point wondering about her.

YN was likely much younger than him. Not impossibly young– she was clearly an adult, with an established career and the confident exhaustion of someone who had dealt with the internet for years– but young enough that the distinction still registered in his brain. He had no business attaching meaning to a passing attraction anyway. Pretty woman, funny voice. That was all.

The ghost’s footsteps stopped outside the locker. The room went silent with the stream, and YN’s teammates had finally stopped talking. The handle jerked once, then twice. Jungkook whispered, “Don’t open it.” 

“Why are you telling her?” Jin asked.

“She can feel it.” 

“She cannot feel you through your television.” 

“You don’t know that, though.” 

The handle moved again. YN’s character stayed hidden. Then, slowly, the footsteps receded. Everyone in the room exhaled at once. Jin noticed and almost laughed. Four grown men, sitting in a bright living room, holding their breath over a digital locker. 

YN pushed the door open cautiously. The moment she stepped into the garage, one of her teammates spoke. “You should go back to the van.” 

Jin frowned. “She just said she needs the ghost type.” 

Jimin looked at him with raised brows. “You’re listening.” 

“It’s difficult not to. She’s shouting.” 

The answer was casual enough. Jimin accepted it without interest and turned back to the television. Jin did, too. YN’s character had moved toward the hallway, flashlight beam trembling over walls. Her teammates began arguing again about evidence they may or may not have gathered. Jin took another drink. He still couldn’t tell what had caught him. It was not simply her appearance, though that had been the first thing he noticed. It was something in the way she occupied the stream, maybe… like the audience existed, mattered, but didn’t frighten her into becoming careful. 

He knew that had to be partly performance. Everything on camera usually was. Still, he wanted to keep watching long enough to work out the kinks and seams. Not because he was interested, but because he was curious. And there was a difference. At least, there ought to have been. 

“Alright gutter sluts,” YN smiled, addressing her team. “I’m going back to the van to grab some salt and the DOTS. Anything else we need or want?” 

Jimin made a strangled noise and buried his face against Jungkook’s shoulder. “Gutter sluts?” 

Jungkook was already laughing too hard to answer. Taehyung repeated the word thoughtfully, as if testing whether it belonged in his vocabulary. “It’s affectionate.” 

“It is not,” Jin said. 

Onscreen, YN’s teammates all answered at once. 

“Smudge sticks.”

“A flashlight.” 

“My dignity.” 

“Can you bring me back to life?” 

“He’s not even dead.”

“No,” YN replied flatly through the stream. Her character moved quickly through the farmhouse, flashlight bouncing over peeling walls and scattered furniture as she headed for the front door.

Jin watched her face rather than the game for a moment. There was something oddly precise about her timing. She let the others pile nonsense into the silence, then cut through it with a single sentence. It reminded him of the way the members spoke to one another when the cameras had been running too long… Everyone always competing for the last word until someone ended the entire conversation with one well-placed insult. He could understand why the younger ones watched her. That was all, he decided. Understanding, not interest. 

Taehyung reached for the soju bottle and filled his own glass. “Do you think she calls everyone that?” 

“Probably,” Jungkook answered. 

Jimin lifted his head. “What would she call us?” 

“Unemployed,” Jin said. Three heads turned toward him. He gestured around at the room. “Look at you.” 

“We just finished a tour,” Jungkook protested.

“And immediately became people who watch strangers hunt ghosts.” 

“You’re watching too.” 

“I’m trapped here.” 

The front door of the farmhouse opened onscreen, and YN’s character stepped out into the rain. Jin’s eyes followed automatically. The game’s van stood at the edge of the property, its interior harshly lit against the dark. Her teammates kept talking through the radio, each offering increasingly useless requests.

“Check the sanity.” 

“Grab the thermometer.”

“Bring the music box back.” 

“Why would she bring the music box back inside?” Jin asked. 

Jungkook glanced at him. “It can trigger an event.” 

“It can also be used to trigger a hunt.” Jimin smiled. 

“Because it’s a cursed possession?” Jin asked. Jungkook’s eyebrows rose slightly. Jin lifted his glass. “You explained it earlier. I listened.” 

Jungkook accepted that easily and turned back to the stream. No suspicion. Jin didn’t know why he felt relieved. Inside the van, YN’s character began collecting equipment. Salt, DOTS projector, a smudge stick she almost forgot, prompting the chat to flood with warnings. Jin noticed her eyes skim the messages. She didn’t read most of them out loud, there were too many. Still, she seemed to catch certain names, certain jokes, and responded to a few without losing track of the game. That kind of attention took practice. He wondered how long she’d been streaming, then wondered why he’d wondered. The answer irritated him enough that he reached for a piece of chicken.

Taehyung took the last one first. Jin stared at his empty fingers as Taehyung ate it slowly. “You saw me reaching.” 

“I thought you were gesturing.” 

“With chopsticks?” Jin frowned, leaning across the table to steal from Jungkook’s plate instead. 

Jungkook moved it out of reach without looking away from the television. “Get your own.” 

“This is my own. I’m older than you.” 

“That isn’t how ownership works.” 

“It should be.” 

Onscreen, YN finally finished loading her arms with equipment. Jimin pointed. “She took too much.” 

“She always does that,” Jungkook said. “Then she drops something important when the ghost hunts.” 

Jin looked back toward the screen. YN’s character had stepped down from the van and started across the rain-soaked path toward the house again. Her teammates were still arguing, and her chat was still warning her. She looked entirely unbothered. Jin rested his elbow against the arm of the couch and told himself he was only waiting to see whether Jungkook’s prediction was correct.

“I have the sticks, DOTS, and the salt!” YN announced to her teammates. “Rook, Yuna, Skyler? Where you guys at?” 

For half a second there was only static. Then three voices all answered at once. 

“Upstairs hallway.”

“Garage.” 

“I’m dead.” 

YN stopped just outside the front door for a beat. “Skyler,” a voice labeled YUNA said carefully. “You are standing right next to me.” 

“Oh, then garage.” 

ROOK laughed so hard his microphone crackled. Jungkook dropped his head back against the couch. “They never know where they are.” 

“They’re in one house.” Jin said. 

“That really doesn’t help them.” Jimin replied. 

YN shifted the equipment around her inventory onscreen before pushing through the front door. The farmhouse was dark again, Jin watched the flashlight move over the walls once more, then glanced toward her face camera when she narrowed her eyes at the game. She looked suspicious before anything had even happened. It was expressive, that face of hers. Easy to read. Or perhaps only easy to think he could read.

“Okay,” YUNA said through the radio. “We think the ghost changed rooms.” 

YN stopped. “The ghost did what?” 

“It might be upstairs now.” 

“Might?” 

“We lost the temperature.” 

“How do you lose a temperature?” 

SKYLER’s voice cut in. “I dropped the thermometer.” 

“Where?” 

“Upstairs?” 

Silence. YN stared into the camera. Jin smiled into his glass, he tried to suppress it, but the expression stayed. No one was looking at him anyway. Taehyung had begun explaining to Jimin why a ghost changing rooms was strategically elegant, Jungkook was already predicting that someone would die within the next minute. 

YN stepped farther into the house. “Alright,” she said. “Rook, come get the salt. Yuna, place the DOTS wherever you think the room is now, Skyler locate your missing sense of direction and then maybe the thermometer.” 

“I’m in the garage,” Skyler insisted. 

“You said that thirty seconds ago.” “I still am.” 

“Then how did you drop it upstairs?” 

Another pause. “That’s actually a really good question.” 

Jimin dissolved into laughter again. “She sounds tired of them.” 

“She chose to play with them,” Jin said. 

“That doesn’t mean she can’t regret it.” 

Jin considered that. Fair. The game’s atmosphere shifted as YN moved through the foyer, a low creak sounded somewhere overhead. Her character looked up. The others were still talking to one another, but she had gone quiet and focused in the small face camera window. Not frightened, but alert. He found himself waiting with her. 

A figure flashed past the doorway at the end of the hall. YN jerked the mouse so hard the camera spun toward the wall and Jungkook shouted. Jimin grabbed Taehyung’s sleeve, and Taehyung shouted because Jimin had grabbed him. Jin flinched, though he covered it by reaching for the bottle of soju again. Onscreen, YN swore under her breath. 

Rook laughed. “You saw that, right?” 

“No,” YN said. “I actually love whipping my camera around for no reason.” 

Jin looked down while he poured. He was still smiling, it was not the kind of thing anyone would notice, just a little amusement. A little curiosity. The same curiosity that had him wondering what other games she played, whether she was always this caustic with her friends, whether she was funnier when she was tired or just less filtered. He caught the direction of his thoughts and stopped them. 

There was no reason to build a person out of scattered moments on a screen. He knew that better than most. YN was a performer, whether she used the word or not, and he was a stranger on a couch. Nothing connected them. Nothing needed to. 

“Hyung,” Jungkook said. Jin looked over, and Jungkook was holding his plate toward him. “You wanted chicken?” 

Jin took the plate automatically, it was empty. He stared at it while Jungkook grinned. Jin shoved it back into his hands. “You’re irritating.” 

Onscreen, YN’s teammates began shouting again. The lights flickered, and the front door slammed shut. Jungkook leaned forward, “Hunt.” 

YN froze in the middle of the hallway, still carrying around all of her equipment. She had nowhere obvious to hide from what Jin could see from where he, too, was leaning forward. 

The death animation swallowed the screen quickly and loudly. Jimin yelped, Jungkook swore, and Taehyung clapped once, sharply, as if the ghost had just scored a goal. Jin flinched despite himself, the movement small enough to disappear under everyone else’s reactions. 

“Told you it was a demon, now you’re dead and we have to hope that Yuna will clutch the round because Skyler definitely won't." Rook laughed, also dead. 

“Fuck you and your mother,” YN hissed.

Jungkook folded forward laughing. YN’s camera shifted toward the crumpled body of her character, one leg bent awkwardly beneath her and the other extended across the floor. “Oh, look at my body. It’s kind of sensual.” 

Jin’s drink caught in his throat. He coughed once into his fist. Jimin turned to him, “Are you okay?” 

“The soju went down wrong.” 

Jimin accepted that, already looking back at the television. Taehyung leaned closer, examining the corpse through the screen. “She’s right.” “She is not.” Jin said. 

“It has a certain elegance to it.” 

“She’s collapsed beside a radiator.” 

“A tragic elegance," Taehyung amended. 

Jungkook rubbed his eyes. “She always says things like that when she dies.” 

“You say that as though this happens often,” Jin said. 

“It happens enough.” 

Onscreen, Rook was still laughing while YN’s character wandered the map as a ghost, circling her own body with evident fascination. Jin found himself smiling again, not because the joke had been especially clever, but because of the ease with which she had made it. The scare had ripped a genuine reaction from her, but she had recovered almost instantly, turning the embarrassed moment into something everyone else could laugh at with her. It was a useful instinct, a familiar one. He knew what it was to feel a room tilt toward awkwardness and redirect it before anyone could see too much.

Then Yuna died. “She got me! Did we just lose?” 

“No,” YN sighed. “Skyler is still alive.” 

“So, we lost.” 

“Isn’t he your boyfriend?”

“This is why I know these things.” 

The entire living room erupted as Skyler was killed by the next hunt. Jungkook threw himself back against the couch, Jimin was laughing so hard he’d gone silent, and Taehyung pointed at the television as though Skyler might somehow defend himself. 

“They had one job,” Jungkook sighed. 

“They had several jobs,” Jin said. “And accomplished none of them.” 

The results screen loaded, contract failed, very little money earned, equipment lost… YN’s teammates were already arguing over whose fault it had been.

“Rook called it a demon and no one listened.”

“I was collecting evidence.” 

“You were singing.” 

“It helps me focus, babe.” 

Jin took another drink, this time more carefully. The others were still laughing, replaying their deaths in fragments, but Jin’s eyes moved back to the small camera window. YN looked less rattled now. Amused, annoyed, still carrying traces of adrenaline around her eyes. He wondered, again, how old she was. If he guessed, he’d say around Jungkook or Jimin’s ages. 

“Do they ever win?” Jin asked. 

Jungkook glanced over. “Yes.” Jimin shot him a look and Jungkook revised, “Sometimes.” 

“And how often is sometimes?” 

Taehyung answered. “Enough to keep hope alive.” 

“That sounds like gambling.”

“Streaming is kind of similar,” Jimin said. 

Onscreen, the group loaded back into the lobby. YN’s team continued bickering and blaming one another while she checked the chat, thousands of messages racing past in several languages. Jin watched her skim them, and then she caught one, laughed, and shook her head. He could not read what had prompted it from his distance from the TV, but for reasons he didn’t care to examine, he wanted to. Not urgently, not enough to move closer to the screen, just enough that the stream no longer felt like it was only background noise. He supposed it hadn’t felt that way for a while.

“What else did you say she plays?” Jin asked. 

Jungkook answered without looking away. “Everything.” 

“An actual answer, Jungkook.”

“Skyrim, Call of Duty, Baldur’s Gate, Zelda, Overwatch, Dead by Daylight… Party games too.” 

“She’s bad at driving games.” Jimin added.

Jungkook nodded. “But will insist she isn’t.” 

Jin looked at the channel name beneath her camera only for a moment, then he committed it to memory without acknowledging that he had. The lobby deliberated on another contract, finally selecting one at a modern house. Jin leaned back against the couch and crossed one ankle over his knee again, posture loose and expression indifferent. No one paid him any attention. That suited him.

He still didn’t know what had caught his interest so deeply, only that when Jungkook reached for the remote to lower the volume during an argument with Taehyung, Jin said, almost absently, “Leave it.” 

Jungkook did, and the next game began. It lasted forty minutes. Long enough for Taehyung to move from the floor to the couch and then back to the floor again. YN’s team finally identified the ghost correctly, though only after Skyler used the last smudge stick by accident and Rook locked himself outside during a hunt. 

Jungkook raised both hands in victory when the results screen confirmed it. “There.” 

“One successful contract,” Jin said. “Congratulations.” 

“You were literally watching the entire time.” 

“I had nowhere else to look.”

Jungkook gestured again around his living room. “There are walls and three people around you.” 

“The stream was more interesting,” Jin countered, the truth slipping out before he could reconsider it.

No one reacted. Jimin was busy reading something on his phone, Taehyung had started stacking empty glasses in a pyramid, and Jungkook was already browsing other videos from YN’s channel while the stream briefly paused for an advertisement and break.

Jin felt foolish for noticing that none of the others had taken interest in his admission. 

“Let’s watch the Skyrim one,” Taehyung said. 

“She’s live,” Jungkook replied. 

“She’s taking a break.” 

“She’ll be back.”

“How do you know?” 

“She always takes breaks during stream. The countdown is on the screen, Taehyung.” 

Jin glanced at the TV, the countdown was indeed there as the advert ended, but Jungkook’s other comment… “You know her schedule?” 

“Roughly.” 

“That’s concerning.” 

Jungkook pointed the remote at him. “You watched fishing videos for four hours last week.” 

“Those were instructional.” 

“You know how to fish.” 

The pastel holding screen was overlaid with soft music on the TV, the countdown timer now read eight minutes. Chat continued moving, Jin still could not read most of it from where he sat, but names and emotes passed in a blur. Messages in Korean appeared frequently enough to catch his eye, mixed between English and other languages he did not recognize at a glance. He wondered whether YN spoke Korean at all.

She returned before the timer finished. Not to the game, just to the camera. She had taken her headset off and tied her hair back, bottle of soju much similar to their own in one hand while she adjusted something offscreen. The game window remained minimized. Jungkook turned the volume up slightly. YN settled into her chair and began talking to the chat while waiting for the others. 

The change was subtle. Without the game demanding half her attention, she seemed calmer. Less performative, perhaps, though Jin knew better than to assume that meant more honest. Still, he listened. She answered questions about upcoming streams, mentioned a charity event she was considering, and complained that one of her moderators kept trying to convince her to play a farming simulator despite her inability to keep even fictional plants alive.

Jin smiled once when she admitted she had accidentally married the wrong character in a game and refused to reload out of principle. He didn’t ask what the game was, though he almost did. Instead, he let the others carry the conversation around him. The evening began to thin out, Jimin checked the time and groaned. Taehyung lay flat on the rug, staring blankly at the ceiling while Jungkook disappeared briefly into the kitchen and returned with water bottles. He threw one to each of them. Jin caught his.

“You’re all sleeping here,” Jungkook said.

“I’m going home,” Jin argued.

“You drank. All of you. You’re staying.” 

“I’ll call someone.” 

“You’ll wake your manager and he’ll kick your ass.” 

“That’s his job.” 

“It is not his job to rescue you from my house at two in the morning because you think you’re too old to stay over, hyung.” 

Jin twisted the bottle cap open. “He enjoys feeling needed.” 

Jimin murmured, “That’s what you tell yourself.” 

Jin kicked lightly at his ankle. YN’s gameplay still played in the background, the sound of her teammates finally returning to their computers filled the silences between her reading comments out loud. The easy conversation shifted into chaos again almost immediately. Jin drank his water and watched without comment, and by the time the next map was loaded, Taehyung was asleep on the floor. Jimin lasted another ten minutes before curling into the corner of the couch with his eyes closed. Jungkook remained awake, but only barely, head tipped back and remote balanced loosely against his stomach. Jin was the only one remaining upright. 

He glanced around the room. No one was watching him, which shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. He picked up his phone and opened Twitch, not because he wanted to follow her, only because the television screen was too far away to read the channel information clearly. That was reasonable enough. He searched the name beneath her camera, and the profile appeared immediately. YN, verified, a couple million followers across all platforms, a schedule, past broadcasts, clips with titles that suggested the younger members hadn’t exaggerated her tendency toward chaos.

Jin scrolled once, then again. A short biography listed her age and he stopped, read it, calculated the difference without meaning to. His mouth tightened slightly. It wasn’t scandalous, she was only some odd years younger than Jungkook. It wasn’t absurd… Still, enough years were between them that he felt newly aware of himself. Of the lines beside his eyes when he laughed, of how long he had already been living publicly while she had likely been finishing up school, of how different their worlds were despite both existing through screens other people watched from afar.

The attraction, though, didn’t vanish. That would have been too convenient. It simply became something he placed carefully at a distance… a private observation, nothing actionable or important. He locked his phone with stiff fingers while she argued with Skyler about who had stolen the strong flashlight. Jin looked back at the stream, and for another few minutes he allowed himself to watch it without analysis. 

Then Jungkook stirred beside him. “You’re still awake?” 

“Obviously.” 

Jungkook blinked toward the screen. “She’s still alive?” 

“For now.” 

“Ghost type?” He mumbled, wiping at his chin. 

“Moroi, probably.” 

Jungkook’s head turned slowly. “You learned the ghosts.” 

“I am listening to their endless arguing about them, so yes.” 

Jungkook blinked again, nodded, yawned, and closed his eyes. A few minutes later, his breathing had evened out again. Jin waited, not consciously, only until he was certain everyone else was asleep again, then he unlocked his phone again. YN’s profile was still open on the screen. His thumb hovered over the follow button, following meant nothing. It wouldn’t notify anyone in the room, and it certainly wouldn’t make him part of anything.

It was simply a way to find the channel again without searching for it. Jin pressed it, and the button changed. Following, no sound or alert, nothing dramatic. He lowered the phone and glanced again at the TV. YN had survived another hunt, she laughed into her microphone while her team shouted over one another. Jin listened for a few seconds longer, then, without thinking too hard about why, he turned on the stream notifications.

“Well, since my friends are headed to bed like responsible adults on the opposite side of the globe,” YN smiled at the camera, sipping at her soju, “it’s that time of night, divas. Skyrim time! Drink if you’ve got it, we’re about to fuck up Windhelm.” 

Jungkook’s eyes flickered open at the word Windhelm, and Jin watched him stare blearily at the TV as the game title screen appeared beneath her camera. “Windhelm,” he mumbled. 

“I thought you were asleep.” 

“I am.” 

“Uh huh.” 

Jungkook ignored him, shifted onto his side and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his face. Within seconds, he was motionless again on the couch, slumped next to Jimin whose mouth was open now against the corner cushions. Jin shifted further into his end of the couch with his eyes glued on the screen that changed again as YN loaded her save.

The harsh darkness of the loading screen gave way to snow-covered roads and mountains washed blue under the night sky. Her character stood outside Windhelm’s gates in mismatched armor, accompanied by a follower who looked deeply unequipped for whatever she intended to do.

This, at least, Jin understood more easily. Not Skyrim specifically–he had never played enough of it to try and claim any expertise– but the rhythm of a game played solo. The gradual quiet after friends left, and the way a person filled the space differently when there was no one in voice chat to compete with. YN took another sip of soju and began explaining her plans to her audience. 

Apparently she held many grudges against the city, most of them seemed personal. Jin glanced at the time, it was late enough that he should stop watching. He had already followed her, turned on notifications, and learned more ghost mechanics in one night than he had ever wanted or intended to know. That was plenty. He could sleep.

Instead, he lowered the volume on the TV slightly so it would not wake the others. YN’s character passed through Windhelm’s gates, and immediately she veered away from the main road to steal a cabbage from a nearby vendor. Jin frowned, “What was the point of that?” 

No one answered, and he looked around. Jimin was tucked against the corner still, a hand now trapped under his cheek. Taehyung remained sprawled on the rug beneath a blanket Jungkook must have tossed his way earlier. Jungkook’s face had disappeared completely inside his hood, and Jin briefly wondered if he would suffocate inside of it. 

He turned back to the screen as YN sold the cabbage to a merchant for next to nothing. “That was a waste of time,” he told her quietly.

She could not hear him, of course. The chat seemed to agree, though. Messages poured past, several containing cabbage emotes and references to an incident he didn’t understand. YN responded as though the theft were a matter of principle, and Jin smiled. Alone, he didn’t bother trying to hide it.

He picked up his phone and opened the stream there as well, lowering the volume to zero. The smaller screen made it easier to read chat and inspect the channel properly without getting up. That was his only reason. He scrolled through the profile while the TV continued playing the stream, finally reading more into the information he only allowed his eyes to flick through earlier with the younger members still awake. 

Her schedule was irregular but frequent, late-night Skyrim appeared more than once, as well as horror games with friends, competitive shooters, charity streams interspersed with clips whose titles were mostly variations of YN becoming angry at an object, game mechanic, or teammate.

A clip near the top read: YN DISCOVERS HER SKYRIM HUSBAND HAS BEEN DEAD FOR THREE WEEKS

Jin stared at the title, then tapped it. The short clip opened silently.

YN stood over an NPC’s body in the middle of a road, sounding genuinely horrified as she realized the man had apparently died several saves ago. The subtitles indicated that she demanded to know why chat had not told her. The chat had, according to the replies. Repeatedly.

Jin covered his mouth to keep his laugh quiet. On the TV, present-day YN was now arguing with a guard. He closed the clip and returned his focus to the live stream. A small indicator showed that she had noticed the new follower count climbing, though there were too many new names for any one account to register. 

Jin preferred that. The idea of being noticed produced a strange mixture of temptation and discomfort. Attention was rarely neutral for him, it came with recognition and calculation. Even genuine kindness could change once someone understood exactly who they were speaking to. Here, he was only another silent name… He liked that more than expected.

YN entered a tavern and ordered a drink in the game, then lifted her real bottle towards the camera. Chat filled with beer emotes, and Jin looked toward the water bottle in his hand, then at the remaining soju on the table. He didn’t take it, the hour was already punishing enough without following a stranger’s drinking game. A younger stranger, he reminded himself. The age listed on her profile had stayed in the back of his mind. Not as an accusation, just context.

She existed in a different stretch of adulthood from him. Her life seemed louder, more spontaneous whereas his had been organized around responsibility for so long that even his impulsive decisions tended to come with staff and security concerns. He could find her attractive without romanticizing the distance between them. He could enjoy the stream without making it strange. There was nothing wrong with either. The insistence sounded unnecessary even inside his own mind.

Jin locked his phone again and left it on his knee. On the TV, YN attempted to pickpocket someone in the tavern and was caught immediately. The entire room became hostile. “Why would you do that in front of everyone?” Jin whispered. 

YN drew her weapon as the tavern erupted into violence. Jin blinked at the screen as she shouted at the guards, sending them flying into the walls, and struck the wrong NPC with her sword, hitting her own follower afterwards, and fled into the streets with half of Windhelm pursuing her. The chaos had unfolded so quickly that he pressed his knuckles against his lips as he laughed, shoulders shaking. 

Taehyung shifted on the floor and Jin went still. After a few seconds of agonizing waiting, Taehyung settled again. Jin lowered the volume another notch. When he looked back, YN’s character had escaped by jumping into a freezing river outside of the city. She was laughing too, not gracefully. Her head was tilted back, one hand over her face, the sound breaking apart each time she tried to explain that everything had gone exactly as intended. 

Jin studied her for a moment. That pull returned, quiet and unresolved. It wasn’t yearning, he didn’t know enough about her to yearn for anything real. It was closer to recognition without any real familiarity, the sense that there was something about her he would understand if he were given enough time to do so. That, he decided, was why he kept watching past 3 am, to identify it. A harmless exercise, a curiosity that would probably disappear within a few streams once the novelty wore off. YN recovered from the disaster and began climbing back toward Windhelm, Jin watched the follower struggle to keep up behind her. 

“You should leave the city alone,” he murmured. 

She immediately turned around and headed back towards the gates. 

Jin sighed, then reached for the soju. 

The soju was warmer that it should have been. Jin poured only a little, more out of companionship with the moment than any real desire to keep drinking. He raised the glass toward the TV without thinking, then caught himself halfway through the gesture. He looked around the room, noting the sleeping forms of the other three men. Then he drank. 

YN marched back through Windhelm’s gates as though the guards had not attempted to kill her less than five minutes prior. The bounty notification appeared immediately. Jin sighed, “you know they remember you.” 

YN attempted to walk past the nearest guard. He immediately stopped her in her tracks. The chat began flooding with variations of PAY YOUR CRIMES and RUN. YN selected the dialogue option to resist arrest. 

“Why?” Jin huffed, staring at the screen in shock. 

She drew her weapon again, and the city devolved into chaos once more. Jin’s lips pressed together, but the laugh escaped anyway, quiet and breathy, shoulders trembling while he tried not to wake anyone. A guard struck YN’s character from behind and her health dropped sharply. 

“Potion,” Jin muttered as she opened her inventory. “Good.” 

Then she ate eleven wheels of cheese. 

Jin blinked. “What are you doing?” 

The health bar climbed and he stared at it. “That works?” 

He glanced toward Jungkook, instinctively prepared to ask, but the younger man was still either sleeping or succumbed to the fabric of his hood. Jin turned back and watched in horror as YN consumed several loaves of bread, three apples, a raw fish, and something that appeared to be an entire cooked goat leg while the guards waited patiently outside the frozen inventory screen.

“That is disgusting,” he whispered. 

She closed the menu and resumed fighting at full health.

Jin’s eyebrows lifted, “Effective, though.” 

The battle lasted for another minute before YN accidentally shouted a civilian down a staircase. She went completely still and the chat exploded. Jin covered his mouth as her camera pivoted slowly toward the staircase. The civilian lay motionless at the bottom. Her expression shifted from horror to calculation.

“No.” 

She crouched beside the body and began looting it. Jin laughed into his hand. It was the sort of decision Taehyung would make in a game, cause a disaster, stare at it solemnly, then search the pockets. YN took six gold and a pair of boots.

“That was not worth it,” Jin sighed as she equipped the newly stolen apparel. “They don’t even match.” 

Chat apparently agreed. Messages flew past criticizing the outfit while YN defended the boots with growing outrage. Jin leaned closer to his phone to read. One viewer asked why her character was dressed like a “medieval lost-and-found bin.” 

Another claimed the boots completed the look. YN read that one aloud and pointed triumphantly at the camera. Jin reexamined the outfit… fur armor, steel gauntlets, a mage’s hood, newly stolen normal boots. “No,” he said. “They made it worse.” 

His thumb moved toward the chat box. He stopped. The field waited at the bottom of the screen, he could type anything, something harmless. 

The boots are terrible.

Thousands of other people were already saying the same thing. His message would disappear instantly, unnoticed. That should have made it easier to send one, instead, he closed the chat. Not yet. 

He didn’t know why the idea of speaking felt more intimate than following her, perhaps because words created the possibility of an answer, however unlikely that was. Watching, at least, was passive. Speaking meant stepping into the room. He preferred the doorway, for now. 

The fighting finally ended when YN escaped into a nearby building and crouched behind a table until the guards lost interest. Jin shook his head, “That shouldn’t work.” 

YNs character remained motionless while the detection indicator slowly closed. Her face grew calmer too. She took another sip of soju and began talking to chat about what she intended to do next. The plan involved breaking into a manor, planting an item on someone, and possibly stealing every plate in the building. Jin listened with the wary attention of a man hearing the early stages of a crime. Why the plates mattered was never adequately explained by her, and the stream settled into a softer rhythm of lockpicking, looting, and YN chatting with viewers while searching drawers and bookshelves. The occasional sharp burst of panic happened when a guard passed nearby, but never became anything too bothersome. 

Without the others awake beside him, Jin became more conscious of her voice. Not its pitch or accent, exactly, though she did sound American, but its cadence. The way it sped up when she became excited, the small pause before a joke when she already knew it would make chat angry, the quieter tone she used when someone shared something sincere between all of the nonsense. 

A viewer mentioned having a difficult week, and YN stopped rummaging through an NPC’s wardrobe long enough to respond. The shift was immediate but not exaggerated. She did not offer reassurance or turn the moment into a performance of compassion. She simply spoke to them for a few seconds, warmly and directly, and then moved on before the person could become a spectacle. Jin’s smile faded into something more thoughtful. There, perhaps that was part of it. The contrast. 

She could call thousands of viewers assholes and somehow make it sound affectionate, then recognize when one of them needed gentleness without announcing she was being gentle. It was an appealing quality, he allowed himself to admit that much. Attractive did not mean significant and interesting did not mean destiny. He was old enough to know the difference. 

On the rug, Taehyung stirred and rolled onto his side. Jin lowered his phone immediately, though there was nothing incriminating on it beyond a public stream. Taehyung blinked up at the TV, “she’s still playing?” 

“Apparently.” “Did she fix Windhelm?” 

“She made it worse.” 

Taehyung gave a sleepy hum of approval before his eyes closed again. Jin waited until his breathing settled before picking up his phone again. Only then did he look down at the closer and muted version of the stream. YN was carrying a stolen silver platter through a dark hallway. He shook his head at the antics, blinking down at the closed chatbox. 

When the stream eventually ended, after YN was arrested, escaped, lost her horse, found the horse again, and then somehow became the legal owner of three dozen cabbages… Jin remained seated in the silence. The TV displayed the channel’s offline screen. For several seconds, he did nothing. The room felt oddly empty without her voice filling it. 

That was only because it had been playing for hours. Habit often formed quickly, silence always felt noticeable after sustained noise. A rational explanation. 

Jin picked up the remote and turned off the TV. Darkness settled over the room. 

He stood carefully, collecting empty glasses and carrying them into Jungkook’s kitchen. He drank his water, checked that the door was locked, then returned with blankets for Jimin and Jungkook. Neither woke as he draped the fabric across their sleeping forms. 

Before lying down in the remaining empty armchair, he checked his phone one last time. A notification from Twitch sat near the top of his screen.

YN POSTED A NEW CLIP

He opened it. It was the moment with the stolen boots. The caption read: FASHION IS SUBJECTIVE. CRIME IS FOREVER. <3

Jin watched it once, then again, because the first time he had been reading the caption. He shut the screen off, sighing, and pressed his phone against his chest and closed his eyes. The attraction would pass, probably, and if it did not, it would remain exactly what it was then: private, distant, and his. 

Jin woke with a stiff neck, one sock missing, and Taehyung’s foot resting against his shin. For several seconds, he had no idea where he was. Then Jungkook snored from the couch and his memory returned in pieces. Cards, soju, Phasmophobia, Windhelm, stolen boots… Jin reached under the armchair for his phone. 

The screen lit up with the usual collection of messages, staff schedules, a group chat that had somehow accumulated 57 notifications overnight, and several alerts from apps he had forgotten to silence. When he unlocked his phone, it was still on GremlinHours Twitch page, the red live ring around her profile notably absent. 

He accessed his settings and disabled alerts from appearing on his lock screen, not because there was anything to hide, but because he simply preferred a tidy phone. Jin returned it to his pocket and nudged Taehyung’s foot away. “Get up.” Taehyung made a sound of deep personal suffering. “It’s morning,” Jin responded. 

“That’s cruel.” Taehyung groaned. 

“You’re sleeping on the floor.” 

“It’s comfortable right now.” 

“You’re using my leg as a pillow.” 

Taehyung opened one eye. “It’s a good leg.” 

Jin stared at him. “Move.” 

Jungkook was waking up on the couch, stretching before standing up like he’d never been asleep. He padded towards the kitchen, barefoot and silent, and filled a glass of water at the sink. He drank it quickly, looking as though he’d been summoned against his will to do so. 

Jin sighed, standing and heading to the kitchen himself. He opened the refrigerator and grimaced. It contained several varieties of sauce, protein drinks, kimchi, and nothing he considered breakfast. 

“Do you live like this?” 

Jungkook leaned against the counter. “There are eggs.” 

“Where?” Jungkook opened a drawer. Jin stared. “Why are your eggs in a drawer?” 

“It’s the egg drawer.” 

“That is not a thing.” 

“It is here.” Jungkook’s phone buzzed against the counter. He picked it up, read the screen, and chuckled. “She posted a Windhelm clip.” Jin kept his back turned while removing the eggs. “Oh god, what are those boots?” 

Jungkook opened the video and YN’s voice filled the kitchen at low volume.

“Fashion is subjective–”

Jin cracked the egg harder than necessary. The shell collapsed into the bowl. 

Jungkook glanced at him, “You got shell in it.” 

“I see that,” Jin grumbled, then picked the fragments out with exaggerated concentration while the clip replayed behind him. He had already seen it, twice, and the knowledge felt strangely private in daylight. Jungkook laughed at the same moment Jin had the night before, and Jin found himself noticing the differences. The clip was funny, but shortened and polished and stripped of the quiet stretch that had surrounded it the night before. 

He preferred the stream. The thought arrived naturally and he did not examine it. By the time breakfast was ready, Jimin and Taehyung had staggered into the kitchen and taken seats at the counter. The conversation quickly shifted toward plans, aches from the tour, and whether they would meet the others later in the day.

YN was not mentioned again. Jin was relieved, but also faintly disappointed. Both reactions were unreasonable, so he ignored them. 

Four days passed before he watched her again. 

Not deliberately, he had come home late after a recording session, removed his shoes, and dropped onto the sofa with the intention of watching television until his mind stopped moving. His phone vibrated beside him. 

GoblinHours is live: BALDUR’S GATE, BAD DECISIONS, BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

Jin read the title, then locked his phone. He changed his clothes and washed his face, reheated food he hadn’t originally planned on plating for himself that night. When he returned to the living room, the notification was still there. Watching for a few minutes would mean nothing, he had followed her for that purpose anyways. He opened the stream on his phone before transferring it to his TV. YN’s face appeared first, animated with outrage while several other voices played from the game through her headset. The game filled most of the screen around her. 

Jin set his food on the coffee table. He had little idea of what was happening, there were dice, a pale elf who seemed offended by quite literally anything happening around him, and a large red woman that YN seemed deeply attached to. An entire party was trapped inside a building because someone had stolen an object in full-view of its owner. Jin watched silently for several minutes.

YN attempted to talk her way out of the situation, and the dice failed her. Combat began immediately. “Of course,” Jin murmured. 

He ate while the disaster unfolded. This stream felt different from the last one. Less frantic than Phasmophobia, more conversational than Skyrim. YN stopped frequently to debate dialogue options with chat, then ignored the majority decision whenever it didn’t suit her. Her viewers complained, and she insulted them. They sent affectionate emotes in response. Jin began to understand their relationship, not fully, that would have required the familiarity he didn’t possess, but he understood enough to see that the cruelty was mostly ritual. A language that was built over time between the audience and the person at the center of it.

He watched until his food was gone, then until the dishes had cooled beside him. When he finally checked the time, nearly two hours had passed. Jin frowned, that was longer than intended. He reached for the remote, before he could close the stream, YN began reading messages from viewers who had submitted character names for a future playthrough. Most were ridiculous, and she rejected several immediately. Then she read one Korean name aloud, pronunciation practiced and careful but slightly uncertain. Jin paused as she tried it again. It was closer, and the chat began offering corrections, many of them were contradictory. Jin opened the chatbox on his phone, fingers hovering. He could type the correct pronunciation, nothing personal, nothing flirtatious. Useful information from one anonymous Korean viewer among thousands. He wrote it phonetically, read it once, and then deleted it. 

Someone else would explain. Someone always did. A moment later, another Korean viewer posted the correction. YN repeated it correctly and thanked them. Jin felt briefly pleased, then mildly annoyed with himself for feeling anything about it. He placed his phone facedown, her age returning to him, not forcefully, but as a quiet reminder. 

So did everything else. His name, his career, the complicated consequences attached to otherwise ordinary interactions. A message from him would not be ordinary if she ever learned who had sent it. That didn’t mean he could never speak in chat, it only meant that he should understand why he wanted to before he did. At present, he did not. Attraction was surely part of it, curiosity too, and maybe boredom, though the idea seemed less convincing. He still couldn’t name the rest. 

Jin picked up the remote as YN selected a dialogue option chat had begged her not to choose. 

The pale elf disapproved, and a fight began. Jin lowered the remote, “five more minutes,” he said to the empty room. 

Twenty minutes later, his phone displayed a low-battery warning as he watched the chat. He plugged his phone in on the endtable, eyes focusing now on the TV alone. YN, unaware of him, laughed as another carefully constructed plan collapsed around her. 

Jin’s ‘five minutes’ became the rest of the stream. 

Jin did not acknowledge that fact when it ended. He simply stared at the offline screen for a moment, collected his dishes, and went to bed later than intended. The next morning he was tired, that was the only consequence. No revelation, no dramatic shift in the shape of his life. By breakfast, YN had been reduced to a pleasant memory of laughter and poor decisions involving dice. 

He did not think about her during dance rehearsals, or while he answered emails. He did not think of her when a stylist mentioned Skyrim and Rust while discussing vaguely medieval or apocalyptic concepts for a shoot. He certainly didn’t open the Twitch app during lunch to chek whether she had updated her schedule. 

The schedule happened to be there when he opened it for an unrelated reason. 

YN would be live twice that week. One Call of Duty stream and one Sims stream titled: BUILDING MY ENEMIES HOUSES WITHOUT BATHROOMS XXXXX

Jin read the title twice and closed the app. 

He missed the Call of Duty stream. It wasn’t intentional, work had just ran late and it was followed by dinner with Hoseok and Namjoon, and that was followed by nearly an hour spent standing beside his car while Namjoon explained an essay he had recently read and then chatted absentmindedly about Pokemon. By the time Jin had returned home, the stream had ended. He noticed the absence only because the notification that he’d allowed on his lockscreen after much deliberation had changed from LIVE to Watch the replay now.

He dismissed it. Watching live was one thing, a replay required effort and intent. He was not going to become the sort of person who rearranged his evening around the broadcasts of a woman he had never met. 

The next day, a clip appeared in the BTS groupchat. Jungkook had sent it. YN was crouched behind cover in Call of Duty, whispering an elaborate tactical plan to her team before accidentally throwing a grenade into the wall directly in front of her. 

The explosion killed her character instantly. Her webcam remained perfectly still for three full seconds, then she removed her headset and walked out of the room without a word. Taehyung responded with twelve laughing emojis. 

Jimin wrote: She planned that for five minutes 

Jin watched the clip, then watched it again because Hoseok sent a message halfway through the first viewing and distracted him. He did not react to it. Jin’s group chats were active enough that silence never looked strange. A minute later, Jungkook sent another clip. This one showed YN returning to her chair with a glass of water, sitting down, and announcing to her teammates that the game had been sabotaged by “the military-industrial complex.” 

Jin pressed his lips together and reacted with a single thumbs-up. Neutral, almost dismissive. No one commented. 

He caught the sims stream by accident. The notification arrived while he was in bed, reading through a script he had already read twice. He ignored it for twelve minutes, then he opened the stream on his phone and set it beside the pages. 

YN had created a character based on someone she disliked, though she refused to identify them. The Sim had poor hygiene, no cooking skills, and a house containing several sinks but no toilet. Jin tried hard to focus on the script, but looked up when YN placed a refrigerator in the garden. She had also built a swimming pool around the front door. 

He lowered the pages, the viewers were voting on whether the Sim deserved a bed. Jin opened the chat, the poll showed 78% favor of no bed. He stared at the results. Cruel.  He voted for a bed, and the percentage didn’t change at all. YN glanced toward the poll, “22% of you are weak,” she said. “This is why society is collapsing.” 

Jin’s eyebrows rose. He had offered mercy, and she had insulted him for it. The absurdity pleased him more than it should have. He set the script aside. For the next hour, he watched YN construct what gradually became less a house and more an elaborate violation of building codes. Every room was accessible only through another room, the kitchen contained a fireplace directly beside the curtains, and there were no smoke alarms. 

“You’re going to kill him,” Jin said. 

YN added another fireplace. Jin shook his head. The chat moved more slowly than it had during Phasmophobia. Not slowly enough to follow everything, but enough that individual messages remained visible for a few seconds. People suggested furniture, YN ignored the sensible suggestions and embraced the worst ones. One viewer asked for her to add a ladder into the swimming pool, and she did, and then another told her to remove it after the Sim entered it. She accused them of being a murderer, then bookmarked the suggestion. 

Jin opened the message field and typed: At least give him a fire alarm.

He looked at the sentence, it was ordinary enough, no one could identify him from it. Nothing about it revealed his age, career, location, or even his personality beyond a concern for fictional fire safety. His thumb hovered over send, YN placed another rug in front of the fireplace, Jin sent the message. It vanished into the flow of chat immediately. 

His pulse did something fairly irritating. He waited, not because he expected her to see it, but because the possibility existed now. YN continued decorating and the chat moved on. 

Jin relaxed. There, he had spoken once and nothing had happened. The world remained intact. He reached for the script again. 

“Who said fire alarm?” YN asked, leaning toward her monitor. 

Jin’s hand stopped and the chat filled with viewers claiming credit. YN scrolled upward, “Moon–” she squinted. “Moonrabbit. You think this man deserves safety?” 

Jin went completely still. His username appeared briefly on the stream, highlighted beside the message. There wasn’t any recognition in her voice, of course there wasn’t, he was just one anonymous account among thousands. Still, hearing the name aloud created a strange sense of intimacy, thin as thread and entirely imagined. 

YN selected the smoke alarm from the menu. “Fine. Moonrabbit has chosen mercy.” She placed it on the wall, then she built another fireplace directly below it. 

Jin stared. “That defeats the purpose.” 

As though responding to him, YN smiled at the camera. “But mercy has limits.” 

The chat erupted, and Jin lowered his phone against his bedspread. A quiet laugh escaped him, insignificant. She had read a message, streamers did that constantly, she would forget the username within minutes if she had not already. He should have found that reassuring. Instead, a small, absurd part of him felt pleased that for several seconds, something he had said had entered her world and changed it, even if the change was only a smoke alarm inside a virtual death trap. 

He opened the chat again, fingers resting against the keyboard, then stopped. One message was enough. Two might look eager, and that thought embarrassed him immediately. No one was tracking how often he spoke and no one knew who he was. He was inventing rules for a situation that in all honesty was too small to require any. 

Still, he did not type again. He watched from the doorway, exactly where he belonged. 

The next afternoon, Jin discovered that the stream had automatically granted him channel points, whatever those were. He searched through the rewards available through YN’s page. Some allowed viewers to choose YN’s next in-game outfit, others forced her to drink water, stretch, or speak in a particular accent for five minutes. 

One reward cost an absurd amount and was simply titled: MAKE YN APOLOGIZE TO AN NPC

Jin smiled. He had nowhere near enough points, not that he intended to collect them. He closed the page, and that evening, while waiting for food to arrive, he opened it again and tuned into a Just Chatting stream. His balance had increased incrementally. Apparently, points accumulated simply from watching. Jin stared at the number, then at the reward. It would take months to earn… Jin did not know why that calculation lodged itself so comfortably in his mind. 

The point balance was a quiet nuisance. Jin checked it more often than he checked several apps he actually needed. He wasn’t obsessive with it, only after some streams and sometimes before them… and occasionally during lunch when he had no intention of watching but wanted to see whether the number had updated correctly. It always had. 

He still spoke rarely. One message during a Zelda stream when YN spent nearly twenty minutes attempting to reach a chest that was clearly decorative, another when she accused a Red Dead Redemption horse of betrayal after riding it directly into a tree. Once, late at night, when she had been playing Skyrim for nearly six hours and ignored chat’s increasingly frantic reminders to eat. 

Moonrabbit: You have consumed more food in the game than you have in real life.

YN read it and looked into the camera. “That is slander, Moon. I had three almonds.”

Jin stared dumbly at his phone. Moon. It was only a shortened username, nothing else, he knew that. Still, he replayed the clip the following morning while brushing his teeth, just to verify that he had heard it correctly. He had. 

Over the next few weeks, Jin learned the shape of YN’s streams. Not her schedule, she did not appear to possess one in any meaningful sense, just the shape. The hour when the energy shifted from performance into something softer, the point at which the alcohol made her more honest but not yet reckless. The games she played when she was restless and the ones she chose when she needed comfort. 

Skyrim meant conversation, Call of Duty meant aggression, and The Sims meant vengeance. Red Dead Redemption meant she would spend forty minutes brushing a horse and then deny being attached to the animal.

Jin learned which teammates could be trusted. Yuna usually could, Skyler could not navigate, and Rook was better at games than YN admitted and worse at being quiet than any human being had any right to be. He learned moderator names, inside jokes, the reason chat spammed cabbages whenever YN claimed she had a plan… he did not learn anything she had not chosen to share. That distinction mattered to Jin, maybe more than it should have. He had no interest in searching for old interviews or digging through private histories assembled by fans. He understood too well how invasive curiosity could disguise itself as affection. The stream was enough. More than enough, some nights.

The subscription happened during Dead by Daylight. 

Jin had been watching from a dressing room while waiting for a shoot to resume, one earbud hidden beneath his hair. YN was playing survivor, albeit badly. Not because she lacked skill, but because she kept abandoning safe positions to rescue teammates who had made objectively atrocious decisions.

“You’re going to die,” Jin murmured to the screen. YN didn’t hear, obviously. Instead, she doubled back for Skyler, winding through a mess of branches and building remnants. The killer appeared, YN took a hit, unhooked Skyler, and went down in his place. Jin frowned at the screen. Skyler escaped without looking back once. “Coward.” 

The stream cut to an advertisement. He had not seen many ads on her channel before, maybe they were scheduled. Maybe the app had changed something. Either way, the sudden cheerful commercial irritated him enough that he opened the subscription menu. The lowest tier cost almost nothing to him, which was not the point. Subscribing would make him more visible– a badge beside his username, a marker of continuity, YN might start recognizing the account. He should have found all of these things undesirable… he did, mostly. 

“Seokjin-ssi?” He locked his phone, glancing up at the staff member leaning through the doorway. “They need another ten minutes.” 

“That’s fine,” he nodded. 

The door closed and Jin looked down again. The ads had ended when he pulled the stream up again. YN was spectating Skyler, who had survived entirely because she had sacrificed herself. 

“He’s not even repairing anything,” she complained. “I died for a man crouching behind a rock.” 

Jin pressed subscribe. He selected the setting that prevented a public alert, no animated banner or announcement to signal his purchase. No message appearing in chat. A small badge materialized beside moonrabbit. That was all. Jin exhaled, YN never noticed. He told himself he preferred it that way.

Two streams later, she did. She was playing Overwatch and losing patience with a team member who kept demanding healing while sprinting alone into the enemy team.

Moonrabbit: Tell him you cannot heal poor judgment.

YN read the message during the respawn screen. ”Exactly, Moonrabbit. Thank you.” Her eyes shifted toward the username. ”Oh, you subscribed.”

Jin went rigid. The dressing room was empty this time, but he still lowered the brightness of his phone. YN smiled, not broadly, just a small and warm curve that felt different from the grin she used when chat amused her.

”Thank you, Moon. Welcome officially to The Gutters.”

The game resumed and she moved on. Jin did not. Welcome officially. He adjusted the earbud, though nothing was wrong with it. He watched the rest of the match in distracted silence, uncomfortably aware of how pleased he felt. That was exactly why he had hesitated. Not because he feared being discovered, though that was there too, but because tiny scraps of acknowledgment could become disproportionately valuable when someone was lonely enough, curious enough, or foolish enough.

Jin was not lonely, not precisely. His life was crowded. His phone never stopped, his family loved him, the members occupied so much of his emotional world that solitude had often felt like a luxury. But there were forms of isolation that survived crowds, the kind created by never knowing whether someone liked the person or the story attached to him. YN liked neither because she did not know either existed. Whatever warmth she offered Moonrabbit was directed toward a username with a dry sense of humor and an unhealthy concern for safety regulations in her gaming sessions.

It was uncomplicated, for now. Jin knew better than to mistake uncomplicated for harmless. 

At the next group dinner, Jungkook propped his phone against a water glass and played one of YN’s recent clips. She was attempting to teach Rook how to drive in GTA. The car lasted a handful of seconds. Taehyung laughed before the crash had even happened. 

Jimin leaned across the table. “She should stop letting him drive.” 

“She’s worse,” Jungkook said. 

“She is not,” Jin replied before thinking. 

Three faces turned toward him, sending his heartbeat stumbling. Jin lifted a piece of meat from the grill and placed it on his plate. “At least she knows she’s bad,” he added. “That one sounds too confident.” 

Jungkook considered this, then nodded. “True.” 

Conversation moved on, no suspicion. Nothing in Jin’s expression had changed, nothing in his tone had exposed the private hours he spent listening to the same voice that played through Jungkook’s phone speakers. Still, he was more quiet through the rest of dinner.

He disliked how easily the secret– he hated calling it that– could have surfaced through something as small as instinctive defense. He was not defending her, he barely knew her. He knew the version that she broadcast. The version that was funny, perceptive, reckless with digital vehicles, unexpectedly kind, and far too near Jungkook’s age for him to be thinking about at midnight while waiting for notifications.

The age gap had not disappeared merely because weeks had passed. If anything, the familiarity made it more important to remember.

YN’s life appeared unsettled in ways his no longer was. She wasn’t immature, he would not insult her that way, but her life was still expanding. She could move countries, change careers, vanish into a new obsession. Jin had obligations woven into his bones. History followed him into every room. Whatever attraction existed between him and a woman on a screen belonged safely inside fantasy because reality would just weigh it all down.

He understood that, and he accepted it even more so. 

His phone vibrated underneath the table with a stream notification. 

GoblinHours is live: SKYRIM AND SOJU – LET’S MAKE TERRIBLE CHOICES :-))))

Jin did not reach for it, but Jungkook reached for his. “Oh, she’s live again.” 

Taehyung immediately said, “Put it on.” 

Jungkook began casting the stream to the TV mounted on the restaurant’s private-room wall. Jin remained perfectly calm. YN appeared onscreen, already arguing with chat about whether she had accidentally joined a cult. Taehyung lifted his glass as YN raised hers toward the camera. ”To bad decisions,” she said.

Around the table, the rest of the younger members copied her. Jin hesitated only a moment before doing the same.

“To bad decisions,” Jungkook echoed.

Jin drank without speaking. His phone remained untouched under the table, her stream pulled up. But when YN greeted chat and added, almost absently, ”Moon, behave tonight. I saw you encouraging the horse theft last stream,” Jin nearly inhaled his drink. 

Jimin patted his back while Jungkook laughed at something else entirely. No one noticed the heat rising under Jin’s collar. On the TV, YN continued talking, unaware that Moonrabbit sat in a private dining room with three of her regular viewers, trying not to choke himself to death over the sound of a nickname.

Jin waited three days, not because he had decided against donating, but because he wanted the decision to feel less connected to the restaurant. Less connected to YN saying Moon in front of the others and his body reacting as though she had touched him. 

Three days felt respectable, measured. By the third night, it also felt completely arbitrary. He was home alone, showered, dressed in an old t shirt, and sitting at the dining table with a bowl of ramyeon growing soft beside his laptop. 

YN was playing Red Dead Redemption, or, more accurately, YN was attempting to rescue a stranger from a gang hideout while stopping every thirty seconds to calm her horse. The horse’s name was Bugatti, because her last horse, Tax Fraud, had fallen victim to a very large cliff. Jin had learned that two streams ago. He had also learned that Bugatti frightened easily, disliked snakes, and was treated with considerably more tenderness than any human character in the game. 

”Easy, baby,” YN murmured as the horse tossed its head. 

Jin looked up from his food. The softness in her voice made him strangely aware of the empty room around him. He lowered his gaze again, the stream continuing beside him. He had only opened it as background noise, something familiar to fill the empty corners of the room while he ate. He did not need to watch every movement or hear every joke. Still, when YN rode past the gang hideout entirely because she had been reading chat, Jin noticed. “You missed it.” 

Chat informed her at the same time. She cursed, turned Bugatti around, and blamed the map. Jin smiled as a donation alert popped across the top of the stream. A viewer had sent a large amount with a message requesting that YN use it toward a future charity event. YN stopped immediately, her expression softened as she thanked them, sincere and careful in a way Jin had come to recognize. 

Then she added, ”That amount also gets you access to the Discord, by the way. One of the mods will message you. No pressure to join, but it’s there.”

Jin’s attention shifted. He had heard her mention the Discord before. Private channels, game suggestions, occasional voice chats with moderators and longtime supporters, early announcements, community movie nights… He had never considered joining, but that wasn’t entirely true.

He had considered it and dismissed the idea before it could fully develop. The stream was public, watching required nothing from him, chat required very little. Discord felt different, more persistent, and people would surely notice when someone returned. Moonrabbit could exist in chat as a series of occasional comments without becoming a person. In a smaller community, the account would begin gathering more shape. 

And YN would be there. 

Not constantly, not privately, but still, she would be closer. Jin stared at the donation banner until it disappeared, then he looked down at his food. He should finish eating. Instead, he opened the channel information. The donation tiers were listed plainly. The amount required for Discord access was high enough to discourage casual entry but not high enough to be remarkable where he was concerned. 

That was exactly what made it dangerous. Money distorted scale. What felt minor to Jin could feel intimate or extravagant to someone else. He had spent years watching strangers attach meanings to gifts, and he didn’t want YN to feel bought. He didn’t want special treatment. 

He wanted–

Jin stopped, because that was the question. What did he want? Access, apparently. A quieter room in which she might remember his name more often. The possibility of understanding what she was like when the audience was smaller. It sounded invasive when phrased so honestly… 

He closed the page. Onscreen, YN dismounted Bugatti and immediately entered an ambush. Gunfire erupted and JIn watched her take cover behind a wagon while insisting she had planned out the entire scenario. He ate another bite, grimacing at how cool the noodles had gone. He should have reheated them, instead, after the fight ended, he opened the donation page again.

The message box waited. He could donate anonymously, no public alert or spoken thank you. The moderator would still contact the account afterward. It would be cleaner, less performative. Jin entered the amount and paused, reduced it to exactly the lowest tier that granted access, then increased it slightly because choosing the precise minimum felt somehow worse. He considered the message.

For Bugatti’s emotional damages felt too playful. For the next charity stream felt too formal. No message was best. He selected private donation, hesitating with one finger over the confirmation button. It was still a choice. Not fate, not momentum, not something that had simply happened because the stream was playing. He was choosing to move closer. Even anonymously, even carefully, he was choosing closer. Jin could recognize that small decisions became habits before they became problems. 

He pressed confirm. The payment processed without sound, and nothing appeared on the stream. YN continued looting the hideout, unaware. Jin sat back, relief came first, then disappointment. He frowned at himself, he had chosen privacy, he wanted privacy. A public reaction would have defeated the purpose. His laptop chimed a few minutes later, a direct message from one of YN’s moderators sat in his inbox. 

LanternMoth: Hi, Moonrabbit! Thank you for supporting the stream. Your donation qualifies for annual Discord access. Totally optional, but here’s the invite if you’d like to join. Please read the rules when you arrive–privacy is a big deal in there.

Below it sat a link. Jin read the message over and over again. Privacy is a big deal. Good. He clicked and the server opened into a welcome channel filled with emojis and brief introductions. There were fewer people than he’d expected. Still hundreds, enough to disappear within. A list of channels ran down the side. Announcements, game requests, clips, food, pets, a private supporter section, voice rooms, and near the bottom, a channel labeled: after-hours.

Jin did not open it. He read the rules first. No sharing screenshots outside of the server, no asking YN for private information, no discussing her location, no contacting members privately without permission, no celebrity speculation, invasive questions, or identity hunting. His mouth tightened fractionally at the last two. Apparently, the community had learned boundaries the hard way. 

He reacted to acknowledge the rules, and a bot granted him full access. More channels appeared and the member list shifted. YN’s name sat near the top, offline. Jin looked at it longer than necessary. Then he opened the introductions channel. The most recent message was a simple template. 

Name or nickname: 

Country or time zone: 

Favorite games: 

Fun fact: 

He nearly closed the app. Name was impossible to disclose without possibly giving away his identity, time zone narrowed too much, and fun fact was a trap entirely where his interests were concerned. He read the intros from the few members before him. Most used usernames, most only gave countries, and nobody seemed to demand any further details. 

Jin typed slowly. 

Nickname: Moon

Country: Korea 

Favorite games: League, MapleStory, and anything that doesn’t involve inventory management

He stopped at fun fact, deleting the line entirely, then posted his message. It appeared at the bottom of the channel, and nothing happened. No alarms, no sudden recognition. One person reacted with a moon emoji. Another replied: Inventory management is the real final boss.

Jin smiled and typed: Exactly.

Then he closed the server, which should have been enough for the night. He returned to the stream, YN had reached a town and was attempting to sell stolen jewelry. Jin picked up his chopsticks, and his laptop chimed again. He glanced toward Discord. A new reaction had appeared under his intro. A silver rabbit, left by YN. No message, no greeting, only the small icon. Jin stared at it. 

The rational explanation was obvious, she likely reacted to every introduction when she had time. A simple gesture to make new members feel welcome. Nothing personal or special, he knew that. Still, he did not close the server again. He left it open in a separate tab while YN rode Bugatti into the evening, and every few minutes his eyes drifted back toward the silver rabbit as though it might disappear if he stopped looking. 

For the next week, Jin did almost nothing in the server. He read messages other users sent, kept updated on stream polls, and lurked. That was all. 

The Discord existed differently from the stream. It was quieter, fragmented into smaller conversations that continued whether YN was present or not. People posted screenshots of glitched games, disastrous Sims houses, rare Skyrim finds, and meals they had cooked while watching old streams. A channel dedicated to pets moved faster than nearly everything else. 

YN appeared sporadically. A message at three in the afternoon sometimes, a photo of a lopsided sandwich at midnight, a complaint posted just before morning broke: 

YN: whoever suggested i start a new baldurs gate campaign as a bard, i hope ur pillow is warm forever 

The message had accumulated dozens of laugh reacts by the time Jin saw it later in the morning. He added one, nothing more. He learned quickly that she didn’t dominate the space within the server. Her moderators did most of the work, enforcing rules without drama and redirecting people when conversation drifted too close to personal territory. 

YN entered when she felt like it, scattered a few messages through several different channels, and then would vanish again. It should have made the server feel less compelling, instead, Jin found the unpredictability strangely comforting. There wasn’t a demand to keep up every hour of the day, and zero expectation that he speak. He could open it between schedules, read for a few minutes, and close out of it unnoticed.

On the eighth day, someone posted a photograph of homemade soup in the food channel. The broth was pale, the vegetables had been cut into wildly inconsistent sizes. 

Cloudyday: first attempt. Bullying welcome.

YN: looks comforting 

YN: but why is that carrot the size of a human organ

Jin laughed in the back seat of the car. His manager glanced at him through the mirror. “What?” 

“Nothing,” Jin shook his head, locking his phone. He lasted ten seconds before opening it again. 

Cloudyday: i got tired of chopping man 

YN: the carrot knew and took advantage of your weakness, it seems 

Without thinking too much, Jin typed for the first time. 

Moon: A properly sized carrot should not require a knife and fork.

He sent it. YN reacted with a laugh react, and Jin shut the app immediately. He looked out the car window, irritated by the warmth that had reached his face. It was a reaction emoji, she had likely pressed it while walking, talking, or doing something else entirely. He knew this, yet his body still seemed unconvinced. 

The first direct exchange happened because of Skyrim. YN posted in the game-suggestions channel late one evening. 

YN: serious question

YN: if i install another twenty mods, is the game more likely to become beautiful or melt my pc????

Responses arrived immediately. Most of the members encouraged her, and several warned her. One mod responded a few minutes later: 

LanternMoth: The last time you added five mods, everyone in Whiterun lost their clothes.

YN: that actually wasn’t a bug 

YN: that was liberation, buddy  

Jin read the exchange on his sofa, a leg folded beneath him. He shouldn’t participate, he knew little about Skyrim modding beyond what he had absorbed from her streams. But then someone linked a complicated visual overhaul that appeared likely to destroy her PC right away. 

YN: downloading this immediately thnx

Jin frowned, opening the page. Even without technical expertise or extensive Skyrim experience, the installation requirements looked elaborate. He returned to Discord. 

Moon: That mod requires several other files and a specific load order. 

The channel showed YN typing below his message. 

YN: you say that like i take load orders seriously

Moon: Then you should not download it immediately. 

YN: wow

YN: joined the server eight days ago and already oppressing me

Jin’s thumbs paused over the keyboard. He could hear the words in her voice, and that made answering more difficult than it should have been.

Moon: I’m trying to prevent another citywide clothing incident.

YN: cowardddd

Several other members reacted to the exchange. The conversation moved on almost instantly, people debating which mods were worth a load order risk. Jin remained still with his phone in both hands. She had responded to him directly, twice, and it had felt… easy. Not thrilling or overwhelming, but natural, as though Moon belonged inside the exchange. Jin set his phone down and stood up, pouring himself more water. He remained in the kitchen long enough for the conversation to move beyond anything he might answer. 

Distance was useful. He had begun visiting the server more often than he intended, but he was not losing perspective. YN was friendly because this was her community, she knew Moonrabbit as a subscriber who occasionally made dry comments and stressed game safety. She did not know Jin. If she did, everything would change. That alone could certainly keep him careful.

A few nights later, YN appeared in the after-hours channel. Jin had still never opened it, the name suggested intimacy he did not need. The channel probably contained drunken conversations, personal stories, people speaking more freely than they did elsewhere in the server. He preferred not to intrude. 

But YN started a thread inside the channel that night.

YN started a thread: insomnia club

Jin looked at the screen, it was nearly four in the morning. He had finished working hours earlier but had failed to sleep, his mind refusing to settle after a long day of recording. He opened the channel, noting the thread had so far contained fewer than twenty active accounts. 

YN: anyone else awake for absolutely zero good reason or am i uniquely cursed? 

Responses came from different time zones. Some people were at work, some were just waking up, and others, like her, had no excuse. Jin read without chiming in. She complained that she had tried tea, music, reading, and a documentary about deep sea creatures. 

YN: now i am awake AND deeply concerned ab the ocean it’s all fucked upppp

Someone suggested counting backward, another recommended breathing exercises, YN rejected both with theatrical hostility. 

YN: siiiigh

YN: moon r u awake or are u one of those sensible people who has a bedtime??? I see ur green icon 

He checked the member list as though another Moon might exist. None did. 

Moon: I was sensible several hours ago.

YN: such a tragic fall from grace 

Moon: I’ll blame the ocean documentary too. 

YN: see!!! u understand me

Jin’s mouth curved. He looked around his dark living room. No staff lingered in the doorways, no cameras with red indicators were pointed at him, and no members were sprawled nearby needling him for attention. Only his phone and the quiet hum of the AC that filtered through his home filled the silence. 

The thread continued around them, nothing private or inappropriate. YN asked the group to vote on which game she should play the next evening. People argued over Zelda and Dead by Daylight. Jin kept from voting himself, he had work and would likely miss the stream entirely. 

YN: moon is abstaining from democracy 

He answered before overthinking himself into a shallow grave. 

Moon: Democracy gave you seven fireplaces in one Sims house.

YN: and history remembers my greatest work ((((:<

Jin laughed quietly, then the age difference surfaced again, sudden and sobering. The hour, the casual intimacy of sleepless strangers, the ease with which he could begin imagining this as something it was not hit him with force. He had to be careful not to mistake access for closeness. YN knew a sliver of him, a deliberately edited one. 

Moon was funny when Jin had time to compose the sentence. Moon never had bad moods, never arrived exhausted, never became impatient or defensive. Moon had no history except the messages YN could scroll through. 

Moon was an incomplete person. 

Perhaps that was why she found him easy to talk to and poke fun at. Jin placed his phone on his chest, debating leaving the thread. He should sleep. A new message appeared.

YN: okok actual question for the insomnia club 

YN: what is one game you wish you could play again for the first time? 

The replies slowed. People gave thoughtful answers now, nostalgia weighing heavily on the responses. Jin considered what his would be… games from his childhood, old favorites connected to the members, worlds he had entered during years when everything in his real life had been changing too quickly to process. 

Moon: MapleStory. Not because it was perfect, but because I miss who I was when everything in it still felt enormous. 

He read the message after sending it, noting that it revealed more than anything else he had said so far. Not his identity, nothing dangerous either, but something true to him. He nearly deleted it.

Then YN reacted to it with a white heart emote. A minute passed before she responded. 

YN: yeah 

YN: i think sometimes we don’t want the game back 

YN: we want the version of ourselves who didn’t know where it all led yet 

Jin went very still, the thread continuing under her message and his fingers. He didn’t continue to read it. He looked at her words until the screen dimmed, for the first time since entering the server, his attraction felt secondary. It was still present and inconvenient, but now there existed the first quiet suggestion that YN might understand something he had never said out loud. Or typed. Whatever.

There was a feeling that lived there now, something they shared that Jin hadn’t realized. It was smaller than intimacy, and somehow more dangerous. 

Moon: That may be exactly it. 

She reacted with another heart. 

YN: alright cursed people, i’m going to attempt sleep again 

YN: behave while i’m gone 

The thread filled with goodnights, and Jin added his own. 

Moon: Goodnight. Stay away from the ocean. 

YN: no promises, moon

Her status went offline. Jin remained awake for another hour. He didn’t reread the whole conversation, only the part about wanting an earlier version of oneself. And once, only once, the final message with his name.

The insomnia conversation changed nothing, Jin told himself the next morning. It had been a thoughtful interaction between strangers in a group thread. Nothing intimate and nothing uniquely theirs, despite how it had felt the night before. YN had spoken to several other people and reacted to their messages as well. By noon, the thread had been buried under notifications from active channels. Photographs of breakfast, complaints about work, and an argument over whether cereal qualified as soup notified Jin throughout the day. 

There was no reason to return to the thread from the night before. Jin returned to it twice. Only to check something he remembered incorrectly. Once realizing he hadn’t, Jin closed his phone and returned to work.

That afternoon, all seven members met at the studio.

The room filled quickly with overlapping voices, discarded jackets, coffee cups, and the familiar disorder that formed whenever BTS were all together without cameras requiring structure. Yoongi occupied one corner of the sofa, listening to Hoseok describe an idea with the patient expression of someone pretending not to have any opinions yet. Namjoon stood near the desk, reading something on his phone while Jungkook leaned over his shoulder without permission. Jimin and Taehyung had somehow turned stretching into a competition next to the coffee table. Jin sat in front of the mixing console and attempted to remain above all of it.

“Hyung.” 

He ignored Jungkook. 

“Hyung.” 

“No.” 

“I haven’t even asked anything.” 

“You were going to.”

Jungkook dropped into the chair beside him. “Did you like the stream the other night?” 

Jin looked over. “What stream?” 

“You know… The one you said was more interesting than my walls? The stream.” 

Jin turned toward the console again. “I don’t remember.” 

“You watched it for hours.” 

“I was drinking.” 

Jungkook accepted that with a shrug. “She’s playing Lethal Company tonight.” 

Across the room, Taehyung looked up from the floor, straightening his shirt. “What time?” 

Jungkook checked his phone. “Late.” 

Jimin groaned. “I have something early tomorrow.” 

“That has literally never stopped you,” Jin said. 

“It should start to.” 

Hoseok looked between them. “Who are you guys talking about?” 

“YN,” Taehyung replied. 

Namjoon looked up from his phone. “The live streamer?” 

“You know her too?” Jin asked before he could make the question sound less interested. 

Namjoon adjusted his glasses. “I’ve seen the clips Jungkook has sent. The one where she tried to negotiate with a zombie wasn’t bad.” 

“That was The Walking Dead,” Jungkook nodded. 

“She thought choosing silence would make her character appear threatening,” Jimin added. 

“It did.” Taehyung insisted. 

“The zombie ate him.” 

“A threatening death.” 

Jin listened as the conversation spread. Hoseok had seen one of her dance game streams. Yoongi knew her name because a producer had mentioned her charity work in passing before, and Namjoon had, actually, watched several of the clips Jungkook had sent in the groupchat. 

She existed closer to their world than Jin had realized. 

Not personally, but visibly. Famous enough to be recognizable, established enough that a future overlap wouldn’t be impossible. The thought made his stomach tighten. 

He examined the reaction, it was not entirely excitement. The safety of Moon depended on distance. YN could like Moon’s jokes because she didn’t know there was a public figure behind them. She didn’t have to wonder whether she was speaking correctly, or whether anything she said would become news, or if a casual exchange carried hidden expectations and dating rumors. 

Jin did not want that ease to disappear. He also did not want to admit how much he had begun valuing it. 

“Hyung.” Jungkook nudged his arm. Jin blinked at him. “You’re staring.” 

“At?” 

“The desk.” 

“It’s a very good desk.” 

Yoongi glanced over from the sofa. “It isn’t.” 

“You chose it.” 

“And I regret it. Daily, actually.” 

The conversation moved on. No one connected Jin to YN because there was no reason to. Still, when Jungkook later suggested putting the stream on during dinner, Jin was the first to object. “We should discuss the arrangement.” 

“During dinner?” Jimin groaned, staring at him. 

“Yes.” 

“You hate discussing work while we eat.” 

“I’ve matured.” 

Yoongi looked at him blankly. “Since when?” 

Jin ignored him. He did not want YN’s voice filling the room while the server remained open on his phone around others. He did not want someone to glimpse Moonrabbit in chat and hear YN respond with familiarity. The risk was tiny, but that did not make it comfortable. They ate without the stream, and Jin pretended not to be relieved. 

He reached home after midnight. YN had already been live for over an hour. Jin changed clothes before opening the stream, an act of discipline that felt increasingly ceremonial. Lethal Company filled the screen. YN, Rook, Yuna, and Skyler were aboard a small ship, arguing about who had spent all their excess money on a shower. 

“I thought it was functional,” Skyler said. 

”It is functional,” YN replied. ”It functions as proof that you shouldn’t control our finances. Ever.” 

Jin smiled while opening Discord. The server was active, members discussing the stream in real time. He kept the chat hidden. After the previous night, he preferred to retreat silently. 

A sensible correction. On stream, the team landed on a moon covered in fog. Within minutes, Skyler had vanished. Rook was killed by something YN could not identify on the monitor in the ship. Yuna returned to the ship carrying a metal sign and no useful equipment. YN eventually ventured through the fog to the facility alone, addressing the audience with the weariness of an underfunded manager. Jin watched for nearly twenty minutes without typing.

Then YN’s character encountered a small creature in a hallway. She stopped, and the creature stopped. “It’s cute,” she whispered.

Chat filled with warnings. Jin knew enough about her by now to predict the next decision. 

“Don’t,” he groaned. 

She approached it. 

“No,” he shook his head. “YN.” 

The creature launched itself at her face. Jin jumped so hard that he had startled himself again. Her character stumbled blindly through the facility while YN screamed into the microphone, hands jerking against the mouse and keyboard loudly. She walked directly off a railing, and the screen went black. 

Jin covered his eyes. A notification appeared in Discord. YN had posted in the live-chat while waiting for her teammates to finish the round. 

YN: nobody say anything 

Responses poured in automatically. Jin watched them accumulate. He should remain quiet, he had intended to remain quiet. 

Moon: You just attempted diplomacy with a parasite.

There was a pause, then YN’s laughter came through the stream. She hadn’t read the message out loud, just looked toward her other monitor and chuckled, visibly trying to stifle it. Jin stared at the TV. In Discord, a response appeared. 

YN: you’re on thin ice tonight, moon 

The message was ordinary, public and one of dozens. His reaction was not. Warmth spread through him, slow and unwelcome. Jin leaned back and placed his phone facedown on his chest. There it was again, the appeal he had been attempting to name. Not merely attraction, not simply that she was beautiful or funny, but the pleasure of being met. 

Moon offered a sentence, and YN caught it at the angle he had intended. She did not require any explanation, didn’t smooth the humor down into something safer. She returned it, which was rare. Rarer than beauty, and much more dangerous where Jin was concerned. Jin picked up his phone. 

Moon: I’ll proceed carefully. 

YN reacted with a knife emoji. He laughed under his breath, then stopped himself from sending anything else. The stream continued, and he watched from a little farther back, determined not to let one enjoyable exchange turn into a pattern he could no longer control. 

Near the end of the night, YN’s team finally met a decent quota. Rook celebrated, Yuna took credit, and Skyler bought another decorative item for the ship to which YN threatened to revoke his purchasing privileges permanently. Jin’s eyes burned from exhaustion, but he stayed through the final minutes. 

As the others left the voice chat on stream, YN remained on camera to say goodnight. She thanked the subscribers, donors, and moderators, then she glanced toward her second monitor. 

“And the Discord degenerates who spent the last four hours encouraging us–seek professional help, maybe.” 

Chat responded with hearts, and YN smiled. 

“Except Moon. Moon’s on thin ice and doesn’t get healthcare.” 

Jin’s mouth fell open. She moved on immediately, reminding everyone of her next stream. No emphasis or suggestion that the comment held meaning beyond the earlier joke. Still, she had remembered it for hours. Remembered him. Jin looked down at Discord, and he did not respond. There was nothing he could say without revealing how thoroughly the comment had landed in him. The stream ended, and a moment later, YN appeared in the server again. 

YN: goodnight guttersluts

Messages followed, Jin waited until dozens of others had replied before adding his own. 

Moon: Goodnight. I’ll begin preparing my legal appeal.

Her response came just before her status changed to offline.

YN: denied

Jin smiled into the darkness of his home, then set his phone on the nightstand, rolled onto his back, and stared at the ceiling. He had been careful, revealed nothing, the members remained unaware. YN knew only Moon. Everything was still contained, but for the first time, Jin understood that his secrecy was no longer protecting only his identity. It was protecting this version of their connection, and somewhere under that realization was a question he did not want to answer yet. 

How long could something remain uncomplicated when one person knew the truth and the other did not? 

By early winter, Moon had become part of the normalcy of YN’s streams and Discord. 

He was never the center of it all, never the loudest voice, but he was present. If YN posted a picture of a catastrophically overcooked grilled cheese at one in the morning, Moon would eventually appear to ask if she’d mistaken charcoal for seasoning.

If chat insisted a horror game wasn’t scary, Moon would quietly remind everyone that half the server had screamed at virtual mannequins before. He rarely spoke first, he almost always landed one line before disappearing again. People stopped greeting him like a newcomer, he had become one of the regulars. Jin found that realization strangely alarming. 

“Jin.” 

Jin blinked. He’d been sitting in the makeup chair while a stylist worked on his hair. “Hm?” 

The stylist laughed. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for, like, thirty seconds.” 

“Oh.” 

“You were somewhere else.” 

“I was thinking.” 

“And smiling.” 

Jin’s expression disappeared so quickly it almost hurt. “I was?” 

“Mmm,” she nodded, continuing to work without another comment. 

Jin looked down at his phone resting in his lap. Discord was open, YN had posted exactly two minutes earlier. 

YN: bugatti kicked me today :////

Attached was a photograph of the horse in Red Dead Redemption staring blankly into the middle distance. The caption beneath it read: no remorse in those eyes 

Moon had replied before Jin consciously decided to. 

Moon: He knows what you did in Windhelm last week.

She reacted with a crying laughing emoji. 

YN: that’s between me and the guards 

Jin locked his phone, chuckling, and caught his stylist’s eyes in the mirror. 

“...Good joke?” 

“Sort of.” 

A few days later, Jungkook wandered into the studio carrying takeout and bad ideas. “I’ve got something.” 

Yoongi didn’t even look up from the computer. “No.” 

“I haven’t even said what it is yet–” 

“No.” 

“You don’t know what it is, hyung.” 

“I do.” 

“You don’t.” 

“I absolutely do,” Yoongi deadpanned. 

Jungkook grinned. “What if…” 

“No.” 

“...we do a charity livestream where we all play horror games?” 

Yoongi sighed as Hoseok paled. Taehyung looked interested immediately, “I’d do it.” 

Namjoon glanced over his laptop. “For charity?” 

“For charity.” 

“...I’d consider it.” 

Jimin groaned. “I hate horror.” 

“You love horror.” 

“I hate playing horror games.” 

Taehyung looked delighted. “I’ll protect you.” 

“You’ll hide behind me.” 

“I would never.” 

“You absolutely would, Tae.” 

Jin listened while pretending not to. His chopsticks had paused halfway to his mouth. 

“A multiplayer horror stream could raise a lot…” Hoseok mused. 

Jungkook nodded. “Exactly.” 

“Who would host?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“We could invite someone,” Namjoon suggested. 

“Like who?” Jimin asked. 

“There are lots of gaming creators.” Jungkook shrugged. 

The conversation drifted toward logistics before anyone suggested names. Jin kept eating, his heartbeat had picked up for no sensible reason. It was hypothetical, nothing more. Had to be.

That weekend, YN announced she was playing around with ideas for her next big streaming event. She didn’t mention horror games at all, thankfully. She did mention a 24 hour community stream supporting children’s hospitals. She outlined the possible ideas while sipping coffee. “Games, art, community challenges…” she counted on her fingers. “...and if we hit the final donation goal…” she sighed dramatically. “...my moderators want to choose a dance I have to learn.” 

Chat exploded, and for once, the Discord was faster. Within minutes, a dedicated thread appeared. 

Dance Suggestions 

Hundreds of replies. Jin read them with growing amusement. Half of the server wanted something impossibly difficult, the other half wanted YN to learn something intentionally embarrassing. Someone suggested ballet, another suggested breakdancing, and a moderator pleaded for mercy. 

YN: if any of u say “idol choreography” i’m deleting the server <3 

She was, of course, too late. Three people immediately recommended BTS songs, Dionysus among them. 

YN: absolutely not

YN: have u people LOST YOUR MINDS

More replies flooded in, and she doubled down. 

YN: i enjoy having knees 

Jin watched the screen. He had never actually considered what it would look like if YN attempted one of their choreographies. The mental image was… unexpectedly endearing. He scrolled through the suggestions again, ignoring the suggestions for Dynamite and Butter. The debate grew surprisingly serious as more of their songs were suggested. 

Jin stayed out of it, because that felt wiser than contributing any damning recommendations. 

YN: okay compromise 

YN: if we somehow hit the absurd stretch goal, i’ll let chat vote 

YN: but if u pick something impossible i’m learning exactly one move and declaring victory 

That sounded about right. Jin reached for his tea as his phone buzzed again. A private notification from LanternMoth lit up his screen. 

LanternMoth: Hey, Moon! Hope you’re doing well. Just wanted to let supporters know we’re putting together a community suggestion document for future charity collaborations. Nothing official, just brainstorming creators, games, ideas, etc. Feel free to add anything if inspiration strikes! 

Jin read it twice. Creators and collaborations. His thumb lingered over his screen, he could suggest anyone… or no one. His identity remained completely hidden. There was no expectation that he contribute. He closed the message… and reopened it five minutes later. Finally, he typed one sentence. 

Moon: Co-op streams with creators from different fields tended to attract new audiences for charity. Musicians who genuinely enjoy games could be fun, if anyone would actually agree. 

He sent it. Simple and direct. He had not mentioned BTS, he had not mentioned himself, it was merely an observation. Still… for the first time since Jungkook had pulled up her stream months ago, an invisible thread had been tossed forward into the future. Jin looked out the studio window. YN was probably somewhere laughing at another ridiculous dance suggestion, completely unaware that an anonymous supporter had just nudged a tiny domino without realizing how much stood behind it. He had no intention of pushing any further. Life, he had learned long ago, was perfectly capable of doing that on its own. 

YN disclosed her location accidentally. At least, that was how it looked. 

She was halfway through a late night Skyrim stream, mildly drunk and deeply offended by an NPC who had charged her for a room she claimed she had already paid for. 

Chat was moving quickly with questions, jokes, and arguments over whether she should rob the innkeeper or not. Then someone asked what time it was for her. YN glanced at the corner of her monitor on stream. “Almost three.” 

The chat reacted immediately, several viewers began calculating time zones. YN’s expression changed, only slightly. A tiny pause, a flicker of realization. Jin noticed this because he had become too familiar with the way she looked when deciding whether she should say something. It wasn’t the biggest thing, he supposed. She’d mentioned moving continents previously, but had never actually disclosed what country or city she was in now. 

She took a sip of soju. “Before you weirdos start doing geography,” she said, “I should probably clarify something again, because some of you are very adamant that it is not three a.m in Seattle.” 

Jin’s hand stopped over the bowl of tangerines on his table. YN leaned back in her chair. “I don’t live in America anymore.” 

Chat slowed for less than a second before going at the speed of light. Messages flew too quickly for Jin to follow. 

WHATSINCE WHEN???? CANADA?

EUROPE???????????

ARE YOU IN WITNESS PROTECTION??!?!?!??!

YN laughed, “No, I’m not in witness protection. I mean, maybe emotionally sometimes.” More questions flew in while she rubbed her thumb over the label on the soju bottle, visibly choosing her words. “I haven’t lied about it, really. I mentioned it a while back, actually. I just haven’t publicly harped on it because some of you could turn a restaurant receipt into a military operation.” 

That earned a flood of guilty looking emojis. Jin’s attention sharpened, he understood the caution immediately. Location was not a harmless detail once enough strangers cared. 

“But I’ve been here for a year now, so keeping it vague is becoming increasingly stupid… I live in Busan.” 

Jin froze. YN remained on the screen, Jin remained in Seoul. They had never met, the distance between them was still measured in far more than double digit kilometers. But until that moment, he’d imagined her elsewhere. America, probably. Maybe Canada. Somewhere across an ocean, safely embedded in another life. Busan was not another life, it was a train ride, a domestic flight, a city Jin knew, a place his family knew. The revelation removed an abstraction he had not realized he was using as protection. Chat had become unreadable again. 

YN lifted both hands. “Calm down. No, I’m not telling you where in Busan. No, you may not guess. If you recognize a cafe or street from something I post, congratulations on having eyes. Keep it to yourself.” 

Her tone stayed ligoht, but something firm lived under it. The moderators began posting reminders immediately. 

No location speculation.

No searching property records. 

No asking for neighborhoods.

No posting sightings. 

Jin looked toward Discord. The server had already locked several traveling related channels and enabled slow mode in the general chat. LanternMoth had posted, too. 

LanternMoth: Reminder: city-level disclosure is not permission to investigate further. Do not speculate about YN’s home, routine, or current location. 

Jin reacted to the message before reading anything else in the slow-moving chat. YN returned her attention to the stream. “There, now you all know. I live in Busan, the world continues rotating.” 

Rook, who had apparently remained silently connected to voice chat, spoke for the first time in several long minutes as he waited for Skyrim to give way to Dead by Daylight. “You made it sound like you had committed an atrocious crime.” 

“If only it were that simple,” she sighed. 

Chat, thankfully, began spamming horse emotes as YN’s Skyrim mount came into view. She had affectionately coined him Piss Queen after her previous horse met an unfortunate end at a waterfall. Jin sat with a tangerine now forgotten in his hand, staring at the city name that still repeated sparsely in the chat. Busan. He heard it differently than the international viewers would. Not as a destination, as proximity. His mind began supplying details before he could stop it. 

The weather there, the ocean in winter, how quickly the KTX could get him from Seoul Station to Busan. The fact that he had perhaps been in the same city as her during schedules without knowing… He shut the thoughts down. That was exactly the sort of thinking YN had warned against. City level information did not make her available. It did not invite coincidence, and it certainly did not justify curiosity about where she spent her ordinary life. Jin peeled the tangerine carefully. Onscreen, YN had saved her game and exited to her pastel desktop, launching Dead by Daylight as her other friends joined their Discord call. 

He watched for another minute, but the stream now felt subtly altered. Not because she had changed, she was still the same, but because his mental picture had. Her Korean references had made more sense, the convenience store drinks that appeared beside her keyboard, the delivery food, the occasional frustration with apps on her phone, the hour she streamed, the soju… How had he not realized? 

Maybe it was because he had simply not allowed himself to assemble the clues. That would have felt too much like looking. A message dinged in Discord. 

Cloudyday: busan gutters rise up 

Several members reacted. 

YN: do not rise up. sit down immediately. 

Jin smiled, his fingers moving toward the keyboard. He could say something neutral like ‘Welcome to Korea,’ but that was too strange after a year. ‘Busan is a good city,’ felt too personal. He typed nothing. The chat did not need to know he was Korean beyond what his introduction already said. 

YN certainly did not need to know the reveal had affected him at all, because it shouldn’t have. He reminded himself of the facts. She was still younger, still a stranger, still unaware of his identity, and still someone whose community he inhabited under a partial truth. If anything, the physical closeness made his restraint more important, not less. Distance had made the whole thing feel theatrical, Busan had now made it feel possible. 

Two days later, the members met for dinner. 

Jungkook arrived late, dropped into his chair and announced, “YN lives in Busan.” 

Jin did not react, at least, he hoped he did not. 

Jimin looked up from the grill. “What?” 

“She said it on stream.” 

Taehyung’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” 

“For a year,” Jungkook nodded. 

Jimin laughed. “And none of us knew?” 

“She kept it private,” Jungkook said. “Just said Korea before, sometimes.” 

Jin focused on turning the meat. Hoseok glanced over. “That could make a collaboration easier.” 

The tongs paused in Jin’s hand for a fraction of a second. 

Namjoon nodded. “Logistically, yes.” 

“Collaboration?” Jimin asked. 

Jungkook shrugged, “We were thinking about that charity stream. I’ve talked about it with some friends and they mentioned her for it.” 

“What friends?” Jin asked. 

The question came too quickly. He covered it by placing meat onto Jimin’s plate. Jungkook didn’t notice. “Online friends I game with,” he answered. “Fans have mentioned us to her, too. A couple of other creators, as well.” 

Yoongi took a drink. “She does have a pretty big Korean audience.” 

“She speaks Korean pretty well too,” Taehyung added. 

Hoseok looked at him. “Does she?” 

Taehyung nodded. “She uses it sometimes on stream.” 

Jin knew that. He had listened to her switch languages when thanking Korean donors, laughing at her pronunciation mistakes before correcting herself. He had once spent ten minutes composing a message explaining an idiom, then decided against sending it. Still, he said, “I hadn’t noticed.” 

Jungkook reached for the meat Jin had just cooked. “That’s because you don’t watch much.” 

“True,” Jin nodded. The lie was small, smooth. Almost effortless now. That bothered him more than near discovery. Conversation shifted toward other things, schedules and music, whether they would spend more time locally in the coming months. Jin stayed quiet. 

When Jungkook mentioned he might reach out to YN’s management someday about a gaming collaboration, nobody treated it as significant. Why would they? It was a professional idea, a future possibility, the kind of overlap that happened constantly between people with public careers. Jin lowered his gaze toward his glass on the table. For the first time, meeting YN no longer felt impossible. It should have excited him, but instead, unease settled under his ribs. 

Moon had been safe because Moon could never walk into a room. Jin could. And if the day came, he would have to look at her while carrying months of private familiarity she did not know existed between them. He would know her favorite soju to drink during long streams, which games she played when she was anxious, what jokes made her laugh when she was overtired, that she feared deep water but adored the ocean from a distance, that she called him Moon. 

She would know nothing about him beyond what the world already knew. The imbalance suddenly felt enormous. Jin turned his glass slowly between his fingers, he had always known the truth would complicate things. He had not considered what meeting her before telling it might feel like. Across the table, Jungkook was still talking. 

“Busan’s good,” he said. “She probably likes the quiet.” 

Jin looked down at the meat burning on the grill. “Yes,” he said softly, picking up the tongs before anyone noticed. “Probably.” 

For the next several weeks, Busan became a fact that Jin tried not to touch. He did not ask questions, search for sightings, or pay closer attention when YN mentioned rain, traffic, or delivery times. He knew how easily curiosity could become trespass when one had enough resources. 

So he treated the city like any other detail she had chosen to share. Public, general, meaningless. This worked reasonably well until she posted a photograph in Discord. Not of herself, not of a recognizable street. Just of the sea under a pale winter sky, dark water folding against a concrete edge. A paper cup sat near the bottom of the frame. 

YN: needed to get out of the apartment before i started arguing with the furniture

The photo received dozens of reactions. People asked whether she felt better, someone recommended a cafe, and a moderator removed the cafe name immediately and reminded everyone not to speculate or recommend location. Jin studied the water, Busan had miles of coastline, countless places where a person could stand and take that exact photograph. He knew better than to identify it. 

Still, something about the image pressed against him. Maybe because it was ordinary. A quiet moment offered without performance, no face, no joke sharpened for an audience. Only cold water and the admission that she needed air. 

Moon: Furniture rarely admits when it’s wrong.

YN: exactly. deeply toxic household. 

Jin smiled. 

YN: but i feel better now. ocean threatened me back into perspective.

He hesitated. 

Moon: Effective therapy, though the bedside manner is poor.

YN reacted with a white heart and Jin locked his phone. That should have been the end of it. Instead, while sitting in the back of a van later that afternoon, he found himself watching the sea slide past through the window. They were in Busan for work, the coincidence felt almost insulting. He had known about the schedule for months, long before YN’s disclosure, and not that long after Moonrabbit existed. Still, the city now carried a second presence in his mind. Not a location, but a possibility. Jin hated the word.

They had come down for two days of recording and promotional work for their next project and series of RUN BTS videos. By evening, Jungkook had convinced several of them to eat near the water rather than return directly to the hotel. They chose a private room, security handled the entrance, and everything had proceeded normally. 

Jin sat beside Namjoon, listened to Taehyung argue about side dishes, and did not think about YN. Then Jungkook set his phone on the table. “She’s live.” 

Jin’s chopsticks halted. Jimin laughed. “You always know.” 

“I have notifications. So do you,” Jungkook replied. 

“So do I,” Taehyung smiled. 

Jin concentrated on a piece of grilled fish. Hoseok leaned over. “What’s she playing?” 

“Skyrim.” 

“Again?” 

“She lives there.” Jungkook explained, propping the phone against a water pitcher. YN appeared in the small frame, wearing an oversized sweatshirt and complaining that her game had crashed for the third time. Behind her, the background looked exactly as it always did. No window, no clue, no evidence that she existed somewhere in the same city Jin sat in now. 

Jin’s awareness of that fact became immediate and physical, his shoulders tensed and he took a drink. 

“This mod list is held together by prayer and cybercrime,” YN told chat. 

Taehyung laughed. 

Namjoon glanced at the phone with slight interest. “What is she trying to do?” 

“Make the snow prettier,” Jungkook said. 

“It already looked fine.” Jin replied. 

Jungkook looked at him, and Jin lifted one shoulder. “I remember the game.” 

Nothing more was said as YN restarted her last save. The younger members watched in fragments while eating. Hoseok asked questions, and Namjoon became briefly invested in the lore. Jimin complained that every NPC looked suspicious. Jin barely spoke, not because he feared exposure or some elaborate unveiling of his indiscretions, but because the proximity made the stream feel too intimate. YN was somewhere beyond the restaurant walls, perhaps a twenty minute walk away, perhaps an hour, but she existed in the same weather, in the same city. Moon could be in Seoul, or anywhere else in Korea. Jin had never lied about being in Busan, but silence sometimes began resembling deception when enough context had accumulated around it. 

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he did not check it. A minute later, it buzzed again. Then for a third time. Jin waited until Taehyung and Jungkook became absorbed in an argument over whether YN’s current follower was useful or not. Under the table, he opened Discord. 

YN had posted in the supporter channel. 

YN: game crashed again 

YN: i’m repelling technology tonight 

Several responses followed before she messaged again. 

YN: moon you’re quiet tonight. are u judging my load order from afar?

Jin gripped his phone harder as he read the message, pulse stumbling. Jungkook’s phone continued playing the stream less than two feet away. YN glanced toward her second monitor onscreen, waiting only loosely, attention already drifting elsewhere. She had no idea that the man she had addressed sat in a private restaurant room in Busan with six others who knew her voice now. 

Jin’s first impulse was not pleasure, it was panic. Small, controlled, but unmistakable panic. He could ignore the message, Moon was not obligated to answer. He had been quiet before, but silence might stand out more now that she addressed him directly. Jin typed beneath the table. 

Moon: I’m trying to determine whether prayers count as required dependency for mod load orders.

On Jungkook’s phone, YN looked down. Her mouth curved. “Moon says he’s trying to determine whether prayers count as required dependency where mod load orders are concerned.” 

Jungkook laughed. Taehyung leaned toward the screen. “Who’s Moon?” 

Jin’s hand went stiff around his phone. “Some person in her server,” Jungkook smirked. “He is funny.” 

Jimin nodded. “That was good.” 

Jin lowered his eyes to his plate. No one noticed he had stopped breathing properly. Onscreen, YN typed something. His phone vibrated in his hand. 

YN: it does. install faith before graphics overhaul 

Jin did not reply, he could not. Not with Jungkook’s phone broadcasting her face across the table. Jin’s stomach tightened as he looked at her on the small screen. For the first time, his anonymity did not feel private. It felt unfair. Not because he owed the internet his identity, not because a streamer was entitled to investigate every subscriber, but because YN had begun treating Moon like an actual entire person, and Jin had allowed her to build that person around carefully selected truths. 

He had never outright lied. But he had let her assume equality between them. Two ordinary people awake at bad hours, two strangers talking about old games and hostile oceans. The truth would alter every past exchange retroactively, and that frightened him more than being recognized. 

“Hyung,” Namjoon nudged the serving plate toward him. “You’re not eating.” 

Jin picked up his chopsticks. “I am.” 

“You’ve been holding the same piece for a minute.” 

Jin placed it in his mouth and chewed automatically. Across the table, Jungkook turned the stream volume down as the rest of the food arrived. The conversation shifted toward the next day’s schedule and YN’s voice became background noise. Jin’s phone remained in his lap as a new Discord message appeared. 

YN: you disappear every time i win an argument 

He looked at it, the warmth blossoming despite everything. That was the problem. 

Moon: I was giving you time to enjoy the rare experience.

YN reacted with a knife, and this time, Jin did not smile. 

Later, at the hotel, Jin stood near the window and looked down over Busan. Lights stretched toward the dark outline of water. The stream had ended long ago while they were still at the restaurant. The others had long since retreated to their own rooms. He should have slept, but instead he opened Discord and scrolled through his messages in the group chat. Months of them now, mostly jokes and brief conversations, nothing that should have mattered as much as it did. 

YN had not confided secrets to him, she had not made any promises. They were not friends in any conventional sense at all, yet still there was trust in the way she casually addressed him in the server. Expectation in the way she occasionally noticed his absences. A place shaped for Moon inside her community. 

Jin sat on the edge of the bed and opened his account settings. His finger hovered over the option to delete the account. It would be clean, Moon could disappear before reality complicated anything further. YN might ask once, then the community would move on. He stared at the button and could not press it. The thought of vanishing without any explanation felt cruel, but the thought of staying felt selfish, and the thought of telling her the truth felt impossible at this point. 

Jin closed the settings. A direct message notification appeared. From YN. His entire body went still on the bed. They had never spoken privately, not once. He opened it. 

YN: hey, serious question 

YN: did i make u uncomfortable talking about u on the stream? 

Jin read the words several times. The anxiety within them was quiet but unmistakable, as his had been earlier at the table. She had noticed his silence and worried that she had crossed a line. He answered quickly. 

Moon: No. You didn’t do anything wrong.

The typing indicator appeared. 

YN: okay 

YN: you just went quieter than usual 

Jin looked out toward the window, at the city. At the reflection of a man who had built his entire adult life around being seen and was now terrified of one woman seeing him too clearly. 

Moon: I’m private by habit. Sometimes I overcorrect.

That was true. Painfully so. YN took longer to respond. 

YN: understood 

YN: i won’t ask for details 

YN: but for what it’s worth, you don’t have to earn your place here by being entertaining all the time 

Jin’s throat tightened as the message struck somewhere unguarded. He had spent years being entertaining as instinct, armor, and responsibility. YN could not know that, couldn’t possibly know how precisely she had found him anyway. He typed several different answers and deleted each one before finally typing something true. 

Moon: Thank you. I mean that.

YN reacted with a white heart. 

YN: goodnight, moon

Jin’s eyes softened on the words. The city remained beyond the glass, close enough to hold both of them and vast enough that they might never cross paths. For the first time, he wished the distance were greater. For the first time, he wished it were gone. 

Moon: Goodnight, YN.