Chapter Text
The classifieds were thinner than usual this week.
The paper lay flat beneath Taehyung’s hand, a damp ring from his mug bleeding through the ink. He kept circling the classifieds until the ink blurred, but nothing stuck. Dishwashing was filled, retail wanted experience he didn’t have, and the hours that paid enough clashed with his deliveries.
The pen pressed hard enough to scratch the surface. He folded the page once, then again, slid it into his jacket, and carried the empty mug to the sink. The apartment was small and quiet, stripped down to the bare minimum he just needed out of a living space. A rack of dishes. A basic set of furniture and a single plant near the window that leaned toward whatever sun Seoul allowed to shine through.
Rent was due in eight days.
He told himself he’d keep looking, but each morning came back to the same truth: the delivery company was the only thing keeping him from living on the streets.
The thought pressed against his stomach like a weight he couldn’t shift. He slid his phone and keys into his jacket, locked the door, and left.
The delivery company sat between a motorcycle repair shop and a print shop that never seemed to have customers. An old and washed down sign with the name “Rivercross Delivery” hanging over the door. The lot smelled of oil slicks and damp pavement. Inside, the air carried the dry smell of cardboard and dust that clung to the back of his throat.
Taehyung signs where he always does, slipped the pen back into its chipped holder, gave it to his manager and waited for the next route to be called.
The manager flipped through the clipboard, pen tapping once against the column.
“You’re on city runs again tonight. Keep time, don’t cut corners.”
“Big client in Gangnam,” he says, flipping a page on his clipboard. “Regular deliveries. Three nights a week, sometimes four. Premium orders. They want someone who shows up when they say they will and doesn’t talk. You want it?”
Taehyung nodded. He didn’t ask for the rate. He understood that regular meant better than guessing, and nothing.
“Good,” the man said.
He flipped the page back, tapped his pen against the margin. “If the Gangnam client stays steady, we’ll shift you there more often. Regular orders, premium stock. The kind of account that pays the lights, so don’t screw it. Show up on time, keep quiet, get the signature. That’s all they want.”
It was simple work. Load. Drive. Unload. Get the signature. His shoulders ached, his palms roughened, and the city blurred into the same gray strips every night.
He didn’t like the work, but he knew its rules. Stack crates so they didn’t slide when the truck jerked. Find the dolly’s balance point so the weight didn’t split his back. The city dragged past the windshield in gray strips and folded again in the mirror, the same streets until they blurred. He memorized the shortcuts, the corners that swallowed minutes, the lights that never broke in his favor.
Months passed into a rhythm he could quite literally hold in his hands.
His first run to this new client took him south across the Han River just before dusk. The front of the building was all clean lines and a sign that read Singularity in bright white neon that glowed cool against the evening. The kind of sign over the entrance people photographed as if that were the event itself. A complete contrast to Rivercross’s washed out and rusted image. He followed the instructions in the delivery manifest and drove to the back.
The alley was nothing like the glass and lights out front. Steel doors. Rusted stairs. Cigarette butts. At the loading bay, a puddle clung to a crack in the concrete, reflecting only a shard of neon.
Taehyung parked where the chalk mark on the asphalt told him to, the truck shuddering once as he cut the engine. He lowered the ramp, the metal clanging against the pavement, and gripped the first crate. The weight pressed into his palms as he slid it onto the dolly, shoulders already used to the rhythm of unloading.
Twelve crates this time. Bottles clinked against one another, a delicate, expensive sound. He tried not to count the cost with every thud of glass. He did not like thinking of what a single bottle could pay for.
Inside, a man waited with a clipboard. Dark jacket. Dark eyes. Face without friction. He checked the invoice line by line, then lifted his pen. The handwriting that landed on the page was small and neat, like letters cut with a blade.
“You’re new,” he says without looking up.
“Yes.”
A glance, not long enough to reach anything. The clipboard returns to Taehyung’s hand. The man turns toward the corridor and the door closes behind him with a soft seal.
When Taehyung takes a look at the delivery invoice on the clipboard, he notices the name printed at the top of the form. Min Yoongi. Director.
This establishment would become another addition to his routine.
As the deliveries became consistent Taehyung learned the back entrance of Singularity faster than the front.
The storage room with its concrete floor always felt colder than the other halls. The way the light flickered near the ice machine. The wall at the corner, paint worn down to concrete from the daily grind of dollies brushing it. He saw staff during their shifts, dressed in black, voices low.
Beyond the service corridor, the club itself lived in another climate. There was music behind the wall he could not hear fully, a bass that softened the air around it, a tide held in by that door.
Three nights a week, sometimes four. He met Min Yoongi every time. The man signed without flourish. Sometimes he counted bottles in a crate even though he already knew the numbers. Sometimes he asked about timing for the next shipment with a voice that made time feel like a fact, not a suggestion.
On some nights Taehyung finished the Singularity run so late the city had lost most of its bright edges. Driving home along the Han River, the water black except where bridges touched it with lamps.
He’d carry one bag from the convenience store up the stairs, wedge his shoulder into the apartment door, and drop his keys in a dish that rang. On the counter, a lined notebook sat open to columns of numbers. Rent. Utilities. What to buy and what to leave on the shelf.
There were days he wished; wanted a better chair or a set of heavier bowls. He wrote the spending down and then crossed them out. The plant near the window leaned sideways in the morning and he turned the pot around so it wouldn’t grow one-sided.
On a typical day, his phone vibrated with a message from Jimin, a photo of scuffed studio floors and a caption that said, “Got the kids to keep time for two whole songs. Miracles do happen”.
With his cheeks munching on one side, Taehyung sent back a photo of his lunch, seaweed-wrapped triangles lined up like dark little roofs, and a single dot. Jimin replied with a string of hearts and a threat to drag him out somewhere with light if he kept eating in the truck.
One night the delivery manifest listed two pallets for Singularity.
It held only premium labels and one small, unmarked carton that his assigned partner that shift double checked, then left under a blanket of brown paper. Taehyung refrained from lifting the edge to peak. He had learned a long time ago that some lids were the reason people still kept their jobs.
Min Yoongi met him as always, a pen behind his ear. He signs, nodding at the unmarked box without speaking, and two men Taehyung doesn't recognize move it away on a dolly with quiet wheels. The door to the back rooms closes behind them like a held breath.
The front of Singularity changes faces with the hour. College students, laughing too loud in flashy clothing. Men with gray at their temples, women beside them walking in practiced rhythm. Salary men and women looking to unwind after their nine to five, or ten. The end result was almost all the same: getting wasted and in right circumstances find someone to take back to the nearest hotel.
Taehyung turns his face the other way.
He'd learned to park where the trucks lens could not see into the bay. To pay no mind to the muffled music from front of the house. It wasn’t his business to be curious about the front side of the business.
Min Yoongi always remained the same. Back and in Front of the house.
The first time Taehyung ever heard of the name spoken in the building, it came from a bartender who didn’t bother to lower his voice as he passed the service corridor.
“Jungkook wants the room cleared by eleven,” the bartender says to someone who nods without asking.
As he goes outside the back door, huffing in relief as he sees there’s only the last crate left a man from the kitchen stands with his apron rolled down and a cigarette held near his mouth.
“Long night,” the man says to no one in particular.
Taehyung shifts the last crate into place and locks the truck. Long nights paid the same as short ones. He wipes his hands on a towel, counts the slips and runs a finger down the list to the last line that matters most, then walks back inside one last time for the night.
The deliveries took him deeper inside Singularity tonight. The bartender, a tall square-shouldered man, leaned over the counter, draws Taehyung’s attention.
“Room seven,” he announces, writing the number in the air with the tip of his finger. “Bring it in yourself.”
Taehyung blinks. This was new. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone wanted him past the service door. He opened his mouth with the beginnings of a question and closes it again. The bartender had already turned to the next thing, a shaker in his hand.
Taehyung looks at the crate waiting against the back bar on the dolly with bottles aligned. He adjusted his grip and starts down the corridor. Between the service hall and the private rooms, the temperature changes slightly. The carpet thickens into a texture more luxurious. The lights dim and walls are touched in colored darkness. Doors sat beneath small, gold numbers. He had noticed them before when he rolled a dolly past but had never stopped long enough to read them.
He could barely hear anything behind those doors.
He reaches the door marked seven and adjusts the crate higher against his hip. His shoulder brushes the wall. He could feel the pulse in his fingers where the weight lands. I just need to drop this off and I’m done for tonight he thinks to himself. Then he grabs the handle and pushes forward.
The door gives without resistance. The room exhales back at him. Smoke, low-hung and sweet. A thread of bass that pounds into vibration reaching his ribs and settles. Glass pouring into glass. Laughter, bright and soft at once, like a spill.
The tables were crowded. Bottles sleeves-deep in ice. A lamp in the corner cut a soft circle where it landed and arrested the haze just enough to make it glow.
One man sat with his weight sunk into the low sofa as if the room belonged to him.
A woman rested across his lap, legs folded in a sweep of silk fabric, one hand lying flat over his chest where the buttons parted. Her laugh slid out like a ribbon from a gift. The man’s arm held at her waist, giving small caresses. It made the back of Taehyung’s neck go cold, feeling that he was somehow intruding, he’s not supposed to be here.
Min Yoongi sat at an angle in a chair near the corner. He held a drink beneath the line of his gaze. He didn’t seem surprised or affected to see a delivery boy in the doorway, but he did look at him, leveled and brief.
The others were the kind of people Taehyung had only seen from the distance of the front door of Singularity. Suits of a certain cut and quality. Watches that meant something to the kind of men who never needed to check them. Fingers wrapped with thick gold and silver. Cigars paused halfway to mouths, smoke coiling, the glowing tips feathers of light in the dark ambience.
The music in the room kept going. It drew itself in, then settled just beyond Taehyung’s own presence and the open door. The woman on the slouched man’s lap turned her head with interest without any investment. Her perfectly straight long black hair that swayed slightly, her eyes were bright, her mouth curved faintly.
There were only certain types of people who opened that door, and Taehyung knew he wasn't invited.
“Looks like someone’s lost,” she says playfully, as if she were amused to see a lost little kid; someone who didn’t belong for more than a couple of reasons.
Taehyung froze at the frame, the crate against his thigh, every second feeling heavier, heartbeat under his skin. He could feel his fingers go tight.
He looks at the man holding her because there's nowhere else to look that help his position, but his stare unsettles Taehyung. The man’s dark gaze caught and held, flat and unreadable. He tries to convince himself the stare is nothing, just another interruption in a night full of them, if it weren’t for the music continuing to vibrate through his torso without any conversation and laughter to mix into the beat.
He expected a hand to wave him out. A staffer to show up and herd him towards the correct door. He expected impatience.
He didn't expect stillness.
The man’s eyes didn’t bother with a smile or a frown, although they were certainly sharp.
They just lingered, as if Taehyung were an interruption worth holding onto. The woman’s hand rose and fell with his breath, the heel of her polished them moving gently against the open V of his expensive black shirt. The edge of a chain showed and disappeared. His thumb pressed against her waist.
Taehyung’s shoulders began to ache from the position of the box. He adjusted a fraction, aware that any larger movement would make noise and break something that did not belong to him to break. The floor felt steady beneath his shoes and too loud inside his head. He could feel his own breath and did not want anyone else to hear it.
Min Yoongi placed his glass on the table without the ring tapping the wood.
His gaze moved to the couple and then away, a small exchange that either meant nothing or meant that it was in the exact proportions it needed to be seen.
No one else in the room spoke. A line of ash from a cigar surrendered to gravity and fell into an ashtray without sound.
The bass is still thudding through the floor. Taehyung’s hand tightened at the corner of the crate enough to make the skin at his knuckle go pale. The woman angled her body a degree more into her man. She didn’t at Taehyung again and now he’s unsure whether that made standing there easier or harder.
“Wrong room,” the man’s voice finally announcing itself.
The words were almost quiet enough to be mistaken for part of the music but still cutting with that sharp steel tone of authority.
Taehyung exhaled without meaning to. He dropped his gaze, found the line where the carpet met the threshold, and stepped back over it. The door closed with a soft and final sound that left the air in the hall feeling thin.
He stood there for the length of two breaths, the crate biting at his palms, the skin at his wrist flushed where the wood rubbed. The numbers on the doors were still gold, still precise. He saw the number seven. Or what looked like one. The light caught the number one in a mix of dark ambience, bending the shape, making it easy to mistake if you were exhausted and moving with a heavy crate in your arms after a long night shift.
Room seven waited ten steps away.
He carried the crate there and set it on the table near the door inside the correct room. Two servers stood with menus fanned in their hands. One took the bottles from the crate, lifted each with care, and slid them into a line. No one asked why he was late by a minute. No one noticed what sat on his face trying to conceal his embarrassment.
He signed the slip they handed back and left, the air from the correct room closing behind him.
Back in the service hallway the temperature changed to a more familiar air again. A staffer pushed a cart past without looking up, the wheels humming. A woman in a blazer spoke into a headset about a reservation that had arrived with two extra guests. The ice machine spit cubes into the bin with a clatter like hail.
At the loading bay, his assigned coworker stood with a hand braced against the truck door. “You good?” he asks, not turning all the way around.
“Fine,” Taehyung responds dryly, sliding the dolly into its place and climbing the ramp.
They pulled out of the alley into the river of taillights, then into the larger river beyond that. The windshield held the city and reflected a rhythm that matched the lights on the dashboard. Taehyung rested one wrist over the other on one knee and let his fingers find a pulse that settled to a smaller beat. He stayed silent.
On the passenger-side floor a plastic bag held the uneaten part of his dinner. The rice would be too cold now. He pictured the plant near the window and wondered whether he had left the curtain open enough to keep it from leaning. He thought of the notebook with the numbers and the empty squares in the week that needed scribbled black ink.
They backed the truck into the company lot and killed the engine. Taehyung went through the closing motions as cleanly as opening. He stacked the blanks, filed the signed slips, washed his hands at the sink near the loading door. The water ran cold for a moment and then warmed.
As he dries his hands by patting them over his jeans, his phone lit with a message from Jimin. “Did you make it back or did the city eat you.”
He types, “Back” before putting the phone away.
At home the apartment held its usual darkness. He turned on the kitchen light, placed the keys in the dish and they made their small bell sound and stopped. He opened the notebook and put a new number in the correct column.
When he finally lays down after showering, the room made its own quiet. Somewhere above him someone walked from one end of their living space to the other as he listens to the thuds of footsteps through the cheaply made walls.
He closes his eyes, and the shape of the private room came back unasked. Leather, smoke, the angle of a lamp. The woman’s hand where it rested, and that man’s gaze, loose and certain. A look that was unaffected and had not tried to be anything it was not.
He turned his face toward the side wall and slept when his body finally allowed it.
The next morning, Taehyung woke with a line pressed into his cheek from the pillowcase. He poured water into the mug and drank it cold, then filled it again and left it near the sink the way he always did.
He had decided not to request to change his route to avoid Singularity. Even though the sting of embarrassment carried into the next morning, it was a mishap, he’ll get over it. Hopefully Min Yoongi would as well.
Work remained relatively the same. The alley welcomed him with its steel and its black water that never dried. Min Yoongi signed the forms once more. Somewhere in the building a door opened and closed with a soft seal, and he doesn't look up to see which one.
His pen scribbles steady as ever, before he hands the slip back across the crate. A gaze lingering a moment longer than the ink required.
“You walked into the wrong room the other night.”
Taehyung swallows nervously, keeping his hand on the dolly handle, “Apologies, it won’t happen again.”
The director’s mouth turned slightly, neither a smile nor disapproval, but just a quick hum of recognition, slipping the clipboard under his arm.
“See that it doesn’t. Jeon Jungkook doesn’t like disruptions.” The name lands flat without emphasis, but with a kind of weight that didn’t need explanation.
Taehyung turns down his head slightly, a nod that said nothing more. The corridor filled itself with the hum of a cooler, the sound of ice shifting in its bin.
Yoongi caps his pen and tucks it into his pocket.
“You’ve got steady work here. Don’t let a any unwanted wandering undo it.”
He turns away without waiting for a reply. The papers were signed; the job was done.
If only Taehyung could stand in that hallway now and forget the way his hands felt against the edges of the crate the other night, he could almost convince himself the look he'd received had been nothing at all. That those eyes looking his way were probably the same that rested on a hundred small disruptions in a hundred nights: without weight or meaning.
He could almost convince himself the mistake had belonged to the number on the door and not to him. Almost.
By the end of his shift, he parked the truck and walked home along the slower street because his feet needed the grounding of pavement, not tiles or carpet. He bought three mandarins for a price that wouldn’t hurt his budget. He makes his bed sheets smooth with his palms.
The night comes down and folds the city into itself; he lays back and lets darkness fill the apartment completely. Somewhere else in his mind music starts up and smoke lifts over a room he could find his way back towards again if he were to shut his eyes. Door marked with a golden number, and a man who had looked at him a little too long, not with annoyance nor anger, but in a way of making his surroundings feel smaller after.
He finally slept. By morning, he’d carry another crate. Put it down where it needed to be put down. Count and not be counted. Taehyung would write numbers in the notebook, one column after the other. And if the memory of a delicate hand against a chest and an arm holding a waist rose up in the quiet parts of his mind, a gaze that measured the shape of a mistake pressed lightly against the back of his mind, he would not name it.
He would adjust his grip, find the balance point, and move.
The plastic flaps of the pojangmacha rattled every time someone pushed through. Outside, rain struck the pavement hard enough to make the gutters hiss, but inside the tent bar the air was thick with steam and smoke. The grill hissed, oil snapping, the smell of batter and chili paste heavy in the vinyl walls.
Taehyung slid onto the low bench across from Jimin, and his shoulders finally loosened out. His jacket dripped at his feet, rain still dark and damp in his hair.
“You look like hell,” Jimin notices immediately, grin sharp as he pours soju into two glasses. “Lucky for you, I’m generous with my time.”
“Generous with my money, you mean,” Taehyung responds.
“Same thing.” Jimin slides a glass toward him. “Drink. Pretend you missed me.”
Taehyung downs half without ceremony. The liquor burns only slightly, a light heat cutting through the damp in his chest. He exhales and picks up a skewer of fish cake from the pot between them.
Jimin watches him with bright eyes, noticing the other’s slightly darkened under-eyes. “So? Work still murdering your back? You look taller, but only because your spine’s about to snap.”
Taehyung chews slowly, letting the broth soak into his tongue. “It’s fine.”
“Fine,” Jimin repeats after him, rolling his eyes. “That’s your answer for everything. Fine. Great. Okay. You sound like an answering machine, you know that?”
“It pays rent, doesn't it.” Taehyung said simply, his eyes focusing on the food in front of them.
“And drags your soul out the door every morning. Don’t romanticize suffering Tae, you’re not in a movie.”
“How’s the studio?” Taehyung asks instead, shifting the focus of topic to his long-time friend, the conversation about his dead-end job pops up between them at least around twice a month, mostly due to his best friend’s concern.
“A circus,” Jimin says immediately with a smirk, already used to Taehyung's deflection. “One kid tripped over his shoelace and took down three others like bowling pins. Their parents were watching through the glass like it was some tragedy, and I’m just standing there trying not to laugh.”
He lifts his hands, miming the collapse, eyes bright. “Then another one started crying because she said the mirror was looking at her wrong. Like what does that even mean?”. Jimin’s hands reach around his head with his palms facing up, shrugging his shoulders.
Taehyung shakes his head, biting down a smile, his eyes and expression relaxing now that he's finally got some food in his stomach and can listen to something that isn’t supply demand and orders.
“It means I deserve hazard pay,” Jimin continues, topping off their drinks. “You should come watch sometime. Free comedy show, front row.”
Taehyung breaks into a short laugh, low and coarse in his throat, “there it is,” Jimin glees, triumphant. “Actual sound. You’re welcome.”
Taehyung lips curve faintly into a smile. The tent buzzed around them—other tables clattering, the ajumma behind the grill shouting at a supplier on her phone. The rain still demanding a shower of drumming sounds over them in their tent.
Jimin leans forward, chin now in one hand. “So, what about you? Anything happen on your runs lately? Please tell me you finally snapped and hit a customer with a dolly.”
Taehyung lifts another skewer and doesn't answer; he purposely avoids his friends' eyes and the other notices the cue immediately.
“Oh my god,” Jimin's eyes light up. “Something did happen. Spill.” The pitch in his friend’s voice gaining an octave in anticipation, he could always read Taehyung so well.
“It’s nothing.” Taehyung tries to keep his voice atypically neutral, but he knows Jimin’s not going to let this one slide.
“Tae.” Jimin drawls, smile crooked in his upcoming threat. “You know I don’t mind embarrassing you in public.” Taehyung knew Jimin was no stranger to performing for the public’s attention, he was a dance teacher after all. His eyebrows furrowing together in annoyance and the steam ghosting against his face. Taehyung lets the silence stretch until it almost unbearable, letting out a sigh of resignation. “I accidently stepped into the wrong room the other night.”
Jimin’s eyebrows shot up. “Wrong room where?”
“...Singularity.”
“The club?” Jimin’s grin split wide. “The Gangnam one? With the glass walls and all those rich kids who look like catalog models?”
Taehyung gave the smallest nod, his awkwardness showing.
Jimin slapped the table, laughing. “No. No way. You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t roll a dolly straight into a VIP room.”
Taehyung doesn't answer, his eyes focusing to the side; face already giving the answer away.
“You did!” Jimin nearly fell off the bench, slapping his knee as if the table couldn’t hold his laughter. “Jesus, Tae, okay, okay. So, what happened? Did they make you serve the drinks too? Ask for the specials?” He lets out a giggle, eyes bright with mischief, his shoulders still shaking. The whole thing was twice as funny, knowing how his friend is so quiet and systematic, whos always followed every routine like scripture had blundered straight into the last place he'd be seen at.
Taehyung decides to pour himself another glass instead of replying.
Jimin leans in closer, voice dropping into gleeful suspense. “Okay so, who was in there?”
Taehyung hesitates, glass at his mouth. The image presses back in: leather couches, smoke curling, the woman’s laugh bright against the surrounding music and the man with a chain wrapped around his throat. Those eyes holding him too long. Min Yoongi was there as well.
“Jeon Jungkook,” he announces finally, he focuses on his drink.
Jimin blinks. Then lets out a low whistle. “As in the Jeon Jungkook?”
Taehyung nods once, his brows furrowing in confusion, “You know him?”.
“The Jeon family Jungkook? Owner of the same club? Prince of Gangnam? The one everyone talks about like he was born with a crown on his head?” Jimin lets out an exasperated breath, disbelieving his friend cluelessness. “You don’t just walk into a room like that, Tae. I heard his parties go crazy”.
All of this is familiar to Jimin's world. Contrary to Taehyung, Jimin is quite the socialite, enjoys his nights off getting drunk and letting loose, something he’s been trying to teach his friend to try as well, albeit half the time unsuccessful.
“Like I said, it was an accident,” Taehyung mutters, his newfound embarrassment now newly layered with the knowledge that it wasn’t just some corporate snob gathering, but someone who’s name should have meant at least something to Taehyung, given their age and demographic. He was never really the type to keep up to date with social media gossip, trends or care about anything related to nightlife other than his job and Jimin’s ventures.
“An accident,” Jimin repeats, shaking his head. “Of course it was. Only you could trip into Gangnam royalty carrying soda water like that.” He points with his skewer, eyes gleaming. “So? What was he like? Did he talk to you? Was he drunk? Did he kick you out himself?”
It was some expensive alcohol and not soda water Taehyung thinks to himself. He recounts the silence, that gaze that pinned him as if he were a disruption being held onto, his stomach tensed.
“He didn’t say anything.” He admits.
“Oh, that’s worse,” Jimin sounds delighted. “Rich-boy mind games. Let me guess—he probably looked at you like you were something stuck to his shoe?”
Taehyung shook his head. “Not exactly.”, he doesn’t how to describe what he saw, what it meant and whether he was still going to have a job after that night, he mainly remembers how his own neck dropped a cold sweat though.
Jimin catches the flicker in his tone, leans in with a predator’s grin. “Wait. No. Don’t tell me he actually noticed you.”
“Stop.” Taehyung says incredulous, his brows shooting up at the mere suggestion.
“Oh my god. He did.” Jimin smacks the table again, drawing a glare from the ajumma outside. “My precious Taehyung, cracked by one measly chaebol stare. I wish I’d been there.” His teasing unrelenting.
Taehyung’s ears burns. He reached for another skewer, the broth dripping back into the pot as he pulls it out, he wished Jimin would find something else to muse about already.
Jimin observers him for a moment longer, grin softening. “I'm joking Tae, don’t read too much into it. A stare like that? That’s just typical rich-boy boredom.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Taehyung affirms this time more concretely, because it really doesn’t, it’s only Taehyung’s anxiety and his over thinking, like he always does with most things. “Sure,” Jimin replies lightly, knowing this as well, knocking back another drink. “Nothing at all.”
The rain outside thickens, drumming against the plastic walls until the whole tent hums. Taehyung leans back, glass in hand, but his eyes stare at the table, the memory still pressing behind them.
Gangnam’s night pressed in with heavy neon, bleeding across wet pavement. More crates were signed for, the dolly rattled empty behind him, and Taehyung stops at the curb to stretch his back. His shoulders carrying the day’s weight, a dull throb working down into his arms. The rain had thinned to a drizzle by now, but the night was still bustling with excitement, the streets full of young people dressed up and loud noise and music advertising each establishment.
He notices a line of people extending down to the curve of the street, with all of them waiting to get into Singularity, waiting to get passed with a dress code by bouncers.
A sleek looking car pulls up, black and polished and its doors swing open. Men climb out first, voices already loud, jackets cut sharp. Women following right after in expensive glamourous short dresses, heels snapping against the pavement as though the street itself was their own runway. Their laughter floated brightly, out of reach.
And then Taehyung sees Jeon Jungkook.
He steps out last, thin silver chain catching in the glow of a passing headlight, black hair swift back carelessly by the breeze. One of the bouncers dips his head, voice carrying a flat “Jungkook-ssi” that seems both formal and familiar at once. The name strikes Taehyung harder than he expects— cementing proof that the man from the couch belonged to the same name the director had spoken about with such weight.
His people closed around him with easy gravity. A woman slipped her arm through his, the same face Taehyung remembers from the other night, laughing gingerly in that room where he hadn’t belonged. She leans in close, saying something meant only for him. It has Jungkook glancing up across the street.
His eyes slide over the night’s clutter—traffic, neon, rain, the mirage of people and it passes in direction where Taehyung stands. It was brief, indifferent, no sharper than a passing headlight, but it hit Taehyung with the same unsettled charge as before.
Taehyung watches as the couple and their groupie walk towards the entrance of the club, with bouncers opening the doors for them in practiced rhythm. His grip tightens on the dolly even though its empty.
The woman laughs louder, tugging at Jungkook’s sleeve, and he let himself be pulled toward the front entrance. The group moves as one, their voices folding into the hum of the club ahead. Glass and neon swallowing them whole.
Taehyung lets out a held in exhale, his breath clouding faint in the damp air. Around him, the city goes on. Horns blaring, footsteps splashing and loud chatter, but the glance clings to his mind like tobacco caught onto clothes. He finally pulls the dolly forward, wheels knocking against the curb, and sets off down the street.
The rain begins again, harder this time, stitching lines across the asphalt.