Chapter Text
I don't wanna ride this rollercoaster. I think I wanna get off
But they've buckled me down like it's the end of the world
If you don't wanna have this conversation, then you'd better get out
Cause we're climbing to our death, at least that's what they want you to think
Just in case we jump the track, I have a confession to make
It's something like a corkscrew
I don't wanna fall, I don't wanna fly, I don't wanna be dangled over
The edge of a dying romance
But I don't wanna stop, I don't wanna lie, I don't wanna believe it's over
I just wanna stay with you tonight
I didn't mean to scream out quite so loudly when we screeched to a halt
I'm just never prepared for the end of the ride
Maybe we should get on something simpler, like a giant balloon
I've got two tickets left, and so do you
Instead of giving them away to some stranger, let's make 'em count
C'mon, let's get back in line again and ride the big one
Don't you wanna fall? Don't you wanna fly? Don't you wanna be dangled over the edge
Of this aching romance?
And if it's gonna end then I wanna know that we squeezed out every moment
But if there's nothing left can you tell me why
That it is you're holding onto me
Like it's the end of the world?
Song that inspired this story and its title: END OF THE WORLD from MATT ALBER
The room was too white.
Not clean-white. Studio-white. The kind of sterile, overlit space that pretended to be casual for television. The light above Jimin’s head hummed softly, filling the silence between his shallow breaths.
A producer leaned in to fix the mic on his lapel.
“Try not to touch it while you talk, okay?” she said, smiling the way people smile when they’ve said the same line all day.
Jimin nodded. He could feel a tiny tremor in his fingers.
The camera’s red light blinked on.
Somewhere behind it, someone called, “Rolling. Three, two, one—”
Jimin’s mouth pulled into something that could pass as a smile.
“Alright, Park Jimin-ssi,” said the off-camera voice, warm but professional. “Why did you decide to apply for our program, Married at First Sight?”
He exhaled slowly. The question was simple, painfully so, and yet the words got tangled somewhere between his throat and his heart.
“Because…” He hesitated. “Because I’m tired of almost.”
The producer tilted her head. “Almost?”
Jimin laughed, soft and self-aware.
“Almost in love. Almost chosen. Almost enough.”
He shifted in his chair, eyes flicking to the lens. “You know, I keep getting to the part where someone should stay. And either they don’t… or I don’t.”
He could feel the next thought pushing up. The one he wasn’t sure belonged on TV. That sometimes he left first, not because he didn’t like them, but because something was missing and he couldn’t name it. Because he didn’t want to hurt them later. Because he’d never actually had that stupid movie moment with a woman where everything in him just… settled.
The camera felt like an eye. Noticed everything.
“I figured,” he continued, “if I let someone else make the choice… the experts, the psychologist, all their tests… maybe it’ll go right for once. Maybe I won’t run. Maybe she won’t run. Maybe there’s actually a match for me out there that I just couldn’t find on my own.”
He almost added: or maybe I’m just lonely enough to try anything and won’t have to keep guessing what’s wrong with me, but he swallowed that part.
He glanced down at his hands. They’d gone still in his lap, fingers laced like he was holding himself together.
Off-camera, the producer said, “You know our team—Dr. Han Insu and everyone—they work hard to make sure it’s a real match.”
“I know,” Jimin said, nodding. “That’s kind of why I’m here. I’m… not doing great picking for myself.”
A tiny, bitter smile.
Cut.
“Can we get a bit about your dating history?” someone asked from behind the lights. “Just so viewers get to know you.”
Jimin wet his lips. “Sure.”
A quick flash, in his head, of Yerin—pretty, clever, a graphic designer—whose hand he’d held in winter, whose kiss had been fine, whose texts had been kind. They’d even slept together a couple of times and it had been… okay. Comfortable, not electric. She had finally said, I feel like you like me, but you don’t… want me, and he hadn’t known what to say because she was right.
Another flash: Mina, the loud one, who loved clubbing and ramen at 3am, whose friends had adored him. The chemistry had been better—fun, easy, flirty—but it burned fast. He’d broken up with her after three months because she’d started talking about moving in and he’d felt nothing but pressure.
Another: Sujin, the safest of them all. Sweet, patient, the kind his mother would have approved of. Sex had been gentle but a bit distant, like he was playing a part he knew well. He’d stared at her across a café table one day and realized he liked her company but couldn’t picture a future, again, and the guilt had sat on his chest for days. Like every crush he’d ever had kept fading right before it should have become real.
Different women. Different types. Same ending. Him, leaving carefully. Them, leaving hurt.
“They were all good people,” he said finally, carefully. “Just… not it.”
🎬
Later, in the hallway, another staffer was filling out his information on a tablet.
“Age?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Occupation?”
He hesitated. “Dancer.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh, nice.”
He just smiled. He didn’t explain that he hadn’t been onstage since he’d wrecked his knee last spring. That he’d been teaching and choreographing and pretending it was the same. That the part of him that loved performing had gone quiet… and maybe that silence was why he was now letting a TV show arrange his love life.
“Family knows you’re applying?” she asked, casual.
Jimin huffed. “Not yet. My mom still thinks I’m going to marry a nice girl from church.”
The staffer laughed and kept typing, taking it as a joke about strict parents, not the gap between his life and theirs.
Jimin didn’t add: and I’ve never actually been in love with any of the girls I dated, so maybe this is me trying to prove I can. That sounded pathetic even in his own head.
🎬
When the interviews were done after long hours of the same questions, asked with slightly different eyebrows, they let him wait in an empty room. Pastel posters on the walls showed couples from previous seasons: holding hands, glowing, the It worked! montage.
They looked too bright. Too edited. Fake.
Jimin stared at them and tried to picture himself standing in a fitted suit beside a stranger, smiling for the nation. The thought made his stomach roll and his chest squeeze with an odd mix of curiosity and uncertainty. Like he wasn’t sure if he’d be acting or actually feeling it.
What if it worked?
What if there was actually someone whose rhythm matched his?
What if the problem hadn’t been the women?
What if it had been him, circling around something he didn’t understand yet?
He could hear Hobi in his head—Jung Hoseok, who danced with him first and loved him longest as his best friend, who’d laughed in disbelief for five minutes straight when Jimin first told him he was applying to the show.
“You? On a dating show? You don’t even let people finish sentences when they flirt with you. You don’t even like talking about your feelings when you’re drunk.”
Jimin had thrown a pillow at him.
But later, when Hobi finally stopped laughing, he’d said something softer:
“If you do this, Jiminie, promise me one thing… listen to your gut.”
Sitting in that sterile room, surrounded by fake-happy posters, Jimin realized he wasn’t even sure what his gut sounded like anymore. It had been quiet for so long, drowned out by other people’s ideas of what his life should look like—parents, friends, society, now TV.
🎬
A production assistant peeked in. “We’re ready for your B-roll, Jimin-ssi. Just some shots of you looking out the window, maybe walking, smiling, that kind of thing. Just be natural.”
Natural.
He stood, smoothed his shirt, followed them. The floor was polished concrete that reflected the studio lights, it felt slippery. They positioned him by a large window. Seoul outside was washed in late-afternoon gray, buildings layered like paper cutouts.
“Think about love,” someone said behind the camera.
He almost snorted. Instead, he closed his eyes.
And for the briefest moment, he imagined something. Not a person, not a face, just a feeling.
Warmth under his hands.
Soft laughter spilling into early morning light.
The quiet kind of peace that doesn’t ask for proof.
A space where he didn’t have to perform. Not even for millions of viewers.
When he opened his eyes, the camera was still capturing him like it could read his thoughts.
He wondered what version of him they would cut together. The lonely romantic? The funny dancer? The desperate handsome?
🎬
That night, on his way home, he stopped at a convenience store. He bought triangle kimbap and a canned coffee he didn’t need. The cashier bowed and said nothing; he was nobody here, which was a relief.
In his small apartment, he dropped the food on the counter and looked at himself in the dark window.
He didn’t look like a man about to probably get married to a stranger on national television.
He looked like someone waiting for something to change him.
He thought of Hobi again: Listen to your gut.
Jimin rested his forehead briefly against the cool window and whispered, so low it barely counted as sound:
“I hope I’ll know when it’s real.”
Then he turned off the light, and the room, and the city beyond the glass, swallowed him in the dark.