The studio was quiet at that hour. Min Yoongi sat in front of the mixing board with his headphones on, one hand on the keyboard and the other on the desk.
A beat was playing in his ears, a simple drum pattern with a slow bass line under it. He had been working on it for three hours.
The fan meet had ended in the evening. The other members had gone back to the dorm, tired and hungry. He had told them he wanted to stay and work on some music.
That was what he always did when he wanted to feel like himself. Beats, lyrics, a late night in the studio. It was what a producer and a star was supposed to do.
But tonight it wasn't working.
He played the same eight bars again, then deleted the snare and put it back. He changed the bass. He changed it back.
After a while he took his hands off the keyboard and leaned back in the chair, staring at the screen without seeing it.
The door opened quietly. Someone crept in on tiptoe and stopped right behind his chair.
"Boo!"
Yoongi jumped so hard that his headphones flew off and his chair rolled back into the desk. "Yah! Are you crazy?"
Jimin was bent over laughing, one hand on his stomach. "Your face! You should have seen your face!"
"You almost killed me." Yoongi picked up his headphones and put them on the desk. "I thought you went back to the dorm."
"I did. I came back." Jimin dropped onto the couch against the wall and pulled his legs up. "The manager sent me. He said you weren't answering your phone."
"It's on silent."
"That's what I told him." Jimin looked at him more closely. "What's wrong with you? You've been weird all day."
"I haven't been weird."
"You stared at the ceiling during lunch. Then you were smiling and waving at fans, but your head was somewhere else.
Then you stared into space at the table like you were seeing ghosts." Jimin crossed his arms. "What are you thinking about?"
Yoongi didn't answer. He looked at the screen, then at the floor.
Jimin waited. He was the kind of person who could sit in silence for a long time without getting bored. It was one of the reasons Yoongi trusted him.
Finally Yoongi let out a long breath. "It's been on my chest for over a month. I really need to talk to someone about it."
"Then talk," Jimin said. "I'm here."
"You can't tell anyone. Not the manager, not the others."
"Who would I tell?" Jimin said. "I can't even keep my own secrets."
That almost made Yoongi laugh. He turned the chair around to face him.
"You remember the manager complaining about me last month," he said.
"About the club?"
"Yeah. I went to Diamond Bar. By myself. No bodyguard, nothing."
Jimin's eyebrows shot up. "You went to a club alone? Are you out of your mind?"
"I know, I know. I wore a hoodie and a cap. I just wanted one night to myself. No schedule, no managers, nobody calling my name. I sat at the bar and sipped my drink. I was just minding my own business."
"And then?"
"And then a girl crashed into me."
"Crashed into you?"
"She was drunk. She stood up from her seat and stumbled right into me. She kept saying 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' over and over, like a broken record." Yoongi rubbed the back of his neck. "I asked if she was okay. And I took off my hoodie and cap so she could see my face."
"Why would you do that?" Jimin said. "You're not supposed to do that!"
"I don't know. She looked so lost, and I thought it would be easier if she knew I wasn't a stranger." He shook his head. "She looked up at me, and I swear I could see her brain stop working. She said, 'Oh my God,' and then she kept saying it. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Five, six times. She told me she felt like she was dreaming. She even pinched herself."
Jimin started laughing again. "She pinched herself?"
"Twice. I told her she wasn't dreaming." Yoongi smiled a little, but it faded. "Then she introduced herself. Han Seo-yeon. She shook my hand with both of her hands."
"A fan," Jimin said.
"A fan. Since the very beginning, she said. Since 2013. I was her bias. She even wrote me a letter once, years ago, about a hard day in her life."
"Did you read it?"
"I don't know. I told her I read almost all of them, but I can't remember hers." Yoongi looked down at his hands. "I feel bad about that."
"Then what happened?"
"I asked her why she was drinking so much. She went quiet. Then she told me everything." His voice dropped. "She said she was working overtime when she got a message from a stranger. It said her boyfriend was cheating on her with her best friend. She didn't believe it. She said he was a nice man, a caring man. She said they were like family. Her boyfriend and her best friend, both."
Jimin's face went serious. "She found them?"
"She went home and saw them herself. She told me she'd even had problems with her parents because of them. She said she felt so stupid." Yoongi pressed his lips together. "She was crying and smiling at the same time. I felt terrible for her, Jimin. I didn't know what to say. I just said I was sorry."
"That's rough."
"Yeah. But then she said something that surprised me. She said that if she'd known the cheating would lead her to a bar and then to me, she wouldn't mind. At least something good came out of it."
Jimin whistled softly. "Okay."
"So we talked. Honestly, it was the best conversation I'd had in months. I told her about the rehearsals. About J-Hope being so strict about every little detail. About Jungkook making everyone laugh. About V mispronouncing words. About RM breaking everything he touches."
"And me?"
"I told her you're just yourself."
"That's the nicest thing anyone's said about me," Jimin said. "I'm touched."
Yoongi smiled briefly, then rubbed his face with both hands. "Then, out of nowhere, she asked me to spend the night with her."
Jimin sat up. "What?"
"Just like that. She looked at me and said, 'Can you spend the night with me?'"
"What did you say?"
"I was shocked. I said no. I told her she was drunk. I told her she was asking because of everything that had happened, and she would regret it in the morning. She said she wouldn't. She said she was glad she never gave her first time to her boyfriend. She said she wanted it to be with her bias. She said she didn't want to be alone tonight." He swallowed. "I offered to stay with her and just talk all night. She said no. She said she wanted to spend the night with me."
The room was quiet. Jimin didn't say anything.
"You know me," Yoongi said. "I'm not an irresponsible guy. I don't do things like that. I never have. I was drunk too, and I knew it was a bad decision. I knew exactly what it could do to us. To the group. To everything. And I still..."
He didn't finish.
"You still did it," Jimin said quietly.
"I spent the night with her." Yoongi stared at the floor. "And in the morning, I left before she woke up. No note. No number. Nothing. I just left."
"Why?"
"Because I was scared. I told myself it was safer. If she woke up and saw me, it would get complicated. If anyone found out, it would be a disaster. So I walked out and told myself it was over." He shook his head. "But I feel really bad about it. She was crying the night before. She had just been betrayed. And I left her without even saying goodbye."
"Hyung..."
"And I'll be honest with you." Yoongi looked up. His eyes were tired. "I miss her."
Jimin blinked. "You miss her?"
"I don't know how to explain it. I've thought about her every day since. I keep hearing her say 'Oh my God.' I keep seeing her pinch herself. I keep thinking about how she smiled even when she was crying." He tapped his chest. "It feels like something is missing here. I don't know what it is. It's not supposed to feel like this."
"It's been, what, a month?"
"A month and a few days."
"You've counted?"
Yoongi laughed, a short, helpless laugh. "I didn't mean to."
Jimin got up, crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk beside him. He looked at him for a long moment.
"Hyung, I have to ask you something," he said. "Are you in love?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I don't know what this is. I've been in love before. It wasn't like this. This isn't a crush. This isn't even a feeling I can name." Yoongi pushed his hair back. "I just feel so small, Jimin. I stand in front of thousands of people every week, and I feel like I'm doing everything right. Then I think about her and I feel like I'm doing everything wrong."
"Did you see her today?"
"At the fan meet?" Yoongi frowned. "No. I don't think so. But..."
"But what?"
"Something strange happened. In the middle of signing, I felt like someone was staring at me. I looked up and scanned the room. I looked all the way to the back. There was nothing. Just fans." He shook his head. "I thought I was imagining it. There are always people looking at me at those events. But it felt different."
"Different how?"
"I don't know. It was like..." He stopped and laughed at himself. "Forget it. I'm tired. I'm making things up."
Jimin didn't laugh. "You know her name. Han Seo-yeon."
"That's all I know. I don't have her number. I don't know where she lives or where she works. I only know she's a fan and her name."
"That's not nothing."
"It might be nothing," Yoongi said. "She didn't ask for my number either. Maybe she woke up the next day and was glad I was gone. Maybe she regrets it."
"Do you think she regrets it?"
"I told her she would."
"And what did she say?"
Yoongi looked at the wall. "She said she wouldn't."
For a while neither of them said anything. The beat was still playing quietly through the headphones on the desk, looped and unfinished.
"Okay," Jimin said finally. "First, I won't tell anyone. You know that."
"I know."
"Second, you're an idiot for going to a club alone."
"I know."
"Third, you're not irresponsible. You're a person who made a mistake and feels bad about it. That's different." He nudged Yoongi's shoulder. "And fourth, if you're in love, you can't fix it by sitting in a studio at midnight deleting the same snare drum."
"How did you know I was deleting the snare?"
"You've been doing it since I walked in."
Yoongi laughed, and this time it was real. He picked up the headphones and set them down again.
"Thanks," he said. "For listening."
"Anytime." Jimin stood up and stretched. "But you're coming back to the dorm tonight. Not one more hour in here. The manager will kill me."
"Five more minutes."
"No."
"Three."
"Hyung."
Yoongi sighed, turned off the monitor and stood up. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair.
At the door, he stopped and looked back at the board, where the beat was still looping quietly.
Han Seo-yeon, he thought.
He turned off the light and followed Jimin out.