The first time it happened, Yoongi woke up feeling as though he had nearly drowned. His lungs ached, his eyes burned, and every muscle in his body seemed to twitch in exhaustion. A muted groan slid past his lips as he lifted a hand to rub at his eyes, but the distinct crinkle of paper distracted him mid motion. Opening his hand, the man blinked at the roll of paper resting against his palm. On it, written in a stylized cursive, were the words “Bangtan Sonyeondan.” Staring at them, his mind burned as though it were trying to remember the significance of the phrase but finding only nothingness where a memory should be. Even as he glanced away, the words slipped from his mind like water through the cracks in a rock. Looking back down at his hand, he was surprised yet again by the paper. A frown turned the curl of his lips even as a furrow arched between his brows. 

Walking through the city, Yoongi continued to glower at the words, willing them to have meaning. But, no matter how he stared at it, his mind refused to tell him the significance of the phrase. Bangtan Sonyeondan. Bulletproof Boyscouts, or so Google told him. He was so intent on the paper in hand that he missed the way the sidewalk curved and nearly ran into a building. Scowling, he looked up only to find himself in front of Black Butterfly Tattoos. His eyes narrowed. A tattoo shop. He looked down at the paper before trudging over to the door and pushing it open. By the time he returned home that night, the curl of “Bangtan Sonyeondan” underneath his left clavicle had begun to burn – feeling as though the skin were about to flake off beneath the fresh ink. 

He could remember the words without looking at them.

Two weeks later, Yoongi woke up, and somehow felt even worse than the last time he had suddenly come to. A gasp tore through his raw throat as the oxygen stuttered into his lungs, and his eyes seemed ready to bleed they were so red. Rolling over, he went to reach for the glass of water and pain pills on the bedside table – who left those? – when the crinkle of paper drew his gaze. Warily, he opened his palm. This time, there were no words, only a drawing. In bold black and white: a bulletproof vest. His eyes trailed over the details, including the number 95 on the vest pocket. Bulletproof. It had to be related to his tattoo, but how? Keeping a grip on the paper, he sat up and distractedly downed the pills and water with his free hand. He then carefully reached over, tucking the paper onto his phone, before going to get ready for the day. Just like last time, the image slipped out of his mind almost immediately. When he came back to the paper, it was as though he were seeing the image for the first time.

He sighed.

Curling his fingers around it, he pocketed his phone, his keys, and his wallet before trudging out the door. Yet again, he found himself at Black Butterfly Tattoos. The same man – tall, black-haired, and scowling – was leaning against the counter watching him enter. “Back again?” he drawled, his low voice curling through the air like a wisp of smoke from a cigarette.

“Seunghyun, are you being a brat to customers?” a voice called from the back – probably Daesung, one of the piercers. Or maybe G-Dragon, with his shock of red hair and tattooed eyeliner.

“Yeah,” Yoongi all but growled, his eyes narrowing a little.

Seunghyun snorted and pushed off the counter to stand upright, towering over the blonde. “What do you want this time?”

Yoongi eyed the man before sliding the piece of paper onto the counter. “I want it on my calf.”

Arching an eyebrow, Seunghyun looked down at the drawing. “G,” he called, his eyes never leaving the man in front of him. “This one’s for you.” When it came to graphic tattoos, G-Dragon was one of the best in the city. Not that Yoongi cared; he just wanted it done so he could hopefully remember something, anything.

The second tattoo didn’t feel any better as it was healing, but at least Yoongi didn’t go into shock. That was something. 

Third came a line of text, which Yoongi ended up having tattooed along the outside of his forearm: “Like the autumn sky, it’s empty between us.” It was written in the same hand as the first one, though the styling was different. Bangtan Sonyeondan had been bold and blocky, but this was thin and wispy, the letters curling together rather than standing in bold defiance. Fourth came a withered rose, the petals falling to scatter around it gracefully. Looking at it, Yoongi’s heart had ached and his stomach clenched with some forgotten agony. It made him want to cry to see it, though he had no idea why. That tattoo ended up hidden on the inside of his bicep – somewhere he wouldn’t see it too often and be reminded. Even weeks later, the sight of it would make his throat squeeze shut as though he were about to cry. And, sometimes he would dream of a man whose beauty put the roses to shame - tall, broad shouldered, and just shy of familiar. 

It was the fifth tattoo that made him truly feel as though something was gravely wrong. He could not actually read the curling letters, they were too small and in Korean - a language he couldn't read. But, he could discern that they formed the stylized shape of a sun. In fact, it was rather pretty, in a pseudo-tribal sort of way. And the fact it was made up of words was nice too. Yoongi, when he had been a kid, had dreamed of being a poet, and so he had a natural affinity for words. (Somehow he had ended up writing technical manuals for a boring 9-5 job that was slowly killing his soul. If not for the mystery of the drawings, he’d think his life utterly void of interest. All he did was work, eat, and sleep.) Going down the street, he entered the familiar tattoo shop and found G-Dragon sitting on top of the counter with a wide smile on his lips. “I thought we might be seeing you soon,” the man teased with a giggle. “It’s been nearly two months! Seunghyun thought we’d lost you for good.” From the back came the sound of a snort.

Rather than banter with the man, Yoongi held up the drawing. “I want this one.”

Taking the paper, G-Dragon examined it with a hum. “Interesting. Eulogy for the sun.”

“What?” Yoongi’s eyes flashed as the embers of a memory stirred. Sun. Sunshine. Someone with a smile as bright as the sun… but who?

“It says, ‘A eulogy for the sun; it will never rise again.’” G-Dragon shrugged. “Didn’t you know?”

Yoongi shook his head. “No. A – a friend drew it for me. Draws all of my tatts.”

“I know. I can recognize their hand.” G-Dragon slid to his feet. “Well, you’re in luck. My schedule is clear this afternoon. I was going to spend it eating cake, but inking you sounds more fun. Where you want this one?”

Trailing after G-Dragon, the blonde considered his options. “My hip. Right.” It seemed like a fitting enough place for the tattoo, and it was far enough away from the others to not make him feel … cluttered.

“Hip it is,” G-Dragon chirped. “And if your friend ever wants a job, let them know I like their style.”

Each time Yoongi woke up with another piece of paper in his hand, it felt as though his soul died a little more. He no longer looked forward to the mysterious papers, but instead came to dread them and the feelings they awoke in his body. It was as though every piece of him but his mind recalled the meaning of each picture, each line of text, that he added to his body. Perhaps there was a reason he could not remember them. And yet, he continued to add them to his body in hopes of remembering something, anything that would help him understand what was happening.

Six was a circle with a bold black star in the center. Both of them looked as though someone had tried to erase part of them, though each line was deliberately smudged. The artist, it seemed, had wanted to give the feeling of erasure rather than actually wanting to destroy the imagery. That drawing ended up on his left shoulder blade. Seventh was another image: a black butterfly with its wings spread wide. When he had gone into the tattoo shop with it, he had actually cracked a joke about how his friend had taken inspiration from the establishment. But, when Seunghyun had seen it, a dark expression had crossed his features. He had quickly excused himself and left Yoongi gaping after him. Daesung had scrambled up to the front and helped Yoongi make an appointment for later that day – after the blonde got off from his 9-5 job. The butterfly had ended up on the inside of his right wrist, tucked up just high enough that it wouldn’t show under his dress shirts. 

Eight… Eight was perhaps the worst. He woke up and looked down to find eight words scrawled out on the page, this time in a different hand than the others: “lost stars trying to light up the dark.” The moment he read them, tears began to pour down his cheeks and his shoulders shook with the force of his sobs. It felt as though someone had torn out his heart and in its place branded those words into the fleshy cavity that remained. Rather than dress for the day, he called into work, claiming the flu, and simply lay in bed crying over seemingly nothing. And then, that afternoon, he called Black Butterfly Tattoos and asked G-Dragon for another appointment. This time, the words ran along his ribs, on the left side. He wanted to keep them close to his heart. 

Nine…

Nine didn’t even have the decency to hurt. By now, Yoongi knew how to deal with the inexplicable pain associated with the tattoos. Rather than lay in bed crying, the man would pull out a sheet of paper and write, the words curling easily from the depths of his pain and onto the page. It was the first time in six years he had written anything outside of the requirements of his job, and it amazed him just how much of a relief it was to make contact with that part of himself again. He felt as though he were meeting himself again for the first time in years, learning about the new Min Yoongi – the one with tattoos and pieces of himself missing. The Min Yoongi who did not understand himself or what was happening to him. But there was nothing that could have prepared him for nine.

Five months later, he had grown accustomed to waking up more tired than he went to bed and without a piece of paper in hand. His co-workers had even begun to , claiming the man had somehow learned how to work out in his sleep. And, maybe it was true. He was becoming leanly muscled and strong, even though nothing in his routine had changed. One of his co-workers, a wet-behind-the-ears kid named Sanghyuk, even teased Yoongi by asking if he was secretly a superhero. Yoongi wished. At least then he would have some understanding of what was happening to him. The blonde eventually came to accept that for whatever reason he was becoming fit and couldn’t remember how he got the pieces of paper he had woken up to eight separate times. It became a distant memory, a joke that lived on in the ink on his body. Maybe, he thought, it was just an elaborate prank someone had pulled on him. He learned to laugh about it, and sometimes even wore a Superman shirt under his dress shirt, just so he could tease Sanghyuk by randomly flashing the logo at him across the office.

But, the peace of that acceptance was shattered when he woke up to the ninth paper in his hand.

The sketch itself was pretty enough. Seven silhouettes stood together, their backs facing the viewer. Looking at them, there was one in particular that caught his eye: small, shoulders slouched, and so familiar. His hair stood on end when he realized it was him. Someone had drawn him with the six other figures. He stared at it for so long that time seemed to lose its meaning. Rather than feeling upset or in agony as he had with the others, this one made him feel as though the very humanity had been from the marrow of his bones. Yoongi was cold and empty staring at the six other figures; he felt as though he should know them, as though they were something missing from his life. It was as though someone had revealed he was adopted on live television: the room was spinning and his mind could not even begin to process the overwhelming sense of loss gnawing at him.

Yoongi’s fingers nearly clenched around the drawing, prepared to throw it away, but something stopped him. A thought or a memory, he wasn’t sure, but something made him set it down on his phone rather than toss it into the garbage beneath his end table. Rising to his feet, he shuffled into the bathroom and stared at his reflection. His face was swollen and puffy, as though he had only slept for a fitful few hours; and, his eyes were a glassy red. What had he done last night – drink himself nearly to death? Tugging his shirt off, he tossed it into the hamper and stretched, turning to step in the shower when his gaze caught on something. Stopping short, he whirled and leaned on the skin. His arms shook. There, tracing the curve of his collarbones and his pale neck, were round red blemishes. Raising a finger, he poked at one, just to see if he were imagining things. The skin turned white beneath the pressure of his nail before returning to the same reddish hue. Eyes lifting to his reflection, he frowned. “Yoongi…what have you been doing?” he muttered under his breath.

Forgoing his shower, Yoongi slipped into the first outfit he could find and a beanie before grabbing his effects, paper included. G-Dragon arched his finely plucked eyebrows when Yoongi came storming in. “Wow, look what –“

“This,” the man cut him off, slamming it on the counter. “I need it.”

G-Dragon, sensing his distress, carefully came around the counter and, much to Yoongi’s ire, put an arm around his shoulder. “Hey, you’re fine,” the man murmured. “We’ll get it done. What is it this time?”

Yoongi drew in a tremulous breath. “A sketch.”

Picking up the paper, G-Dragon left one arm around Yoongi as he started back for his station. He had been planning on getting Taeyang to touch up the tattoo on his back, but this was more important. “Mm, so it is,” he said, taking in the details. “A very nice sketch.” His eyes narrowed as he helped Yoongi sit down. “Jimin. Is that your friend’s name?”

The blonde’s eyes flew up to G-Dragon’s face. “What?”

“Jimin. Is that your friend’s name?” Leaning over, G-Dragon pointed to the bottom of the sketch. There, in a familiar hand, was written Jimin. Yoongi shuddered at the sight of the name. Jimin, Jimin, Jimin. Every bone in his body clacked with the need for Yoongi to remember who belonged to the name, but there was nothing but silence between his ears.

Finally, he choked out, “Yeah. Jimin…” He drew in a ragged breath.

“And…where do you want it?” G-Dragon asked, watching Yoongi carefully.

There were so many places he could have it. His back, a hip, his other calf, over his heart. But, he wanted to be able to see it, no matter where he was. The man held out his left arm and pointed to the soft skin of his inner forearm. “Here. Make it as big as you can.”

After that day, there were no more papers, no more mornings where he felt stretched too thin, and no more mysteries. Min Yoongi went back to being the boring 9-5 guy he had been the six years before. It was as though it had never happened. The only shadow of the event lived on in the nine tattoos spanning his body and the half-formed dreams that sometimes haunted his sleep. He felt lost – adrift in a world he no longer seemed to belong in. Yoongi could never figure out why, but nothing felt real without the familiar weight of paper in his hand. 

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I'd be curious if you can guess what was happening to Yoongi and what the tattoos mean. Hope you enjoyed! Let me know your comments down below. As always, thanks for reading!