Ah, this is the life. Jungkook gulped down his orange juice and let out a content sigh, eyes blissfully closed. A perfect Saturday morning, no school, no homework, parents are both at work, another lovely, lazy day. He heard birds chirping outside, there was a slight breeze coming in from the window, and a general, peaceful quietness spread throughout the house. The boy smiled to himself. And no Park Ji—

The sharp ping from the doorbell resounded in the empty house, breaking the quiet spell. Jungkook heaved an exasperated sigh. I spoke too soon.

When he took his time in reaching the front door, the bell proceeded to ring incessantly, alerting probably the entirety of Seoul of Jungkook’sobnoxious neighbor. He hissed irritably and threw open the door.

“Yah, Park Jimin! I can’t go one bloody day without you annoying the hell out of me—”

Before he could even finish, the shorter male flicked him on the forehead, causing him to growl in annoyance. “First of all, that’s Jimin-hyung to you, brat.” Jimin marched his way in, laptop tucked under his arm. “And, second, I’ve got something important to show you, regarding our channel,” he said, smiling, knowing that if there was something that had anything to do with Jungkook’s baby (a.k.a. their YouTube channel), the other boy would be all ears.

The two best friends/neighbors of seven years had created a YouTube channel three years ago under the alias of KookandChim where they mostly did dance/song covers, made up their own choreography, and did silly experiments. Over that short amount of time, they had already garnered quite the fanbase of over 4 million subscribers.
The two had gone up to Jungkook’s room where Jimin had seated himself at the desk, pulling up their channel. The other had sprawled himself across his bed, waiting for the other.

“So, what was it that you had wanted show me?” Jungkook asked, fiddling lazily with a figurine that had been on his bedside table.

“Well, you’ll never believe this, but there’s this guy that has his own channel—he’s from Daegu, by the way— and he’s a big fan of our channel as well! Especially you.” Jimin excitedly rushed all the words out, beaming at his friend with an almost closed-eye grin.

The younger rolled his eyes. “So?”

Jimin smirked. “So, he’s only been on YouTube for about two months…” He teasingly let the end of the sentence drift, knowing it would only irritate the other more.

Jungkook raised an eyebrow. “And?” he demanded.

“…and he already has 2.5 million subscribers.”

The two stared at each other for several seconds, Jungkook with an increasingly disbelieving expression and Jimin with an increasingly growing smirk (which was seriously starting to irritate the hell out of the other).

“Give me the laptop.”

Jimin let out a bark of laughter before handing said laptop to his friend, knowing that his curiosity and disbelief would be too much to ignore. Jungkook scanned the channel’s homepage and crinkled his nose at the profile picture of a close up shot of someone’s (presumably the channel’s owner) eyeball. The channel was called KimTaeV. He snorted dismissively. Stupid name. His eyes narrowed at the number that was next to theSubscribe button. 2,536,124.

No way.

“How the hell did he get 2.5 million subscribers in two freaking months and it took us a year and eight months to get to 1 million?” he shrieked.

Jimin huffed, not even surprised at the other’s behavior. “Yah, brat, be grateful for all the subscribers we have now.”

Jungkook turned his head so fast, Jimin was surprised he didn’t get whiplash. “I am forever grateful for all of our fans,” he insisted fervently. He turned back to the laptop screen, eyes burning. “I refuse to let one guy’s of pure luck get me down.” He scrolled down, sneering. “Besides, he’s probably just got a nice face, that’s why he has so many subscribers.”

Jimin rolled his eyes. “You’re being too harsh. And, I did say that he was your fan, especially. How can you think so unkindly about one of yourfans?”

“Because he got so many subscribers in practically no time at all,” Jungkook muttered, a childish pout making its way onto his lips.

“Alright, here,” Jimin took the laptop from the sulking male and clicked on an older video. “He does some singing and dancing too. But, mostly, he just does a bunch of funny skits and adventures and stuff.”

The video started and out of nowhere, a face popped up, coated in haphazardly put on makeup that resulted in the wearer looking like a knock-off version of the Joker, but with bright orange hair. Jungkook jumped in surprise.

“What the hell?”

“Shhh,” Jimin put a finger to his lips, ignoring his friend’s scowl. “Just watch, it’s funny.”

The boy proceeded to reenact a pretty famous scene from The Dark Knight, all the while practically spitting into the camera with his accented English and constant usage of the renowned phrase “why so serious?” and giving his viewers a definite close up of his almost revolting face. Jungkook probably would have been amused had it not been for the bitter cloud of 2.5-million- subscribers-in-two-months hanging over his head.

He turned his nose up in the air. “That was stupid.”

“You’re the one being stupid,” Jimin retorted.

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Park Jimin, you come into my house, you ruin my perfectly good Sunday morning, you dampen my mood by showing me a complete imbecile who how I will never for the life of me understand got 2.5 million subscribers in such a short amount of time—”

“This is a picture of him.”

And, there it was, in all its glory. Oh. Oh.

Jungkook’s eyes widened, almost comically. Jimin had pulled up the boy’s Instagram account, displaying a picture of a slightly tanned guy with the same bright orange hair like he had in the Joker video; only here, he was definitely free of the absurd makeup, and was grinning at the camera with two fingers spread out in a peace sign, eyes forming little crescents. For lack of a better word, Jungkook vaguely registered thinking somewhere in the back of his mind that he looked…cute.

He didn't know whether to coo or wretch. 

“His real name’s Kim Taehyung, but he calls himself V,” Jimin explained, not noticing the other’s slack-jawed expression.

Jungkook weakly cleared his throat. “Well…like I said. He’s got a nice face, that’s why everyone likes him.”

The older of the two scoffed. “Are you really that determined to hate him?”

Jungkook didn’t respond, sulking.

“Well, if you still aren’t convinced,” Jimin said, going back to his YouTube channel, “I bet you’d really appreciate his singing and dancing skills then. He’s pretty good, even you won’t be able to deny it, Kookie!”

“Fine, let’s see what he’s got,” Jungkook agreed.

They pulled up a cover he did not too long ago of Adele’s “Someone Like You”. Jungkook was certain that no amount of talent this Taehyung kid had would be enough to impress him when it came to singing; it was his passion after all. But, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

The second the music started, Taehyung’s almost melancholic crooning seemed to mute all other noise around Jungkook. The video was all black and white with Taehyung walking down a couple streets alone while singing. But it was his voice, his beautiful, hauntingly sad voice, was what made Jungkook’s breath hitch in his throat.

Forget the fact that his pronunciation may not have been perfect or that his voice jumped from his husky baritone to a soft tenor. Forget all of that. The raw emotion flooding from the laptop speakers caused Jungkook’s chest to physically hurt ever so slightly, as though his own heart was spluttering in pure awe and incredulity.

This guy can sing.

He could hear God cackling now.

The song came to a sweeping close and Jungkook’s hand itched to press the replay button.

Jimin turned to grin at him. “I told you he was good.” The other didn’t reply but chose to simply stare at the black screen for several more seconds.

“Uh…Jungkook?” Jimin asked, eyebrows furrowed, when the boy still made no indication of a reaction at all.

“Hyung.”

“…Yes?”

“What does it mean if you want to binge watch all 32 videos a person’s ever put up on their channel and become a prominent member of their fanbase in the process?”

“…Dude, you’ve got it bad.”