Crammed in an elevator with 10 other people was not how you imagined your first day at work to be. But this was the life of a white-collar worker.

When you had finally reached the 18^th floor you quietly excuse yourself and squeeze past the people in front of you. You heard whispers of:

“Who’s this?”

“I’ve never seen her around”

“She’s not even in uniform, does she even work here?”

You try to ignore the people openly talking about you and giving you weird looks as you walk into your supervisor’s office.

Your father had placed you in the international trade sector because of your language advantage, hoping that you could start from there and climb your way up the ranks of the corporate ladder.

“Ah, Miss Jung” Your advisor says when he looks up to see you standing awkwardly by the door.

“Good Morning” You say politely and bow 90 degrees. You were so used to bowing as a form of respect in Korea that you forgot that it wasn't a thing here in China.

Your advisor, a middle-aged man, chuckles. “I heard you were from Korea, but there’s no need to be so formal here” He walks over and begins to introduce you to your co-workers. He seemed like a busy man, and most of the workers were nervous when he came around. He's probably pretty strict on them too, by the way they all they either straightened up their clothes or pretended to look like they were busy when you guys walked by. Some of the coworkers you were introduced to just looked you up and down with eyes of judgment, mostly the female workers. The males were awkward and/or nervous to shake your hand. 

“So you’re from Korea?” The girl who introduced herself as Jia Min asked. She was tall and slender, and not wearing heavy makeup like the girls you often saw in Korea. 

“Well, I was born in China” You reply, not feeling like explaining your whole life, which was something you've had to do way to often and this time around, you were too lazy to even bother. 

She nods and brushes your comment off, and you knew she probably wasn’t going to consider you a real Chinese because in this discriminatory world, people like you didn’t fit in anywhere, but at least she seemed nice about it. She didn't continue to pry about your life in the U.S., which was something a lot Chinese people tended to do. You had first hand experience because your relatives and friends of your relatives would often look at you with greedy eyes because to them growing up in the west meant you were loaded. They always expected you to bring gifts or provide some sort of materialistic item of value from the States or whatever foreign country you had traveled from. 

"Oh, no wonder your Chinese is really good!" she exclaims, and proceeds to tell you that your desk was the one right next to hers and if you have any questions or concerns she would have your back. Jia Min was actually pretty interested in Korea because it turns out she's an avid Kdrama fan and has been obsessed over many dramas that were real hits in China, with mainly included "My Love from Another Star" and "Descendants of the Sun". But becuase of the THAAD conflict, people have been keeping the Hallyu obsession on the downlow to avoid controversy. 

When you finished the company tour and introductions, you went back to your desk and decided to unpack your stuff and get settled in. At least the view of Beijing was nice, the smog was actually not too bad today, and the sun was actually visible. You started to wonder if this was going to finally be the reality of where life's going to take you: an office job in Beijing. As boring as it sounded, it was stable alright, and it's what most people end up doing or hope to do...and that was to settle.

Settling....

And then a student's wise words at your college graduation speech rings in your head: "Don't settle. Do what you love." 

You chuckle to yourself at the thought. If only I knew what I loved to do, if only I knew what I really want in life. Of course you were still lost in life, but deep down, at the bottom of your gut, you knew the thing you were looking for was most definately not here. 

…

“Jungkook-oppa, you look tired” The fan kneeling in front of Jungkook with her signed album comments. She looks at him with puppy eyes and pretends to puff up her cheeks, acting cute to cheer Jungkook up and get him to notice her because he seemed a little out of it at the moment. 

The distracted Jungkook looks up at her and forces a smile onto his face. “I’m as energized as ever,” He says, trying to show the fan that he was fine, despite the soreness that tugged at his muscles. He had really just been on autopilot for the last couple of days, and it was finally catching up to him or more like, his body. 

He really should’ve taking it easy at dance practice, but it’s like he was desperate to find that feeling back. That feeling of being untouchable, that sort of high that he was on a week ago. Somehow it was gone and he didn’t know where to look for it.

“Well, don’t forget to take care of yourself” She says before waving and moving on for the next member to sign her album. He looks at her and nods with another tired smile. 

“Aww, why are you crying?” V asks a fan who had broken down into tears in front of him. She was clearly overwhelmed with feels and couldn't contain her emotions when she walked up to the boys. “Don’t cry, look at me” V starts to make funny faces in an attempt to make her laugh, but she’s too shy to look V in the eyes. He puts his hand gently on he chin and lifts her face to meet his. The young male give her a warm tender smile, which makes her blush shyly.

“She probably likes me more” Jimin says, as the fan isn’t crying anymore when she reaches him. Jimin gives her a seductive stare and she covers her face.

“It’s because I comforted her,” V says to Jimin who’s trying to take credit for work he didn’t do.

“Thank you oppas” The fan says before walking away. “Hwaiting! Sarangheyo!”

Jungkook breathed a sigh of relief when the last fan left the fansign. He didn’t really know what had gotten into him either; he wasn’t THAT tired in the physical sense, aside from the soreness, and preparations for the world tour were going smoothly. He wasn’t anxious or nervous about traveling around the world to perform for International ARMYs. But there was some sort of undefined emptiness he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

After the fan meet, the boys head to a restaurant to have a nice traditional Korean meal of different stews and side dishes. They were sitting cross legged on the floor and chatting about random topics like, video games, award ceremonies, other kpop idol friends, and of course their upcoming world tour. 

"Jungkook-ah, are you ok?" Jimin says, while waving a hand in front of Jungkook. He noticed that the young maknae was spacing out and barely even touching his food. 

"Oh, yeah I'm fine. Just not hungry" Jungkook says looking down at his bowl of untouched sundubu jigae. He looks around at the members shocked faces. Jin even drops the piece of kimchi he had in his chopsticks that he was about to bring up to his mouth. 

"Not hungry?" JHope says, expressing confusion because the concept of Jungkook not being hungry was completely new to him. 

"No! Not Today..." Jungkook begins to sing Suga's rap in "Not Today" in hopes of reassuring the members he was fine because he didn't want to ruin the happy atmosphere. The members all sigh and begin laughing and patting Jungkook on the back. All except V, who knows Jungkook is just putting on a show. He's the only one who's noticed Jungkook has been off lately and as much as Jungkook tries to hide it through intense dance practices, vocal lessons, and dorky jokes, the older boy can tell that deep down Jungkook is not as ok as the front he puts on. 

…

Another day of work finally passed, and you were slowly getting the hang of how things worked at the company after about a month. Your supervisor barely checked up on you since you got in through “connections”, and most of your coworkers acted like they were walking on eggshells when they talked to you because they all knew who your father was. Except for a group of female workers who always found a way to get on your nerve, making you do all the dirty work that they're supposed to do themselves and being ungrateful brats after you did them favors like buy coffee, run errands, and vaccumn the carpet under their desks. You had complied because you didn't want to be on bad terms with anyone at the company, and you were trying your best to just fit in, but looks like even that's not going to be easy.

Today you had accidentally walked in on a few female workers talking about how the only reason you got in the company was because of you family relations, but another had defended you and said it was because of your language skills.

It didn’t really piss you off or anything because it’s not like you were going to be best buddies with any of your coworkers. They weren’t overly welcoming, and there was this unspoken cultural barrier between you and them, because of course you were the weird girl who grew up in America and didn’t know squat about Chinese culture.

You decided that as long as you guys were all on good terms, you wouldn’t expect too much from them. You had been trying to look for different jobs on the side because the only thing keeping you going was knowing that you weren’t going to be stuck there for good. Yes, you had decided that you were going to find another job because the situation you were in, was not something you could deal with for the rest of your working career. No, you would find something better to do; perhaps even going to grad school would be a good option. At least your father would understand.

As you were taking the bus home, you decide to listen to some music to kill time. Traffic was horrible as usual, and the people were pushing you left and right trying to squeeze on to the already overcrowded vehicle. But man, the concept of personal space was just nonexistent here. 

Although you had come to terms that Jungkook was unattainable early on, you had subconsciously believed you could at least stay by his side, no matter how selfish it made you feel, but apparently that wasn’t even in the cards for you.

Is it even possible to feel heartbroken with someone you had never even been romantically involved with?

And why do people fall in love with people they know they can’t have?

You hated feeling so pathetic and unable to move on.

You even told yourself that you’d lay off BTS songs until you could handle listening to Jungkook’s voice without feeling so helpless. Yeah, it was pathetic and so unlike the rational person you were before meeting BTS. 

But nowadays even when you were listening to music that wasn’t BTS, every song reminded you of him, his voice, the image of him dancing, the sound of his playful laughter, his smile when he looked directly in your eyes…

You can do this, it’ll pass.

You take a deep breath and look at the cars driving by, the people in them just minding their own lives. 

Everyone has to learn to move on.

Granted it's only been a month, but everything in the world still reminded you of him.

.......