Recommended listening: DIGITAL DAGGERS - STILL HERE

At the question, all the humor in the room evaporated and everyone stared at Taehyung with wide, questioning eyes. The boy felt himself shrink under their gazes.

“Um,” he supplied helpfully.

“That’s a strangely vague answer to a usually easy question,” Seokjin said, tossing a lock of pink hair over his right shoulder.

Taehyung’s heart started beating rapidly. “My name’s Kim Taehyung,” he blurted out before mentally slapping himself for the stupid answer. But to his surprise, the other boys didn’t seem annoyed by this answer. Instead, they look puzzled and looked at each other, murmuring. Hoseok looked at Taehyung. “Your name is Kim? Then why do you call yourself Taehyung?”

“What? My name is Taehyung.”

That just increased their confusion. “What?” Jeongguk asked quietly, peeking over Namjoon’s shoulder.

Now Taehyung was confused. “Kim is my family name,” he said, accidentally looking at Seokjin and Namjoon. No recognition was shown on either of their faces. “Taehyung is my birth name.”

“Then why is it first?” Jimin asked, tilting his head like a confused puppy.

Taehyung thought about it. “I dunno. It just is, I guess.” He swallowed a ball of nervousness. “Why are your family names second?”

They looked at each other and shrugged. “No idea,” Yoongi said. “It just is.”

“Hey, Yoongs,” Jeongguk said, a little louder this time, now that he wasn’t looking at the stranger in the room. “He kinda talks like you.”

“Does he?” the older boy asked, looking at Taehyung. “I guess he does. Where you from, kid?”

Taehyung bit his lip. “Daegu,” he said.

“Where’s that?”

The boy’s heart dropped.

“Um, the lower part of the country,” he supplied, feeling ridiculous. “Sorta near the water, I guess?” At those words, Yoongi, Jimin, and Jeongguk smiled.

“I guess that makes sense, then,” Yoongi said with a shrug. “I’m from Kanagawa. Maybe the places are near each other.” The words meant nothing to Taehyung, but he smiled all the same. “But I can’t say the name sounds very Japanese.” He paused for a moment. “Neither does your name. You still haven’t given us much about you. How did you know about us? And how the did you know the password to message us?”

“It’s the name of Seokjin’s cat,” Taehyung blurted out.

“Cat?” Seokjin repeated, looking confused.

“Dammit, Jin, we told you that password is too hackable,” Hoseok scolded Seokjin. “The entire fan following knows how much you like that anime character!”

Anime character? Oh, yeah, Seokjin had mentioned once that he named his cat after some character. But he never remembered the older boy telling ARMY about his pet. Well, what works, works.

Seokjin and Hoseok bickered for a while after that, before Namjoon rolled his eyes and whistled a quick, high pitched tune that immediately made the boys be quiet.

Hoseok glared at Namjoon accusingly. “Taehyung doesn’t count for that,” he said.

“Why not?” Namjoon asked, shrugging. “He’s a guest. Whistle counts for everyone that isn’t from the company.”

“What are you talking about?” Taehyung asked, lost.

Jimin pursed his lips and whistled the same tune. “It basically means actually shut the up, when we’re around people not from the company. When we’re with each other or company members, we pretty much never shut up and the whistle doesn’t count.”

“That’s odd.”

Jimin shrugged. “Bad things happen if we run our mouths around people that we need to impress.”

That didn’t make any sense. “What kind of people do you need to impress that you can’t talk?” Okay, the idea that they needed to keep the majority of their opinions to themselves was not an unusual concept. But to just not speak at all? Wasn’t more than half of the industry built on talk shows?

They all looked at him like he had grown a second head. “Um, everyone?” Yoongi answered.

A song started playing out of nowhere. Seokjin sighed dramatically and held out his right hand expectantly as if someone were going to place money into it. Taehyung was about to ask what he was doing when Jimin tossed a ringing cell phone into the eldest’s waiting palm. Seokjin deep in a deep breath and suddenly went from appearing as just a normal young adult to a prince.

“Hello?” he said into the phone. The rest of the boys noticeably settled down, as if they were well-accustomed to long phone calls. “Oh,” Seokjin suddenly growled, his demeanor changing to angry. The other five boys released a collective groan. Apparently, Seokjin frequently had phone calls with someone they didn’t really like. Taehyung observed the scene like an outsider that had no place there.

A few sighs and muttered “okay”s from Seokjin, and the cell phone was tossed unceremoniously onto the ground before he turned and glared at Yoongi. “I thought you guys got us out of work for the day!” he shouted.

“What? We did!” Namjoon protested.

Seokjin huffed. “Well, my beloved emissaries, some foreign ambassadors apparently flew in and bosslady wants us to work tonight. And a formal meeting too,” he wailed and the others groaned once more. “Oh yeah, and the manager said something about Hoseok?” he phrased it as a question, raising an eyebrow.

Jeongguk shrugged. “We said Hoseok was coughing and sneezing and definitely infectious - and quite possibly dying - and most definitely cannot work a