Chapter six。

 

it had been two months since promotions for whistle started. two months of performing on music shows, two months of getting up early and goig to bed late, two months of watching their album on the charts praying that it would rise and then hoping that it wouldn’t fall anymore than it already did, two months of hardwork and dedication and harassing family members into streaming whistle ( #streamwhistle ). two months that ultimately culminated in a lukewarm and bitter feeling of something skin to failure.

not quite failure, because failure would be their disbandment, or not charting at all. they held a spot on the top 100 chart for the entirety of their promotions, granted by the end they were dangerously close to losing their spot, and they garnered a small amount of public interest for their unique sound amongst the oversaturated saccharine sounding girl groups. haneul muses about all of this on the car ride home from their schedule. she, manager kwon, and mei xie being the only ones awake on the three hour drive from gwangju to seoul.

she thinks not of failure, but of the quiet tenacity of something similar-to-but-not-quite-failure.

mei xie and manager park speak in low voices, careful not to wake any of the others. haneul pretends to sleep, though she isn’t exactly sure why, being brought back to her days as a child, where her mom and dad would talk while they thought she was asleep. important conversations between adults always happened during moments like this.

“how was your first goodbye stage?”

“fine. it would’ve been better if they stopped cutting our stages. tsuta and haneul don’t get to do their parts.”

“it's hard, isn’t it? just be patient and have faith.”

there’s a silence between the two of them. haneul’s closed eyelids seem to weight more and more.

“manager park?” he hums in response, “do you think we’ll make it?”

“of course. you girls are talented―”

“talent and skill doesn’t always mean success. plenty of talented groups are failing.”

“i don’t think trv will fail. it might take a while and working even harder, but you’ll succeed. why are you asking, mei xie? i always expected you to have undoubting faith in your group.”

it sounds like mei xie stops herself from brushing it off, from saying nothing, like she usually does whenever haneul or seohwa ask her whats wrong. “because… i don’t feel we’re a very functional group. there’s too much friction.”

“i can guarantee that no group is as close as they appear to be, at least in the ones that i’ve managed. it’s impossible to get seven, nine, thirteen people to constantly be on the same wavelength, especially just starting off.”

“what other group did you manage?”

“...glam.” there was silence. silence that threatens to whisk haneul off to sleep with the sound of the car wheels over smooth asphalt. “but obviously, i wasn’t one of their core managers.”

an almost understanding sort of silence filters between them again, and next thing haneul remembers, mei xie and manager park waking everyone up and ushering them out of the van.

everyone says their goodbyes to manager park as they enter their dorm building and trudge up all the steps. their bodies worn from a long day of working, mei xie unlocks the front door.

a gaggle of men leap out at them. jiwoo seizes yeoreum’s upper are with one hand and throws a punch with her tiny fist, “yeoreum’s finally managed to summon a bloodthirsty spirit to kill us all!”

“i haven’t finished the preparations for that yet.”

there’s a pause that acknowledges yeoreum’s statement, but that quickly morphs into ignoring the possible impending death that potentially awaits them.

“congratulations on your first goodbye stage!” the voices of their lablemates fill the desolate dormitory hallway.

the girls bow at a small angle, tired and not completely registering what was going on, until jin shakes the contents of two plastic grocery store bags.

food.

he waves them in front of tsuta and jiwoo’s hungry faces. “it’s namjoon’s birthday, and tomorrow we fly out to manila, so we figured we’d celebrate with our beautiful younger sisters.”

the other members share celebratory words, but quinn stands off to the side. not wholly in a response to exclusion, but because she knew she would have plenty of time to share sentiments with him later.



the smell of seaweed soup and the sound of searing cuts of hanwoo fill the warm air within the small dorm. twelve people crowd around a table that can’t possibly fit all of them, chattering and laughing and drinking and mingling. mei xie and jin duck and dodge around each other in the cramped kitchen as they pursue through the cupboards to find the perfect flavoring for their meal. she occupies one stove top burner, and he the other. he grills the meat, she makes the soup. and dumplings. it isn’t a mama xie meal if there are no dumplings.

some people are already drunk, a morning flight be damned. and some people―ahem, yoongi and taehyung―are more drunk than others but most people have a pleasant buzz going on.

taehyung is up and dancing, which is actually more like off rhythm swaying to music that isn’t even playing. yeoreum watches him, her eyes glowing with a tinge of curiosity.

so this is a drunk person…

“yeoreum!” he calls out, finger pointing at the space between her eyebrows. possibly at the new pimples that accumulate beneath her bangs. “go yeoreum! our creepy doll go yeoreum!” she hears him the first time, but that doesn’t stop him from continuing to say her name with increasingly ridiculous monikers. “our creepy doll go yeoreum who loves seeing bugs in nature and would probably jump at the chance to marry a d-list retro horror movie monster!”

yeoreum scoffs in her head, d-list? b-list or higher baby, she has standards after all. “what?”

“dance with me!”

she looks and him and he looks at her. and she looks at him, and he looks at her. and she― “yah kim taehyung!” mama bear roars, funny…. “leave yeoreum alone.”

the rest of the party eyes yeoreum, expecting her to stay seated at the table.

she doesn’t.

for exactly two whole seconds go yeoreum does the first dance that comes to mind with more energy than anyone’s ever seen from bighit’s beloved maknae.
 

there’s silence from everyone sans taehyung, who screams. immediately. not hollers. screams. like a girl. he screams and wraps his arms around her tiny shoulders and shakes her like a newborn baby.

“c’mon everyone! pour a drink for our dance champion, haunted doll go yeoreum!”

“no.”

jungkook’s ears perk up at the word ‘champion’. his bunny eyes are wide with pure drunken intrigue, “this was a competition?”

hoseok nudges jin’s side, “looks like he’s trying to steal your thunder as an mc!”

taehyung doesn’t stop shaking yeoreum, “oooh does man’s man jeon jungkook want to leave the beautiful haneul’s side?”

“you bet your i do.”

jin shouts from the kitchen about jungkook’s use of vulgar language in front of children.

jungkook gets up and steadies himself by placing a hand on haneul’s shoulder. she smiles at him, and god does he love her smile―wait, what? he asks his last few brain cells if it's gay to love your lady friend’s smile. his brain cells tell him to shut the up and win.

he pulls off some polished moves in typical jeon jungkook fashion. there is light clapping from the peanut gallery.

“hmm… very impressive indeed. can ghost girl go yeoreum make a strong counter attack?”

yeoreum whips and the crowd ing loses it. yeoreum smirks, yes she’s the best.

jungkook blinks. question marks fill his mind. this can’t be right. he’s the golden maknae. and yeoreum’s just…. creepy. no offense yeoreum.

some offense yeoreum.

“no, no, no,” he chuckles while trying to lull the raging cheers, “that was just me warming up!”

he bulks up, preparing to unleash something big. everyone watches, wondering how jeon jungkook could possibly usurp yeoreum.

he does… something? no one can really describe fully what, but it was something.

whatever it was, “besides a desperate grab for victory,” tsuta snickers, it makes jungkook slam his knee into one of the table corners. he comes tumblr down besides haneul.

her only response is to stare at him as he lays face down on the ground and laugh at him.

jin and mei xie set the table, placing the food on the scuffed, low, thrift store table that was ceremoniously passed down from bts to trv when the boys moved into their fancy new dormitory. the hot steam rises up and under the plates, and mei xie scolds hoseok when he tries to place the pan of seared meat directly onto the wood’s surface. heat damage, she tells him.

they all eat in near silence, not because they’ve ran out of things to say, quite the opposite. there was a lot that could be said between everyone, jiwoo thinks. among trv, among bts, from trv to bts, from bts to trv. she rolls her eyes at the sight of namjoon’s hand on quinn’s thigh, the “secret” form of skinship that they think they’re hiding from everyone. trv was supposed to make their own name, not ride on bts’s coattails. or .

but instead the silence is brought on by the intoxication warming their bodies and their raging appetites no longer constricted by diets.

plus after quinn, tsuta, and seohwa’s fifthteenth mealtime fight, mei xie implemented a strict “no conversation while eating” rule for her own sanity.

so they eat and they drink, the soft clinking of chopsticks against one another and the smacking of lips and the gulping of soju the only conversation between the fourteen of them.

jiwoo reaches into the pan for the last piece of meat. her chopsticks bump into namjoon’s. she can imagine the differences in their group meal dynamic. mei xie, being the wonderful mother she is, always left the last bits of food for the youngest ones. namjoon and jin probably eat the last bits themselves.

she gives him a look that says, “you’re not gonna give this up?” when he responds back witha  drunken gaze of determination, adrenaline spreads throughout her tiny aries body, much faster than any alcohol would.

he tries to grab the meat again, but lee jiwoo is an immovable force. kim namjoon is in her house at trv’s dinner table. their rules apply here.

and quinn. quinn just watches with those bright eyes of hers, the ones that have just about every man wrapped around her finger. there’s a twinkle of intrigue as if this was a final anime fight. she looks between namjoon and cas and as namjoon tries to grab the meat again, quinn wriggles her fingers against the flesh of his side, causing him to yelp and jerk his chopsticks out of the pan.

quinn smiles at jiwoo and jiwoo picks up on the signal and rushes to stuff the meat in .

haneul reaches across the table to high five jiwoo, the whole table drunkenly invested in the deathmatch.

namjoon looks at quinn with an almost-glare before his face softens and he places a hand atop her brown hair. all of quinn’s other boytoys, and her darling tsuta, stare at them. the tension only lasts for a moment before taehyung clears his throat.

“since the es have been brought together,” taehyung picks stray scraps of food of jimin’s plate, “we have to respect traditional practices and ask the age old question to all of the lovely ladies in the room!” namjoon and yoongi roll their eyes before taehyung even gets the question out, “so, our lovely and chic trv! which of us would each of you date!”

“if we had to choose?”

“like, if a gun was held to our head?”

tsuta and seohwa’s eyes dart to each other after both of them relay a similar answer, both not wanting to admit that they could share the same sentiment.

taehyung is unbothered by their sarcasm, “yes! someone is holding a gun to your head and threatens to kill you and all of the company staff, who are you choosing to date kang seohwa, and why?”

“i’m not answering this,” she takes another pull of her drink and flicks some of her brown hair over her shoulder, and taehyung accepts that as an answer.

“alright! mei xie noona?”

“i would let everyone die,”

“you two are no fun!”

quinn’s laughter interrupts the rest of taehyung’s whining. she plucks at her shirt, her face rosy. “don’t feel too bad taehyung, mei-unnie is infatuated with giriboy!”

“and seohwa has vaguely belligerent with that one dude,” tsuta chimes in, “jae, i think?”

mei xie and seohwa’s expressions are vastly contrary to one another. mother mei’s eyes are shut tight, her eyebrows twitching, and her lips pressing together into a tight line. she exhales sharply, neck and shoulders tense. seohwa, on the other hand, coughs into her drink and it splashes back up onto her red face.

the guys are interested in the hot, juicy goss. seriously, jiwoo thinks, if anyone ever tries to say girls are the ones obsessed with gossip they’ve obviously never interacted with men.

hoseok looks over to his mama and leans in just the slightest bit closer to her. he pokes her, an excited grin on his face. “yeah noona, how are things going with gr boy?”

“nothing’s going on,”

taehyung scoffs, “it was a hot issue when he came out and said he liked you. and when you said it back!”

“we have a―” cuts to their late night hookup fly through her mind, “―professional relationship.”

“purely professional?”

“purely―what’s that supposed to mean?”

before mei xie can end hoseok and taehyung’s lives, jin redirects everyone’s attention to seohwa’s “mystery man”. “i’m more interested in seohwa’s jae.” namjoon and yoongi nod in agreement. “so, is he a nice guy?”

seohwa gets dizzy, for once out of sheer frustration and not anxiety. her noodle arms fold across her flat chest, “you sound like a father,”

“is he a classmate of yours?” jin flips his dad switch on, “no daughter of mine is going to date until she’s―how old are you?”

“nineteen,”

“until she’s 47!”

“gee, thanks dad,”

haneul’s clear voice resounds through the joking as she nudges jungkook’s shoulder, “hey junggoo, are you alright?”

jungkook, who was living his best life, rests his head on the table. he doesn’t respond, but his brain cells grunt in affirmation.

“oh god,” jin sighs as he jumps into actual dad mode and goes to jungkook’s side. he shakes jungkook firmly, “yah jeon jungkook!”

“hm?”

“are you feeling sick?”

“nuh-uh,”

“okay, sit up for us.” jungkook whines, “come on, let everyone see your handsome yet not as handsome as mine face!”

everyone rolls their eyes at jin, and jungkook begrudgingly sits up and wobbles.

“okay jeon jungkook, wanna do us a favor?”

“no,”

“wanna go to the convenience store and get some ice cream?”

“no,”

“with haneul-ah?”

“...yes,”

haneul puts on a brimmed cap while mei xie fishes for a medical mask and a cap for jungkook to wear, to make sure they can retain some of their anonymity in the public.

jin takes a look at haneul and his eyebrows draw together, “haneul-ah’s going out like that?”

quinn’s the one to speak up, saying everything the others are hesitant to point out. “we’re nugus. the only person who’ll recognize us is the old man who runs the store.”

his eyes widen, not in surprise at her answer, but at his own tactlessness.

trv had essentially been promised the world by management, told that they couldn’t fail. and instead of success they had met nothing but roadblocks so far, even from bang sihyuk himself. their debut peaked at 45 and then dropped to the low 80s in the subsequent weeks.

before he can apologize, mei xie sends haneul and jungkook off. she knows the thing the rest of her members want is pity, especially from any bangtan members.



quinn was right. the old man running the convenience store was the only person on she encountered that recognized, though haneul also contributes it to the cover of a late seoul night. not necessarily dark, because of all the metropolitan lights, but empty. that liminal point between night and day where the clock reads am but the sky is dark. the point in time where most of the salary men had finished their company dinners and stumbled home drunk.

it's the two of them, just kang haneul and jeon jungkook, and two bags of ice cream. they walk past the empty crosswalks and the still-functioning traffic lights, past the fire hydrants and the manhole covers, past the narrow alleyways all in silence. not for any particular reason besides the mood. it's an ephemeral kind of silence, a funny kind of ephemeral silence.

it actually lasts quite a while, which is why it's funny. the silence between them, for once, isn’t dying to escape, aching to be filled by a joke or some good-natured teasing. the silence is heavy though, but that’s not necessarily bad.

she watches him from her peripheral, as she watches everyone else, in that special way of hers. she watches him roll his neck, watches his hands fidget. she watches his gaze, straightforward yet still a bit tipsy.

“so,” her voice is the first notable sound that cuts through the vacuum they encompassed, the first notable sound he’s heard in what feels like forever, “do you wanna share what’s on your mind?” his eyes turn to hers, and he grins. “if not, that’s alright, but i figured i’d ask since you’re usually not this quiet.”

“i’m fine, really.”

haneul knows this game. she knows he’s stressed out about something and she also knows that jeon jungkook is not the type to be extremely forthcoming with it. she knows that he doesn’t want to make her worry, because he never wants to make anyone worry. and so, it’s a game of saying the right thing to support him in his unspoken troubles.

“alright then,” her eyes look ahead and she holds her bag of ice cream in front of her body, “even if you are fine, i believe in you. you’ve done easy things and hard things before, so i know you’ll find a way to deal with whatever may come up. know i’m always putting good energy out into the world for you, jeon jungkook.”

his smile grows bigger, his eyes brighter. he nods as she speaks, his body acclimating closer to her personal bubble. she watches him stand just a little bit taller. a warmth gathers in her cheeks before spreading throughout the rest of her chest. she can’t help but giggle at her apparent success in making him feel better.

jungkook slings a muscular arm around her shoulder and pulls her closer to him by her neck. if his grip wasn’t so reminiscent of a fisherman and a river bass, haneul would be unable to hide the jolt that shoots through her body and leaves her hyper-aware of every point of contact between them, unable to hide the blooming euphoria and the redness in cheeks. but she can and does with a choked squawk as he squeezes a bit tighter, “thanks wythe kang kangbap!” he shouts the last part before releasing her.

she rubs her neck and her ringing ear, shaking her head. “c’mon let’s hurry back,” she says, “jiwoo’s probably losing it over how long we’re taking.”