The group stared at the stream of messages for several seconds. The heater in the room had started churning away, creating an ambient hum that filled the silence in the air nicely.

“Why does he call you that?” Jeongguk asked after a long time. “‘Hyung’.”

Seokjin thought for a long time, unconsciously tugging on the earring hanging from his right earlobe. “Maybe it means something else to him?”

“If it were to mean something else in a language besides Japanese, why would he use it?” Yoongi countered. “He understands that we’re Japanese, right?”

The oldest boy in the room buried his face in his hands. “Who the hell knows?!” he cried out. Immediately, the boys closest to him jumped and shifted away, their eyes wide. It wasn’t unusual for Seokjin to yell or to swear (he did both often), but he never took it out on one particular boy. It was always all or nothing for the boy’s rage.

Mentally noting that he needed to apologize soon, Seokjin took the tense silence as a chance to think. An insane fan or not, this was not what Seokjin had signed up for when he’d taken this job. Though, to be fair, he had - and did - put up with a lot of things that he hadn’t signed up for. All he had signed up for was a nice paycheck. So, of course, meeting the other boys had been something he hadn’t signed up for.

And yet, they were now a part of his life.

The Universe has a funny way of doing that to people.

“Calm down, Jinnie,” Jimin