His eyes slammed open and he stared at the ceiling as he keened from the force of the nightmare, young body bowing up into an arch before he slumped back down. Unfamiliar smells and sounds assailed him on all sides. The linens on the bed were very, very soft, different from that in the small hut on the mountain. They were also soggy with sweat, and there was a carpet beneath his feet as he grimaced and swung his feet off to the ground to stand.

He blinked sluggishly, trying to reconcile things, and almost fell when he gave a step forward. His body was way too small, with soft flesh and little of the muscle tone he had become used to. It hurt like a when he fell forward on the second step anyway, step snarling around what looked like a little boy’s blanket, soft and fluffy. There were things around, so many things that he could not concentrate on just one thing.

The room spun around him as nausea threatened, and it felt as if something dragged him backwards by the hairs on the nape of his neck. Pain flared, bright then dark, and he passed out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The second time that his eyes slammed open he was slightly more used to the way that it felt. It didn’t prevent his body from gasping, and he flailed like a fish on a hook, banging his head into the bunk above his. It stunned him enough that he slumped back, and a sleepy mumble came from the bunk above his. When he could summon up thought past the ache in his head, he tilted his head to look at the room around him.

It was definitely sparser than the first one, and there were signs of two people living here beyond the mumble from the bunk above him. Two desks, two sets of books, two sets of eyes at the… at the…

He gulped and looked at the door and the woman standing there, eyes wild.

“Jimin?” she asked curiously. “Are you okay?”

He tried to stutter out an answer, but the first word that dropped from his lips was eomma, and his body knew that she was that, just as he knew the mumble from the top bunk had been his younger brother, and they had a happy family.

This time, when the hook at the nape of his neck snatched him again, he struggled for real, fighting to stay in that reality, tears suddenly welling on his cheeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rama dragged him through countless possibilities. Tall, short, fat, thin, with family, without, a myriad of faces and shapes and beings until he felt so tired he could barely summon up the energy to feel anything. In fact, it felt exactly like being an unwilling participant being dragged through the butthole of Time and Space. Sometimes there were things in the dark that he didn’t want to see. He was a cyborg in one reality, some kind of delicate plant creature in another. In one highly memorable one, he had tiny little arms, atrophied like a T-Rex.

Sometimes there were faces of great beauty around him, three men and a woman, and he was more afraid of the woman than all three of the men put together, she had that kind of an aura about her. Gods whispered to him, fairies stuttered in the silences, and after a while he pinched his eyes shut to avoid seeing anything else.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He flailed awake with a shout, arms automatically going to beat the snot out of Rama – whatever patience he might have gotten on the mountain was through, over, so far gone that he wanted to assault him with an array of highly improvised weaponry. He wanted to beat him like a drum, until…

“Careful,” a soothing voice said over him, and gentle hands helped him back onto the bed. There was a man bending over him, one that almost put Rama’s beauty to shame, and with each pass of his hands a little of the pain leached away, until the truly enormous headache that threatened slowly disappeared into nothingness. “I want you to roll over slowly towards the side of the bed. Don’t pick your head up.”

Jimin tried to open his mouth to ask why, but in the next moment as the nausea actually struck he was only too happy to try. Even so, the man had to guide him around and hold his head as he vomited a black bile into the bin conveniently there. It wasn’t even recognisable as last night’s meal. He wasn’t sure what it was, and he prayed weakly that he wasn’t being used for some space monster’s incubation pod.

The hands were gentle on him as he vomited, and the smile the young man gave him equally so. There was a towel, a warm towel, and a hand that helped him turn back on the bed after rinsing his mouth. Against the nape of his neck he could feel the individual fingers press in, oddly shaped, but the way they took away the rest of the pain felt so good he wouldn’t have minded if the man had seven fingers and two thumb-tentacles. “What… what happened?” he managed to get out quietly. “Who are you? Where am I?”

“I’m Seokjin,” the man said. “Kim Seokjin, but you can call me hyung or Jin-hyung, okay? You’re going to be living with me for a while, so let’s not be too formal. As to what happened to you… well.” His smile disappeared a little. “What I think happened is that you… made a choice? Somehow? In the presence of a person of great power.” He paused to chuckle. “You’re in Seoul.”

Jimin closed his eyes and thanked his lucky stars when the darkness behind them remained empty. “I can’t remember,” he got out thickly after a while. “Stupid, hyung, I’m so stupid. I’ve never been to Seoul. I’ve never even been to this world, I think.”

Seokjin tilted his head a little. “It was a little stupid,” he finally said. “There isn’t really a name for what you went through. I’ve been healing you for the past two weeks, and tonight’s the first time you were conscious. An old tengu dropped you off here, asked me to take you in. I’ll bring you a mirror, if you promise not to move.”

Swallowing, Jimin nodded.

Moments later he fumbled open the mirror Seokjin handed him – a painting kit of some sort? – and stared in the mirror attached to it. He nearly cried when he saw his face looked only a little younger, and he didn’t have that too-short feeling to his limbs. From what he could see in the small mirror he had a good enough body – a slim torso and strong limbs and sinewy feet, with the rest thankfully hidden beneath a pair of soft grey boxers. He felt weaker, but moved a little easier.

“Do you look different?” Jin asked diffidently as he sat down on the end of the bed. “Feel different?”

“A little,” Jimin said, amazed. “I mean, my body is a little different and I look a bit younger, but I still look like me. Am I still Park Jimin? How old do you think I am?”

“You’re still Park Jimin,” Jin assured him. His laugh afterwards was gentle, but had a repetitive sound to it, a ke-ke-ke that tripped instead of flowed. “So you’ve always been a flower boy then? Almost an idol. Perhaps you look younger because this Jimin had a different life growing up. You look about eighteen or nineteen, Jimin-ah.”

The word ‘idol’ made no sense, nor did the explanation about age, so he shrugged. He shot Jin a small, shy smile instead, shoulders slumping forward. “This from a man that is five times as handsome as the sun, Jin-hyung? And can heal?”

Jin didn’t have his problems with shyness; instead, grinning widely, he reached out to card his fingers through Jimin’s hair. “I’m worldwide handsome, right?” he teased. “Do you want to sleep a little more, or do you want to take a bath perhaps? I have some clothes you can put on afterwards, but we’re going to have to go shopping soon.”

“I…” Shopping. Clothes. Money. Jimin took a deep breath and curled his fingers into the blankets. “I don’t have any money, unless I can find work? I would love a bath.”

Jin considered him thoughtfully. “You’re a proud boy, Jimin-ah, aren’t you?” he asked gently. “I have enough for both of us for the moment. You can take your time figuring out what you want to do now, but you’ll think better after that bath. Come on, let me help you up…”

“Where is the light coming from?” Jimin asked as he stood with Jin’s help. “Have you captured a star in that vase?”

“Oh boy,” Jin muttered. “I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

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1. Imagine waking up in a modern world without the concept of technology, or electricty. Thankfully for him, the language isn't too different.
2. The start of Kim Seokjin being a Whole Mom.