Secret Door

Jiminnie < 3

caught youi was just looking at it ‘-’you saved it tho

you only take like five seconds to when you really like something

that's genuinely not a thing

I've been keeping track for four months so I promise you it's a thing

which is embarrassing to admit out loud so let's please move on.

jimin

what

that's the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me

•••

….

•••

...okay well. I was just being observant. it's not a big deal. ANYWAY. front door tonight. walk in with me.

are you sure?

yes. I've been sure. you keep asking me.

I just want to make sure you're comfortable

I'm comfortable. I've been comfortable. I decided I was comfortable a long time ago and I've just been waiting for you to stop asking

wear the grey shirt okay? not because I think about what you wear or anything. it just looks really nice. on you specifically. okay I really am going now, i love u!

You stayed sitting on your bed for a moment. Then you got up, went to your closet, found the grey shirt. Held it for a second. Put it on. Stood in front of the mirror feeling a little ridiculous and entirely, helplessly, mindlessly happy.

She was already outside when you arrived and she saw you first.

You were still stepping out of the car when you heard her say your name and when you turned around she was already walking towards you, smiling and she was so pretty that your brain went completely offline for a minute.

She was wearing something dark and elegant with her hair done and her earrings catching the light and she looked like the version of herself that made rooms go quiet, if not loud, quiet. But she was also walking toward you in a way, that way she moved when it was just you, a little quicker than necessary, like she'd been waiting and was done waiting now.

She went up on her toes and hugged you.

Both arms around you, face tucking briefly against your neck, and you wrapped her up and held on and she was warm and she smelled like the perfume she always wore to these things and for a moment there was nothing else, no cameras, no lights, no event, just her.

"Hi" she said, into your collar.

"Hi" you said, into her hair.

She pulled back. Her hands went straight to your collar, smoothing it, adjusting it, checking each button with care, performing this whole small ritual with the seriousness of someone doing something important. You stood still and let her. You'd learned months ago that this was the thing her hands did when she'd missed you and couldn't just say so, understanding her completely was one of the very best achievements of your life.

"Grey shirt." she said, smiling

"As requested."

"It looks good." She smoothed the collar one final time and left her hands resting there, against your chest, just for a moment. Then she looked up. Her cheeks were already a little pink. "You look really good."

"So do you," you said. "You look—" and you meant to say something easy, something that didn't make it a whole thing, but she was right there and she was looking at you like that and what came out was: "you look so, so pretty. I keep forgetting and then I see you and I remember all over again."

She stared at you.

Then she looked very back down at your collar. Her hands finding the button that had been perfect for several minutes now.

"Thank you" she said, very quietly, to the button.

"You're welcome" you said, to the top of her hea.

She stood there for one more second. Then she took a small breath, straightened up, and took your hand, fingers sliding between yours like they already knew the way, like they'd been doing this forever, and started walking.

"Okay," she said. "Let's go. Don't say anything else nice for at least ten minutes so I can recover."

"I make no promises."

"Please," she said. "I'm asking nicely."

"I'll try my best."

"That's not reassuring." But she was squeezing your hand, and she was smiling and didn't let go.

As all the fools on parade cavort and carry on for waiting eyes—

The cameras went up the moment the doors opened.

All at once there was a total surge of light and sounds of clicking cameras, all of it pointed at her and you. You'd been to two of these before and it still caught you a little, the sheer weight of that attention. But Jimin walked into it the same way she always did, she'd already decided it had no authority over the evening, like it was simply weather, but she was the storm.

She was still holding your hand.

She leaned slightly toward you and said, close enough that you could hear her: "Giselle texted."

"When?"

"About four minutes ago. She said—" she was already fighting a smile "she said: unnie I'm watching the livestream right now and I need you to hold his hand tighter I can barely see it from this angle."

You blinked. "She's watching the livestream."

"From the practice room couch. She sent a photo." Jimin showed you the screen for a second, sure enough, there was Giselle, cross-legged on a couch, phone held up to show her own face next to a livestream of the venue entrance. She had the expression of someone watching a very important sporting event. "She said she wanted to be there in spirit."

"She's watching us live right now."

"Almost certainly."

"Should we wave?"

Jimin laughed, that surprised, helpless laugh that you loved more than most things, and tucked her face briefly against your arm. "Don't encourage her."

"She's already encouraged."

"I know, that's the problem." She looked up at you, still laughing, eyes bright. "She texted the group chat that she was doing this, by the way. So Ningning and Minjeong are also—"

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it.

NINGNING: I'M WATCHING TOO HI OPPA 👋👋👋

WINTER: why is everyone awake right now

WINTER: oh my god is that him

WINTER: unnie he looks nice

GISELLE: TOLD YOU

NINGNING: unnie he's so tall???

GISELLE: HOLD HIS HAND TIGHTER

WINTER: take care of her for us!!

Jimin showed you the screen. You read it. Then you looked up.

"Hi" you said, to wherever the livestream camera was.

Jimin made a sound that was half-laugh and half-mortified, and hid her face in your shoulder for a full three seconds while you walked. Her phone kept buzzing.

She straightened up. Ahead of you, someone was adjusting a camera. Someone else was calling a question. The whole line of press was doing what it did.

Jimin tightened her hand in yours, turned toward you, and smiled.

Inside, the event was all warm light and quiet music and elegant people being their most gracious selves, and Jimin moved through it with the ease of someone who had grown up in this particular kind of room. She listened when people talked. She asks follow-up questions.

You loved watching her do it. You can just watch her the whole evening without being bored.

But she kept finding her way back to you.

Every fifteen or twenty minutes she'd wrap up a conversation and drift over, shoulder bumping yours, and she'd steal a sip of whatever you were holding without asking eveb asking that makes you laugh instead because you found it cute, which she did every single time without fail, like this had been established as a policy and she was simply honoring it. She'd say something just for you. Sometimes she'd show you something on her phone, once it was a photo Ningning had sent of a very round dog, no context, and she waited patiently while you laughed and looked quietly satisfied about it.

One time she came back and didn't say anything at all. Just stood next to you, close enough that her arm was against yours, and watched the room for a few minutes. Like she just needed to be in the same square foot as you for a little while. Then she went back.

You looked at the space she'd left.

You were so completely gone for her. Entirely, unreservedly gone, and the feeling had stopped being frightening a while ago and become something warm you carried around instead, she always looked ethereal without even breaking a sweat and you loved her even more because of that.

Ones you would rather be beside than in front of.

She found the corner at the ninety-minute mark.

You could see her doing the survey from across the room, those quick assessing glances, and then she made up her mind and came straight to you. She took your arm with the easy certainty of someone collecting something that belonged to her, and to no avail, you also found it cute, so basically every little thing she does is cute and you fucking love it.

"Found it." she said.

"The corner."

"The corner." Leading you through the room. "I've been looking for twenty minutes."

"You've been working for twenty minutes."

"I can do two things." She pulled you into the alcove tucked behind a tall arrangement of white flowers, its own small world of quiet in the middle of everything and stepped in and turned and looked at you with this expression, this satisfied and happy expression. "See? Nice, right?"

"It's a really good corner."

"I know." She leaned back against the wall, tilted sideways, and put her head on your shoulder like it lived there, easy and immediate. You felt her settle, that gradual, slow loosening, all the held-together-ness of a public evening gently releasing, like something being set down.

"Hi" she said, softer now.

"We've said hi like four times tonight."

"I know. I like saying it." A pause. "Hi."

"Hi, Jimin."

She smiled. You felt it against your shoulder.

"My feet hurt" she said.

"Do you want to find somewhere to sit?"

"No. This is better." She thought about it. "You're better than sitting."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me at one of these."

She laughed a little, quiet and warm. Then, "What do you want to eat after?"

"Whatever you want."

"Tteokbokki."

"Then tteokbokki."

"The place with the broth."

"I know the one."

She lifted her head to look at you. Her eyes were doing that thing, soft and warm, the look that she'd been doing for months and that you still hadn't entirely gotten used to and weren't sure you wanted to. "You're not going to argue about the broth this time?"

"I'm saving it."

"For when?"

"For after I admit you're right about it."

She stared at you. "You're already admitting it?"

"Preemptively. To save time."

"That's—" she blinked— "okay that's actually very smart." She put her head back on your shoulder. "I've been right about the broth for two years."

"I know."

"Everyone kept saying the rice cakes—"

"I know."

"The broth is what makes you go BACK—"

"Jimin."

"What."

"I know. You're right. You've always been right."

A pause. She was quiet for a moment. Then, very small and very pleased: "...okay."

“Kiss me” She said right after, to which you reacted as fast as a cat and leaned in to take her lips for a soft and sweet, yet passionate kiss.

“I love this, I love us, I love you.” You said

You stood there together in your little hidden corner while the whole event went on around you and it was warm and easy and entirely good and you didn't need it to be anything more than exactly what it was.

Fools on parade frolic and fuck about to make her gaze—

There was a man nearby doing the thing.

You noticed it,the stories pitched a little too loud, the laugh meant to carry. He'd glanced over twice. Three times now.

Jimin was telling you about Minjeong.

How last week at a late practice Minjeong had fallen asleep sitting up against the mirror wall, just tipped over into sleep between one second and the next, and all four of them had looked at each other and silently, unanimously, without a single word, agreed to just let her.

"We kept going," Jimin said. "We practiced around her for twenty-three minutes."

"Twenty-three."

"Ningning was timing it." Her voice was so fond it was almost unbearable. "She had her phone out and everything. She'd show us the number every few minutes."

"Did Minjeong know when she woke up?"

"I don't think she knew for certain. But she definitely suspected." Jimin smiled at the memory. "She woke up and looked around and we all immediately pretended to be very focused on the choreography. Very professional. Very normal."

"She believed you?"

"Absolutely not. But she didn't say anything." A pause. "She made us all breakfast the next morning. That's her way."

—turn to a scribble on a page by a picture that holds her absence.

The man glanced over again. Laughed at something with great enthusiasm.

"That's one of my favorite things about them," Jimin said, quiet and warm. "We don't have to say things. We just know."

But you're daft to think she'd care.

"That's really beautiful." you said.

"Yeah." She leaned slightly more into your arm. "It is."

She reached over and took a piece of something from the small plate you'd been holding and ate it without looking and without apologizing, she did it again! And her shoulder was steady and warm against yours, and the man across the room had turned entirely back to his own conversation.

She hadn't looked over once. Not once, not for a second. She'd been here the whole time, and the rest of the room had been furniture.

She found you at the very end of the night holding both heels in one hand and looking genuinely happy and exhausted.

"Hi" she said.

"When did you—"

"Twenty-five minutes ago." She looked at her feet with no regret whatsoever. "My feet were staging a formal protest. I had to listen."

"Your feet are going to be cold."

"Already are." She looked at your jacket with the look you always knew.

You were already taking it off.

"Oh—" she started. "I wasn't—"

"You were."

"I was a little," she admitted, in a small honest voice.

You held it out and you put it on her and it swallowed her immediately shoulders too wide, sleeves past her hands, the whole thing, and she looked down at herself and then back up at you and her expression in that moment was something you wanted to keep. Something open and warm and vulnerable.

"It's warm," she said.

"Good."

A pause. "Smells like you."

"Good or—"

"Good," she said, quickly and firmly, and then looked away and then looked back. "Thank you. Really."

"Always," you said, and you meant it in every direction, for every version of always.

She found your hand. Cold fingers, warm ones. The heels swinging from her other hand, her bare feet on the carpet.

"Ready?" she said.

"Ready" you said.

She started walking and she was smiling and she didn't look back because she already knew.

Outside, the last of the photographers stirred when the doors opened.

Jimin walked out into the lights in your too-big jacket, barefoot, heels swinging, already talking.

"Thee thing people don't understand about tteokbokki is that it's a two-part experience—"

"It's one dish—"

"It's a dish with a soul and a body and people only pay attention to the body."

"That is the most dramatic thing you've ever said about food."

"I'm serious!"

"I know you're serious that's what worries me."

She shoved your arm with her shoulder, laughing, and you stumbled slightly and laughed too, and the cameras were getting everything, your jacket on her, the bare feet, the hand-holding, the laughing, and she didn't think about it for even a second.

Someone called Karina from the press line. She turned her head with a warm smile.

"Good night," she said, like she genuinely meant it. Like she hoped they had a good one.

Then she turned right back to you. "The soul of a dish," she said. "That's what the broth is. I stand by that."

"Noted."

"You said I was right earlier."

"I said it preemptively."

"A deal's a deal."

"Fine," you said. "The broth is the soul of the dish."

She pointed at you with her free hand. "Thank you." Very serious. Very satisfied.

The car was right there. She climbed in, you followed, door shut, and the whole outside world went soft and muffled and quiet, just the city moving past the windows and the two of you in the warm dark.

She curled into your side immediately. Your jacket. Your shoulder. Her cold hand finding yours.

"Hi." she said, small.

"Hi."

The city passed. Neither of you said anything for a little while.

"I want you to know something," she said, after a while.

"Yeah?"

"I've been wanting to say it all night." She paused, finding the words. "When I'm with you I feel really, normal. Like, good normal. Like I can just be a person and not have to think about anything else." She paused again. "I don't always get to feel that way. And I just wanted you to know that it's because of you. It’s always because of you and I love that it’s you."

Your chest did something it had no name for yet.

"You make me feel that way too," you said. "Like the best version of normal."

She pressed her face into your shoulder. You felt her exhale, long and slow, like something she'd been holding since the evening started.

"Okay," she said softly. "Good. Okay."

Her hand in yours. Her face against your shoulder. The city going by.

You pressed your lips to the top of her head, very gently, and she went still in the way she did when she was absorbing something happy, and then she tucked herself even closer.

The tteokbokki place was still open.

She made a small, private noise of happiness when she saw the lights.

Inside it was warm and bright and mostly empty at this hour, and she ordered for both of you before the menus arrived because she'd already decided in the car, and when the food came she pushed the best pieces toward your side without noticing.

Her cheeks went pink from the spice almost immediately.

She talked. The real week, the one behind the other one. A new song they were learning that was harder than it looked. A face mask Giselle had recommended that had been, her words, genuinely upsetting. A documentary she'd watched at two in the morning about deep sea creatures that she hadn't been able to stop until she'd watched three more.

"Deep sea creatures." you said.

"They're fascinating," she said, a little defensive. "Some of them make their own light."

"That's true."

"Did you know there are fish that have never seen sunlight? Their entire lives in the dark and they're fine. They just adapted. They made it work."

You looked at her. She was eating tteokbokki at midnight with her hair coming loose and your jacket still on and she was telling you about deep sea fish with complete sincerity and genuine wonder.

"I think that's beautiful," you said.

She looked up.

"That you find things beautiful like that. Random things. Fish you saw at two in the morning." You shook your head a little. "I really like that about you."

She was quiet for a second. The pink in her cheeks had deepened and it wasn't from the spice anymore.

"Stop being nice," she said. "I can't eat when you do that."

"Why not?"

"Because my stomach does a thing."

"What kind of thing."

"Ah— it doesn't matter. Eat your tteokbokki."

You ate your tteokbokki. The first bite was, immediately and obviously, extraordinary. The broth was rich and deep and warm.

You put your chopsticks down.

"The broth," you said.

She looked up instantly.

"You were right," you said. "Completely, entirely right. The broth is the soul of the dish."

The smile that broke over her face was so bright and so delighted and so purely, openly happy that you had to smile back just as a reflex, couldn't have stopped it if you'd tried.

"I KNOW RIGHT" she said.

"Okay"

"I have been saying this"

"You have"

"For TWO YEARS!"

"I believe you"

"The SOUL!"

She was laughing, and you were laughing, and under the table her foot found yours and stayed there, warm and still and easy, and she didn't mention it and you didn't mention it and neither of you moved.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it and immediately turned it to show you.

It was Giselle. A screenshot of a fan account post, a compilation of moments from the livestream. The two of you walking in, mid-laugh. You leaning down to hear something she said. Her face right after, turned back to the camera, caught in the middle of a real smile.

The caption on the post said: she looks so happy. whoever he is, thank you for making her look like that.

And the comments underneath, hundreds of them, all variations of the same thing:

they're so cute I can't breathe

the way he leaned in to hear her 🥺🥺

he looks at her like she's the best thing in the room

I don't know him but I already like him for her

look at her laughing. when was the last time we saw her laugh like that at an event

Giselle had added below the screenshot: see unnie. the people have spoken. also hi [Y/N] if you're seeing this. we approve. I personally approve. this is official. BUT don't make her cry okay?!

You looked up from the phone. Jimin was watching your face.

"Giselle" you said.

"Giselle" she agreed, soft.

"She's a good friend."

"The best." Her voice was warm with it. "She really, really is."

She took her phone back and typed something, you couldn't see what, and set it face-down on the table. Then she looked at you across the small warm table with the late-night restaurant empty around you and the tteokbokki between you and her cheeks still pink and your jacket still on her shoulders.

"I'm glad I texted you the front door thing" she said quietly.

"I'm glad you did too."

"I almost didn't. I kept writing it and deleting it."

"How many times?"

"...six."

"Jimin."

"I was nervous," she said, simply and honestly, the way she said the true things. "I wanted it to mean what I meant it to mean and I didn't know if you'd, I didn't know how you'd take it."

"I took it very well," you said. "I put on the grey shirt."

She laughed, and covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head. "You're — you're so—"

"What?"

"Good," she said. "You're really good." She said it quietly, like she was just realizing it, like it was a fact she kept encountering and never quite getting used to.

Under the table, her foot pressed a little warmer against yours.

"So are you," you said. "You're really, really good, Jimin."

She looked at you for a long moment. Her eyes were bright and warm and a little full.

Then she picked up her chopsticks with great purpose and pointed at the bowl.

"Eat," she said. "Before it gets cold."

"Yes," you said. "Okay."

You both ate. The restaurant was warm. The hour was late. Outside the city hummed its steady nighttime hum,

Her foot stayed against yours the whole time, warm and small and certain, and neither of you bothered to mention it at all, because some things doesn't need to be said to be entirely, completely, understand.