Prologue: The Distance Between Us
Paris, July 2026
The lights were too bright… Jungkook had spent years beneath them.
He knew how to smile beneath them. How to dance beneath them. How to turn exhaustion into confidence and nerves into something that looked like certainty. He knew how to stand in front of thousands of people and make them believe he was completely unafraid.
Tonight, the lights felt different… they felt like they were burning through him.
The Stade de France was a living thing.
Thousands of voices rolled through the stadium, rising and falling around the stage until the sound became almost physical. The air trembled with it. Every surface seemed to vibrate.
Jungkook could barely hear himself breathe… He held the microphone tighter.
One more verse. Just one more.
He had done this countless times and he could do it again.
His eyes moved across the audience.
Lights.
Faces.
Phones held high.
Purple spreading through the darkness.
And then, almost instinctively, his gaze moved toward the other side of the stage.
Jimin.
There he was… Only a few meters away.
Close enough that Jungkook could see him clearly beneath the stage lights, to recognize the expression on his face: Concern… The smallest crease between his eyebrows.
The kind of expression Jimin had worn thousands of times before whenever Jungkook was tired, overwhelmed, nervous, sick, angry, or simply pretending to be fine.
Once, Jungkook had known he could cross that distance, he wouldn’t have thought twice. Once, if Jungkook looked at him like this, Jimin would already be moving.
A hand on his back… Fingers around his wrist… A quiet question whispered where nobody else could hear.
Are you okay?
And Jungkook would have known that he could answer honestly.
But that had been before and now there were rules, cameras, people watching… people who analyzed every movement, every glance, every accidental touch. There were instructions delivered behind closed doors in voices that never needed to become angry because everyone understood the consequences.
Keep your distance.
Don’t linger.
Don’t make it obvious.
Don’t give them anything to talk about.
Professional.
Always professional.
Jungkook swallowed. His chest hurt. He looked away.
The next line came out shakier than he intended. He tried to steady his breathing.
The crowd sang with him.
He heard thousands of voices carrying the words back toward the stage, but somehow the sound only made the emptiness inside his chest larger. He had thought he could handle this.
He had told himself that he could. They had survived worse.
They had survived youth, mistakes, years of secrets and schedules and airports and hotel rooms, the military, time apart… everything the world had thrown at them.
So why couldn’t he survive this?
His eyes found Jimin again. Jimin was still looking at him. Neither moved.
That was the worst part… that they both understood and neither of them could do anything about it.
Jungkook’s vision blurred. He blinked rapidly.
Not here please… Not here.
He lowered his gaze for half a second, trying to regain control.
The music continued.
The audience cheered on.
The show continued.
The world continued spinning.
But something inside him had already stopped.
His breath caught, he tried to sing and… nothing came. A tiny sound escaped instead. Jungkook looked down, his shoulders trembled and the first tear slipped down his cheek.
For one terrible second, the stadium seemed to disappear. There was only the microphone in his hand, the stage beneath his feet… and Jimin.
Jimin saw the tear and his entire body went rigid. Every instinct inside him screamed the same command.
Go.
Go to him. Forget the cameras, the staff, the rules.
Forget everything.
Just go.
But his feet stayed where they were. His hands curled into fists, his nails dug into his palms until the pain gave him something else to concentrate on.
He couldn’t. Not here.
Not with thousands of people watching, when every camera was already searching for something, when one impulsive movement could become a headline before they even left the stadium.
Jimin stared at Jungkook. He watched the person he had spent years learning to protect stand alone beneath the brightest lights in Paris and he hated himself for staying still.
Jungkook wiped his cheek quickly. It didn’t matter because another tear followed. Then another.
The audience began to react.
Some people shouted his name, others raised their phones higher. The sound became louder.
Jungkook closed his eyes. He could hear the crowd, the music, his own breathing.
But underneath everything, beneath the thousands of voices and the pounding bass and the roar of the stadium, he heard a memory.
A different night.
A different city.
Rain against pavement. A younger voice.
A younger version of himself.
Don’t leave.
Jungkook opened his eyes.
Jimin was still there.
For one brief second, neither of them cared about the stadium.
Their eyes met and Jimin knew. This wasn’t exhaustion or nerves. This wasn’t the pressure of the tour. Jungkook was asking him for something without saying a word.
Please.
The word existed only between them. Jimin’s throat tightened. He wanted to cross the stage, take Jungkook into his arms in front of everyone, and tell him that he was sorry.
That he was here. That he had never stopped being here.
Instead, he stood several meters away. The distance between them had never felt so enormous.
Jungkook turned away first.
The music carried on… The concert carried on… The cameras kept recording.
And somewhere beyond the stadium, Paris glittered beneath the summer night as if nothing in the world had gone wrong.
But Jimin knew better because he had seen the tears.
And Jungkook knew that he had seen them.
Neither of them would be able to pretend anymore… Not tonight… Not after this… Not when the cameras finally stopped rolling.
Nine years earlier.
Seoul, 2016.
It was raining the night everything began to fall apart.
