Four months had passed like four days.
Amelia walked shoulder to shoulder with Grey to the concert venue. The city streets were already buzzing with eager fans, security lining the streets and guiding cars towards designated parking lots. Banners, posters, photos of this band were literally everywhere, and every time Grey glanced at one she felt like she was being slapped in the face with deja-vu.
"Why are you looking at the posters like that?" Amelia quirked an eyebrow, laughing.
Grey scratched the back of her head, suddenly feeling a pressure in her chest. Even for her this was a bit too weird. "Have we seen them in concert before?"
"It's the first time for both of us unless you've been a secret fan this whole time," Amelia said, nudging her.
Grey shook her head, deciding to keep her focus forward so she could steer clear of that off-putting nostalgia. She playfully pushed Amelia. "I've been a fan of BLT since their pre-debut days."
Amelia glared. "Stop calling them a sandwich!"
"Fine," Grey said, throwing her arms up in surrender. "I'll call them by their ingredients. Bacon, lettuce, and tomato."
Amelia smacked her in the arm with a poster as they both laughed.
"You know, I do really like their music," added Grey.
"But you freak out when you watch their music videos," said Amelia, crossing her arms. "Why?"
"It just makes me feel weird." Grey shrugged. They entered through automatic glass doors. Amelia ogled the merchandise stands, jogging over to a section of multicolored plush toys.
She squealed. "They have BT21 pillows!"
Grey looked at the dog in a yellow hoodie. Then she glanced at the one with a heart-shaped head. For some reason she thought about boxes of cereal too. She asked Amelia, "Are these collectible? Like in breakfast cereal?"
Amelia shook her head. "I haven't heard them to be."
"Oh," Grey said. The next part she blurted. "You should get the Koya chopsticks."
"Do they make Koya chopsticks?" Amelia raised an eyebrow, lifting up a black sweatshirt and checking the size. "How do you know so much about this?"
"I don't know." She just did. "We should hurry up and get to the meet and greet. We don't want to be in the back of the line."
Amelia nodded vigorously, folding the sweater she picked up. She played with her black hair, fishing a tube of lip gloss from her purse. She applied a coat until her lips shimmered pink and then she checked her reflection on her phone. "Do you think this is RM worthy?"
"He'll be floored," Grey said, smiling. Her best friend had always been beautiful. He would be an idiot not to see it. But Grey wasn't sure what idols did when they found someone attractive. Either way, she hoped he would give her some special acknowledgment for the effort. Amelia took her hand, leading her around the stage and up a staircase. More girls and a few guys joined them, all of them walking in the same direction.
"Hey," said Amelia. Grey tore her attention from a nearby poster to look at her. "You said you had a new story idea?"
"Yeah." Blood rushed to Grey's cheeks. "Want to hear about it?"
Amelia draped an arm over her shoulders. "Let's hear what that beautiful head came up with."
Grey bit her cheek, nervous. She took a deep breath, opening a bit of her heart to Amelia. "This idea is really special to me. It's one hundred percent original, and I think it came to me in dreams."
"Ooh, how mystical," said Amelia.
"There's this girl," said Grey, looking up to the ceiling, "and she's brought on this quest to find a weapon of some sort. Along the way she meets seven heroes that guide her. She'll have a mentor too, and for the sake of girl power, a really strong queen they're all following."
Amelia brought them to a line of fans. This must have been their final stop. "Woah, so you're going high fantasy?"
Grey nodded. "It's gonna be epic."
Somewhere inside the next room a mob of girls squealed. Amelia pat Grey on the back. "Don't be afraid. BTS just does that to people."
"Ooookay," said Grey, trying to think of her idea. "There's supposed to be a lot of romance. I want my readers to feel it in the heart. Just a bunch of freaking awesome ships that you can't forget."
Amelia said, "Which you can do because you write very well."
Grey blushed. "I still need time to improve."
"Practice makes perfect!" Amelia shamelessly stood on her tiptoes to peer into the next room. She must not have seen anything though, because she turned back to Grey. "So why does she need a mentor if she has seven heroes?"
"Everyone needs a guardian. But I want this one to be different. Not human, but like a little helper."
"You saw all this in a dream?"
"It just came to me," said Grey. "I got on my laptop one day and just started writing. When you're able to write freely without second-guessing and you get that spark, then you know you're writing your story."
"You're the writer here. I trust your judgment." Amelia clapped her cheeks as the line moved forward. She was growing redder by the second. "We're almost inside! Oh god. Do I look okay?"
Grey laughed. "I told you, you look stunning."
Amelia frowned suddenly. "You don't think your seven heroes could be BTS? I mean there are seven of them. They'd fit perfectly."
"I've never considered fan fiction writing," Grey admitted.
"Oh!" Amelia nearly crumpled her poster in excitement. "Make them dark. Girls love bad boys. And if all seven of them were lowkey evil? I'm," Amelia paused, fanning herself, "I'm already dead."
Grey had never thought about it that way. They were always angels in her head. But, she supposed she could try.
A security guard at the door motioned for five more fans to enter. Grey and Amelia were the first two. Amelia secretly gripped her best friend's hand and dug her nails in from excitement. Grey didn't feel the pain when she walked in. The room had their cardboard cut-outs on the side walls, some music video playing on a wall behind a long table where all of the boys sat. Fans moved in a smooth line ahead of them, blushing or laughing as each boy interacted with them.
Amelia unfolded her poster, placing it on the edge of the table and moving down.
The boy with the high cheekbones and happy smile greeted her kindly. He used his permanent marker to etch his signature over his photo. Amelia looked breathless when he finished, unable to even believe Jung Hoseok sat in front of her. It was Grey's turn next.
She'd borrowed one of Amelia's extra posters, and her hands were trembling as she opened it. The idol chuckled politely. The boy next to him was a honey-tinged voice gently tapped his shoulder and looked at Grey to say, "He is our sunshine."
Grey said, "Duckling?"
"Oh!" Hoseok smiled at Taehyung. "Duckling is a new one! That's cute!" He quacked just to make a point.
The pair laughed, Grey feeling like an absolute creep for blurting that out. Of all things, she referred to him as a baby duck. Nevertheless, he handled it well. She slid her poster over to Taehyung, who gave her a boxy smile. His dark hair and blue contacts made him appear as some mysterious prince. He signed her poster and thanked her for coming.
She tried to proceed, but stopped. Amelia held up the line, blushing furiously at Namjoon. Her best friend moved away from him slowly, the two not even able to cease staring. The angelic one that nearly closed his eyes when he laughed nudged RM in the side. Jimin whispered something in RM's ear, the rapper trying to hide a smile as he finally looked away and at Grey's poster.
Grey couldn't stop smiling like an idiot, proud of her best friend.
After Namjoon was Seokjin, the resident prince. Also the member that made Grey feel the most... different. She came to his part of the table, unsure what to do when he stared her dead in the face.
He asked, "Do you think I'm handsome?"
"Very," said Grey. She laughed as he nodded triumphantly.
"You are very pretty too," he said.
It was the last thing she expected him to say. She became so red she thought she was glowing. In fact, if she could glow, she would have glowed right then and there.
"Thank you," she said.
She sidled over to Min Yoongi, who smiled just enough to still look cool. Grey didn't understand why, but she laughed. He signed her poster, raising an eyebrow. "What's so funny?"
She laughed harder. His cool façade cracked, his gums showing as he laughed with her. "Thanks for coming," he said.
The last member was busy playing with a pink bunny keychain after signing Amelia's poster. Grey moved her poster to him. She recognized him from the music videos. He was typically in the center of their formation. His voice was, in fact, gorgeous--that much she remembered. She just couldn't think of his name.
His black hair fell perfectly over his dark eyes as he twirled the keychain around his finger. He wore a black tee shirt with a lone breast pocket. Grey squinted her eyes at the design on it.
A compass.
He flicked the bunny keychain a tad too hard, the plush toy falling over onto Grey's side of the table. She bent down to pick it up. When she resurfaced from the floor, his eyes were wide. A tad shocked.
She decided not to think about the look, putting the toy on the table. He moved it to the side to make room for her poster. The entire time he snuck her glances, a consistent series of double-takes. He reached for his marker and it slipped from his hands, rolling towards her.
She reached to stop it as he did, and their hands touched.
Grey gasped immediately, the concert hall melting away to an ash-ridden street where bodies burned and the moon swelled with the color of blood. She saw his face stricken with dirt and grime, she felt him grab her hand as another pair of hands wrapped around her waist to take her away. And for the life of her she did not want to be taken away. She heard his words as clear as day.
"I'll wait. I'll remember. I will find you, and I will fall in love with you all over again. Until then... go to him."
She blinked out of the vision, the smell of blackened smoke and charred flesh fading away as quickly as it had come. His name had come from memory, and not from what she'd seen through the media.
"Jungkook?"
He looked down at their hands, just as frozen. "Have we met?"
She shook her head, trying to recall the image of war that she'd never seen before. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't bring it back. But she knew what she felt.
"I don't know."
He nodded, still flustered. His hand fell away because he used it to disguise what he was writing. The girls in line behind Grey tried to sneak a peek, but he wrote too fast. As he finished, he folded her poster in two and blushed as he handed it back. She took it, getting out of the way of other fans before they could get upset.
Amelia shoved her. "Excuse me? Did that just happen?"
"What?" Grey asked. She glanced over her shoulder at Jungkook to find him hurriedly looking away, his cheeks a fine shade of rose.
"He's totally checking you out!"
Grey rolled her eyes. "He's not. Can we please go to our seats?"
Amelia yelled, all of Bangtan watching her parade out ahead of Grey.
Grey, on the other hand, unfolded her poster where he signed.
Not only was there a signature, there was also a phone number.
:::
(A/N) Found reader,
Next up are the credits + activities chapter. In it are the following components: a note from me to you, acknowledgments, the TTS official playlist, an author q&a, a final thoughts section, and a POLL for bonus features!
For further explanation, the tts playlist includes all the music that inspired me over a mass of different genres. The author q&a is where you can ask literally anything about what inspired me, how I handled the creative process, how I layered the story, clarification on the ending, what I'm eating for lunch. Literally anything lmao. The final thoughts section is where you get to say whatever you want one more time! Whether that be a special note to me, you rooting for your ship (or mourning it), dragging Grey, whatever! And the bonus features? I'll let you check that out yourself...
If you end the journey here, thank you. I hope your ride was a good one, and I hope that you will come back to visit my works again! It has been SO awesome writing for you. I love you! I'm blowing Seokjin kisses through my computer.
LONG LIVE #GREYJIN
LONG LIVE #GREYKOOK
ONWARD TO THE CREDITS!!!