Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A couple higher-level things:

• The title comes from the first verse of Namjoon's RM mixtape's hidden track God Rap ("Thank god that I can live/Thank god that I can breathe/Thank god that I can spit/Thank god that I can dream"). All arc titles come from Seokjin's The Astronaut.
• Blanket disclaimer that I am not Korean, have never been to Korea, and speak absolutely no Korean. This story attempts in best-faith to be culturally sensitive, but when and where cultural norms clashed against story plot/character development, the latter has taken precedence. All the research I discuss below does not, of course, speak for or represent any lived Korean experiences. The sole purpose of this set of notes is to serve as a marker to indicate my thought processes as I developed, wrote, and published this story.
• Dates are, mostly, canon-compliant up until mid-2018. Canon compliance has been checked by cross-referencing: x x 
• Other useful sites: x x x
• Literature that I referenced as I was constructing the romance in this fic (I know I’ve used Richard Jackson elsewhere in my fics, but pls understand that his poetry is THEEEEEEE kind of romantic writing I would KILL to have so I WILL be using it everywhere!!!): x x x x x x
• Another seminal work that informed my understanding of Korean history/translation with respect to poetry is this wonderful book that started as a dissertation for a U of Chicago PhD (...you do NOT want to know how I got my hands on the dissertation first, instead of the book) but: thank you very very much for your hard work :D
• Scents of all the members:
  • Seokjin—Sea Island Cotton
  • Yoongi—Pineward Boreal
  • Hoseok—Back to Black
  • Namjoon—Fresh Jungle Rain
  • Jimin—Coastal Cliffs
  • Taehyung—Eucalyptus Spearmint
  • Jungkook—Moonlight Path
• Families of all the members:
  • Seokjin—father is pack alpha; mother is an omega; elder brother (Seokjae) is an alpha. Family is technically traditional and conservative, though they’ve modernized such that they don’t live together like a traditional pack would.
  • Yoongi—parents are an alpha-omega couple; no information on any other family members. Family lived in a traditional pack structure. He is no longer in contact with any of them.
  • Hoseok—family consists of solely betas; Hoseok had little exposure to alphas/omegas at all until he came to Seoul.
  • Namjoon—father is an alpha; mother is a beta; sister is a beta. Family is technically modern and eschews traditional practices.
  • Jimin—parents are an alpha/omega couple; no other information on any other family members. Family lived more in line with traditions, with one omega to a larger number of alphas/betas. Jimin is still in contact with them.
  • Taehyung—parents are a beta/beta couple; no other information on any other family members. They’ve been trying for an omega for three generations and haven’t had any luck in wooing one into their pack.
  • Jungkook—parents are an alpha/beta couple; no other information on any other family members.
• All the names for the OCs in this fic are indeed from the South Korean national badminton team! Some are current players, like Heeyong and Yungyu; the majority are retired, like Dongmoon (who is now the current head coach), Hyeock, Jaejin, Jaeyoun, Kyungeun, Kyungjin, Soyeong (who just had her retirement ceremony!), Sarang, and Yongsung.
• A series of tags that I would've added if the tag list wasn't getting way too crowded:
  • #Min Yoongi Is The God Of Variety Shows? No. He Is The God Of Vice And Virtue.
  • #A Study of Dichotomy: Kim Seokjin's Guide To Bullying Your Pack Affectionately
  • #What If I Was Kim Namjoon And Backed Into A Corner And Couldn't Believe You And Couldn't Believe My Own Instincts And Was Also In The Middle Of A Nervous Breakdown. What Would You Do.
  • #How To Short-Circuit Kim Namjoon's Nervous Breakdown With A Song: Therapy Pioneered By Jungkook's Miraculously Online Phone
  • #Losing Your Virginity To The Biggest Dumbass This Side Of The Mariana Trench (He Keeps Getting Distracted By Hot Young Betas Near You)
  • #Meditations On The Gift-Giving Kink Every Single BTS Member Has For Kim Namjoon
  • #How To Keep Your Team Keeping Going When They're All Hashtag Suffering: A Lesson By Jung Hoseok
  • #Reasons Why Jeon Jungkook Is Called The Golden Maknae And 110% Deserves That Title
  • #Being A Proud Pack Alpha To Six Brats Is No Joke
  • #Getting Your Rocks Off By Promoting Coups For Your Lovers

ARC 1:

• “I’ll tell Jimin and Jungkook to work on the Run choreo in the meantime.” → Hoseok says this because that is the only song BTS performs at MAMA 2015. It’s also the first performance of Run outside of their own concerts!
• Anyang is where Kim Seokjin was born and raised according to Wikipedia, though there are multiple sources where he refers to himself as from Gwacheon, a city next to Anyang.
• “Yoongi had once asked Seokjin about it in front of them all while in Thailand”—This line is inspired by BTS Now 1, released in 2014, that takes place in Thailand. Though of course there’s no real conversation that mimics this one :D
• Timeline of Seokjin’s past (all ages international here, though they’re mostly Korean age in the story):
  • 2009—Presents as an omega at 17, leaves home immediately after with Choi Heeyong for Seoul. Works as a linecook in a Chinese restaurant in Gwangjin, close to Konkuk University. Heeyong gets a job smuggling omega suppressant drugs into and across Korea.
  • 2011—Heeyong gets into an altercation with the Korean government while smuggling drugs. Though she is captured by the government, she refuses to give up information and manages to escape. The organization she’s allied with offers to give her a new identity named Kim Minji and she accepts, along with a job outside of Seoul. Seokjin initially plans to join her until he’s scouted off a bus on his way to the restaurant by a Bighit agent. After discussing with Heeyong/Minji, Seokjin decides to join Bighit. A little while later, after a conversation with Namjoon, Seokjin decides to become a part of BTS. 
  • 2013—holistic suppressants for omegas are legalized by the Korean government. Seokjin starts taking omifizarole, a holistic suppressant that stops his heats and limits his instincts. Before this, he was taking another (illegal) suppressant.
  • 2015 November—A batch of omifizarole is tainted by a deliberate attack to keep omegas from having access to suppressants. Seokjin is one of them. Story begins here.
• All dates should line up with information taken from this site, as well as from this series of reddit posts. Dates regarding events post-debut are taken from this godsend of a site, which gave me a list of all the shows that BTS put on in any specific time period. Any mistakes are, of course, my own!
• "Namjoon shrugs, then wishes he hadn’t, because it feels too flippant. [...] Hoseok nods back and takes the compliment for the dismissal that Namjoon had meant it" → If you notice, phrases of Namjoon second-guessing himself/being strict and/or masculine really fall away over the course of this arc (and are barely visible in the rest of the story). That's on purpose! He's still settling into himself here, still figuring out what kind of a pack alpha he wants to be/can be at the beginning. As Seokjin starts to blossom into himself, so does Namjoon—though the growth in his confidence is largely internal and implicit.
• Room assignments taken from this site. Because this story starts in late 2015, they’re in their second dorm and Taehyung is sharing with Hoseok and Jimin. Seokjin is, as always, sharing with Yoongi.
• Nov 2015 is when BTS released HYYH Pt 2 and kicked off their HYYH tour. They spend most of December touring and promoting their album on a number of music programs; most of the timeline of this show is built around this same site linked above. Should the members be on a vacation literal weeks before the start of the comeback? Probably not! But this is fiction!! I’m going crazy!!!!
• “Things certainly settle down in January, giving them all a bit of breathing room. But Seokjin doesn’t slow down at all: apparently Bang Sihyuk hadn’t been joking about his schedule being hard. Though Namjoon hadn’t realized quite how hard until Jungkook complained about dishes in the sink for the fifth time that week, and he opened their shared calendar to see Seokjin’s schedule quite literally vomiting color straight into June. Fashion shoots, predominantly, but also an OST for a high school murder mystery that suits Seokjin’s voice, and a series of meetings with producers that very much don’t: they’re rap-focused, tight beats and sharp twists, as unsuited to Seokjin’s high smooth vocals as possible.” → the funny thing here is that when I wrote this paragraph, it took me quite a bit of time to research because I did not know what kinds of things took up idols' time. I had to do a lot of research!!! When I look back now, this kind of thing feels like it could flow out of me almost thoughtlessly lol
  • Again, “slowdown” is relative, but after putting on 8 shows in December, BTS only did 2 in Jan. I’m assuming they were starting work on Wings. This is also when Taehyung is shooting for Hwarang.
  • Seokjin’s OST is totally referencing his Hwarang duet with Taehyung XD
  • The murder mystery I’m referencing here is Revenge of Others, but that came out in 2022 (so way too late for the timeline), and this is all happening in 2016. Let’s ignore that bit <33
  • Who are these mysterious producers that are "rap-focused, tight beats and sharp twists, as unsuited to Seokjin’s high smooth vocals as possible"? No clue!
• Mixtape vs EP vs album—mixtape is free, usually using copyrighted tunes/beats from other people’s songs but with your own lyrics. EPs and albums are pretty much the same thing, unique, copyrightable-music; EPs are just shorter albums. Namjoon was the first member of BTS to release his own mixtape, in mid-2015. Seokjin never has; in this AU, he’s the second to release his own music and the first to release his own album.
• “It’s what I was doing last week at KBS.” → dates this conversation to the first week of January, because they did KBS on Dec 30.
• “I see,” says Namjoon. “So. You’re not trying to move on, then. Or go solo.” → afaik, until they went on “hiatus” they didn’t have individual sponsorships. These solo shoots are very much outside of BTS’ historical 2016 playbook!
• Research on songs (from chapter five):
  • Outside very much takes inspiration from Abyss, but with obviously different lyrics. There’s also a bridge in Outside that isn’t there in Abyss.
  • Yeah, I like Running Wild enough to keep it in this album too :D Though ofc in-verse it’s not a) in English or b) a lead single.
  • Interlude: Candle isn’t actually mimicking anything in RL! It’s its own thing!! But also the title is very deliberately chosen—it’s supposed to match Shining Lantern, because (just like Jin loves his astronomy references) this author loves her fire analogies!
  • As someone who has never read song reviews in her life, these five paragraphs were some of the most daunting I’ve ever written. I've reworked them at least a dozen times. I was stuck on it for months. I actually started studying so much BTS history just so I could write this without it sounding like crap. That said, this particular review site helped me out a lot! This guy probably never knew what his reviews could and would be used for, but such are the travails of putting things up on the internet.
    • Taehyung’s description of “second song could have more instrumentals on the chorus” is, indeed, taken wholesale from that review. Am I going to think myself capable of improving a song? NO BUT I CAN COPY OTHER’S HOMEWORK!!!!
  • Yeonpae (연패) is a contronym! It means both “losing streak” and “winning streak.” Another example of a contronym is, indeed, the English word “cleave.” Do Korean albums change titles completely because of the wordplay? None of the BTS albums have!!! But in fic everything is possible XD
• Jungkook “limits himself around Namjoon—or at least he tries, and fails miserably—” is indeed calling out that one Bon Voyage where Namjoon refuses to cuddle Taehyung despite him being the cutest twenty-something alive. 
• Namjoon crushes on Yoongi with jealousy and Hoseok with admiration. This is mostly because I went to Hope On The Stage and also started crushing on Jung Hoseok’s whole stage presence. The man deserves it!
• Seokjin not caring for tiny details and outsourcing them to Hoseok isn’t, like, a detail that I have concrete evidence to be in character but also it’s TOTALLY a hill I’m going to die on. The party that Hoseok throws is inspired by the JITB party :D 
• The details of the “weird green suit” are taken from this M Countdown Idol performance and the beginning of the Idol MV
  • Enjoy these pretty little Namjin photos while you’re at it
• The Samsung Lions are a baseball team based in Daegu that had a great time up until 2015, when they started losing and never really stopped losing. Because the conversation that Namjoon has with Yoongi in Ch 8 is set in mid-2016, I knew I absolutely had to include the reference.

ARC 2:

• Again, the information re: Seokjin’s album’s response in Ch 11 took me SOOOOO much time to research. I learned what M Countdown is for this fic. U R WELCOME.
  • Yeonpae peaking within the top hundred of the Billboard 200 is a crazy accomplishment when HYYH Pt. 2 (released in Nov 2015) peaked at 171 and Young Forever (released May 2016, roughly similar time to Yeonpae here) peaked at 107. The reason why I went so high here was because Wings (released Oct 2016) peaked at 26. The popularity of BTS across 2016 was fucking meteoric, apparently.
  • The conversation Seokjin and Hoseok have at the end of Ch 11 (“I’m not going to win” / “Not for Melon. But you’ll probably be nominated for MAMA too. And that’s fucking doable.”) is referring to the scoring guidelines for the MMA vs MAMA awards (MAMA has much less weight for album sales than MMA), and how the MAMA awards are much more favorable for Seokjin in this situation
• “Their suits are stiff and uncomfortable, but Namjoon doesn’t mind that—the discomfort is good, actually. It reminds them all of how to behave in front of an audience ready to pick apart the tiniest reaction and lambast them for it, and as a group from a small label, they have even less leeway for such mistakes. There’s a part of Namjoon that wonders if Bang PD had made that a rule for the stylists: the worst outfits seem to given to the worst offenders. Taehyung’s ruffled collar is starched stiffer than cardboard; Jimin’s waistcoat is nigh on painted to his stomach.” → taken from the actual MMA Bangtan Bomb video. All further details on their outfits, presenters, etc. are descriptions taken from either the same video or the official broadcast (x and x)
• “Yayoi Kusama exhibits scheduled for North America in 2017” → This was written before Hoseok decided to visit the Kusama exhibit in Tokyo!!! Sometimes Dialux is indeed prescient!!!!
• “I’ll get started on cutting the perilla leaves.” → Yes, it is referring to the MBTI Lab episode (particularly the last five minutes of the second).
• The whole conversation on Nanchang, Gan (or Kan) Chinese, and some background on the Chinese diaspora in Korea. 
  • Also, because these are relatively timely: two interesting twitter threads on far-right anti-Chinese protests and growing resentment in Seoul. This article (by the same author as the tweets) discusses briefly the international lens of this anti-China sentiment (including South Korea).
• Mugwort rice cake (also known as hotteok). 
• The sheer amount of research I’ve done for “The norms for what food should be cooked for this meal also shift from place to place. Different parts of Korea have different foods that are supposed to be cooked: Busan naturally has much more seafood; Daegu has its fruits; Gwangju has its bread; and Seoul, historically the richest part of the country, has its sugar.” was enough to almost derail this fic and stop me from publishing in the first place. Here we go:
  • Busan and its seafood. Also, the Busan Cooperative Fish Market (which is the largest in all of South Korea). And the Jagalchi Market (which is the more public-facing restaurant/market area).
  • Daegu is known as the “Apple City” for its high-quality apples, but there are a lot of other fruits that it produces, including Korean melons and all these other fruits that you can go picking yourself (or at least, you could in 2016?).
  • Gwangju!!!! Oh god. I spent so long on this I nearly gave up on this story entirely. Chunseol bread is definitely one inspiration here. There’s also the famous Palace Confectionary, which apparently has a Dinosaur Egg Bun that’s so vividly named I’m tempted to fly all the way to Korea just to try it. But mostly, the reason for bread as the food of choice here was because Jeolla-do (the region that Gwangju is located in) is known as the “breadbasket of Korea” for its grain crops.
  • Seoul: apparently South Korea is self-sufficient for eggs and sugar? Wild if true, lmao, and according to this USDA report, not true: they simply process the raw sugar to refined sugar (though it’s an old report, so take that with a pinch of salt). The three primary sugar refiners are CJ Corp, Samyang Corp, and TS Corp, all of whom are, unsurprisingly, headquartered in Seoul.
• “Jimin’s confusion—and his sudden dip into haerache—clears up suddenly” → haerache is taken from this site, on the levels of speech on the Korean language; haerache is the level used in textbooks, news, laws, teachings, etc. Not often used, I’m presuming, in day-to-day interactions between friends.
• So Namjoon really did study in NZ for a while as a kid. Re: the Auckland/Wellington conversation, I do think it’s kinda funny when there’s a much bigger city that isn’t the capital in an area. Like Australia (does anyone actually know Canberra except for nerds like me? Esp when Sydney’s right there…)
• “‘Well,’ says Hoseok, dragging the syllable out. ‘Yes. We’re flying out on the twenty-ninth, aren’t we?' [...] 'So he doesn’t know that we’re flying to Auckland in four days?’ Hoseok asks archly.” → dates this conversation to Oct 25, 2017. Technically, they have the last non-Korean leg of their Wings Tour left (in Macau) on Nov 4, but in this universe this particular concert doesn’t take place. 
• “Then, when his knees start protesting too loud for him to ignore, Namjoon sits down on a bench in a park beside the Han River and lets his feet rest in a low-lipped wading pool, and he breathes: in and out, in and out, in and out.” → idk if this is actually a thing, but from my research it shouldn’t be: this chapter is taking place in late fall, when all of the pools along the Han River are definitely closed. Even if this was summer and they were open, Namjoon probably wouldn’t have the privacy to sit in one like this all by himself. Even if he did, they probably wouldn’t be open that late. It’s okay though it’s a pretty visual <333 All things are possible in the imagination <333333
• “Free me from freedom, he’d written, not that long ago, and he’d meant: Free me from myself.” → this line is adapted from Reflection, Namjoon’s solo song from the Wings album. It’s a song that refers to him going on walks along the Han River (rather appropriate for this situation!), and the original line is “I want to be free/I want to be free from freedom.” 
•  “It sucks, doesn’t it? You poor little fool who hates the idea of love and are shit-scared of permanence: what is the only thing worse in this whole goddamn universe than having a pack around you, tying you down, weighting you, forcing you under the waves?” → LOTS of inspiration here taken from Greg Brown’s “Love is a Chain,” which has beautiful lines like “An' I said to myself I would leave/Said I gonna travel an' just do as I please/An' I stood with my back to you, darlin'/An' we both ended up on our knees” as well as “Many times I have gone to the depot/Jus' to listen to the departure times/I was thinkin' of all the places I would love to go/An' gonna leave everything behin’/Ah, but I know I could go to the moon/To the cold side where everything is dark/But I'd still see your face before me/An' I would still say your name in my heart” 
  • Something something asking and begging something something getting everything you ever wanted something something being terrified of it
  • ALSO the Halsey Great Impersonator album. GOD. I WOULD trade my 401k for an RM/Halsey collab. (I think my husband would stop me but it depends on how fast I can get to my laptop lmaoooo)

ARC 3:

• “Namjoon hasn’t actually touched his own passport since handing it over to Hoseok before they left their house.” → Because of the BV S1 trip, where he lost his passport. ALSO because of this most recent vlog where he drops something in a museum and then never mentions it again LITERALLY LMAO
• “Jimin’s phone is perpetually at twelve percent charge, except for the times it dips down to four. He doesn’t bother keeping it plugged in for longer than five minutes at a time.” → This line was written before Taehyung showed us how bad he is in actual rl at keeping his phone charged. By then, it was too late to switch the two of them out in the fic. AND SO: my dearest apologies to Park Jimin for the unwarranted character assassination. (Unless he does it too……. At which point I should pat myself on the back for being clairvoyant????)
  • EDIT: Well, post the shirtless fashion show live where he let his phone die instead of turning it off….. TURNS OUT I WAS RIGHT. I WAS RIGHT!!!!!!
  • EDIT AGAIN: Post his birthday live where he talks about having a phone charger........ I apologize??? For thinking this was a character trait?????
• “Taehyung’s taste in car music is notoriously unique.” → Yeah, this is wholly and fully made up lol
• "He claps his hands when none of them move. 'Jungkook-ah, come to the kitchen with me. Make me some food.'" → This is because of the ITS episode where Taehyung asks Jungkook to make him some food. I COULD NOT in good conscience leave it out when I found it absolutely WAY Too Adorable.
• “loose, white shirt made of shimmery silk panels” → I wrote this whole visual WELL before the 2025 Gucci look, but I do love being proven that white silk never fails to look good
• “His arms are wrapped in ropes that glitter in the candlelight.” → Think body chains similar to this, but a) over the clothes, b) full-sleeved, c) with more diamonds, d) in white-gold. NOT LIKE HE’S IN CHAINS LIKE A SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM PRISONER.
• “same mint undertones as Taehyung but blunted with a woody note that never fails to make Namjoon feel like he’s hiking Bukhansan.” → I didn’t know this when I wrote it (I just googled long nature trails near Seoul and picked out the most euphonious name for the sentence), but!! APPARENTLY!!! Namjoon’s hiked this place twice??? And put it up both times on IG??? Anyways. Always good to know when things happen serendipitously. 
• So Namjin really did go on cafe dates. According to Jin: “When I decided to join BTS, you [RM] called me out to a cafe near the company. You asked me whether I’m determined to join BTS, what kind of dream do you want to achieve in the group. I thought that I was serious/earnest about becoming and joining the group but Rap Monster’s determination was way above that. I was touched thinking that ‘ah, this guy is serious,’ and I thought that I had to get a grip on myself. He was young but he paid for the coffee, he said: ‘I called you out so I will pay for you.’” I wanted to bold some parts of this quote, but it’s so fucking cute I couldn’t bear to edit any part of it. Basically, everything re: the money independence conversation is obviously my own addition, but they went on cafe dates pre-debut :////// and Namjoon paid for them ://///////////
• “Finish up my high school, take the suneung, go to college” → the suneung is the entrance test for college in South Korea.
• “New Zealand is one of three countries that allow omegas to own land. It’s also the only one of the three to not have digitized the records” → Literally NONE of this is true. Obviously there are no omegas in RL, but NZ actually does have digitized details and a publicly accessible house ownership record. If you are looking for confidentiality wrt property records, you’re better off in Germany, Belgium, or Spain. So. If you are a kpop star reading this fic, a) please do not EVER let me know, and b) please do not use this fic as legal advice re: where to buy a house you don’t want on a public record somewhere. I am not a property rights attorney. I am not an international tax law attorney. My expertise is VVVVVVVV different.
• “I called Hyundai and asked them for all the personal records they had on their end for hyung’s car.” → OKAY. So I know this is something that can work in California, with the passing of the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). I also know that South Korea’s PIPA is fairly strong and detailed, and offers citizens similar rights to access and erase their data. Presumably this can be hijacked by bad actors (or good actors, or an intrepid Min Yoongi), if they have enough details about your life. If the part you’re questioning is whether your car actually tracks all this data, I am so very sorry to be the bearer of bad news…
  • NOW THERE IS A PROBLEM HERE THO. And that is that PIPA was amended in 2020 to make it as strong as it is today. This all happens in the story in 2017, when there was no right to erasure/access of personal data. But WE ARE IGNORING THIS AND MOVING ON.
• “color of stormclouds above Achasan” → yes, that is the mountain Namjoon and Taehyung climbed for their Run BTS punishment. 
• The hanbok described here is modeled after Hoseok’s hanbok in the 2018 Melon Idol performance, which is in the traditional 18th century style. 
  • But obviously not the exact same either lmao. The belt isn’t embroidered in RL, and it has some adornments (a little flute???) attached that I don’t really fuck with tbqh
• The necklace that Taehyung has crafted:
  • Similar to this image, but with three layers instead of two, and the three layers are connected by a triangle instead of one line. So: not similar at all!! But this is the only connected layered necklace I was able to find, so that’s the reason for the reference.
    • You can see a sketch of it here
  • The one-seventh area triangle proof. Imagine the purple-shaded area to have diamonds instead.
  • The “diamond dust” that Namjoon references is similar to this, but obviously in a different shape.
  • No, there is not and has not (to the best of my knowledge) been an art exhibit built around the one-seventh area triangle proof. But if it was, and if it took place in Seoul, I would not be surprised to see RM and V of BTS attend it lmao.
• So here’s a piece of contradictory information I haven’t been able to reconcile:
  • Exhibit A: The first useful link on Google when searching “when was bon voyage season 2 filmed” leads to this tweet, with a user claiming it was filmed between April 20-28, 2017. Exhibit B: this site, which claims BTS wrapped up its US leg on April 2, and then went on to have two shows in Thailand and Indonesia between April 23-29, 2017. Wikipedia supports Exhibit B’s read, and following a couple links led me to this archived site, which lines up with the Exhibit B explanation.
  • Point is that they probs filmed BV S2 sometime between April 3-20, not 20-28, and you shouldn’t believe everything you read on Twitter.
• Ykw, idk what skin type Namjoon has and all but I will say that if you’re like me and sensitive, having fantastic sex is great and all but dealing with the scratches down your back is Not It. It actually does take months to stop stinging. I basically stopped washing my back for six weeks. It was vvvv gross. I broke up w that guy because he refused to cut his nails. It was one of the deepest heartbreaks of my life </3
• “Namjoon was scheduled to do a live that night; he didn’t. Nobody did.” → That’s factually right! They finished their US leg of the tour on April 2, but according to this, Taehyung did a live on March 25, and then Jungkook did another on April 22, so nothing actually happened on April 2. This does not mean that Taehyung seduced Namjoon in a car. However. If he had!!! It would explain why Namjoon was so out of it the first couple eps of BV S2. I too would be vvv much out of it if Kim Taehyung made it a point to seduce me.
• “How many KOMCA credits do you have?” → Apparently it’s 231 songs (including Stop the Rain) in 2025, making Namjoon the youngest most-credited Korean artist ever (...a sentence that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me tbh??? There's another artist (Ravi, from VIXX) w 239 credits, so it's not like Namjoon's the most-credited right now, but that’s what the wiki page says………). Anyways, what’s important is that he’s written a lot.
• "I know it’s me that’s the problem, here. There’s something wrong with me, maybe, but
• it’s who I am. And I can’t ask you to feel something that you don’t." → most of this story arc is vvv different from where the story was going initially (there was a lot more action ideated for this little bit, up to and including a re-entrance of the omega from Hong Kong); I changed a lot of it after listening to Namjoon's first solo live post-military. I think this tweet is a pretty good summary of my reaction to that live.
• Seokjin’s love song to Namjoon is basically Another Level with different lyrics, more verses, and a bridge. Yes, that is my favorite song from Happy, and yes, it is my favorite solo BTS song.
  • Description of Another Level taken from x x x x
    • Again, I know nothing about songs apart from how they make me feel. I think there’s a violin somewhere?? But apparently it’s a piano??? What the hell is the difference between a bass guitar and an electric guitar??? What does acoustic mean?????? I don’t know, and I don’t have any desire to learn. I am not music production material!! So take everything here w a sprinkle of salt. If you are a music critic/anyone w any amount of expertise in the music industry/the author of one of the articles above, MY DEEPEST APOLOGIES. You probably never meant for one of your works to be used in this manner, but it has been and I am NOT undoing it <3333
  • I legit nearly broke my skull trying to figure out a metaphor that a) BTS hadn’t used already and b) would work for this situation. LEGIT NEAR BROKE MY SKULL FRRRRR. 
  • Overall, the structure of this is similar to The Astronaut and the way it transitions from a drifting, directionless asteroid → a star that doesn’t shatter → a milky way shining upon dark roads → ray of light I found in the darkness. This song goes hawk dancing/falling through the air/love → swan waiting for their mate to return patiently → phoenix promising an eternity of prosperity to come, with the nightingale tossed in for the chorus.
  • The first verse:
    • From the perspective of a hawk (presumably, one from this list)
    • Mating displays really can be super dramatic between hawks! The so-called sky dance usually includes one (or both) members of the courtship ritual free-falling through the air
    • Of course, the more common situation in which hawks are falling through the air is to catch prey
    • Seokjin capitalizes on that assumption in his verse. He talks about the focus and the speed of a hawk hunting, placing himself as the hawk and Namjoon as the prey—before turning it on its head when he says there is no prey, just a courtship
  • The second verse:
    • From the perspective of a swan (presumably, one from this list)
    • Swans are known for monogamy, strength, and beauty. (There’s a pair of mated swans near a lake near my house, and I can personally attest to all three values: I’ve never seen one without the other, when they take off/land I am genuinely reminded of airplanes needing enough runway to safely make it, and they are some of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen in my life.)
  • The chorus:
    • I don’t say your name/but you are written inside of me/like music in the throat of the nightingale/even when it is not singing → this is an adaptation of the English translation of Cuban writer Dulce Maria Loynaz’s poem LVII (and from the same link, I’d suggest checking out LXVI, which is somehow even more heartbreakingly beautiful re: names.)
      • BUT!! This is the poem that stood out to me when I was thinking of poetry about birds, and this is indeed what the rest of the song is structured around 
    • The nightingale, of course, is known for its lovely song
    • Also, this story, which made me have nightmares when I read it as a kid
  • The bridge:
    • From the perspective of a phoenix (which, in Korea, are called bonghwang)
    • They indicate prosperity and light in the Korean mythos, but I’m combining some Western traditions of burning and immortality in my lyric
    • Also, the bonghwang apparently was strongly associated as a symbol with queens and empresses. Guess who loves being called a princess and recently had a battle for the crown with Namjoon?
    • The “chillingly perfect” falsetto is a riff on the Jin lines at the beginning of Come Back Home, the Seo Taiji song that BTS covered in 2017. Yeah, my arm-hair DID prickle to the point of pain the first time I heard it!!!!
  • Outro: 
    • The description of the outro is inspired by the last chorus and outro for Nothing Without Your Love
    • Seokjin sings “[I’m] nothing without your love” six times at the end, each time varying the line a bit + with a bit more power. I amended “I don’t say your name/but you are written inside of me” to have the same number of syllables (six) and ended up with “[Your] name’s written inside me,” so hopefully it echoes a similar weight/appropriate rhythm. If this is not how music is supposed to work, that isn’t my problem xxxx
• "I think Yoongi-hyung packed some bath bombs in his suitcase. The ones he gets custom-scented." → Yoongi's love for weirdly scented bath bombs
• Namjoon’s suppressant conversation basically refers to two different modes of action for two different drugs with relatively similar effects. One limits [ABC] symptoms; another limits [ABCDEFGH] symptoms. Think of how ibuprofen is a COX inhibitor (essentially increasing the amount of molecules in the body that combat inflammation, fever, and pain) and morphine literally works on the CNS (by binding to a specific receptor only found in the central nervous system), but both are, still, technically analgesics. There’s a reason why morphine is a) so much more addictive and b) why it’s so much more controlled than your common advil pill. Namjoon’s alpherodon is, in this particularly labored analogy, the morphine. 
• The conversation that Namjoon has with Hoseok re: Gwangju was spurred on by this wonderful book, which ignited my interest in Korean poetry like you would not believe (I was also doing research for the modern magic AU, which is how I got on this topic in the first place. This is also the reason (part of the reason) why that fic update has been so delayed: I had to learn a lot more abt Korean poetry before I could WRITE MY OWN. JESUS FUCK). This in turn connected me with the poet Koh Jung-Hee, who wrote a lot of poetry inspired by and regarding the Gwangju Uprising. 
  
  • I swear I’ve read something about a politician (??) considering the people of Jeolla-do (the region where Gwangju is) “like reeds” for their cowardice/lack of patriotism in the Uprising, though I cannot for the life of me actually find a source for this. The reason why this matters is that Koh Jung-Hee’s poetry (specifically “For the Bruised Souls,” for which you can see two different translations here (I like the second one better, though I think looking at both and the differences between both helps to understand the original poem better)) takes this comparison and turns it on its head by describing the reeds in a positive light (“Under the sky even the damaged reeds/Get shaken long enough to fill out an entire season/And if their roots are deep/New shoots will grow where they were cut down” where the reeds, quite obviously, are a metaphor for rebels) 
    • Ik the guy that did the second translation calls it a description of feminism, and it very well could be! But this is the interpretation I'm going with ;)
  • ANYWAYS. Yoongi and Taehyung come from one of the most conservative parts of the country. In this particular story, that matches to a pack encompassing an entire village and more traditional values. Hoseok comes from Gwangju, the liberal stronghold in Korea; that corresponds, in this story, to a world of primarily betas and fewer alphas/omegas. 
    • You might be wondering: what, then, of omega liberation? In a world where the political spectrum runs from alphas/omegas to betas… what happens to omegas that want something different than what they have? Where can they go for that? And the answer, as you might have guessed, is nowhere! That’s why this world fucking SUCKS!!!!!
  • “You think we’ve survived for this long, the betas of Gwangju, without some tricks on handling rampaging alphas? I know what I can do, Namjoon-ah. Go wild. Trust me. I can handle it.” → Yeah, all this research for this one sentence. Lol. Lmao, even.
• "Namjoon hadn’t seen Jungkook’s cock until he was in a shower stall in Bangkok and jerking him off" → Jungkook and Namjoon slept together here after their Thailand Wings concerts (Apr 22-23). Why does this matter? Because Taehyung had his whole seduction episode just three weeks before that. Poor (or lucky??) Namjoon :D
• "Seokjin had been twenty. Twenty-one? Whatever. Namjoon had barely hit eighteen, and he’d been so fucking stupid at that age. What the hell had Seokjin fallen in love with? His mullet? The awkwardly enormous gold chains he nicked out of a sale bin at an ahjumma store?" → Many notes of intense importance here. 
  • They meet mid-2011, because that's when (in this infamous live) Jin says he'd "known Namjoon for a day or two more [than Jungkook]." Mid-2011, Seokjin is, in Korean age, 20; international age, 18 (he'll turn 19 later that year). 
  • Idk which of these pictures counts as a mullet (if none of them do, let's just say that Namjoon has (very understandable) memory loss issues from his pre-debut days), but enjoy! 
    • Am I using this as an excuse to show you these pics? MAYBE SO!!! MAYBE SO!!!
  • The awkwardly enormous gold chains
    • Most of these are from debut era, afaik, so not ENTIRELY accurate lmao re: what Seokjin would've seen in pre-debut Namjoon. But!!! All four links are vvv much showing you four DIFFERENT awkwardly enormous gold chains that COULD VERY WELL have come out of a sale bin at an ahjumma store. 
• After seeing Jin’s bare arms in-person at Newark, I cannot be convinced there wasn’t SOME laser done there. I CANNOT.
• The gourds themselves are a bit of a torturous version of a maraca, where the theory is that alphas/omegas are so sensitive in their rut/heat that this noise would shock them out of the haze they fall into. Idk. I might just hate that sound a lot. (I also might have been traumatized by a maraca hitting my head when I was like seven yrs old and am still working through that to this day :D)
  • Adzuki beans are a widely-cultivated East Asian bean used primarily for red bean paste, separate from soybeans. When dried, they are about halfway in size between green mung beans and black beans. If Hoseok's makeshift alpha-omega taser depends on adzuki beans being a specific amount for a specific gourd size to get a specific tone/decibel out of the maraca, then he's had to experiment a LOT to get the right ratio with his (makeshift) black-eyed beans and his (makeshift) gourd. It's a damn impressive accomplishment for someone doing it for the first time, working off instructions from his mom, with the consequences for failure being pretty high!
• I envision the "scent glands" in this universe to match up (somewhat roughly) to the lymphatic system. Why? I have no idea. But there are lymph nodes in the neck, behind the ear, at the base of the skull, in the armpits and elbows, in the middle of the chest, in the abdomen, around the knees, and in the groin. So Jungkook's abs-bite and Namjoon's elbow-bite and Vhope's knee-bites should, theoretically, work!
  • Jimin's bite to Jungkook being on his abs is TOTALLY because Jungkook's "love comes from his abs"
• "The words are foreign on his tongue: he’s not used to this level of formality, and the traditional words are ones Namjoon had only really brushed over a couple times on the flight to Auckland. He’s probably botching some part of the pronunciation." → taken from the same site re: levels of formality in the Korean language. This would technically be Hasoseo-che, the most deferential/formal form of speech that's really only used for addressing royalty or gods. It's very rarely used in daily conversation and that's why Namjoon had to brush over it to figure out the proper words and the proper form of the words.

ARC 4:

• "Namjoon’s the most likely to sweat off the concealer" → Because he sweats A Lot. (As someone who also sweats a lot no matter how fit I am, I will say a) hashtag hot, b) I understand your pain, Namjoon. I get you.)
  • Check him out doing Fire @ YTC Busan (esp in comparison to the other members) 
  • Also at many many other performances
  • Here's a twitter thread on this very subject (a little old but NEVER too old). Pls enjoy :D
• Jimin having all the bites on his upper arms is because he very notably keeps exposing his shoulders in multiple performances for no good reason. 
  • Taehyung's the only one on the other side bc same-age soulmate privileges
• Background on a couple dates:
  • I'm assuming contract negotiations must have happened in the first half of 2018, bc they a) didn't have any performances between Jan and April, b) Seokjin reveals in his MAMA award acceptance speech that they considered disbanding earlier that year, c) Outro: Tear is released in May of 2018, and we know that Yoongi wrote that song with the potential for their disbandment in mind, d) a lot of them have talked multiple times abt how Fake Love promos were the make-or-break time for the band, and those started in May
  • "What happens if we start sweating on the encore stage and suddenly reveal ourselves?" → encore dates for the Wings tour were in the second week of December of 2017
  • "No breathing room until—mid-January." → technically, not until late Jan; they don't get a break until the 25th, after the Seoul Music Awards, though they don't actually perform anything there. Jan 14th is their last official performance (for Fourth Muster) before they start touring Japan in April.
• Namjoon's breakdown of their album history has a SHITLOAD of research. LET'S JUMP IN.
  • "He knew going in what these albums would be like. It was pretty obvious once their first trilogy was ideated: that was about the trials of becoming an adult in a fucked-up society and figuring out how to survive it, whether with brashness or with anger or with self-destruction." → P obviously about the School Trilogy. You've got, yk, N.O. and WAB P2 for the self-destruction and anger, and Attack on Bangtan and Danger for the brashness and self-destruction angle. 
  • "That fed fairly organically into The Most Beautiful Moment in Life trilogy, which broadened the scope of their music to parts they felt too controversial or too complex at first, like health and aimlessness and uncertainty." → HYYH deals with health issues (Hoseok has Munchausen's; Jimin has PTSD; both Yoongi and Jungkook are Going Through It), societal issues (Namjoon dealing with poverty and asshole customers; Taehyung's father is abusive and neglectful), and just general teenage troubles (Seokjin moving away from his friends, teachers being difficult, etc) on a scope that the school trilogy didn't really attempt to tackle. 
  • "Wings had been a bit of a leap, in Namjoon’s opinion; where the first two trilogies had been topics he’d really marinated in for what felt like his whole life, Wings and its obviously seductive, intellectualized angle felt both like something to aspire to and like something utterly out of his wheelhouse." → Blood, Sweat and Tears is definitely much more seductive when you compare it to the power performances from the first two trilogies; this is also the first to be explicitly inspired by Demian, which lends the album a much more intellectual angle. It's definitely an interesting transition to go from "badass furious hiphop rappers telling y'all to push back against societal norms" into "we're becoming adults and sex is TOTALLY on our minds 24/7" but that's how it happened!
    • There were other things happening too ofc. Wings is really thoughtful and a lot more depressing than you'd imagine (Seokjin's Awake is from this album, and so is Namjoon's Reflection, and so is Spring Day), but there are some bangers there too: most obviously Not Today. But this is what stood out to me XD
  • "There’s a reason the twenty-seven club’s so famous" → Yeah, this is a reference to Stop the Rain, but also: in 2017, none of them have hit 27 yet, not even Seokjin (he's 26). I rewrote the paragraphs here two times just to work this in once I realized this.
  • "Icarus as he was set aflame" → In the original iteration of the story, the wax of Icarus' wings melts and he falls once the feathers drop away. In others, he flies too close to the sun and bursts into flames for it. In the latter telling, the point that he is set aflame is also the absolute maxima of his flight.
  • "The others have their own reasons for wanting to go solo. Taehyung likes genres of music they could never really fully explore as a group. Jungkook could do great things on his own, and he’s obviously curious about what those things could be. Hoseok’s limits in dance and what those dances could look like without having to choreograph six others—at all their various skill levels—are as yet unexplored. " → Couple notes taken from Ch 2 here
    • Taehyung and Yoongi talking on Suchwita abt their different interests in music
    • Jungkook at the Fifa World Cup
    • Killing it Girl dance video
  • "It’s been five years—more than five years at this point, verging on seven including the time as an official trainee, bordering on ten if he includes when he started rapping altogether" → According to this reddit post, Namjoon started rapping in 2007 (when he was 13 international age. Which is WILD. Because he turns 13 in September of 2007; he was twelve (TWELVE!!!!!!!!!!!! I cannot emphasize this enough!!!!! TWELVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!) when he started!!) at an underground hiphop cafe (three words that make zero sense put side by side like that to me, tbqh, but that's what they're saying and I do NOT know enough to contradict anything lmao). 
    • On Suchwita, Yoongi and Seokjin and Yoongi and Taehyung both talk about how tired they were at the time of the contract negotiations (Seokjin explicitly says they got 1.5 days off a month, for three months straight, which is CRAZY WORK). Obviously this isn't the same universe (Seokjin gets a week off every three months), but they're keeping up with the album releases nevertheless, which means they're all working crazy hard HERE too :(
    • I swear to god I remember Jimin and Jungkook talking about how without Hoseok they wouldn't have made it past the Fake Love era in Are You Sure, but I do not have time to go looking for timestamps right now so we're just running w it
• "They debuted with nothing on the table. An unknown label; no famous trainees. Nothing negative to be said about them, but also: nothing positive either." → Namjoon's being very nice here. A better (more accurate) statement would've been to add "except for burned bridges with literally the entire Korean hiphop industry." 
• "Jaejin had been one of those narrowly-cracked doors. He’d been poached from JYP by Bang Sihyuk for his vision, and then he’d been feted by the company when his ideas for the music videos for Wake Up led to their highest position on Oricon to date." → A couple things here:
  • Bang Sihyuk worked first as a composer at JYP before founding Bighit. Presumably he made some friends along the way.
  • Wake Up is the first Japanese album by BTS, released in 2014; ik there were three singles released, but idk if they actually shot different videos for them the way they did for Youth. BUT I do know Wake Up ranked third on Oricon, the daily popularity chart for albums in Japan.
• "Getting Lee Jaejin fired might require a couple delicate conversations, but that’s not the difficult part: the tougher thing is to make sure he can’t fuck them over in the future." → Nothing really much to be said here, tbh, but this is an interesting twitter thread on a former employee of Bighit/Hybe that might genuinely have overworked them (and particularly Namjoon) during the 2017 press tour, presumably got fired for it, and went to get their just desserts all these years (8) later.
  • Another thread by the same person on what Namjoon went through during that press tour and many of the latter ones as well, an experience that definitely colors Namjoon's fears of continuing as a group for their contract negotiations later in the fic
  • I would highly recommend reading the 2023 book which is screenshotted in the thread! I'm still working my way through it (...I'm not a huge fan of biographies tbh) but the parts I have read are vvvv interesting in the way it portrays the members.
• "moving back to be closer to her parents in Kobe. [...] ...which is close to Osaka, isn't it?” → It really is if you check out a map, but I am aware that distances as I perceive them (as an American) are v different from how other countries approach the subject. Idk if this applies to Japan! In this fic, it does not <3
• "He looks at Seokjin, and he doesn’t really mean to do it on purpose, but—he’s pulling his lips in, in a manner that’s going to deepen the dimple on his cheek and widen his eyes—and Seokjin, he knows, is susceptible to it." → Inspired by this ruinous expression from the Youjeen Wild Flower collab stage. Taehyung's vvv right when he says it's the face.
• "So they head over to America with heavy skinlike patches on their bites that are expertly blended into their skin with reams of concealer, and do a damn good job: the press coverage is nearly unanimously positive." → The AMAs, where they do the much-vaunted DNA 'RM rising over them all like a giant monster' performance. (Check out 3:31-3:34 to see what I mean. It's funny bc I don't think ANY OTHER DNA camera work looks at this specific angle, so we had no idea HOW much larger Namjoon was than the rest of them until they visited the US. Thank god they did.)
• "Tear is still being finalized, but it should be out in the first half of 2018. Answer will be in the second half." → as per the canon timeline :D
• "Late evening light paints across his face, golden and purple, and he looks like some sort of a painting. The kind that would’ve been hung over a castle window, the paper fine enough to let only enough light to highlight his features, to turn him from something human into something godly. There’s not many times that Namjoon regrets his lack of ability in physical art forms, but this is one of them: he can imagine it down to the brushstrokes, down to the paint shades, and he can’t do anything about that vision but let it stay in his imagination." → Taken from this twitter post (or this ig post) which talks about a traditional Korean art form called hanji, where the light enters paper-thin artworks from the back instead of the front. This is the background for this photoshoot from Namjoon's Harper's Bazaar magazine cover directly after the military. 
• "like everyone in Gocheok is relieved it’s finally being talked about." → Gocheok stadium is where the encore concerts were held!
• "With his golden hair and iridescent shirt, Jimin looks like a creature of sunlight and shine, made even more luminescent by the sheer number of spotlights focused on him." → They end the Wings encore concerts wearing these outfits. Iridescent is the kindest thing I can say for Jimin's outfit </3
• Piri
• Pad kee mao is also known as drunken noodles. The best Thai dish, bar none.
• "Yeah. Well—I went for a drive. A long one. All the way to Suwon." → Why Suwon? Because it changed hands four times during the Korean War between North and South Korea. Presumably there are some relics of that left over even today, and presumably some of those relics are barbed wire. There is no specific park I had in mind with the barbed wire, dw :)
• The poem that Hoseok mentions is "Trees Standing on the Edge" by Jung Kut-Byol. You can see three different English translations of the poem here and here; the line I quote ("So I am asking of this new century/let us not love too deeply") is a combination of two different translations from the second link. 
  • Trees growing around barbed wire genuinely look like amputated limbs/stitched wounds to me. It's very visceral.
• "He takes a sip of his coffee to ease it open: it’s red velvet and milk bread flavored, the monthly specialty for this specific shop." → This is DEFINITELY not a combo I would rec to anyone (the Korean fusion bakery near me did this and it looked very pretty but tasted pretty awful) BUT Namjoon apparently has a sweet tooth that allows him to enjoy straight-up honey poured down his throat, so maaaaaaaaybe he'd like this too?????
  
  • "The clear plastic cup is striped from the inside in variegated shades of red and white, melting into pink at the bottom." → Because this takes place during February, which is the month that has Valentine's Day <33
• "Namjoon, as the only one with prior notice of the subject—mostly because he’d been the one to ideate it—does fairly well. Jimin’s been to Jeju a couple times with his family and always likes to read travel intro stuff; he ties for second with Yoongi, who just knows a lot of weird shit. Seokjin, always good at wheedling information out of the staff, comes in a respectable fourth. Hoseok, Taehyung and Jungkook are in a dead heat the whole time for last place until the staff members finally ease up on the question difficulty; Hoseok and Jungkook blurt out the answer to the name of Jeju’s forests so concertedly—to the point that even replays can’t say who opened their mouth first—they’re given joint fifth place and Taehyung ends up last." → A couple things to note!
  • Namjoon and Yoongi really do tend to have an encyclopedic knowledge of arcane matters, including interior decoration, but Yoongi specifically seems to enjoy learning things and then mentioning them randomly
  • Jimin is from Busan which is relatively close to Jeju; idk why he knows more about random factoids in this universe than Jungkook, but he just does.
  • The name for Jeju's forests is Gotjawal, which is different from the Korean word for normal forests (Google Translate tells me this is 숲, or 'sup' which definitely is different from gotjawal so I feel a bit safe making this connection!)
    • Also, like, we have the whole "In The Soop" series which is further proof for the Korean word for forests being sup isn't it??? Sometimes I'm a bit dense unfortunately :(
• "There is a tradition in Jeju of women diving for oysters and seaweed [...] The haenyeo are very good free divers who harvest many different things from the sea." → All factually correct. The haenyeo, translated literally, means 'sea women,' because they are a (rare) example of a traditional Korean craft pioneered by primarily women. Though now dwindling in number, the ones that still participate can apparently hold their breath for up to ten minutes underwater because of a special breathing technique they use called sumbisori. 
  • The haenyeo are not pearl divers, they're sea divers. The waters around Jeju are not full of pearl oysters (that is, oysters that produce pearls); they're full of chamgul, or Pacific oysters, which are primarily used as a food. Pearl oysters do exist around Korea, but they're not around Jeju and they're mostly cultivated; they're around the southern coast facing Japan (so I'm assuming around Busan).
  • However!!! American missionaries to Korea in 1897 noted that Jeju Islanders lived on "beef, horse and [...] pearl oysters [which] are very large, some measuring 10 inches in diameter, and very fleshy [...] and from which mother of pearl is obtained." Mother of pearl is not produced by all oysters; it's only produced by those oysters that create pearls, because it's only under specific conditions (exposure to an irritant) that a pearl is formed out of the mother of pearl layers. SOOOO it isn't impossible!!! For them to find it!!! Even if it is unlikely!!!!!
  • "We’ll take you down one at a time. Ten minutes total, or five dives—whichever is less. I don’t want you getting sick from the pressure of the water." → Nitrogen bends/decompression sickness is a real thing, and reddit tells me it can occur at any depth of a dive, but a) I know nothing about diving and b) I don't think there's much by way of "nitrogen bends" for, like, Olympic highdivers??? HOWEVER!!! just to cma I checked out these diving tables that tell me that these guys should be fine if they don't do it for longer than nine minutes at a time @ a depth of 40 feet, and if they need it, a couple minutes at the surface should keep them safe. 
  • The names of the haenyeo are also taken from the Korean national badminton team, but, like, an older generation
    • Kyungeun's surname (Go) is one of three surnames unique to Jeju (the other two are Yang and Bu).
• Why are they climbing Hallasan? Because Seokjin did it five days after his military service ended lmao.
  • Jeju is a volcanic island (Hallasan is actually a dormant volcano; the lake visible if you hike to the top is a crater lake), and the Geomunoreum Lava Tube System that they skip going to is actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • The hiking trails, otoh, are fully made up. There are hiking trails around Jeju, but if there are any that match up to what I'm talking about in the fic it is by pure chance, not any research on my part XD
• "Once they’re done with taking photos and down from Hallasan—which takes longer somehow—they eat a quick lunch and ditch the idea of the lava tubes—it’s past evening already, courtesy of their late start—and head back to the hotel, where they get some nice footage of Jimin cooking for all of them to make up for the lack of cave video." → Timing taken from Run Seokjin Ep 1 linked above (roughly nine hours). Also, if at any point you questioned why they went straight from a late lunch at a restaurant to a Jimin-cooked dinner, I assure you that you are not alone: I've questioned it myself, but it happens way too often on Bon Voyages and ITS for me to call it a timing error. Ig if you're always in a calorie deficit state, you just have a bottomless stomach???
• "Jimin isn’t a bad cook by any measure, unlike Namjoon and Taehyung who both seem to have a preternatural ability to make mistakes heretofore unknown to all of mankind the minute they set foot in a kitchen, but he isn’t one that likes to follow the rules: and, with Hoseok’s encouragement, he becomes adventurous." → We all know that Jimin and Namjoon and Taehyung are the Bad Cook Line of BTS, but I am of the firm opinion that Hoseok also belongs there (he's just strategically quiet about it). 
  • See the weird little sandwich he debuted on BV4, which is not something you make if you're an experienced cook/a sane person (it's the product of throwing things together when your kitchen's empty of everything else, coming across something pretty a) interesting and b) tasty, being enormously impressed with yourself, and then not shutting up abt it for years). Trust me. I have a younger sister. She is not very good in the kitchen. She is very busy. She loves the weirdest food combos. She tries these combos bc she has nothing left in her kitchen.
• "if you feel like you’re going to crash, accelerate harder" → taken from Intro: Never Mind
• "I’m here from the east, and you’re here from the west, and Namjoonie’s here from the north: we’re all here for the same dream." → Daegu's in the east, Gwangju's in the west, and Ilsan is in the north of SK. 
• You can imagine the hawk-collar to look something like this, only with the golden interlocking bit (separate from the actual chain) flared up to look like the tips of a hawk's wings. 
• "Namjoon showers swiftly and gets into the clothes that Hoseok had laid out for them—comfortable pants, a comfortable shirt, but, Namjoon realizes when he steps into the living room, all coordinated subtly with the other six so as to make it clear they’re dressed up." → Costumes taken from this Butter performance (also, this part of the Butter MV, on the gold-lit stage), only accented light purple instead of yellow. This styling remains some of my favorite BTS styling ever, which is why I had to shove it into the fic somehow. (I still believe that Hobi would never choose these of his own volition—the Idol outfits seem much more his style, ngl—but let's say Namjoon put his foot down here <3)
• "The other is to a house of our own in Seongbuk." → Because Seongbuk-dong is known for expensive gated single-family home communities like this one (as compared to the apartments/penthouses available in downtown Gangnam). All info on this taken from x x x
• "Seokjin is wearing a jacket with purple threadwork." → This jacket, a gift from Taehyung to Seokjin as explained in this Run BTS episode
• "There are offers that none of them had even considered—like the one that Jimin’s sputtering over, to get a chunk of the actual company itself" → from reports that they were given shares of Hybe when they renewed the contract in 2018.
• "'As of right now and with respect to this contract, we are classified as at-will contractors,' says Seokjin slowly. 'Our contract can be canceled for many reasons by the company, up to and including extended infirmity or behavior considered damaging to the brand of either the company or the brand we represent. We’d like to change this.'" → A couple things here:
  • K-pop idols are usually classified as at-will contractors for a number of reasons. This can, of course, be taken advantage of by predatory companies (as in the case of TVXQ and SM Entertainment), but it can also prove to be an asset to artists by giving them more flexibility and income (i.e., between 5% of a VERY LARGE NUMBER and a fixed salary, usually the 5% is preferable), especially in the case of successful idols. 
  • The infirmity clause was actually a whole thing between Han Geng (of boy band Super Junior) and SM Entertainment back in 2009
  • The damaging behavior clause is also called the objectionable conduct clause (usually found in endorsement deals, or franchise agreements, etc etc etc) and it's one that I don't actually have evidence exists in K-pop contracts—though I think it'd be a pretty big oversight not to have it lmao??? 
  • Anyways basically BTS are basically asking for tenure here. That's the point I'm trying to make. I thought this was a VERY funny deal to try and strike w a private K-pop agency. Lawyer humor??????
• "Love Yourself: Tear drops in May to critical acclaim. The dozen tracks are all well-received. It’s a darker tone, a more mature tone, but the world seems to like it. Not just like—love. It hits number one on the Billboard 200, shatters records in Korea, and is definitely going to net them a couple daesangs at the end of the year. Fake Love debuts in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100. It wins a triple crown on M Countdown, is guaranteed to hit platinum certification in Korea before June even begins, and is ranked in the best songs of the first half of 2018 by The Guardian, despite it having only a few weeks to compete with other songs." → Let's get into this!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
  • LY: T does drop in May 2018, and it is critically acclaimed. There are, however, 11 tracks on it in RL; it turns into an even dozen only with the addition of Interlude: Mirror.
  • Everything else talked abt above also happens except for the triple crown (they don't win that until 2022 lol).
  • As of right now, LY:T has a 3x million certification in Korea (where platinum is certified for every 250k units). HOWEVER, this certification happened in 2022. So how do we know when it was platinum certified? Well, because we know that it sold 1.6 million copies in its first two weeks, which takes them into June. Whether they actually got it certified or not is in fact up in the air, but they were certainly eligible pretty fast <3
  • The Guardian named Fake Love as one of their 100 top songs of 2018, and afaik don't do first-half breakdowns. But I liked the way the words sounded in the last half of that last sentence ;)
• I'm actually going to do all the analysis of Mirror altogether, so we're skipping ALLLLLLLLL that and saving it for the end, lmaoooo
• "enough interviews, eventually, that Namjoon’s forced to put his foot down and start rejecting some, because there aren’t enough hours in the day and he’s really fucking up his throat by talking so goddamn much" → taken from the Tablo podcast, where he mentions this very thing: singing/rapping doesn't really impact the voice that much, but if you talk too much it can, like, fuck things UP. BAD.
• "Making such requests of interviewees themselves is a bit of a faux pas—admittedly more in Korea than in the US—because it puts them on the spot: to refuse would be rude, so to ask at all is even ruder." → Idk how ANY of the music industry works, much less the media industry, MUCH less the international music industry lmaoooooo
• "All those lean runner muscles won’t do much to cushion a punch thrown by someone trained in a dank Seoul alley and honed by a fervid Jeon Jungkook." → I do think that Jungkook teaching the pack how to box is incredibly hot lmao 
• There are SOOOOOO MANY white names for boys that start with J! I didn't even need any help for these (Jake, John, Jason, James, Jay, Josh......... someone should make a boy group with that concept)
• "They do have to kill the Der Spiegel interview, which Namjoon had been privately furious about—he’d wanted to talk about the technical background of Demian with the interviewer that had an MFA in early twentieth century German-Swiss novelists, fucking sue him" → Der Spiegel has a rep for being, yk, more serious as a media outlet than, let's say, Buzzfeed. Which is fine, different ecosystems, etc, I just think that it's a shame BTS didn't do a Demian-focused interview w them back in the '10s. That's the nerdy kind of stuff I would genuinely have consumed like I've been consuming the leftover pecan pie in my kitchen </3
• "drove out of the airport and to downtown Hamburg, ate through a mountain of fishy sandwiches, wandered through some interesting artsy streets, and then returned to the airport: a waste of time, maybe, but an enjoyable one." → Hamburg's a gorgeous city, has a bunch of fish-based sandwiches, and also has great architecture. The BTS being in London bit was me having a bit of fun, bc they don't fly back home to Seoul after the London concerts (they're a bit busy touring the rest of Europe lmao), but it does date this bit to October 2018 :D
• "They add more dates, then upgrade the arenas to stadiums." → The Speak Yourself stadium extension, which technically shouldn't start until 2019 (messing up the timeline a bit, but that's okay :D)
• "They’ve gone on a bunch of shows to promote it—M Countdown, KBS, Music Core" → Taken directly from their Dionysus promotions, haha
• Alright, so the research for the MMA 2018 show was. A Lot. To start:
  • You can check out the first image in this tweet which shows a couple different things—it's a scan of my notes for the run-through. I did go back and forth between Fake Love and Idol, the two songs that were being promoted in the award shows by BTS (they did Idol at MAMA Hong Kong, Fake Love at MAMA Japan, and both at MMA), but I knew I wanted the MMA Idol performance to be done at the Grammys in the epilogue, so Fake Love it was, followed by the same Airplane Pt. 2 performance done at MMA 2018.
    • Another important factor to make this happen at MMA instead of MAMA was that MMA was set in Korea (in Gocheok), whereas MAMA was not
    • Obviously, a lot of these stages are taken from the 2019 MAMA performance (specifically I referenced this video) which, like, every idol seems to view as theeeeee height of performance, but if you'll notice, there's only one solo stage in the fic that's exactly the same :0
    • Namjoon starts out with No More Dream instead of Taehyung. I did debate between Hoseok and Namjoon here (Hoseok's stage presence is obviously AMAZING, and arguably the best of the seven)—but I loved Namjoon's rap and wanted Hoseok to finish it off (as you might imagine, I flipped back and forth between who I wanted to start/finish a couple times lol). 
    • Seokjin does Boy in Luv but this time he isn't on top of a strange Trojan horse?????? The weirdest part of the MAMA stage imo lollllll
    • And then Taehyung does his hot dance number on a wooden table that he originally did to No More Dream to Danger
    • Jimin's the only one that's the same as the 2019 MAMA one because My God. That Is Sheer Fucking Perfection. Only thing I added was more glitter/mirrors to his white cloth to be in line w the obangsaek/wuxing principles (Jimin's metal; Taehyung is wood; Yoongi is fire; Jungkook is earth; Hoseok is water).
    • Yoongi also doesn't change much tbqh with his rendition of Fire, but he does do a bit more than in the og 2019 performance (bc...... we can never have too much Min Yoongi on a stage???? Of course that's the only change I could make???????????)
    • Jungkook also does Save Me, but his is not the fringed poncho water-park version; this plays into the Jeju canola flowers, earthy remix instead that is essentially copying the contemporary/masculinized style of Black Swan at 2020 MAMA
      
      • One hand outstretched—Jungkook's mimicking the Fake Love ending pose with Seokjin
    • Hoseok's ribboned-shoes are something I made up to mimic Jungkook's fringed poncho on Hoseok's lower half. I just feel like I should be up-front about that. The issue is the only fringed shoes I know of are cowboy boots, and they're kind of not the vibe I was going for w the glittery hanbok, but then I also feel like my description of the shoes made them sound like laced-up ballet flats??? Idk. Imagination is our collective friend <3
    • Another issue is using black with the water. Like!!!! STAGELIGHTS DON'T WORK THAT WAY!!!! FUCK MY WHOLE LIFE!!!!!!! But also I don't even get to mention the obangsaek in-depth so ig it's fine <333
    • "arms like right angles" → taken from this part of the 2019 MMA BTS episode where Yoongi's impressed with Hoseok's straight lines XD
  • This photo also showcases the thought process I had re: the structure of the performance stage. Gocheok doesn't actually look like this! Afaik, it has never looked like it either! But in fiction all things are possible l m f a o
  • Descriptions of the songs are all taken from this site because, again, I know nothing about music. All errors/things that make no sense are my fault and my fault alone I promise!!!!
  • Seokjin's cloak for Interlude: Mirror's performance is pretty obviously stolen straight from this Dionysus Music Bank performance, but preferably one that provides a little more coverage lol
    • A lot of the aesthetics are taken from Black Swan performances at Fallon's and Corden's shows, esp the all-black outfits
    • A very interesting discussion on group sword-dances
    • Geommu
      
      • As an art-form, geommu is mostly performed by women today. It is also a very slow dance. Which is where we bring in other sword dances.
    • The Jimin/Taehyung and Seokjin/Jungkook sword-dance during the chorus is trying to mimic Greek Pyrrhic dances
    • Inspiration also taken from Balkan rusalia dancing
  • Namjoon's fastest raps ever, apparently. 
    • Another piece of inspiration for inhaling without anyone being able to figure out when exactly the inhaling happens during the song
  • I've condensed all the thoughts I had on the actual song Interlude: Mirror below in its own section because it got that long! Enjoy <3
• BTS does win both Album and Artist of the Year in the 2018 MMAs
  • The first time they perform at Gocheok is on Dec 30 2015
  • Namjoon thinks that Shining Lantern is a song that Seokjin wrote for BTS, but there's a double-meaning there: not just for BTS, but to inspire omegas to "ask for more than they've been given." Anyways yes I DID work very hard to make those lines nuanced and have some double-meaning XD

ARC 5 (epilogue):

• "The investigators, however, do make a point of insisting on forensic dating of his diaries" → to make sure it isn't forged material
• "morass of collusion between law enforcement and the fourth estate" → obviously a growing concern worldwide recently lol
• "Namjoon goes from a five-hour police interrogation straight into rehearsals for Gayo Daejeon, then into consultations with the incredibly expensive lawyers that Bighit’s hired for them; he performs at the Golden Disc Awards in a fugue state. The news of the failure of the National Assembly’s public censure breaks two hours before they have to perform at Gayo Daechukje." → Gayo Daegeon, GDA and Gayo Daechukje are all different performances that BTS put on in December after the MMA and MAMA stages.
• "their passports have been confiscated, the police citing them to be flight risks based on their high income and international connections" → giggled to myself at this bc. Yeah. The venn diagram of countries with no extradition to South Korea and enshrined omega rights would DEFINITELY be two separate circles, this is literally just the police being assholes for the sake of being assholes. 
• "the Epiphany, Truth Untold, Outro: Tear, and Mic Drop run towards the end of the show" → This is legitimately the setlist that made me decide that, actually, dance performances could be worth watching. You could even say this run is what made me fall in love with BTS lmao. Of course it had to be in the story <3
• "They perform Idol on stage at the Grammys in hanbok" → The MMA 2018 Idol performance is frameshifted to the Grammys, basically.
• "[Dancing like Phoenixes] has collabs for nearly every track from artists as varied as American pop-powerhouses to indie Korean EDM-focused producers." → The American pop-powerhouse is Halsey; the indie Korean EDM producer is supposed to be Hwang Soyoon (of Smoke Sprite fame). 
• "Eyeball economy." → Many people have talked abt this before, but I was inspired a lot by this specific interview by Ezra Klein (.......interviewing Kyla Scanlon, who is a dozen times more interesting than him I promise lmao)
• "omega rights have become one of the UN’s SDG goals for the first time" → Yeah this surprised me a bit, but SDG goals do explicitly talk about gender equality as number five!
• Seoraksan is genuinely gorgeous, and one of the places I would DEFINITELY visit if I ever actually made it to Korea
• "Seokjin starts too: the honking, goose-like kind of laughter he only really picked up after he started snoring in the past couple months." → We didn't know abt Seokjin's snoring until Kian's B&B lmaoooooo 
• "Seokjin had been right when he pointed at the sun. Call it the sun, call it a coin, call it an egg yolk: what did it matter?" → The egg yolk bit is taken from their conversation in Bon Voyage S2.

INTERLUDE: MIRROR:

• Namjoon's talked multiple times about his definition of rap (rhythm and poetry) and I was like. I know those two things! I work with those two things! *jimin voice* KEEP GOING. 
• And then I, um, realized songwriting's vvvvvvvvvvvv tough. Anyways. I nearly cried like four different times. Twice in public. The baristas and librarians in my area probably have a running list of my crashouts because there have been SO many times I only got through a stanza bc I had a stupidly good yuzu pastry to calm me down. When I started writing this song, I had ~40000 words of buffer. When I finished, I had none. If I didn't have to publish Ch 41 I probably would've kept editing it for even longer. 
• With that said!!! Let's get into it!!!!!!
• You can see the notes I took for three different songs I used as inspirations (Outro: Tear , Dis-ease, and UGH) in this photo I posted; as I was doing so, I was analyzing what a refrain, pre-chorus, post-chorus, bridge, etc etc etc all meant. It has been a VERY long month is what I'm trying to say. But in the end I knew I was either going for one of the two styles described in the top half of this photo (you can also check out some notes I had going into writing; I knew nothing beyond those guidelines lmaoooo)
• This song started out with me knowing I wanted to do more than the description I gave for Seokjin's bird-song, which meant that I needed to get a lot more familiar with Korean than I already was. In that sense, I started thinking through topics of interest in English that could work for a song and then translating them into Korean to see if any of them had any relationship whatsoever. Reflective surfaces—which is to say mirrors, knives, gold, etc—all worked out quite well. You can see a (partial) list of the words I was working with here.
• When writing the song, I wrote it fully in English and then translated it line by line into Korean using Google Translate and DeepL. They are not crosschecked against anything else. All error, therefore, is either due to translation mistakes, my own misunderstanding of Korean (though there are certainly parts where I butchered both English and Korean to try and get a rhyme scheme going), or my unfamiliarity with the way music works :D
• Some Korean used here:
  • Mirror—거울, geoul
  • Knife—칼, kal
  • Sword—검, geom
  • Gold—금, geum
  • Crack (as in a fissure)—금, geum 
• There's quite a bit of wordplay using these five words. Some of it is explained in the fic, but for posterity (reference lines in square brackets below):
  • Yoongi starts out his verse talking about "steel" and "mirrors"; this is purposeful, so the similarity between knife (kal) and mirror (geoul) isn't revealed until the end of his verse when he purposely starts to slur them together—"mirror or knife, mirror-knife, mirror-knife, mirror-knife"—until it's hard to tell the two words apart. Essentially summarizing that there is no difference to him; they are, functionally, the same.
  • Hoseok has a bit more going on:
    • Lines 3, 5, 7, and 9 all rhyme. Line 3 ends with "gold," Lines 5 and 7 with the Korean word for mirror (geoul),and Line 9 with "cold." I've pretty much cannibalized the last sentence especially in an attempt to get cold as the last word.
    • Also, "A mirror that could become a knife if I wasn't careful" uses the same similarity between geoul and kal as Yoongi does in his verse
    • Line 25 and Line 27 also rhyme due to the similarities between geoul and gold
    • At the end, in Line 29, he switches the rhyme scheme up from mirrors and gold ("geoul" and "gold") to swords and gold. In Korean, these are only separated by one syllable ("geom" and "geum"), and Hoseok slurs the words in the same fashion that Yoongi ends his verse until they sound functionally the same.
    • One thing you might have noticed is that when BTS calls Jungkook, for instance, the golden maknae, they use the adjective "hwanggeum" instead of "geum". I'm not entirely certain what exactly the difference is functionally in the language itself, but this site tells me that hwanggeum is used for "yellow gold" and geum is meant to represent the chemical element itself. Either way, the rhyme schema will not be affected.
  •  Namjoon's:
    
    • In Line 13, he stutters geoul and kal in "a thousand mirror-knives fell at the right" so he says both and doesn't differentiate between them, similar to the stutter he uses in Ddaeng
    • And he does this again in Line 15, "sealed tight the gold-cracks" because gold and cracks are homonyms in Korean (both are translated as "geum")
    • Lines 27 and 29 also rhyme, using the kal-geoul rhyme scheme
    • Line 47's "Your love turns the knife to a mirror, the sword to gold" → kal to geoul, geom to geum
  • Vocal line (chorus and bridge):
    • Line 6 and 8 of the chorus ("An unforgiving mirror/That cuts deeper than a knife") is not a rhyme scheme between geoul and kal. Rather, because of the nature of the structure of Korean sentences, the last word of the first line is mirror (geoul) and the first word of the second line is knife (kal) allowing the vocal line to stutter the words together too!
    • Lines 12 and 14 of the chorus ("A fragile thing full of cracks/Sealed together with gold") → crack and gold are both geum, and so the beginning of both lines is the same
    • Line 10 of the bridge ("This is my mirror-knife, this is my wound") → another such opportunity to connect geoul and kal.
    • Line 29 of the bridge ("The mirrors turn gold") → homophone between geoul and gold
• Some other notes for other parts of the song:
  • Yoongi's verse:
    • Line 1 ("I came to Seoul with nothing on my back but a chip heavier than a mountain") → is a play on the English idioms "chip on [my] shoulder" and "arrived with nothing but the clothes on my back"  
    • Lines 9, 13, and 15 all end with the same ㅅㅅ어 (sseo) syllable. To smooth the flow, Yoongi raps the end of Line 11 as "against you" to mimic that syllable.
    • Lines 21 to 28 also have a rhyme scheme—Line 21 and Line 25 end in the Korean syllable 아파 (apa) and Line 23 and 27 end with "this" (an ABAB rhyme scheme).
    • "Nine of years of polish" → bc he's known Namjoon for nine years at this point :D 
  • Hoseok's verse:
    • Lines 11-23 ("Yeah, I fell in love like a snowstorm, a wreckage, an undoable thing" all the way to "(Never once looked back)") all end with ㅅㅅ어 (sseo) 
    • The bit re: frozen lakes turning into mirrors takes a lot of inspiration from this excellent poem by Danez Smith
    • The cold can't touch him because (stay with me here) the six of them have fanned the ambition in his veins that bright and hot
    • Many references to cold things in Hoseok's verse (frozen lakes, winter, ice, snowstorm, avalanche) that are then melted in Namjoon's verse
  • Namjoon's verse:
    • "impeccably hexagonally perfect" → because Namjoon has six pack members separate from him, but also because if you look in nature a lot of crystals (and honeycombs, and basalt prisms, and benzene rings, and a lot more) form hexagons as that is the most energy-efficient form 
    • "let the iced-over lakes melt and the gold stop shining" → i.e., I'd find it hard to communicate even if the consequences are a lot of things falling apart
    • "Is like trying to empty the lake with a single lonely bucket" → I've used this metaphor before to describe how I feel about writing, lol
    • "What I learned of love was because you were with me/What I know of being a leader is because you let me/If I learned how to live it was because you showed me" → This uses the similarities that Namjoon explores in Trivia: Love between living, loving, and, extending it a bit further here, leadership
      • "Until there are no sharp things left in my heart" → ALSO taken from Trivia: Love and its excellent line of "you erode all my edges and make me a love"
  • Chorus/bridge:
    • Lines 17 and 19 ("If love is a sword, I'm falling on yours/If love is a mirror, I’m 너의 빛에 눈이 멀어") → yours and 어 (eo) share enough similarities in terms of syllables for the vocal line to get these two to rhyme
    • The structure of the bridge is meant to be comparable to Dis-ease.
    • Lines 10-22 have an extended metaphor ("This is my mirror-knife, this is my open wound/this is my wound dripping gold/this is my love pouring out of me/this is what makes me shine") that leans a bit into the idea of kintsugi, but I was more inspired by Yeesookyung (specifically Translated Vase) when I was writing it. Yeesookyung's art is more abstract, focused more on putting together something different (something bigger) through that initial act of destruction rather than restoring what had been (as kintsugi tries to do).
• More general comments:
  • I imagine a rougher beat, similar to the sparseness of Haegeum, for a lot of the rap verses; it only becomes grander/orchestral during the chorus
  • Yes, there's a very deliberate distinction between the silver that Yoongi uses and the gold that Hoseok uses.
  • "ratcheted up half a key and sped almost imperceptibly" → taken from here. Can this/should this be done in the middle of a song? No clue!!!
  • A lot of the tension in the song sits in the question: Is this love good for us, is it something we should want? Is it something making us better or worse? Should we let it propel us further, or should we let it burn out? The rapline is pushing for them to keep going, even as they profess their uncertainties; the vocal line is focused on the negatives, even as they acknowledge the positives. That's why they're attacking each other. But then Namjoon says, Come on, come on, I don't believe I'm alone, and the dance shifts (they go from attacking him to defending him) and then, after Namjoon's verse ends, in the bridge, they talk about how their love is like a wound, but the wound is dripping gold; the wound is what makes them as good a pack as they are now; the pain is inextricable from the love.
  • And then in the second half of the bridge, they shift from confession to defiance: "Courage is in our own hands/the mirrors turn gold/our future is bright/we'll only burn brighter" as a sort of rally: yes, this news, this truth, has the potential to derail their careers/future, but not forever. They'll be back. And when they're back, they'll be brighter :D

The actual song, with English and Hangul lyrics (I'll repeat the warning that I am not fluent in Korean, am working off of two admittedly faulty translators, and have an incredibly piecemeal understanding of music as well. Take that as you may!) is below. The first line is in Hangul; the second is the English translation. If the song itself involves English lyrics, they are in quotes. The numbers in square brackets indicate the line numbers for ease of reference in my above notes. All italics and bolds are to indicate who the line is assigned to amongst the vocal line (you can refer to the proximal bullet above it to see who the line belongs to, as you might find in genius).

• Rap 1—Suga

등에는 산보다 무거운 칩 하나만 지고 서울에 왔어

I came to Seoul with nothing on my back but a chip heavier than a mountain

알던 사람들 모두 내쫓아 결국 아무것도 남지 않았지

Drove away everyone I knew until there was nothing left

[5] “Nothing except a maze of” 차가운 강철과 빈 거울

Nothing except a maze of cold steel and empty mirrors 

당신이 침입해서 모든 것을 무너뜨릴 때까지

Until you broke in and tore it all down

너를 통해 나를 알게 됐고, 너 덕분에 나아질 수 있었어

[10] I learned myself through you, I bettered myself because of you

내가 나 자신을 보는 것을 견딜 수 없을 때 나는 보았습니다 “myself through you”

When I couldn’t stand to see myself I saw myself through you

그러면 잠시나마 자기혐오가 누그러졌어

And the self-loathing would ease for a brief period

[15] 단 하루도 평범하거나 쉬웠다고 말할 수 없었어

There was not a day that I could call simple or easy

이 사랑이 날 강철을 갈아내는 숫돌처럼 닳게 하는 건지

I don’t know if this love grinds me down like a whetstone on steel

아니면 거울에 묻은 걸레처럼 나를 더 밝게 닦아주거나

[20] Or polishes me brighter like rags on a mirror

네 다리의 상처와 내 어깨의 통증을 생각하면 아파

It hurts to think of the wounds on your legs and the aches in my shoulder

“(We cannot live like this)”

(We cannot live like this)

[25] 우리가 서로에게 남긴 상처를 떠올리면 아파

It hurts to remember the scars we leave on each other

“(We have to live like this)”

(We have to live like this)

충분한 시간과 노력을 들인다면 강철도 은처럼 빛날 수 있어

[30] Given enough time and work even steel can shine like silver

9년간의 닦은 세월이 이 사랑이 거울인지 칼인지 알 수 없게 만든다

Nine years of polish means I don’t know if this love is a mirror or a knife

거울이나 칼, 거울이나 칼, 거울-칼, 거울-칼, 거울-칼

Mirror or knife, mirror or knife, mirror-knife, mirror-knife, mirror-knife

• Chorus: Jimin and Taehyung

“This love”

This love

“Oh it’s the kind that kills you”

Oh it’s the kind that kills you

[5] 용서할 수 없는 거울

An unforgiving mirror

칼보다 깊이 베이는

That cuts deeper than a knife

Oh, 벗어날 수 없는 종류야

[10] Oh it’s the kind that you can’t escape

금이 가득한 깨지기 쉬운 것

A fragile thing full of cracks

금으로 붙여진

Sealed together with gold

[15] “If love is a sword, I’m falling on yours”

If love is a sword, I’m falling on yours

“If love is a mirror, I’m” 너의 빛에 눈이 멀어

If love is a mirror, I’m blinded by your light

“This love, oh, oh, oh, this love”

[20] This love, oh, oh, oh, this love

“My love, my love, my love”

My love, my love, my love

• Rap 2—J-hope

“I’ve stood on” 얼어붙은 호수 “in the middle of winter”

I’ve stood on frozen lakes in the middle of winter

눈부신 햇살에 얼음과 눈과 공기가 “turned pure gold”

Sun shining so bright the ice and the snow and the air turned pure gold

[5] 조심하지 않으면 칼이 될 수도 있는 거울

A mirror that could become a knife if I wasn’t careful

오래 머물면 나를 죽일 수도 있는 거울

A mirror that could kill me if I stayed long enough

하지만 너와 우리와 우리의 꿈이 있었으니, 그러니 어떻게 나를 건드릴 수 있겠어, “the cold?”

[10] But I had you and us and our dreams, so how could the cold touch me?

“Yeah,” 나는 눈보라처럼, 파멸처럼, 되돌릴 수 없는 것처럼 사랑에 빠졌어

Yeah, I fell in love like a snowstorm, a wreckage, an undoable thing

네가 내 혈관에 불어넣은 야망이 좋은 건지 나쁜 건지 모르겠어

I’m not sure if the ambition you breathed into my veins is a good or bad thing

[15] (하지만 나는 네 사랑을 눈사태처럼 삼켰어)

(But I swallowed your care like an avalanche)

우리의 사랑이 내가 원하는 만큼 오래 갈지 모르겠어

I’m not sure if the love we have will last for as long as I want it to

(내 불확실성을 태워버렸어)

[20] (Burned away my uncertainty)

우리의 미래가 어떻게 펼쳐질지 모르겠어

I don’t know how our future will unfold

(한 번도 뒤돌아보지 않았어)

(Never once looked back)

[25] “But I know the love we have now can be a” 거울

But I know the love we have now can be a mirror 

이 세상을 갈라놓을 만큼 밝아서 “and turn it gold”

So bright it could split the world apart and turn it gold

“Yeah, my gold” 거울, my 금-검, 금-검, 금-검

[30] Yeah, my gold mirror, my gold-sword, gold-sword, gold-sword

• Chorus: Jungkook and Seokjin

“This love”

This love

“Oh it’s the kind that kills you”

Oh it’s the kind that kills you

[5] 용서할 수 없는 거울

An unforgiving mirror

칼보다 깊이 베이는

That cuts deeper than a knife

Oh, 벗어날 수 없는 종류야

[10] Oh it’s the kind that you can’t escape

금이 가득한 깨지기 쉬운 것

A fragile thing full of cracks

금으로 붙여진

Sealed together with gold

[15] “If love is a sword, I’m falling on yours”

If love is a sword, I’m falling on yours

“If love is a mirror, I’m” 너의 빛에 눈이 멀어

If love is a mirror, I’m blinded by your light

“This love, oh, oh, oh, this love”

[20] This love, oh, oh, oh, this love

“My love, my love, my love”

My love, my love, my love

• Rap 3: RM

당신을 봤을 때 세상이 멈춰버린 것 같았어.

When I saw you it felt like the world came to a standstill

“It” 수정처럼 얼어붙었다, “it was that” 육각형으로 완벽하다

It froze like crystal, it was that hexagonally perfect

[5] 나는 살아서 불에 탔다 “to make myself worth your attention-love-time”

And I burned alive to make myself worth your attention-love-time

“I learned what love is because you were by my side”

I learned what love is because you were by my side

“I know how to be a leader because you let me”

[10] I know how to be a leader because you let me

“If I learned how to live it was because you showed me”

If I learned how to live it was because you showed me

천 개의 거울 (칼이) 제때 떨어져 우리를 하나로 모았지만

I know a thousand mirror (knives) fell at the right time to bring us all together

[15] 하지만 금을 단단히 봉인한 것은 우리의 사랑과 노력이었습니다

But it was our love and hard work that sealed tight the gold-cracks

“God,” 내가 얼마나 원하는지 설명할 말이 없어

God, I have no words here to explain how much I want,

(원해, 원해, 원해)

[20] (I want, I want, I want)

“Yeah, fuck,” 얼어붙은 호수가 녹고 금이 빛나지 않게 하라

Yeah, fuck, let the iced-over lakes melt and the gold stop shining

내 갈망의 깊이와 야망의 높이를 말하려니

Telling you the depths of my desire, the heights of my ambitions

[25] “Is like trying to empty a lake with a” 외로운 양동이 하나

Is like trying to empty the lake with a single lonely bucket

“Is like looking into a” 변색된 칼

Is like looking into a tarnished knife 

“And using it like” 변색되지 거울

[30] And using it like an unfading mirror

“So why am I trying? Why am I crying”

So why am I trying? Why am I crying

네가 이해하기엔 너무 불가능하다는 생각에

At the thought that this is so impossible for you to understand?

[35] 세상은 불완전함으로 가득하지만 우리 사이에 살아 숨쉬는 건 완벽한 것

The world is full of imperfections but what lives between us is a perfect thing

다이아몬드의 면들처럼, 당신의 관점에서 내가 알고 싶은 수천 가지 이야기가 있어

Like the facets of a diamond there are a thousand stories I want to know

새의 노래처럼 당신의 목소리에서 듣고 싶은 음표가 천 개나 있습니다

[40] Like the song of a bird there are a thousand notes I long to hear in your voice

“Come on, come on, I don’t believe I’m alone”

Come on, come on, I don’t believe I’m alone

이것은 나를 찢어 놓고, 꼼짝 못하게 하고, 호수가 내 안으로 흘러들게 하는 칼이다

This is a knife that tears me open, pins me down, lets the lake flood into me

[45] 하지만 당신의 사랑은 모든 상처를 금으로 봉인하고 나를 빛나게 할 수 있어요

But your love can seal all the wounds with gold and make me shine

네 사랑은 칼을 거울로, 검을 금으로 바꿔

Your love turns the knife to a mirror, the sword to gold

내 가슴에 날카로운 것이 하나도 남지 않을 때까지

[50] Until there are no sharp things left in my heart

• Omega Call interlude + Chorus (Jungkook, Jimin, Taehyung, Seokjin)

[Omega Call]

“This love”

This love

“Oh it’s the kind that kills you”

[5] Oh it’s the kind that kills you

용서할 수 없는 거울

An unforgiving mirror

칼보다 깊이 베이는

That cuts deeper than a knife

[10] Oh, 벗어날 수 없는 종류야

Oh it’s the kind that you can’t escape

금이 가득한 깨지기 쉬운 것

A fragile thing full of cracks

금으로 붙여진

[15] Sealed together with gold

“If love is a sword, I’m falling on yours”

If love is a sword, I’m falling on yours

“If love is a mirror, I’m” 너의 빛에 눈이 멀어

If love is a mirror, I’m blinded by your light

[20] “This love, oh, oh, oh, this love”

This love, oh, oh, oh, this love

“My love, my love, my love”

My love, my love, my love

• Bridge: Jungkook, Jimin, Taehyung, Seokjin

“(Burning up)”

(Burning up)

“Can’t stop here now, no, never”

Can’t stop here now, no, never

[5] “‘Cause life doesn’t wait”

‘Cause life doesn’t wait

“(Running wild)”

(Running wild)

이게 내 거울칼이야, 이게 내 열린 상처야

[10] This is my mirror-knife, this is my open wound

“(Breathe out, breathe in, breathe out)”

(Breathe out, breathe in, breathe out)

이건 내 상처에서 금이 떨어지는 거야

This is my wound dripping gold

[15] “(Breathe out, breathe in, breathe out)”

(Breathe out, breathe in, breathe out)

이것은 내 안에서 쏟아지는 내 사랑입니다

This is my love pouring out of me

이제 켜고 가까이 끌어당겨

[20] Now turn it on, drag it close

이게 나를 빛나게 하는 거야

This is what makes me shine

우리를 억누르는 건 우리 자신의 두려움

What’s holding us down is our own fear

[25] 아무도 대신 지워줄 수 없어

No one can erase it for us

“Hey,” 용기는 우리 손 안에 있어

Hey, courage is in our own hands,

거울이 금으로 변하다

[30] The mirrors turn gold

우리 미래는 밝아

Our future is bright

“We’ll only burn brighter”

We’ll only burn brighter

• Chorus: Jungkook, Jimin, Taehyung, Seokjin

“If love is a sword, I’m falling on yours”

If love is a sword, I’m falling on yours

“If love is a mirror, I’m” 너의 빛에 눈이 멀어

If love is a mirror, I’m blinded by your light

[5] “This love, oh, oh, oh, this love”

This love, oh, oh, oh, this love

“My love, my love, my love”

My love, my love, my love

• Outro: Taehyung

더 바랄 게 뭐가 있겠는가

What more can we want