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The Plot Twist | 02
Written by @blog-name-idk and @eserethriddle
Summary: Once upon a time you would have jumped at the chance to live the idol girlfriend life. The cameras, the action, the whirlwind romance. But what was once a dream has now become your worst nightmare, and you fully intend to fight the universe as it repeatedly conspires to set you up with your seven perfectly good soulmates from Bangtan Sonyeondan.
In which we punt Y/N into all the fanfiction tropes and you do your feral best to subvert the love story.
Because nani the fuck, you are The Plot Twist.
Pairing: OT7 X Fem!Reader
Genre: Soulmate!AU, crack, humor, idol!AU, light angst, slow burn, romantic comedy, just a fun silly old time
Rating: 18+
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Life is truly unremarkable as a soulmate-less bachelorette.
Thankfully, none of the symptoms Junior Liaison Officer Choi Mijin mentioned to you have occurred – no bodily anomalies, no universal conspirations – and, on the way home from your parents’ place, you chide your anxious self for letting a thirty-minute phone call upturn the joyous revelries of turning twenty-five.
Though of course, even someone like you can see the grandeur behind it. The potential.
Soulmate. Not half of one’s heart, not ‘mi media naranja,’ but soulmate. Someone utmost, born from the same fabric of life – possibly indelicate, and not without flaws – but beautiful, blameless, and immaterially yours.
It’s great. Really great. But it’s daunting, too. There’s unprecedented pressure in that kind of ordeal, and… you like unremarkable. It’s safe. If you were ever going to be remarkable, it would be in ways you can directly control – like getting to the last floor of skull caverns or politely tearing incompetent coworkers to shreds when they challenge you.
But real life? Real personal relationships, with people that matter? That becomes a polynomial. There are too many variables outside of your ability to dictate, too much that could go wrong for you to spend too long mourning the absence of any soulmate symptoms. And anyway, your singularity isn’t your sob story – it’s your defense. Your most effective one.
You get back to your apartment at half past nine the following morning, heavy tupperwares of side dishes prepared by your mother hoisted in tow. At ease, you whistle a cheery tune as you get settled around your kitchenette, arranging each fully packed box amongst refrigerator shelves with care. You help yourself to an enticing pinch of putbaechu and decide to place its tupperware farther down the back.
Yes, that batch probably needed more time to ferment. After all, it’s impossible for napa cabbage kimchi to taste as sweet as cake.
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In his black-and-white checkered pajamas, Jeon Jungkook happily devours the two-tier caramel-frosted cake for breakfast. Furthermore, because he is a considerate maknae, he leaves the vegan, calorie-measured miniature cake for the rest of his hyungs to share when they wake.
They really don't appreciate him enough.
An early riser, also still in pajamas, Kim Seokjin spots him and tuts. “Jungkook, that isn’t healthy.” When Jungkook suddenly spits out the forkful he’d just shoved into his mouth, the eldest grimaces and admonishes, “Yah! I taught you better than that! That is disgusting behavior.”
“You know what’s disgusting?” Jungkook retorts with a revolted scowl, pushing the offensive dessert box far away from his person, lest it insult him yet again. “Surprise vegan cake. I’m going to sleep, hyung. Good night.”
“You mean ‘good morning.’” Seokjin corrects, reaching for the coffee pot with a sigh. “Brat.”
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During your afternoon gaming hours, your phone screen lights up with a notification. Your extended arm worms through sofa pillows to swipe and unlock it, and you instantly growl at the e-mail that greets you.
From: executive-offices@samsong.kr Recipients: yln.yfn@samsong.kr, lee.jaesung@samsong.kr Subject: Executive Meeting on Tuesday
Dear Associates,
We hope this e-mail finds you well.
In preparation for the upcoming work week, we would like to advise your stations re: the exploratory meeting with CEO Son Hyunsuk scheduled for this Thursday at 15:00 (KST) on external company collaborations.
We appreciate your confirmation upon receipt of this notice and bid you a happy weekend.
Regards, Samsong Executive Scheduling
“Jesus Kim Christ, it is a Sunday. This should be illegal,” you swear, placing down the handheld gaming console on the couch next to you and getting up to refill your glass of water instead. Unfortunately, on your return from your hydration quest, you bang your ankle on the leg of the coffee table.
"MotherFUCKER!" you curse, collapsing onto your sofa and cradling your leg for a full minute. After recovering, you pick your console back up.
Idly hovering on the gaming screen, Tom Nook stares up at you with a deadpan glare. You’d think his heavy-lidded, judgmental look was a reaction to your use of offensive language, but you roll your eyes at the prospect.
Tom Nook, the island racoon? A landlord. He can judge all he wants. He’s as evil as company capitalists come.
With somehow even less of a conscience.
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“Ah one, ah two, ah five, six, seven, eight!”
Jung Hoseok snaps his fingers as he moves to the beat, flawlessly demonstrating the first few steps of the dance routine. Kim Taehyung watches him, crouched in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors like a religious student, except he’s also thinking, That is not how arithmetics works. This is why we are performers and not math teachers.
Hoseok seems to catch the faraway look in Taehyung’s expression, because his limbs freeze, dropping to a sudden stop, brown gaze slanting sharp and deadly. The other boys, sensing blood in the water, subtly shift away and try to look as focused as possible.
“What? Would you rather practice cartwheels with Jimin again?” Hoseok rumbles, hand on hip.
Yes…Taehyung laughs nervously. “No.”
Jimin shoots him a knowing look.
“You know,” Hoseok says, pointedly, brandishing his left leg, “I woke up with more bruises from you again. I couldn’t pair my tie-dye top with my denim shorts so now I’m stuck here practicing in my joggers with you instead of walking around Yongsan.”
You’re welcome, Yongsan, Taehyung thinks. Personally, he believes Hoseok’s fashion sense is something of a moving target.
Hit or miss. Miss a lot.
Oh well. Time to bring out the puppy eyes. “Hobi-hyung, can we start from the chorus instead?” He pouts, for cuteness excess.
“Fine!” the dance leader snaps, trying to mask the way the irritation ebbs out of his voice.
Taehyung suppresses a satisfied grin.
Yup. Works every time.
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By the middle of the work week, Min Yoongi has barely scraped by to meet a hard production deadline. Gears still turning in his mind, day lapses into night, unnoticed in the dark haven of his studio. He leisurely strums his guitar for an hour, puts it down, and reaches to compose an accompanying melody with the use of the nearest piano.
Eventually, Yoongi turns off all his music equipment. In his mind, there’s an echo of a tune he can’t shake away. He can barely hear it himself – soft, feminine, slumberous – and he lays back with his eyes closed to savor the ghost of it instead.
He wants to commit it to memory. It’s something he’s never heard before.
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Miles away, you feel pleasantly adrift. It's been months since you moved in, and you hadn’t been aware that your neighbors played music. In fact, the walls between apartment units are assuredly thick enough for all kinds of noises to filter through – a blessing when you get sniped by yet another rune bear.
You're also not really one to enjoy ambient noise outside of your control, but to your surprise, you don't mind this music at all.
It’s nice.
You tuck your knees to your chest and rest your body against the headboard of your bed, closing your eyes to listen. But it seems that the mysterious musician has gone to sleep for the night. Instead, the old made-up lullaby your mother used to sing to you when you were a child filters into your brain unbidden, and you smile at the memory. Within minutes, lightly humming to yourself, you let the notes overtake your thoughts and fall sound asleep.
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Tonight, your dream plays like an old movie. Most of your dreams are like this, but here you feel like you exist in snippets – that you’re a passenger in someone else's skin. Like you’re standing at a different height, taller than reality. The colors seem to cling to the edges of your vision like haloed light through fogged glass when you move, leaving you half-sentient, fighting to see through the haze of your subconscious mind. Like you’re not you.
You wonder where you are. Who.
I want to do more, you hear yourself think in your dream. I want to be more.
You see your feet take you away from backrooms with white walls. Your heart’s near bursting and telling you how much of this it missed, telling you you're finally back where you belong.
This: before your very eyes, an ocean of twinkling violet.
There’s an overwhelming rush of love in your chest as a chant fills the air, expanding throughout your body until it's spilling from your eyes. You can feel the skin of your lips stretch into a smile.
Everything feels like a dream come true.
“I’m your hope!” you tell the roaring crowd.
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Jung Hoseok bolts upright at exactly 6:15 AM.
Letting out a groan, he drops his face into his hands and croaks out, “What the fuck.”
“You okay, hyung?” Jungkook asks, getting ready to turn in for bed himself. It’s his fourth nocturnal day in a row.
Hoseok usually admonishes Jungkook for this kind of misbehavior, but right now he can’t muster enough indignation. It’s just–
“I had a dream. I was a MapleStory livestreamer and – I was really into it. But really? In this economy?” Hoseok continues to complain in his rough morning voice, “I don’t even game.”
Jungkook sniggers, hogging the blankets to himself. “That’s true. Maybe you traded dreams with Jin-hyung?”
Hoseok rubs the spot between his brows. Frowns. It's possible, Jin does love MapleStory. Though lately he's been on a weird arcade game kick despite Namjoon scolding him for being careless in public.
Appeased, he finds the spark to be a proper hyung to their precious maknae. “Don’t sleep at this time tomorrow, JK. If I catch you again, you’re dead at practice. Capisce?”
Jungkook nods a hundred times and buries himself under the sheets. Hobi might lack the broadness and mustache of the stereotypical Italian mobster, but he manages to exude a menacing aura all the same.
“Capeesh, hyung.”
Because he is not a MapleStory livestreamer, Jung Hoseok climbs out of bed at 6:30 in the morning. Because he has a bunch of back-breaking schedules to get to. It’s another Thursday.
No matter what, he’s going to survive. In this economy.
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Thursday meetings are like Monday meetings but from the nine circles of hell combined.
You shuffle into the arcade with a slump in your shoulders but a fire in your heart. The last time you had a day this bad at work was the last time you had come here, to let out your inner rage on tiny dots and cute little ghosts.
You hadn't even realized it was an arcade at first – you had just found your feet moving automatically towards the storefront, as if inexplicably drawn. And as soon as you set foot inside, even before the odd smell of metal tokens that lingers even in arcades with balance cards, an immediate sense of peace washed over you. That this place was safe. That you could enter and put your everyday life and problems on pause for a short, sweet amount of time.
That feeling has remained with each visit, only growing stronger with your increasing familiarity with both the arcade and the elderly owner Lee-ssi, a friendly man who reminds you of your own grandfather.
You're sure that the worn down sight of you in your white blouse and black pencil skirt amidst the backdrop of the rowdy neon arcade is strange, but you figure if your colleagues can release their frustrations by throwing down in public establishments, so can you. In your own way.
The first and last time you went out with your coworkers, the guy from marketing tried to get you to come home with him. So you made up a liver disease to avoid being expected to drink with them again, and are now letting out your frustrations in a much healthier way: against some cocky kid who calls themselves "the Pacman God."
They are pretty good, you will admit.
Just not as good as you.
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There are a few things that never fail to brighten Lee Seungwon's day. Getting to see the half-toothed smile on his baby grandson's face, making his son-in-law uncomfortable when his daughter isn't around, and –
"WHO. DID. THIS?!" Kim Seokjin demands, furiously pointing at the arcade machine standing innocently in the corner, taunting him.
Resisting the urge to laugh, Seungwon only sighs and crosses his arms, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else. Which is truly a front, because despite all the annoyances that come with running an arcade, he truly loves his job. He loves providing a space where kids can be kids, and the rare adult can relive the worry-free days of their youth.
"We respect the privacy of our clients, sir," he says politely, lips twitching at Seokjin's dramatic shriek of outrage. Seungwon has especially been looking forward to this particular adult's reaction upon finding his high score beaten by one of the newer regulars.
"Don't you remember who I am?!" the handsome man questions, and the storekeeper looks him up and down, once again unimpressed. Seokjin remembers he's ensconced in a bright pink hoodie and pink sweatpants, then gives a mental shrug.
Whatever. He looks good in everything.
"Yes. ‘Jin the Pacman God.’ Currently… number two in that game," the shopkeeper sneers as he insults the most handsome man in Korea – possibly the world. "Second to GoDsLaYeR_69." he adds, for good measure.
Seokjin gapes at the audacity of this mortal, his gamer rage only further activated by the offensive words that come out of Seungwon’s mouth next.
"Maybe you should go back," the shopkeeper suggests, inspecting his cuticles, "to MapleStory." After a pause, he puts the final nail in the coffin currently housing Seokjin's pride: "Ahjussi."
The Kim Seokjin, being called ahjussi by a man who looks older than Yoongi's soul?
That's it. That's fucking it.
With gurgling, unintelligible squawks of indignation, Seokjin pulls out his wallet and slaps his arcade card on the counter, followed by his black credit card.
"Load this up with 2,000,000W. Right now."
Lee Seungwon hides a smirk as he obeys.
It's just too easy.
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It had been a rare occasion in which all of the boys’ evenings (and following mornings) had been free simultaneously, and Hoseok decided to celebrate this in a way so rarely possible for them to do together anymore: to find a noraebang and get absolutely wasted.
"How did I let you guys persuade me into doing this again?" Namjoon asks, blinking in a mixture of joy and consternation at the freshly inked, slightly inflamed 7 on his skin. He flexes the side of his leg and watches the clear bandage wrinkle and smooth at the motion.
"Friendship!" Taehyung announces happily, eyes alight as he sways ever so slightly in his chair. Jungkook and Jimin are fully knocked out on each of Taehyung’s shoulders, their demonic sides hidden by the angelic expressions on their sleeping faces.
"No," Yoongi corrects, revealing a bottle of Suntory whisky from god-knows-where. "This."
"Ah, yes!” Eyes bright with satisfaction, Namjoon’s dimples deepen, and Seokjin laughs at how childish Namjoon looks in his glee as he receives his prize and cradles it to his chest with utmost and deliberate regard. With his vision blurred from all of the alcohol, it almost looks like it's disappearing into the leader's ample bosom. “Sunny, my frieeeend!"
Yoongi nods at him, ten times too much, then glances at Taehyung as he narrowly avoids falling off his chair for the umpteenth time. “The infants are fading,” he mutters, “Let’s get them home.”
Twenty minutes later, Hoseok emerges behind a curtain with a brand new tattoo, ready to show it off and receive compliments for being brave and only screaming once.
Except he’s all alone in the waiting room.
He waits a single beat before looking around in confusion.
“Guys?”
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You stumble through your doorway, confused by your body's decision to stop functioning properly. It had begun at the arcade, your normal precision and flawless execution apparently deciding to take its own mental health day and leaving you with slowing reflexes and sloppy reactions.
Finally, you decided to leave after realizing you'd been growling at the machine for the better part of an hour.
Well actually, Lee-ssi had kindly given you a bottle of water and suggested you take a break because you were scaring the kids. You decided to go home lest your happy place become tainted by the miasma of your god-slaying alter ego.
On the train, you nodded off and almost missed your stop – something that never happens. You tripped on your way off the train, and you had initially blamed it on being drowsy, but the trek from the station to your apartment did nothing to dispel your clumsiness.
If you didn't know any better, you would have thought you had gone drinking with your coworkers and were now stumbling home in a drunken haze. But you've been at the arcade since you left work, so that's impossible.
Maybe you're getting sick. That would explain the fogginess in your head, the sluggishness of your limbs.
Feeling under the weather, you spend the night in the dark of your bedroom. But then intense, prickling feelings bug you all over. Instead of the rest you hoped for, the hours are filled with tossing and turning, needle-points on your skin that fall just shy of being painful.
When you wake up, you find your skin tattooed seven different times with the number seven in seven different places.
Um.
What the fuck?