[BTS] 18cm
title: 18cm
rating: T - language
no warnings
word count: 9625
disclaimer: I own the plot and nothing else.
Summary: Seokjin is used to being one of the taller members, that is until one day, he suddenly isn't.
notes: First instalment of the Gateways series.
Ugh, heavy, is the first thing Seokjin thinks as he rouses from sleep. Kind of chilly, is his next thought before his eyes snap open and he realizes that he’s totally devoid of his usual black sleep tee and is somehow propped up awkwardly against something that feels neither like his pillow nor the headboard. He may be lacking sleep, but he’s fairly sure that he’s never, ever woken up like this before. Aside from his current topless and upright situation, he notices that there’s something wrong with his depth perception - everything looks huge, though not blurry. He rules out accidentally sleeping face-first and waking up with foggy vision because he can see every thread in his comforter with perfect, yet frightening, magnified clarity.
“Okay, it’s a dream,” he rationalizes, wriggling but finding himself pinned from the legs down. If this is a dream, it’s one in which his comforter and everything else in the room looks to be about ten times bigger than he is but he shrugs, thinking that it could be fun. In fact, part of him is hoping that one of his Mario figurines will come to life on his shelf and it could be like “Toy Story” except that he’s not like Andy getting rid of his toys; instead, he’d get to hang out with Super Mario and he’d definitely be okay with it if Princess Peach came to life, too.
With some difficulty, he finally manages to wiggle his way out from underneath the comforter, pausing only because one of his arms gets stuck underneath the pillow, and heaves his decidedly nude body over the blanket. Okay, so this is a really weird yet realistic dream, he thinks, hands strategically placed over his front. Even if it’s a dream, he’d rather not have someone walk into the room to find a tiny version of him sprawled naked on top of his comforter. From his vantage point, everything seems the same, just much bigger. The stack of cooking magazines that he’d bought last night on their way back from their final fan sign event at Hot Tracks, for example, are as he left them in a neat stack on his desk. I really wanted to try that pasta recipe today, Seokjin thinks glumly.
Still, he’s not entirely convinced this is reality. People don’t shrink overnight, period. This isn’t Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland where perhaps he ate a tiny bit of a weird little cake the night before and spent the entire night getting smaller until he woke up this size - he’s aware, though, that Alice shrunk fairly rapidly, so he rules out that possibility immediately. This isn’t straight out of Harry Potter where someone used a shrinking charm on him, that is, unless Jimin’s a secret wizard and cast said charm on him because if anyone has a height grudge, it’s their group’s tiny dancer. But Jimin’s too sweet to do that and if the younger male were to shrink anyone, it’d probably be Jungkook. He laughs as how ridiculous this all seems, real or not, and reaches down to pinch his arm in the hopes that he’ll bolt awake and be normal-sized again. His forearm hurts, yet the door looks about a hundred metres too far.
“How do I get out of here?” is the first real problem he recognizes aside from the whole naked-and-a-tenth-of-his-actual-size dilemma. There are a few items on his desk that he could probably hurl at the door in the hopes that someone will come in. If he’s lucky, it’ll be Hoseok who’ll holler bloody murder and freak out, but at least everyone else will wake up and then they can solve this issue together. Even better would be if Yoongi walked into the room; the rapper was probably on his way home from staying up all night working in the studio and he’d take a more level-headed approach to this situation. But first thing’s first: he needs some kind of clothing.
The one plus side to sharing a room with Yoongi is that the rapper prides himself on being adept at arranging furniture to be perfectly square with the room. This means that Seokjin’s night table is flush against the side of his bed and on that table is a tissue box from which he’ll hopefully be able to fashion himself a toga; there’s really nothing else he’ll be able to make short of that or a strapless dress. Thankfully for him, it’s very easy for him to cross the distance from his mattress to the top of the nightstand, but it turns out to be a bit tougher to yank out a single tissue at his current height. Seokjin manages, though, and ends up crafting quite a practical shift dress by first tearing a strip to act as a belt, and then ripping a hole big enough for his head to go through. Clothing problem solved, he stares at his desk that looks so far away.
“I can only go as far as the end of my bed,” he reasons out loud. The logistics of getting from bed to desk - forget door because he doesn’t even want to think about what kind of “Mission: Impossible” moves will require turning the doorknob - and he already knows that this can only end in him lying in a broken heap on the floor. “Or I can sit here and wait for someone to find me,” he adds. Except that they’re on a week-long break and nobody will wake up early if it isn’t absolutely necessary.
It occurs to him, then, that he could try yelling. Hoseok is the lightest sleeper of them all and at this time of morning when it’s dead silent in the dorm, the dancer will likely be able to hear someone crying for help.
“Help! Guys, it’s Seokjin! Wake up and help me!” he shouts at a volume that he only ever reserves for whenever they manage to lose Namjoon at places like rest stops. It’s still early enough that even Hoseok may take a few minutes to actually figure out where all the shouting is coming from, so he keeps yelling. There’s even a split second when Seokjin thinks that it might be a good idea to shove his night table lamp over the edge in the hopes that the sound of it breaking will alert the other members. It’s a limited edition Japan-only ceramic Super Mario and Yoshi lamp, though, so he decides against it.
Five minutes pass, and then ten. By ten, his voice has gone hoarse and he’s certain that nobody will come barging in to find out what’s happened. Collapsing on the nightstand, he’s ready to call it quits and wait it out, but just as he’s about to admit real defeat, he hears the code for their front door being punched in. Excited, he realizes that at 7:30, it’s probably Yoongi back from his studio. Seokjin doesn’t know what to do with himself. He has no voice left in him to yell for help and if Yoongi heads straight to the bathroom, he’ll be left waiting anywhere from an additional ten minutes to half an hour.
The doorknob turns.
“Yoongi, it’s me!” Seokjin tries to yell as the door swings open softly. Even to his own ears, his voice sounds like he’d just done two back-to-back concerts without a break in between.
Yoongi doesn’t notice him, though. He looks at Seokjin’s empty bed and relaxes a bit at not having to sneak around lest he wake up his roommate. Off his beanie and jacket go, his bag gets hung up on a hook and the rapper grabs his face towel, presumably to wash up before passing out.
It’s now or never, Seokjin thinks, heaving against his tissue box instead. The smooth cardboard doesn’t slide as well as he hopes, but with one final push, it tumbles to the floor just as Yoongi grabs his sleep tee and shorts.
“What the -” the rapper says, glancing curiously at the tissue box now lying on its side on the floor. Instead of leaving it there, he walks over to pick it up and when he goes to set it back down on Seokjin’s nightstand, he shouts, “Oh my god” in surprise.
“It’s me! Help me!” Seokjin yells hoarsely, arms waving over his head.
Yoongi kneels down to eye-level with the tabletop before he squeezes his eyes shut, using a free hand to rub at his face. “I’m hallucinating,” he mumbles to himself.
“You’re not. It’s me. It’s Seokjin!” His voice sounds terrible to him, but he has to let his roommate know that it’s not a weird dream or a hallucination.
With a dazed sort of smile, Yoongi reaches forward, muttering about how he needs to sleep better hours and that he’s crazy for even trying to see if this is real or not. “Holy shit!” he yells when fingers come in contact with something solid draped in a tissue.
He’d cry tears of happiness if Yoongi’s grab at him didn’t actually feel like someone had hurtled headfirst into him. “I shrunk!” Seokjin yells, stomping on the tabletop to make some kind of noise.
Again, Yoongi rubs at his eyes in disbelief. He did always joke about how he probably wouldn’t live very long with the way he spends his days in a kind of reverse order from his members, so he figures that maybe this tiny Seokjin illusion is here to tell him that his days are numbered, like a Seokjin-shaped mini reaper. The rapper turns away and Seokjin is so frustrated that he kicks his beloved lamp only to come away hopping on one foot in terrible pain.
“If you’re real, prove it,” says Yoongi, handing over his phone. The screen is unlocked and the cursor for a new Note blinks, waiting to receive text.
The phone is probably only a bit shorter than he is, so even using a whole hand to activate the touch screen might not work, but since he’s barefooted, Seokjin manages to type out, “173cm” and waves a hand over his head, watching as Yoongi’s jaw clenches upon seeing his true height revealed.
“What the hell happened?” yells the rapper. Seokjin finds that he has to cover his ears because he seriously thinks that his eardrums might burst.
Seokjin huffs but sets out to type, “Dunno” with some difficulty.
Face towel and sleep clothes forgotten, Yoongi paces in a tight circle, chewing at his thumbnail. “We have to tell Sejin-hyung or Hobeom-hyung. There’s no lie possible that can explain you just disappearing,” he says.
Seokjin’s about to type out another reply when he realizes that it’s just easier to make an ‘O’ with his arms in agreement. He watches as Yoongi inhales deeply, nodding once.
“Oh, is Seokjin awake?” comes Sejin’s voice from the hallway. He sticks his head into the room where Yoongi had left the door ajar. “Where’d he go?”
Wordlessly, Yoongi pulls their manager into the room and shuts the door softly. “Don’t freak out.”
Sejin just chuckles. “I live with seven boys. What else is there for me to see that I haven’t already?”
“Have a look at the night table and tell me what you see,” Yoongi says. Part of him is glad that Sejin showed up and not Hoseok, although he realizes that the rest of the group will need to be told soon.
The first thing Sejin does after complying with Yoongi’s suggestion is to remove his glasses to check for smudges or dirt. His glasses are clean and with or without them, there’s a remarkably lifelike Seokjin doll in front of him. And it’s moving.
“What.”
“That was my thought at first. I told him to prove himself and look at what he typed out,” Yoongi says, handing his phone over to Sejin.
The manager exhales so slowly and audibly that Yoongi doesn’t know what to think. “Group meeting. Go wake everyone up,” he says softly before passing the phone back in exchange for his own. His fingers hover over the screen as if he’s unsure whether or not to call it in to Bang PD or to wait it out.
Yoongi leaves, deciding to wake up Hoseok first to help rouse the younger members.
“Are you okay?” Sejin asks softly, kneeling down in front of the night table.
Seokjin makes another ‘O’ with his arms.
“Are you scared?”
Another ‘O.’
Sejin sighs. “We’ll figure this out. Let’s wait for everyone in the living room, though,” he suggests, extending an open palm for Seokjin to get on.
***
“What’s so important that we’re all awake before 8?” Namjoon asks sleepily. He throws himself lengthwise onto the sofa and sends the TV remote flying into the coffee table. Nothing breaks, though.
Sejin remains close-lipped.
“Okay, we’re all here,” Hoseok says, wincing from Jungkook’s retaliatory punch after the older male had resorted to biting Jungkook’s shoulder in a desperate attempt to wake him.
“Are we disbanding?” Taehyung asks. He grabs Jimin’s hand tightly.
Yoongi pushes past all of them and takes a seat next to Sejin. “There’s someone missing.”
“Oh, yeah. Where’s Seokjin-hyung?” asks Jungkook. He punctuates the question with a huge yawn, leaning so far over onto Hoseok that the older male just pulls him down and lets Jungkook’s head rest on his thigh.
Yoongi and Sejin share a look. “How are we going to do this?” the rapper whispers.
“Something happened to Seokjin,” the manager starts and immediately as predicted, the group members shout out concern ranging from Hoseok’s more practical, “He had a meltdown and ran home!” to Taehyung’s improbable, “He left to become a Mario impersonator.” Sejin has to physically stand up, towering over them, to get them to stop spinning conspiracies. “He’s fine. Just, here,” he says, shifting away from Yoongi.
This is going to be bad, thinks Seokjin as he walks out from behind Yoongi. He doesn’t even have a voice to assure them that he feels fine.
“Is this some kind of a sick joke?” Hoseok asks. He thrusts himself forward, belly-first, only to promptly reel back in shock. “Seokjin-hyung’s a doll?”
The three youngest are next and Jungkook tries to reach out only to get his hand smacked. “He’s not a doll, so don’t go grabbing at him,” warns Sejin. Taehyung looks like he might cry and Jimin goes stone-faced.
Only Namjoon remains on the sofa. “He shrunk. But we just saw him last night. So he shrunk overnight,” he reasons out loud, eyes fixed to the floor. “What the actual fuck.” He groans, rubbing at his face in frustration. As smart as he might be, there’s nothing in any reputable book that will ever explain how Seokjin went from a relatively tall male to the size of his hands.
Yoongi nods. “Yeah, our thoughts exactly. He seems fine otherwise, but I think he’s having some trouble speaking, so we’ll have to let him communicate with gestures. It seems tough for him to type out messages unless they’re really short.”
A solid minute in silence passes until Hoseok sits up straight and smiles. “He’s really cute, though. I kind of just want to put him in my pocket. He’d actually fit.”
It’s the first time any of them actually laugh that morning.
***
After everyone quickly washes up, they all return to the living room to continue the discussion about what steps to take next.
“We can’t tell PD-nim,” Namjoon says, fussing with the hem of his t-shirt. “Not right away.”
Everyone nods in agreement.
“I don’t think we can leave him alone at home,” Yoongi adds. “It’ll take him forever to text for help with his phone. We’ll have to split up taking care of him.”
Seokjin has half a mind to stomp in protest that he’ll be fine, but the reality of the situation, not being able to reach anything, for example, is something that he’s already faced and that was just trying to figure out how to get out of his room.
“He probably needs clothes,” Taehyung suggests. Everyone nods in agreement again.
“Okay, let’s do that first,” says Sejin. “Taehyung, you and Jimin figure that out. I’ll come up with some sort of schedule with Yoongi and Namjoon. Jungkook, get ready for school.”
Jungkook flails. “Can’t I skip today? It’s kind of a big deal,” he whines.
“You’re on a break from work, not school,” says Namjoon. “Please, just go."
He should probably feel relieved that nobody has really freaked out, but more than anything, Seokjin feels bad for how quickly the rest of the members were delegated tasks to take care of him. It’s supposed to be their week off, yet they’ve all been assigned extra work just to make sure he doesn’t drown in the kitchen sink or fall behind the bookshelf while they’re out enjoying their free time.
***
“Say you’re buying doll clothes for your little sister,” Jimin whispers when they finally find the toy aisle at their local supermarket.
Taehyung stops in front of the knock-off Barbie dolls. “Nobody’s going to care what we buy. Now help me find something for Seokjin-hyung.”
Jimin pouts just the slightest. He knows that Taehyung is right, but he still can’t help feeling embarrassed to be looking at doll clothes with another male. “Fine,” he says. “But we’re buying what I choose. You have crap fashion sense, Tae Tae.”
It turns out that there’s an unsurprising lack of male doll clothes and while they could ask one of the coordinators to sew up something quick, things would just get messier by involving other people. What they do find, however, is a knock-off Luffy doll that looks about Seokjin’s height and actually has removable clothes.
“It’s a vest and shorts,” Jimin states.
Taehyung shrugs. “We can wrap him up in a face towel or something if he gets cold. It’s that or fake Elsa,” the taller male says, pointing to a poor rendering of the snow queen.
They both share a sly grin but pick up the fake Luffy instead.
When they get back to the dorm, neither of them wants to present the doll to Seokjin, but Jimin loses rock paper scissors. “Our choices were really limited,” he insists, taking not-Luffy out of its box.
Seokjin sighs - not that anyone can hear - but nods, holding both arms out to take the two articles of clothing that Jimin strips off of the doll. It could be worse, he thinks, but someone else needs to find him better options soon. Preferably one involving underwear.
Yoongi, Namjoon, and Sejin are too busy at the coffee table with their grid schedule to notice anything until Taehyung and Jimin start laughing, both younger males urging Seokjin to wear the little straw hat, too
“Please?” Jimin begs, palms rubbing together.
Seokjin can’t find it in himself to deny them and grabs the straw hat from the doll and puts it on.
“Hyung, do you also have rubber stretching abilities? Because that would be awesome!” Taehyung says excitedly.
Namjoon, who’d broken away from the serious schedule conversation, can’t contain himself and yells, “Cute!” before collapsing into a fit of giggles.
***
Once the schedule is done and Taehyung and Jimin are occupied with playing video games, Seokjin sits down with the more responsible group to listen to this week’s schedule. Hoseok joins them after getting kicked out of his own room.
“We’re all home today, so you can do whatever you want because any one of us can help,” Yoongi says.
“Right, but starting from tomorrow, we’re all going to be in different places, so you’ll come with Namjoon and me,” Sejin says. “But you’ll be with me since he’s filming.”
Seokjin doesn’t mean to, but he breathes a sigh of relief at not physically being in the leader’s hands. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Namjoon, but he does think about Namjoon’s track record at ruining things and would prefer to not take any risks at his current size.
“What’s that sad face for?” Hoseok asks Namjoon.“It’s pretty obvious that you guys don’t trust me with Seokjin-hyung.”
The dancer scoffs. “Yeah, well you can say you’re sorry about breaking a chair, but what good will sorry do if you snap Seokjin-hyung in half?” Hoseok asks.
The entire table except Namjoon bursts into laughter.
“I won’t!” cries the leader.
Yoongi pats him on the shoulder. “You won’t mean to, but it’ll happen, anyway. Such is life.”
Sejin explains the rest of the schedule - Wednesday at home with Taehyung and Jimin, Thursday at the dance studio with Hoseok, Friday at school with Jungkook, and the weekend with Yoongi at home and the recording studio. - and Seokjin just stares at the paper, surprised by how quickly they all pulled together to make it work.
Seokjin pats his hand on Friday and then holds up both arms to ask why. In a performing arts high school where every student has access to a phone with camera capabilities, the potential for word to get out that he’d shrunk could ruin them
“Most of them are going home towards the end of the week. Namjoon offered to take you, but he’s worried that Rap Monie will try to eat you,” Sejin explains. “The same goes for everyone else who has a dog.”
Again, Seokjin pats the page, but this time on Jungkook’s name.
“His parents are on a trip, so he’ll be staying home. And he has to study for exams, anyway. Friday is only half a day of classes and the other half is self-study time, so I think you’ll be safe as long as you stay in the inner pocket of his blazer or his backpack.”
“Hopefully we won’t need this schedule, but we planned for the week, just in case,” says Yoongi. The look in his eyes is so kind that Seokjin almost wants to cry at how considerate they’re all being because of him.
Hoseok reaches out to pat Seokjin reassuringly but decides against it. Instead, he says with a warm smile, “We’ll figure it out together.”
***
The rest of the day goes without too many troubles outside of bathroom and food issues. While Seokjin may have lost his voice temporarily, he’s strong enough to push doors open or close so long as he’s careful to avoid latching the doorknobs. Food is an entirely different matter. With Seokjin miniaturized and it also being their holiday, everyone agreed that it would be best to order in and that it would be Seokjin’s choice.
“He could probably eat two or three grains of rice and be full,” Hoseok observes when he starts doling out rice for dinner. “So dainty.”
“But how do we feed him the pork hocks?” asks Jungkook, still half in his uniform.
Yoongi picks up a piece of the meat and tears it along the grain. “I guess this’ll have to do.” He places the shred of meat on a Chinese soup spoon that Hoseok had found in the cutlery drawer.
“This is probably the least amount of food Seokjin-hyung’s ever eaten,” Jimin says a bit sadly. His comment earns a round of laughter instead and Seokjin even grins up at them from where he’s seated cross-legged on top of the dining table.
By the time everyone winds down for the evening, they’ve mostly gotten used to the fact that Seokjin is no longer one of the taller people around the house. Taehyung, however, almost sits on him and Namjoon basically keeps his arms tight to his sides until he decides to go to bed.
“Hyung, come here for a second,” Yoongi says from his desk. He rolls over to Seokjin’s desk and extends a hand to bring the older male over to where his laptop screen shows a variety of doll clothing from Gmarket. “We should probably order a few now because I’m pretty sure you’re going to want more choices than a tissue dress or Luffy.”
Surprisingly, there are more choices than he’d though possible, and a few with underwear options, although he tries not to think about why sellers are offering doll underwear. Yoongi relinquishes the mouse and lets Seokjin scroll through the pages, only helping when the miniature member would point at a certain item on the screen.
“You’re sure?” Yoongi asks once they reach the check out page.
Seokjin has to crane his neck to see all of the items in the cart, but he’s fairly certain. What started out as just looking for clothing options turned into a search for cutlery and bedding until Yoongi remembered that Taehyung and Jimin had been at the supermarket earlier. He’d sent them back in search of at least those things and had received two picture messages with confirmation that they had found said items along with some stranger pieces of furniture.
***
Seokjin’s second day at figurine-height is, well, problematic.
“Why can’t we come with you?” Taehyung whines. He’d even entered the kitchen dressed to go in one of his cut-up tees and awful gaucho pants. The only thing he’s missing is some kind of pleather cap.
Hoseok lovingly smacks both Taehyung and Jimin on the back of their respective heads. “Neither of you are figurine-sized and helpless. And for the love of all that is good in this world,” voice starting to take on a shrill nagging tone, “do your laundry instead.” He points an accusatory finger at a heap of dirty clothes belonging to none other than the two same-aged friends standing before him.
“Yes, please do,” Seokjin says wearily from where he’s standing on the kitchen counter. He’d woken up with his voice more or less back to normal and had had to endure a full five minutes of the other members laughing - some until they cried like Hoseok, Taehyung, and Namjoon - at how high-pitched he sounded to their ears. As it so happens, a smaller body with smaller vocal chords makes for his current Mickey Mouse-like voice.
Sejin double-checks his phone for today’s schedule. “We should head out now,” he says, unzipping the outer flap pocket of his backpack for Seokjin to hop into. They’d decided that morning that putting him in shirt or jacket pockets could be hazardous.
“Tell us how many times they need to cut because of Namjoon-hyung!” Jimin calls with a cheery wave.
Seokjin peeks his head out of Sejin’s backpack after one of the assistant producers leaves the dressing room having briefed them on today’s taping. It’s a small room and Namjoon has to share with Tyler who’d already gone on to the green room with the other “Problematic Men” cast members, but Seokjin has an odd feeling of pride at being able to see his group’s leader with his own dressing room.
On the car ride to the studio, Namjoon had explained how the filming worked and that it would probably be a really boring couple of hours for Seokjin. If anything, part of Seokjin is excited to be able to come along and watch, or at least listen, to what goes on when Namjoon attends his weekly solo tapings. On TV, they’d all seen their leader have ups and downs in his scoring, but they’d all wondered what went on during breaks or when tapes needed changing.
The three of them decide that it’s better for Seokjin to sit more comfortably in the back of Sejin’s backpack where there’s more space. Namjoon also offers to throw his phone in the back so that Seokjin will have something to pass the hours that it takes to film one episode.
It’s just that during the second segment, in the middle of watching subtitled cooking videos, a notification for a newly uploaded video pops up. He’s accustomed to using his feet to activate the touch screen and as such, swipes his foot across the glass to get rid of the message; instead, he unwittingly opens the linked video of a very naked and busty Japanese AV starlet making eyes at the camera filming her.
“Oh, no!” Seokjin yells from the bottom of Sejin’s backpack, scrambling to press the sleep/wake button to shut it off. The only thing he’s thankful for is the fact that Namjoon had had the foresight to set his phone to silent mode before handing it over.
Sejin’s standing far enough off set that it’s unlikely anyone else heard Seokjin’s scream, but he turns around anyway and opens his bag wide, whispering, “Are you okay?”
Seokjin sends up a shaky ‘O’ with his arms. He appreciates the female form, but not when a breast is bigger than him - that’s more terrifying to him than it is sexy. He’s probably going to have to have a talk with Namjoon about limiting the porn to devices that a) the leader is less likely to lose and b) ones that don’t also store all of their contacts.
***
His third day is what he imagines running a day care might be like, minus diaper changes and feeding.
With Seokjin miniaturized, Hoseok somehow becomes the mom of the dorm despite the fact that the dancer is all nagging and very little nurturing unless it’s to upset Jimin with excessive displays of affection.
“Stop with the rabbit face and just get ready for school,” Hoseok says to the group’s youngest. He’d replaced puppy dog eyes for a look more befitting of Jungkook’s teeth when the group’s youngest had started making it a habit of begging for a skip day after Seokjin shrank.
“I like Seokjin-hyung better,” whines Jungkook, flinging on his backpack moodily.
Hoseok just smiles before he, Namjoon, and Yoongi leave for the studio.
“We’re looking forward to hanging out with you today,” Taehyung says, beaming. His smile is extra rectangular this morning and that immediately sets Seokjin on alert because today will probably be more like him babysitting twin terrors.
It’s excruciatingly boring for Seokjin to sit and watch Taehyung and Jimin play video games. The first hour is fine, but by hour four, he’s had enough of watching the two talk smack to each other while playing, and he even experiences a moment of fright that he’s really turning into his mother when he yells for them to get off of the couch and clean up the dorm.
And so, the two younger males end up cleaning the stove which they grumbled about the entire time, tidying up the group’s clothing room with some whining added in, and scrubbing down the bathroom with several shrieks after finding what Taehyung called, “mutant hairballs.”
“Why are we doing this again?” asks Jimin. His pants are rolled up to the knee and he’s standing in the bathtub, scrubbing at the shower tiles. “We’re bigger than him.”
Taehyung, currently trying to make sense of everyone’s toothbrushes and where they’re supposed to go after he cleans the sink, shrugs. “He could bite us in our sleep and what if it’s kind of like Spiderman but we don’t get any superpowers because we just shrink?”
Jimin pauses mid-scrub and frowns. “I’m small enough, thanks.”
Seokjin isn’t big enough to hug them for a job well done, but he does make sure, after the rap line return home, to tell Hoseok that the two were responsible for cleaning the dorm. He also makes sure to ask Hoseok to maybe tone down the nagging a tad.
Jimin gazes at him with a look that can only be called cartoon starry eyes and simply says “Hyung” reverently.
***
By mid-week, Namjoon, Yoongi, Taehyung, and Jimin all leave for their respective homes and so it’s Hoseok’s turn to watch over Seokjin. Day four is probably the least stressful so far, barring the possibility that their choreographer may discover him hiding in Hoseok’s duffel bag when they head over to the dance studio a little later.
“If you’re still this size by Friday, I’m going to have to tell Bang PD,” Sejin says solemnly at breakfast.
Hoseok nods in agreement. “I’m kind of surprised we were able to keep it a secret for more than one or two days. But I’m more worried that we’ll get caught and then really be in for it for not saying anything sooner.”
“It’s a good thing this happened while we’re on break,” says Seokjin. It’s not a good thing that this happened at all, but he’ll take what he can get. And he’s thankful that they agreed to keep him away from the company where anyone from a coordinator to an intern might be able to find him.
“That’s a nice way of putting it, hyung,” says Hoseok with a wink. “Now jump into my bag and let’s spend hours working on choreography.”
Seokjin makes a face. “You say that like it’s fun.”
“Because it is fun. You’ll see.”
Three hours later when Hoseok is saturated with sweat, face red from exertion, and legs burning with the build-up of lactic acid, he turns to his bag and gasps, “Not fun” before collapsing.
Seokjin is pretty sure he can laugh freely since the music keeps playing over the studio speakers.
On the walk back home from the dance studio, Seokjin feels the need to tell Hoseok that whether or not working on choreography was fun, he still thinks that the dancer looks the greatest when he’s in his element.
“I’d normally say to you, ‘that’s so cute, I wanna bite you,’ but I’m afraid I might just eat you if I tried that at your current size,” says Hoseok, bursting into raucous laughter.
“And somehow, I’d still feel safer with you than with Namjoon,” Seokjin replies, looking up with a grin to where Hoseok had unzipped his duffel.
***
It’s finally Friday and Seokjin feels more tired than ever. He figures it has to do with being sedentary while waiting in the bottom of someone’s bag day after day. Today, though, he can’t say he’s at all excited to be sitting in the bottom of Jungkook’s bag. And not only because it still faintly smells of the apple vinegar that the younger male hadn’t capped properly yet tossed into his bag anyway.
“Why can’t I just stay at home with Seokjin-hyung?” Jungkook asks. He’s sporting a wicked cowlick on the side of his head and a pillow crease running right through the middle of his eye like Kakashi’s scar in “Naruto.”
Sejin looks at him pointedly. “You have exams. You’re graduating.”
The group’s youngest looks like he’s going to say something, but he closes his mouth when Seokjin reaches up from where he’s standing on the dining table to grab Jungkook’s pinkie finger. “It’s just half a day of lessons. And I’ll be with you. I’m not saying I’ll be able to help with math, but if you get called on to answer something in other classes, I might be able to help you,” he offers. He’d overheard Sejin and Hobeom last year discuss their mutual worries about Jungkook’s homeroom teacher’s comments in his final report card and thought maybe he’d be able to help today if necessary.
“That’s not - ah, fine, I’ll get ready,” says Jungkook, eyes downcast.
First period, Korean, turns out to be as dry as Seokjin remembers, but at least he’d been going to a school that didn’t cost an arm and a leg to attend. He thought with all of these kids geared towards careers in the entertainment industry that they’d have the best teachers, but even he ended up dozing on top of a folded towel in Jungkook’s backpack while the teacher droned on about some 300-year old poem. He only wakes up when the chimes for the end of the period ring throughout the school.
“Do you think you’ll be fine for the exam?” Seokjin asks during break.
Jungkook pulls out his phone to make it look like he’s taking a call. Nobody needs to think he’s a crazy person having a conversation with himself or worse, that he’s talking to a tiny Kim Seokjin currently just hanging out in his backpack.
“Yeah, I think so.”
Seokjin can’t see, but he can hear students milling around the classroom, groaning about their upcoming exams or talking about last night’s drama. It occurs to him that Jungkook’s still at his desk. “Just shut your bag for a bit and go hang out with your friends. Nobody will find me in here if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Jungkook slumps forward, phone pressed to his cheek. “No, it’s okay. I don’t have anything to say to them.”
“Trust me. Just go walk around and clear your head. Math is next, isn’t it?” Seokjin asks.
“Just, please don't,” the younger male pleads. “Let’s just get through today.”
“Oh, okay,” Seokjin replies, somewhat crestfallen.
He remembers later on the way home from school that they’d all joked with Jungkook about this, but the reality leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth that he regrets pushing the younger male to interact with people who are nothing but classmates. It breaks Seokjin’s heart to have witnessed Jungkook’s daily loneliness.
That night when Yoongi comes back after two days with his family, he finds Seokjin curled up on his tiny doll bed and doesn’t know what to do when the older male tells him that maybe they need to pay attention to Jungkook a bit more.
It so happens that Sejin is supposed to tell Bang PD the ridiculous-sounding news that Bangtan’s very own Kim Seokjin has shrunken down to about 18 centimetres. But nobody’s surprised when the manager decides against it.
“Why’d you change your mind?” asks Yoongi after Jungkook disappears to his and Namjoon’s room to study.
The manager glances at the clock on his phone. It’s just past midnight meaning that it’s already Saturday. “Let’s give it until the end of the week. The worst could be that we tell him, he goes ballistic, and Seokjin turns back to normal some time during the weekend.
“When we could have just kept quiet like nothing had happened at all,” finishes Yoongi. “Hyung, what do you think?”
Seokjin shrugs. He’s the one who shrank, so it doesn’t really matter if it’s now or later that other people know so long as it doesn’t ruin the group. “I’ll wait it out.”
***
Day six turns into a sleep-in day for everyone still left at the dorms, even for Seokjin who’d ended up staring at the vast ceiling of his shared room until some ungodly hour. Still, he ends up waking up in the late morning and heads over to the living room to watch a weekend cooking show until the others wake.
“Hey, it’s kind of like that pasta dish I was going to make,” he exclaims, pointing to the screen. Seokjin can’t help the slump in his shoulders at not being able to make it for the members. Having eaten takeout for a whole week, regardless of his current size, makes him feel more tired than usual and his hands itch to be back in the kitchen chopping, stirring, and frying.
But the week hasn’t been all that bad, he realizes, when a sappy commercial comes on for a group of friends sitting down to a round of refreshing beer. While there is really no actual positive to him being shrunken, he did get a chance to see different sides of his group mates that he’s certain only Sejin, Hobeom, or any of their other staff members have seen when they split up to do their own work. Some of the days spent with his friends have been predictable like with Taehyung and Jimin, and others less so like with Jungkook, yet he can’t help but feel much closer to each of them. They’ve said in several interviews in the past that they know each other well after having lived together for a few years, but he can probably say with confidence now that it’s completely true for him.
He probably will still have to sit down with Namjoon to talk about the phone porn, though.
“Oh, there you are,” Yoongi says through a yawn. He stretches, groaning about stiff muscles, before sitting down on the couch next to Seokjin. He’s careful to sit on his own cushion after Taehyung had nearly sank their tiny member in between the couch cushions by throwing himself recklessly onto the furniture.
“You could have slept some more,” Seokjin chides, having to crane his neck to look up at Yoongi.
The rapper simply waves him off. “I’ll just nap later if I’m tired.”
“You’re always tired,” jokes Seokjin. “We’ve lost count of how many times you’ve fallen asleep in every position imaginable. We didn’t know anybody could fall asleep standing in line to go through immigrations at an airport until we saw you do it in Incheon.”
The rapper grins widely. “Fair enough. But I’m up now. Want me to make something to eat?” Yoongi offers. He knows that cooking programs always make people want to eat while watching and he can’t imagine that Seokjin would be any different.
Seokjin grins up at him. “Can I make a suggestion?”
“You can never tell anyone about this, hyung,” Yoongi insists nearly twenty minutes into their joint cooking effort. “I don’t know why you talked me into letting you pull this ‘Ratatouille’ thing on me,” he grumbles, trying not to scratch at his head where Seokjin is currently sitting, or rather, wriggling around excitedly at the prospect of being able to cook again.
“Because you love me,” says the older male teasingly.
Yoongi will probably never admit that it’s actually really cute to be living out an animated movie with a human and thankfully not a rat, and that said human is Seokjin who kindly guides him through the cooking process. He very nearly shudders to think how badly this moment would go if it were Hoseok perched on his head instead of Seokjin. If he’s completely honest, though, he’d never let Hoseok try this with him.
“Salt the water,” instructs Seokjin.
“Hyung, I can do this much,” Yoongi assures the other male. He doesn’t point out that the cooking magazine is lying open to the recipe just to the left of the stove and that it says to do so in step five.
Seokjin tugs a little too enthusiastically at the younger male’s hair. “I know, but it’s so important to salt the water. It’s a basic step that some people don’t think is important, you know.”
Normally, Yoongi would probably shake his head and laugh wryly, but at the risk of sending Seokjin hurtling towards a boiling pot of water, he opts to just laugh, head tilted away from the burners.
“This is really good,” says Seokjin after they manage to finish making the meal without incident. Granted, he’s got one spaghettini noodle coiled up on a plastic Pororo dollhouse plate, but the garlic kick is there and it’s heavenly.
Yoongi nods. “You’re still not telling anyone we pulled a ‘Ratatouille’ to do this, though.”
Grinning widely, Seokjin proposes a deal: “I won’t tell if you try the ‘Lady and the Tramp’ spaghetti thing with me.”
The rapper gawks at Seokjin. He hasn’t seen the older male in such a playful mood in a while and although it’s a nice change, he’s the tiniest bit afraid to find out what else he might get roped into doing. “Maybe when you’re back to your original size. I’d basically be eating the spaghetti on my own if we tried it now.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
***
Seokjin’s seventh day at his current size is one in which he’s starting to think that this could be permanent. He might have had a few fun days spent with his friends, but after waking up days in a row at his current tiny height and the fact that their break is nearing its end, he can’t help but allow his very realistic and practical side to tell him to prepare for everything to turn on its head. He can already envision the endless articles, interviews, and press conferences for the day that Bangtan Sonyeondan disbands because its oldest member, Kim Seokjin, decides to leave the group. It’s the only logical explanation Big Hit will ever be able to give and he already hates himself for it.
Yoongi finds him curled up on the window seat in the living room after a late lunch since they’d all slept in again, this time after a horror movie marathon that Jungkook had insisted on since he’d been stuck at school for most of their break. A stack of books and CDs that Namjoon had left behind were all the makeshift stairway that Seokjin had needed to find his way up there.
“Do you want to talk about it?” asks the rapper. Yoongi normally never wants to talk feelings with anyone, but it’s strange for him to see how glum Seokjin has become since he’d last seen the older male.
“It’s all my fault,” Seokjin says. He’s staring down at the slow Sunday afternoon traffic several floors down.
Gingerly, Yoongi takes a seat next to the older male and simply extends his hand palm up. He watches Seokjin hesitate but climb on.
“I’ll just be out here, so holler if you need help,” Yoongi says before leaving the bathroom.
They’d all figured out a system for how Seokjin could bathe without accidentally slipping down the sink drain and it was mostly thanks to Taehyung’s hawk-like ability to locate useful doll items. The younger male had actually found a kitschy little bathtub-shower combo that had some kind of pump contraption to force water from the bathtub portion into a tube and out of the fixed showerhead. The bonus for Seokjin was that it came in a bright pink colour and even had a kitschy little scrap of plastic to act as the shower curtain.
“I’ll be fine, thanks,” Seokjin calls.
It’s strange, he thinks, looking in the sink mirror how nothing looks out of place in his appearance other than the fact that he’s the same size as many of his beloved figurines. His face still looks the same size it always has been according to the reflection if he ignores how the slope of the faucet handle beside him looks more like a chrome kiddie slide. His shoulders are still as wide as he remembers.
“Weird,” he mumbles to his reflection, fingering the lone hoop still in his earlobe. Nothing else on his body had shrunken down with him the morning that he’d woken up significantly smaller than even a newborn baby.
“Yoongi!” shouts Seokjin. He needs to get off of the sink right now. “Yoongi, get in here now!”
The rapper flings the bathroom door open. “Are you stuck? What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain it later, but put me on the floor, please.”
Dumbly, Yoongi picks Seokjin up carefully and places him gently on to the tiled floor of the bathroom.
“How did I not notice it until now?” Seokjin mutters angrily, hands coming up to undo the fastener on the only earring he’d been wearing all week. He’d been in a rush that morning for their last set of schedules before their week break and had forgotten to put in earrings after removing the set he’d nearly been living in over the past month. He didn’t even know whose earring he was wearing since he’d just grabbed one from their bin of new accessories.
The earring slips out easily enough, yet somehow he’s still staring way up at Yoongi. Jungkook, who’d been studying just a room away, joins Yoongi in the doorway of the bathroom and asks what’s going on.
“Are you okay?” Yoongi asks.
Shocked silent, Seokjin just sits there in his not-Luffy shorts for a full minute before he firmly says, “No.”
Freshly bathed but bitter, Seokjin slumps, cross-legged from his perch on the crown of Yoongi’s head. They hadn’t said anything since then with Seokjin dwelling on what else could have made him this way, and Yoongi working on a track in Cubase.
Seokjin watches with mild disinterest as the younger male drags and moves clips along the length of the track; from what he can hear quite clearly from Yoongi’s headphones, it’s another hip hop song, perhaps one for a mix tape that the rapper has postponed countless times to date.
“I’ve been working on this for you for a while now,” Yoongi says softly, just as the song preview slips into what sounds like it could be a bridge part.
“I’m pretty sure nobody wants to pay to hear me rap,” says Seokjin dryly.
Yoongi points to the bottom of the screen where the filename ‘for seokjin hyung’ clearly shows in the taskbar. “It’s not a full song for you, but the singing parts are all yours."
Seokjin doesn’t know how to react.
“I’m pretty sure nobody wants to pay to hear me sing, hyung,” Yoongi adds with just the slightest hint of a smile. “Come down here for a sec,” he says, reaching up to let the older male down.
“I think I’m going to be stuck like this,” Seokjin says, back facing Yoongi. His eyes are trained on the rise and fall of the wavelength forms on the computer screen. If this were any other day when he wasn’t less than 20 centimetres tall, he might have been excited at the prospect of recording a song with just Yoongi.
“You don’t know that, hyung,” Yoongi says softly. He pauses the track, suddenly irritated by the bass thumps of the song.
Seokjin taps the smooth glass of the screen where the filename shows. “I can’t record that. Not with this voice. And I can’t promote it looking like this. I’m going to mess this up for all of us.
In the handful of years he’s known Seokjin, Yoongi has probably never seen the older male this pessimistic about anything. Even when vocal coaches scolded him for his singing, even when their frustrated dance teachers left supplemental lessons up to their fellow members, Seokjin had put in more work into improving himself than anyone Yoongi knew.
“What do we do?”
Yoongi leans forward and rests his chin on the flattened backs of his hands, eyes trained to Seokjin. “Whatever it takes. We’ll be with you no matter what.”
Seokjin ends up feigning exhaustion and begs off to bed, but in his current state, Yoongi suggests that just once, they push their beds together and sleep that way. He reasons that maybe Seokjin just needs a good night’s rest and they both know, after having fallen asleep often enough mid-movie marathons, that they seemed to sleep more comfortably in close proximity to one another. They’d surmised, after the first time they’d woken up shoulder-to-shoulder and well rested, that it was probably leftover from years of sleeping in one room with the rest of the members.
The older male doesn’t protest when Yoongi yanks his comforter to the middle of where their beds are flush against each other so that Seokjin doesn’t slip through or get caught in the minuscule gap where Seokjin’s bed ends and Yoongi’s begins. He lets the rapper tuck him in wordlessly before Yoongi crosses the short space between the beds and his desk to complete his work.
“Good night,” Seokjin calls just before Yoongi puts his headphones on again. His dollhouse blanket is just a little short, its top edge not enough to fully cover his chest, and so he curls in on himself sideways, cheek pressed to a fluffy cotton ball pillow.
“I won’t be that much longer. Night, hyung,” Yoongi says from his desk.
***
Cold, is the first thing Seokjin senses as he rouses blearily from sleep.
“Oh, this again,” is the first thing he says when he realizes that he’s completely naked next to Yoongi. His doll blanket looks remarkably like a fluffy hand towel from his current vantage point and there’s a cotton ball stuck in his fringe.
To all of their memories, the only person who had even come remotely to sleeping naked had to have been Hoseok who’d fallen asleep in his boxers while waiting for his turn to shower, or Jungkook who routinely sleeps either shirtless or strips himself throughout the night. Seokjin in the present is a whole different level of bare. He even pinches himself just like the last time he woke up in a predicament exactly a week ago. It still hurts, but at least he’s back to his regular size.
“Get up,” he hisses to Yoongi, trying to grab some edge or corner of his comforter to at least cover up a little. Unfortunately for him, the rapper had effectively swaddled himself in Seokjin’s comforter, probably so that he wouldn’t suffocate the then-smaller Seokjin if he moved while sleeping.
Seokjin does the next best thing and leans over to bite Yoongi’s ear. The rapper stirs and mumbles incoherently, groaning halfway into his pillow. “Get up. Crisis, Yoongi, crisis,” Seokjin says before he bites the other male again, but this time much harder.
“Ow, what the hell,” grouses the younger male, cracking open an eye.
Seokjin grins nervously and shifts closer. “Uh, so I’m not little anymore.”
Yoongi simply replies, “Oh, okay,” before turning away from the other male. A beat passes before he whips himself around to face Seokjin once more. “You’re back to yourself.” One of his hands wiggles out from where he’d rolled himself up burrito-style and rubs at his eyes just in case, and Seokjin looks like the same man prior to one week ago.
“Yeah, I think so. But, uh, you mind sharing the blankets with me? I’m kind of exposed here,” says Seokjin with a soft laugh.
Yoongi glances down for the briefest of moments before darting back up to meet the older male’s eyes. “No kidding.”
Hoseok effectively wakes up everyone in the dorm when he walks into the kitchen for a glass of water and finds Seokjin standing at the stove making breakfast. He, like the rest of the members visiting home, had trickled in late in the night to their respective rooms in time for the end of their weeklong break.
“This isn’t some weird kind of group dream, right?” Jungkook asks. He’s aware that all eyes are on Seokjin, but it still doesn’t deter the younger male from sidling up to Seokjin despite how the rest of them seem to keep pressing closer as if nobody believes that everything is back to normal.
Seokjin smiles. “I highly doubt it.”
Namjoon exhales loudly, relieved. “I walked around for a week like some sort of leashed toddler in the dishes section of a department store!”
“Yeah, I’m surprised you didn’t hurt Seokjin-hyung at all,” Hoseok says with a grin.
Seokjin can say with confidence that he grew up in a very loving home, but the past week with his friends and what they did for him makes him so emotional that he can’t help the tears that slip down his cheeks. He doesn’t have much time to cry when the three youngest start pointing fingers at who made Seokjin cry and he has to laugh at how nothing really has changed.
“We’re glad you’re back and you’re okay,” Namjoon says, clasping a warm hand around Seokjin’s.
“You still could hurt him, though,” says Hoseok to everyone else’s delight.
Taehyung leans in and inspects Seokjin’s ears. “You think it might have been that earring you wore?”
Seokjin nods. He’d had a brief talk about it with Yoongi the night he removed the earring, but because he had remained the same small size, they both thought it might have been that accessories that are part of the body like earrings, would shrink as well. And because he’d been in a bad mood after not changing back, they had both refrained from discussing it further.
“It could have happened to any one of us,” says Yoongi.
“Too bad it didn’t happen to Jimin-hyung,” Jungkook says, snickering behind the safety of Seokjin’s broad shoulders.
And just like that, with an upcoming slew of schedules, nobody has time to dwell on the fact that Seokjin had spent a week like a living figurine; there are too many dance practices, music show tapings, and concert rehearsals.
One thing changes, though.
“You’ve been coming home early for the past couple of days,” Hoseok comments as he passes by Yoongi in the hallway on the way to his room. It’s just past midnight.
Yoongi yawns a bit forcefully. “I need sleep more than working on music right now.” He’s lying and they both know it - they’re the two who check in on Seokjin more than any of the other members, more so after the “incident,” they decided to name it.
“Right,” Hoseok drawls. “Because swagtastic Min Suga suddenly thinks it’s the responsible thing to do by going to bed before ass o’clock.” He winks greasily and that earns him one of Yoongi’s many withering stares, to which he laughs loudly before escaping into the depths of the noisiest room in the dorms.
It’s to Yoongi’s surprise when he walks into his room to see Seokjin pushing their beds together.
“Up for a movie? I don’t think we’re going to be able to sleep with the Mario Kart party going on next door,” Seokjin explains with a slight frown. The fact that he’s already pushed their beds together and has the TV on tells Yoongi that while it might seem like he has a choice, “no” is probably not going to be the right answer. And truthfully, even if he were nearly asleep on his feet right, he still wouldn’t know how to refuse.
“Sure. But I get to choose.”
Seokjin grins at that. “Only if you promise not to hog the quilt.”
rating: T - language
no warnings
word count: 9625
disclaimer: I own the plot and nothing else.
Summary: Seokjin is used to being one of the taller members, that is until one day, he suddenly isn't.
notes: First instalment of the Gateways series.
Ugh, heavy, is the first thing Seokjin thinks as he rouses from sleep. Kind of chilly, is his next thought before his eyes snap open and he realizes that he’s totally devoid of his usual black sleep tee and is somehow propped up awkwardly against something that feels neither like his pillow nor the headboard. He may be lacking sleep, but he’s fairly sure that he’s never, ever woken up like this before. Aside from his current topless and upright situation, he notices that there’s something wrong with his depth perception - everything looks huge, though not blurry. He rules out accidentally sleeping face-first and waking up with foggy vision because he can see every thread in his comforter with perfect, yet frightening, magnified clarity.
“Okay, it’s a dream,” he rationalizes, wriggling but finding himself pinned from the legs down. If this is a dream, it’s one in which his comforter and everything else in the room looks to be about ten times bigger than he is but he shrugs, thinking that it could be fun. In fact, part of him is hoping that one of his Mario figurines will come to life on his shelf and it could be like “Toy Story” except that he’s not like Andy getting rid of his toys; instead, he’d get to hang out with Super Mario and he’d definitely be okay with it if Princess Peach came to life, too.
With some difficulty, he finally manages to wiggle his way out from underneath the comforter, pausing only because one of his arms gets stuck underneath the pillow, and heaves his decidedly nude body over the blanket. Okay, so this is a really weird yet realistic dream, he thinks, hands strategically placed over his front. Even if it’s a dream, he’d rather not have someone walk into the room to find a tiny version of him sprawled naked on top of his comforter. From his vantage point, everything seems the same, just much bigger. The stack of cooking magazines that he’d bought last night on their way back from their final fan sign event at Hot Tracks, for example, are as he left them in a neat stack on his desk. I really wanted to try that pasta recipe today, Seokjin thinks glumly.
Still, he’s not entirely convinced this is reality. People don’t shrink overnight, period. This isn’t Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland where perhaps he ate a tiny bit of a weird little cake the night before and spent the entire night getting smaller until he woke up this size - he’s aware, though, that Alice shrunk fairly rapidly, so he rules out that possibility immediately. This isn’t straight out of Harry Potter where someone used a shrinking charm on him, that is, unless Jimin’s a secret wizard and cast said charm on him because if anyone has a height grudge, it’s their group’s tiny dancer. But Jimin’s too sweet to do that and if the younger male were to shrink anyone, it’d probably be Jungkook. He laughs as how ridiculous this all seems, real or not, and reaches down to pinch his arm in the hopes that he’ll bolt awake and be normal-sized again. His forearm hurts, yet the door looks about a hundred metres too far.
“How do I get out of here?” is the first real problem he recognizes aside from the whole naked-and-a-tenth-of-his-actual-size dilemma. There are a few items on his desk that he could probably hurl at the door in the hopes that someone will come in. If he’s lucky, it’ll be Hoseok who’ll holler bloody murder and freak out, but at least everyone else will wake up and then they can solve this issue together. Even better would be if Yoongi walked into the room; the rapper was probably on his way home from staying up all night working in the studio and he’d take a more level-headed approach to this situation. But first thing’s first: he needs some kind of clothing.
The one plus side to sharing a room with Yoongi is that the rapper prides himself on being adept at arranging furniture to be perfectly square with the room. This means that Seokjin’s night table is flush against the side of his bed and on that table is a tissue box from which he’ll hopefully be able to fashion himself a toga; there’s really nothing else he’ll be able to make short of that or a strapless dress. Thankfully for him, it’s very easy for him to cross the distance from his mattress to the top of the nightstand, but it turns out to be a bit tougher to yank out a single tissue at his current height. Seokjin manages, though, and ends up crafting quite a practical shift dress by first tearing a strip to act as a belt, and then ripping a hole big enough for his head to go through. Clothing problem solved, he stares at his desk that looks so far away.
“I can only go as far as the end of my bed,” he reasons out loud. The logistics of getting from bed to desk - forget door because he doesn’t even want to think about what kind of “Mission: Impossible” moves will require turning the doorknob - and he already knows that this can only end in him lying in a broken heap on the floor. “Or I can sit here and wait for someone to find me,” he adds. Except that they’re on a week-long break and nobody will wake up early if it isn’t absolutely necessary.
It occurs to him, then, that he could try yelling. Hoseok is the lightest sleeper of them all and at this time of morning when it’s dead silent in the dorm, the dancer will likely be able to hear someone crying for help.
“Help! Guys, it’s Seokjin! Wake up and help me!” he shouts at a volume that he only ever reserves for whenever they manage to lose Namjoon at places like rest stops. It’s still early enough that even Hoseok may take a few minutes to actually figure out where all the shouting is coming from, so he keeps yelling. There’s even a split second when Seokjin thinks that it might be a good idea to shove his night table lamp over the edge in the hopes that the sound of it breaking will alert the other members. It’s a limited edition Japan-only ceramic Super Mario and Yoshi lamp, though, so he decides against it.
Five minutes pass, and then ten. By ten, his voice has gone hoarse and he’s certain that nobody will come barging in to find out what’s happened. Collapsing on the nightstand, he’s ready to call it quits and wait it out, but just as he’s about to admit real defeat, he hears the code for their front door being punched in. Excited, he realizes that at 7:30, it’s probably Yoongi back from his studio. Seokjin doesn’t know what to do with himself. He has no voice left in him to yell for help and if Yoongi heads straight to the bathroom, he’ll be left waiting anywhere from an additional ten minutes to half an hour.
The doorknob turns.
“Yoongi, it’s me!” Seokjin tries to yell as the door swings open softly. Even to his own ears, his voice sounds like he’d just done two back-to-back concerts without a break in between.
Yoongi doesn’t notice him, though. He looks at Seokjin’s empty bed and relaxes a bit at not having to sneak around lest he wake up his roommate. Off his beanie and jacket go, his bag gets hung up on a hook and the rapper grabs his face towel, presumably to wash up before passing out.
It’s now or never, Seokjin thinks, heaving against his tissue box instead. The smooth cardboard doesn’t slide as well as he hopes, but with one final push, it tumbles to the floor just as Yoongi grabs his sleep tee and shorts.
“What the -” the rapper says, glancing curiously at the tissue box now lying on its side on the floor. Instead of leaving it there, he walks over to pick it up and when he goes to set it back down on Seokjin’s nightstand, he shouts, “Oh my god” in surprise.
“It’s me! Help me!” Seokjin yells hoarsely, arms waving over his head.
Yoongi kneels down to eye-level with the tabletop before he squeezes his eyes shut, using a free hand to rub at his face. “I’m hallucinating,” he mumbles to himself.
“You’re not. It’s me. It’s Seokjin!” His voice sounds terrible to him, but he has to let his roommate know that it’s not a weird dream or a hallucination.
With a dazed sort of smile, Yoongi reaches forward, muttering about how he needs to sleep better hours and that he’s crazy for even trying to see if this is real or not. “Holy shit!” he yells when fingers come in contact with something solid draped in a tissue.
He’d cry tears of happiness if Yoongi’s grab at him didn’t actually feel like someone had hurtled headfirst into him. “I shrunk!” Seokjin yells, stomping on the tabletop to make some kind of noise.
Again, Yoongi rubs at his eyes in disbelief. He did always joke about how he probably wouldn’t live very long with the way he spends his days in a kind of reverse order from his members, so he figures that maybe this tiny Seokjin illusion is here to tell him that his days are numbered, like a Seokjin-shaped mini reaper. The rapper turns away and Seokjin is so frustrated that he kicks his beloved lamp only to come away hopping on one foot in terrible pain.
“If you’re real, prove it,” says Yoongi, handing over his phone. The screen is unlocked and the cursor for a new Note blinks, waiting to receive text.
The phone is probably only a bit shorter than he is, so even using a whole hand to activate the touch screen might not work, but since he’s barefooted, Seokjin manages to type out, “173cm” and waves a hand over his head, watching as Yoongi’s jaw clenches upon seeing his true height revealed.
“What the hell happened?” yells the rapper. Seokjin finds that he has to cover his ears because he seriously thinks that his eardrums might burst.
Seokjin huffs but sets out to type, “Dunno” with some difficulty.
Face towel and sleep clothes forgotten, Yoongi paces in a tight circle, chewing at his thumbnail. “We have to tell Sejin-hyung or Hobeom-hyung. There’s no lie possible that can explain you just disappearing,” he says.
Seokjin’s about to type out another reply when he realizes that it’s just easier to make an ‘O’ with his arms in agreement. He watches as Yoongi inhales deeply, nodding once.
“Oh, is Seokjin awake?” comes Sejin’s voice from the hallway. He sticks his head into the room where Yoongi had left the door ajar. “Where’d he go?”
Wordlessly, Yoongi pulls their manager into the room and shuts the door softly. “Don’t freak out.”
Sejin just chuckles. “I live with seven boys. What else is there for me to see that I haven’t already?”
“Have a look at the night table and tell me what you see,” Yoongi says. Part of him is glad that Sejin showed up and not Hoseok, although he realizes that the rest of the group will need to be told soon.
The first thing Sejin does after complying with Yoongi’s suggestion is to remove his glasses to check for smudges or dirt. His glasses are clean and with or without them, there’s a remarkably lifelike Seokjin doll in front of him. And it’s moving.
“What.”
“That was my thought at first. I told him to prove himself and look at what he typed out,” Yoongi says, handing his phone over to Sejin.
The manager exhales so slowly and audibly that Yoongi doesn’t know what to think. “Group meeting. Go wake everyone up,” he says softly before passing the phone back in exchange for his own. His fingers hover over the screen as if he’s unsure whether or not to call it in to Bang PD or to wait it out.
Yoongi leaves, deciding to wake up Hoseok first to help rouse the younger members.
“Are you okay?” Sejin asks softly, kneeling down in front of the night table.
Seokjin makes another ‘O’ with his arms.
“Are you scared?”
Another ‘O.’
Sejin sighs. “We’ll figure this out. Let’s wait for everyone in the living room, though,” he suggests, extending an open palm for Seokjin to get on.
***
“What’s so important that we’re all awake before 8?” Namjoon asks sleepily. He throws himself lengthwise onto the sofa and sends the TV remote flying into the coffee table. Nothing breaks, though.
Sejin remains close-lipped.
“Okay, we’re all here,” Hoseok says, wincing from Jungkook’s retaliatory punch after the older male had resorted to biting Jungkook’s shoulder in a desperate attempt to wake him.
“Are we disbanding?” Taehyung asks. He grabs Jimin’s hand tightly.
Yoongi pushes past all of them and takes a seat next to Sejin. “There’s someone missing.”
“Oh, yeah. Where’s Seokjin-hyung?” asks Jungkook. He punctuates the question with a huge yawn, leaning so far over onto Hoseok that the older male just pulls him down and lets Jungkook’s head rest on his thigh.
Yoongi and Sejin share a look. “How are we going to do this?” the rapper whispers.
“Something happened to Seokjin,” the manager starts and immediately as predicted, the group members shout out concern ranging from Hoseok’s more practical, “He had a meltdown and ran home!” to Taehyung’s improbable, “He left to become a Mario impersonator.” Sejin has to physically stand up, towering over them, to get them to stop spinning conspiracies. “He’s fine. Just, here,” he says, shifting away from Yoongi.
This is going to be bad, thinks Seokjin as he walks out from behind Yoongi. He doesn’t even have a voice to assure them that he feels fine.
“Is this some kind of a sick joke?” Hoseok asks. He thrusts himself forward, belly-first, only to promptly reel back in shock. “Seokjin-hyung’s a doll?”
The three youngest are next and Jungkook tries to reach out only to get his hand smacked. “He’s not a doll, so don’t go grabbing at him,” warns Sejin. Taehyung looks like he might cry and Jimin goes stone-faced.
Only Namjoon remains on the sofa. “He shrunk. But we just saw him last night. So he shrunk overnight,” he reasons out loud, eyes fixed to the floor. “What the actual fuck.” He groans, rubbing at his face in frustration. As smart as he might be, there’s nothing in any reputable book that will ever explain how Seokjin went from a relatively tall male to the size of his hands.
Yoongi nods. “Yeah, our thoughts exactly. He seems fine otherwise, but I think he’s having some trouble speaking, so we’ll have to let him communicate with gestures. It seems tough for him to type out messages unless they’re really short.”
A solid minute in silence passes until Hoseok sits up straight and smiles. “He’s really cute, though. I kind of just want to put him in my pocket. He’d actually fit.”
It’s the first time any of them actually laugh that morning.
***
After everyone quickly washes up, they all return to the living room to continue the discussion about what steps to take next.
“We can’t tell PD-nim,” Namjoon says, fussing with the hem of his t-shirt. “Not right away.”
Everyone nods in agreement.
“I don’t think we can leave him alone at home,” Yoongi adds. “It’ll take him forever to text for help with his phone. We’ll have to split up taking care of him.”
Seokjin has half a mind to stomp in protest that he’ll be fine, but the reality of the situation, not being able to reach anything, for example, is something that he’s already faced and that was just trying to figure out how to get out of his room.
“He probably needs clothes,” Taehyung suggests. Everyone nods in agreement again.
“Okay, let’s do that first,” says Sejin. “Taehyung, you and Jimin figure that out. I’ll come up with some sort of schedule with Yoongi and Namjoon. Jungkook, get ready for school.”
Jungkook flails. “Can’t I skip today? It’s kind of a big deal,” he whines.
“You’re on a break from work, not school,” says Namjoon. “Please, just go."
He should probably feel relieved that nobody has really freaked out, but more than anything, Seokjin feels bad for how quickly the rest of the members were delegated tasks to take care of him. It’s supposed to be their week off, yet they’ve all been assigned extra work just to make sure he doesn’t drown in the kitchen sink or fall behind the bookshelf while they’re out enjoying their free time.
***
“Say you’re buying doll clothes for your little sister,” Jimin whispers when they finally find the toy aisle at their local supermarket.
Taehyung stops in front of the knock-off Barbie dolls. “Nobody’s going to care what we buy. Now help me find something for Seokjin-hyung.”
Jimin pouts just the slightest. He knows that Taehyung is right, but he still can’t help feeling embarrassed to be looking at doll clothes with another male. “Fine,” he says. “But we’re buying what I choose. You have crap fashion sense, Tae Tae.”
It turns out that there’s an unsurprising lack of male doll clothes and while they could ask one of the coordinators to sew up something quick, things would just get messier by involving other people. What they do find, however, is a knock-off Luffy doll that looks about Seokjin’s height and actually has removable clothes.
“It’s a vest and shorts,” Jimin states.
Taehyung shrugs. “We can wrap him up in a face towel or something if he gets cold. It’s that or fake Elsa,” the taller male says, pointing to a poor rendering of the snow queen.
They both share a sly grin but pick up the fake Luffy instead.
When they get back to the dorm, neither of them wants to present the doll to Seokjin, but Jimin loses rock paper scissors. “Our choices were really limited,” he insists, taking not-Luffy out of its box.
Seokjin sighs - not that anyone can hear - but nods, holding both arms out to take the two articles of clothing that Jimin strips off of the doll. It could be worse, he thinks, but someone else needs to find him better options soon. Preferably one involving underwear.
Yoongi, Namjoon, and Sejin are too busy at the coffee table with their grid schedule to notice anything until Taehyung and Jimin start laughing, both younger males urging Seokjin to wear the little straw hat, too
“Please?” Jimin begs, palms rubbing together.
Seokjin can’t find it in himself to deny them and grabs the straw hat from the doll and puts it on.
“Hyung, do you also have rubber stretching abilities? Because that would be awesome!” Taehyung says excitedly.
Namjoon, who’d broken away from the serious schedule conversation, can’t contain himself and yells, “Cute!” before collapsing into a fit of giggles.
***
Once the schedule is done and Taehyung and Jimin are occupied with playing video games, Seokjin sits down with the more responsible group to listen to this week’s schedule. Hoseok joins them after getting kicked out of his own room.
“We’re all home today, so you can do whatever you want because any one of us can help,” Yoongi says.
“Right, but starting from tomorrow, we’re all going to be in different places, so you’ll come with Namjoon and me,” Sejin says. “But you’ll be with me since he’s filming.”
Seokjin doesn’t mean to, but he breathes a sigh of relief at not physically being in the leader’s hands. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Namjoon, but he does think about Namjoon’s track record at ruining things and would prefer to not take any risks at his current size.
“What’s that sad face for?” Hoseok asks Namjoon.“It’s pretty obvious that you guys don’t trust me with Seokjin-hyung.”
The dancer scoffs. “Yeah, well you can say you’re sorry about breaking a chair, but what good will sorry do if you snap Seokjin-hyung in half?” Hoseok asks.
The entire table except Namjoon bursts into laughter.
“I won’t!” cries the leader.
Yoongi pats him on the shoulder. “You won’t mean to, but it’ll happen, anyway. Such is life.”
Sejin explains the rest of the schedule - Wednesday at home with Taehyung and Jimin, Thursday at the dance studio with Hoseok, Friday at school with Jungkook, and the weekend with Yoongi at home and the recording studio. - and Seokjin just stares at the paper, surprised by how quickly they all pulled together to make it work.
Seokjin pats his hand on Friday and then holds up both arms to ask why. In a performing arts high school where every student has access to a phone with camera capabilities, the potential for word to get out that he’d shrunk could ruin them
“Most of them are going home towards the end of the week. Namjoon offered to take you, but he’s worried that Rap Monie will try to eat you,” Sejin explains. “The same goes for everyone else who has a dog.”
Again, Seokjin pats the page, but this time on Jungkook’s name.
“His parents are on a trip, so he’ll be staying home. And he has to study for exams, anyway. Friday is only half a day of classes and the other half is self-study time, so I think you’ll be safe as long as you stay in the inner pocket of his blazer or his backpack.”
“Hopefully we won’t need this schedule, but we planned for the week, just in case,” says Yoongi. The look in his eyes is so kind that Seokjin almost wants to cry at how considerate they’re all being because of him.
Hoseok reaches out to pat Seokjin reassuringly but decides against it. Instead, he says with a warm smile, “We’ll figure it out together.”
***
The rest of the day goes without too many troubles outside of bathroom and food issues. While Seokjin may have lost his voice temporarily, he’s strong enough to push doors open or close so long as he’s careful to avoid latching the doorknobs. Food is an entirely different matter. With Seokjin miniaturized and it also being their holiday, everyone agreed that it would be best to order in and that it would be Seokjin’s choice.
“He could probably eat two or three grains of rice and be full,” Hoseok observes when he starts doling out rice for dinner. “So dainty.”
“But how do we feed him the pork hocks?” asks Jungkook, still half in his uniform.
Yoongi picks up a piece of the meat and tears it along the grain. “I guess this’ll have to do.” He places the shred of meat on a Chinese soup spoon that Hoseok had found in the cutlery drawer.
“This is probably the least amount of food Seokjin-hyung’s ever eaten,” Jimin says a bit sadly. His comment earns a round of laughter instead and Seokjin even grins up at them from where he’s seated cross-legged on top of the dining table.
By the time everyone winds down for the evening, they’ve mostly gotten used to the fact that Seokjin is no longer one of the taller people around the house. Taehyung, however, almost sits on him and Namjoon basically keeps his arms tight to his sides until he decides to go to bed.
“Hyung, come here for a second,” Yoongi says from his desk. He rolls over to Seokjin’s desk and extends a hand to bring the older male over to where his laptop screen shows a variety of doll clothing from Gmarket. “We should probably order a few now because I’m pretty sure you’re going to want more choices than a tissue dress or Luffy.”
Surprisingly, there are more choices than he’d though possible, and a few with underwear options, although he tries not to think about why sellers are offering doll underwear. Yoongi relinquishes the mouse and lets Seokjin scroll through the pages, only helping when the miniature member would point at a certain item on the screen.
“You’re sure?” Yoongi asks once they reach the check out page.
Seokjin has to crane his neck to see all of the items in the cart, but he’s fairly certain. What started out as just looking for clothing options turned into a search for cutlery and bedding until Yoongi remembered that Taehyung and Jimin had been at the supermarket earlier. He’d sent them back in search of at least those things and had received two picture messages with confirmation that they had found said items along with some stranger pieces of furniture.
***
Seokjin’s second day at figurine-height is, well, problematic.
“Why can’t we come with you?” Taehyung whines. He’d even entered the kitchen dressed to go in one of his cut-up tees and awful gaucho pants. The only thing he’s missing is some kind of pleather cap.
Hoseok lovingly smacks both Taehyung and Jimin on the back of their respective heads. “Neither of you are figurine-sized and helpless. And for the love of all that is good in this world,” voice starting to take on a shrill nagging tone, “do your laundry instead.” He points an accusatory finger at a heap of dirty clothes belonging to none other than the two same-aged friends standing before him.
“Yes, please do,” Seokjin says wearily from where he’s standing on the kitchen counter. He’d woken up with his voice more or less back to normal and had had to endure a full five minutes of the other members laughing - some until they cried like Hoseok, Taehyung, and Namjoon - at how high-pitched he sounded to their ears. As it so happens, a smaller body with smaller vocal chords makes for his current Mickey Mouse-like voice.
Sejin double-checks his phone for today’s schedule. “We should head out now,” he says, unzipping the outer flap pocket of his backpack for Seokjin to hop into. They’d decided that morning that putting him in shirt or jacket pockets could be hazardous.
“Tell us how many times they need to cut because of Namjoon-hyung!” Jimin calls with a cheery wave.
Seokjin peeks his head out of Sejin’s backpack after one of the assistant producers leaves the dressing room having briefed them on today’s taping. It’s a small room and Namjoon has to share with Tyler who’d already gone on to the green room with the other “Problematic Men” cast members, but Seokjin has an odd feeling of pride at being able to see his group’s leader with his own dressing room.
On the car ride to the studio, Namjoon had explained how the filming worked and that it would probably be a really boring couple of hours for Seokjin. If anything, part of Seokjin is excited to be able to come along and watch, or at least listen, to what goes on when Namjoon attends his weekly solo tapings. On TV, they’d all seen their leader have ups and downs in his scoring, but they’d all wondered what went on during breaks or when tapes needed changing.
The three of them decide that it’s better for Seokjin to sit more comfortably in the back of Sejin’s backpack where there’s more space. Namjoon also offers to throw his phone in the back so that Seokjin will have something to pass the hours that it takes to film one episode.
It’s just that during the second segment, in the middle of watching subtitled cooking videos, a notification for a newly uploaded video pops up. He’s accustomed to using his feet to activate the touch screen and as such, swipes his foot across the glass to get rid of the message; instead, he unwittingly opens the linked video of a very naked and busty Japanese AV starlet making eyes at the camera filming her.
“Oh, no!” Seokjin yells from the bottom of Sejin’s backpack, scrambling to press the sleep/wake button to shut it off. The only thing he’s thankful for is the fact that Namjoon had had the foresight to set his phone to silent mode before handing it over.
Sejin’s standing far enough off set that it’s unlikely anyone else heard Seokjin’s scream, but he turns around anyway and opens his bag wide, whispering, “Are you okay?”
Seokjin sends up a shaky ‘O’ with his arms. He appreciates the female form, but not when a breast is bigger than him - that’s more terrifying to him than it is sexy. He’s probably going to have to have a talk with Namjoon about limiting the porn to devices that a) the leader is less likely to lose and b) ones that don’t also store all of their contacts.
***
His third day is what he imagines running a day care might be like, minus diaper changes and feeding.
With Seokjin miniaturized, Hoseok somehow becomes the mom of the dorm despite the fact that the dancer is all nagging and very little nurturing unless it’s to upset Jimin with excessive displays of affection.
“Stop with the rabbit face and just get ready for school,” Hoseok says to the group’s youngest. He’d replaced puppy dog eyes for a look more befitting of Jungkook’s teeth when the group’s youngest had started making it a habit of begging for a skip day after Seokjin shrank.
“I like Seokjin-hyung better,” whines Jungkook, flinging on his backpack moodily.
Hoseok just smiles before he, Namjoon, and Yoongi leave for the studio.
“We’re looking forward to hanging out with you today,” Taehyung says, beaming. His smile is extra rectangular this morning and that immediately sets Seokjin on alert because today will probably be more like him babysitting twin terrors.
It’s excruciatingly boring for Seokjin to sit and watch Taehyung and Jimin play video games. The first hour is fine, but by hour four, he’s had enough of watching the two talk smack to each other while playing, and he even experiences a moment of fright that he’s really turning into his mother when he yells for them to get off of the couch and clean up the dorm.
And so, the two younger males end up cleaning the stove which they grumbled about the entire time, tidying up the group’s clothing room with some whining added in, and scrubbing down the bathroom with several shrieks after finding what Taehyung called, “mutant hairballs.”
“Why are we doing this again?” asks Jimin. His pants are rolled up to the knee and he’s standing in the bathtub, scrubbing at the shower tiles. “We’re bigger than him.”
Taehyung, currently trying to make sense of everyone’s toothbrushes and where they’re supposed to go after he cleans the sink, shrugs. “He could bite us in our sleep and what if it’s kind of like Spiderman but we don’t get any superpowers because we just shrink?”
Jimin pauses mid-scrub and frowns. “I’m small enough, thanks.”
Seokjin isn’t big enough to hug them for a job well done, but he does make sure, after the rap line return home, to tell Hoseok that the two were responsible for cleaning the dorm. He also makes sure to ask Hoseok to maybe tone down the nagging a tad.
Jimin gazes at him with a look that can only be called cartoon starry eyes and simply says “Hyung” reverently.
***
By mid-week, Namjoon, Yoongi, Taehyung, and Jimin all leave for their respective homes and so it’s Hoseok’s turn to watch over Seokjin. Day four is probably the least stressful so far, barring the possibility that their choreographer may discover him hiding in Hoseok’s duffel bag when they head over to the dance studio a little later.
“If you’re still this size by Friday, I’m going to have to tell Bang PD,” Sejin says solemnly at breakfast.
Hoseok nods in agreement. “I’m kind of surprised we were able to keep it a secret for more than one or two days. But I’m more worried that we’ll get caught and then really be in for it for not saying anything sooner.”
“It’s a good thing this happened while we’re on break,” says Seokjin. It’s not a good thing that this happened at all, but he’ll take what he can get. And he’s thankful that they agreed to keep him away from the company where anyone from a coordinator to an intern might be able to find him.
“That’s a nice way of putting it, hyung,” says Hoseok with a wink. “Now jump into my bag and let’s spend hours working on choreography.”
Seokjin makes a face. “You say that like it’s fun.”
“Because it is fun. You’ll see.”
Three hours later when Hoseok is saturated with sweat, face red from exertion, and legs burning with the build-up of lactic acid, he turns to his bag and gasps, “Not fun” before collapsing.
Seokjin is pretty sure he can laugh freely since the music keeps playing over the studio speakers.
On the walk back home from the dance studio, Seokjin feels the need to tell Hoseok that whether or not working on choreography was fun, he still thinks that the dancer looks the greatest when he’s in his element.
“I’d normally say to you, ‘that’s so cute, I wanna bite you,’ but I’m afraid I might just eat you if I tried that at your current size,” says Hoseok, bursting into raucous laughter.
“And somehow, I’d still feel safer with you than with Namjoon,” Seokjin replies, looking up with a grin to where Hoseok had unzipped his duffel.
***
It’s finally Friday and Seokjin feels more tired than ever. He figures it has to do with being sedentary while waiting in the bottom of someone’s bag day after day. Today, though, he can’t say he’s at all excited to be sitting in the bottom of Jungkook’s bag. And not only because it still faintly smells of the apple vinegar that the younger male hadn’t capped properly yet tossed into his bag anyway.
“Why can’t I just stay at home with Seokjin-hyung?” Jungkook asks. He’s sporting a wicked cowlick on the side of his head and a pillow crease running right through the middle of his eye like Kakashi’s scar in “Naruto.”
Sejin looks at him pointedly. “You have exams. You’re graduating.”
The group’s youngest looks like he’s going to say something, but he closes his mouth when Seokjin reaches up from where he’s standing on the dining table to grab Jungkook’s pinkie finger. “It’s just half a day of lessons. And I’ll be with you. I’m not saying I’ll be able to help with math, but if you get called on to answer something in other classes, I might be able to help you,” he offers. He’d overheard Sejin and Hobeom last year discuss their mutual worries about Jungkook’s homeroom teacher’s comments in his final report card and thought maybe he’d be able to help today if necessary.
“That’s not - ah, fine, I’ll get ready,” says Jungkook, eyes downcast.
First period, Korean, turns out to be as dry as Seokjin remembers, but at least he’d been going to a school that didn’t cost an arm and a leg to attend. He thought with all of these kids geared towards careers in the entertainment industry that they’d have the best teachers, but even he ended up dozing on top of a folded towel in Jungkook’s backpack while the teacher droned on about some 300-year old poem. He only wakes up when the chimes for the end of the period ring throughout the school.
“Do you think you’ll be fine for the exam?” Seokjin asks during break.
Jungkook pulls out his phone to make it look like he’s taking a call. Nobody needs to think he’s a crazy person having a conversation with himself or worse, that he’s talking to a tiny Kim Seokjin currently just hanging out in his backpack.
“Yeah, I think so.”
Seokjin can’t see, but he can hear students milling around the classroom, groaning about their upcoming exams or talking about last night’s drama. It occurs to him that Jungkook’s still at his desk. “Just shut your bag for a bit and go hang out with your friends. Nobody will find me in here if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Jungkook slumps forward, phone pressed to his cheek. “No, it’s okay. I don’t have anything to say to them.”
“Trust me. Just go walk around and clear your head. Math is next, isn’t it?” Seokjin asks.
“Just, please don't,” the younger male pleads. “Let’s just get through today.”
“Oh, okay,” Seokjin replies, somewhat crestfallen.
He remembers later on the way home from school that they’d all joked with Jungkook about this, but the reality leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth that he regrets pushing the younger male to interact with people who are nothing but classmates. It breaks Seokjin’s heart to have witnessed Jungkook’s daily loneliness.
That night when Yoongi comes back after two days with his family, he finds Seokjin curled up on his tiny doll bed and doesn’t know what to do when the older male tells him that maybe they need to pay attention to Jungkook a bit more.
It so happens that Sejin is supposed to tell Bang PD the ridiculous-sounding news that Bangtan’s very own Kim Seokjin has shrunken down to about 18 centimetres. But nobody’s surprised when the manager decides against it.
“Why’d you change your mind?” asks Yoongi after Jungkook disappears to his and Namjoon’s room to study.
The manager glances at the clock on his phone. It’s just past midnight meaning that it’s already Saturday. “Let’s give it until the end of the week. The worst could be that we tell him, he goes ballistic, and Seokjin turns back to normal some time during the weekend.
“When we could have just kept quiet like nothing had happened at all,” finishes Yoongi. “Hyung, what do you think?”
Seokjin shrugs. He’s the one who shrank, so it doesn’t really matter if it’s now or later that other people know so long as it doesn’t ruin the group. “I’ll wait it out.”
***
Day six turns into a sleep-in day for everyone still left at the dorms, even for Seokjin who’d ended up staring at the vast ceiling of his shared room until some ungodly hour. Still, he ends up waking up in the late morning and heads over to the living room to watch a weekend cooking show until the others wake.
“Hey, it’s kind of like that pasta dish I was going to make,” he exclaims, pointing to the screen. Seokjin can’t help the slump in his shoulders at not being able to make it for the members. Having eaten takeout for a whole week, regardless of his current size, makes him feel more tired than usual and his hands itch to be back in the kitchen chopping, stirring, and frying.
But the week hasn’t been all that bad, he realizes, when a sappy commercial comes on for a group of friends sitting down to a round of refreshing beer. While there is really no actual positive to him being shrunken, he did get a chance to see different sides of his group mates that he’s certain only Sejin, Hobeom, or any of their other staff members have seen when they split up to do their own work. Some of the days spent with his friends have been predictable like with Taehyung and Jimin, and others less so like with Jungkook, yet he can’t help but feel much closer to each of them. They’ve said in several interviews in the past that they know each other well after having lived together for a few years, but he can probably say with confidence now that it’s completely true for him.
He probably will still have to sit down with Namjoon to talk about the phone porn, though.
“Oh, there you are,” Yoongi says through a yawn. He stretches, groaning about stiff muscles, before sitting down on the couch next to Seokjin. He’s careful to sit on his own cushion after Taehyung had nearly sank their tiny member in between the couch cushions by throwing himself recklessly onto the furniture.
“You could have slept some more,” Seokjin chides, having to crane his neck to look up at Yoongi.
The rapper simply waves him off. “I’ll just nap later if I’m tired.”
“You’re always tired,” jokes Seokjin. “We’ve lost count of how many times you’ve fallen asleep in every position imaginable. We didn’t know anybody could fall asleep standing in line to go through immigrations at an airport until we saw you do it in Incheon.”
The rapper grins widely. “Fair enough. But I’m up now. Want me to make something to eat?” Yoongi offers. He knows that cooking programs always make people want to eat while watching and he can’t imagine that Seokjin would be any different.
Seokjin grins up at him. “Can I make a suggestion?”
“You can never tell anyone about this, hyung,” Yoongi insists nearly twenty minutes into their joint cooking effort. “I don’t know why you talked me into letting you pull this ‘Ratatouille’ thing on me,” he grumbles, trying not to scratch at his head where Seokjin is currently sitting, or rather, wriggling around excitedly at the prospect of being able to cook again.
“Because you love me,” says the older male teasingly.
Yoongi will probably never admit that it’s actually really cute to be living out an animated movie with a human and thankfully not a rat, and that said human is Seokjin who kindly guides him through the cooking process. He very nearly shudders to think how badly this moment would go if it were Hoseok perched on his head instead of Seokjin. If he’s completely honest, though, he’d never let Hoseok try this with him.
“Salt the water,” instructs Seokjin.
“Hyung, I can do this much,” Yoongi assures the other male. He doesn’t point out that the cooking magazine is lying open to the recipe just to the left of the stove and that it says to do so in step five.
Seokjin tugs a little too enthusiastically at the younger male’s hair. “I know, but it’s so important to salt the water. It’s a basic step that some people don’t think is important, you know.”
Normally, Yoongi would probably shake his head and laugh wryly, but at the risk of sending Seokjin hurtling towards a boiling pot of water, he opts to just laugh, head tilted away from the burners.
“This is really good,” says Seokjin after they manage to finish making the meal without incident. Granted, he’s got one spaghettini noodle coiled up on a plastic Pororo dollhouse plate, but the garlic kick is there and it’s heavenly.
Yoongi nods. “You’re still not telling anyone we pulled a ‘Ratatouille’ to do this, though.”
Grinning widely, Seokjin proposes a deal: “I won’t tell if you try the ‘Lady and the Tramp’ spaghetti thing with me.”
The rapper gawks at Seokjin. He hasn’t seen the older male in such a playful mood in a while and although it’s a nice change, he’s the tiniest bit afraid to find out what else he might get roped into doing. “Maybe when you’re back to your original size. I’d basically be eating the spaghetti on my own if we tried it now.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
***
Seokjin’s seventh day at his current size is one in which he’s starting to think that this could be permanent. He might have had a few fun days spent with his friends, but after waking up days in a row at his current tiny height and the fact that their break is nearing its end, he can’t help but allow his very realistic and practical side to tell him to prepare for everything to turn on its head. He can already envision the endless articles, interviews, and press conferences for the day that Bangtan Sonyeondan disbands because its oldest member, Kim Seokjin, decides to leave the group. It’s the only logical explanation Big Hit will ever be able to give and he already hates himself for it.
Yoongi finds him curled up on the window seat in the living room after a late lunch since they’d all slept in again, this time after a horror movie marathon that Jungkook had insisted on since he’d been stuck at school for most of their break. A stack of books and CDs that Namjoon had left behind were all the makeshift stairway that Seokjin had needed to find his way up there.
“Do you want to talk about it?” asks the rapper. Yoongi normally never wants to talk feelings with anyone, but it’s strange for him to see how glum Seokjin has become since he’d last seen the older male.
“It’s all my fault,” Seokjin says. He’s staring down at the slow Sunday afternoon traffic several floors down.
Gingerly, Yoongi takes a seat next to the older male and simply extends his hand palm up. He watches Seokjin hesitate but climb on.
“I’ll just be out here, so holler if you need help,” Yoongi says before leaving the bathroom.
They’d all figured out a system for how Seokjin could bathe without accidentally slipping down the sink drain and it was mostly thanks to Taehyung’s hawk-like ability to locate useful doll items. The younger male had actually found a kitschy little bathtub-shower combo that had some kind of pump contraption to force water from the bathtub portion into a tube and out of the fixed showerhead. The bonus for Seokjin was that it came in a bright pink colour and even had a kitschy little scrap of plastic to act as the shower curtain.
“I’ll be fine, thanks,” Seokjin calls.
It’s strange, he thinks, looking in the sink mirror how nothing looks out of place in his appearance other than the fact that he’s the same size as many of his beloved figurines. His face still looks the same size it always has been according to the reflection if he ignores how the slope of the faucet handle beside him looks more like a chrome kiddie slide. His shoulders are still as wide as he remembers.
“Weird,” he mumbles to his reflection, fingering the lone hoop still in his earlobe. Nothing else on his body had shrunken down with him the morning that he’d woken up significantly smaller than even a newborn baby.
“Yoongi!” shouts Seokjin. He needs to get off of the sink right now. “Yoongi, get in here now!”
The rapper flings the bathroom door open. “Are you stuck? What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain it later, but put me on the floor, please.”
Dumbly, Yoongi picks Seokjin up carefully and places him gently on to the tiled floor of the bathroom.
“How did I not notice it until now?” Seokjin mutters angrily, hands coming up to undo the fastener on the only earring he’d been wearing all week. He’d been in a rush that morning for their last set of schedules before their week break and had forgotten to put in earrings after removing the set he’d nearly been living in over the past month. He didn’t even know whose earring he was wearing since he’d just grabbed one from their bin of new accessories.
The earring slips out easily enough, yet somehow he’s still staring way up at Yoongi. Jungkook, who’d been studying just a room away, joins Yoongi in the doorway of the bathroom and asks what’s going on.
“Are you okay?” Yoongi asks.
Shocked silent, Seokjin just sits there in his not-Luffy shorts for a full minute before he firmly says, “No.”
Freshly bathed but bitter, Seokjin slumps, cross-legged from his perch on the crown of Yoongi’s head. They hadn’t said anything since then with Seokjin dwelling on what else could have made him this way, and Yoongi working on a track in Cubase.
Seokjin watches with mild disinterest as the younger male drags and moves clips along the length of the track; from what he can hear quite clearly from Yoongi’s headphones, it’s another hip hop song, perhaps one for a mix tape that the rapper has postponed countless times to date.
“I’ve been working on this for you for a while now,” Yoongi says softly, just as the song preview slips into what sounds like it could be a bridge part.
“I’m pretty sure nobody wants to pay to hear me rap,” says Seokjin dryly.
Yoongi points to the bottom of the screen where the filename ‘for seokjin hyung’ clearly shows in the taskbar. “It’s not a full song for you, but the singing parts are all yours."
Seokjin doesn’t know how to react.
“I’m pretty sure nobody wants to pay to hear me sing, hyung,” Yoongi adds with just the slightest hint of a smile. “Come down here for a sec,” he says, reaching up to let the older male down.
“I think I’m going to be stuck like this,” Seokjin says, back facing Yoongi. His eyes are trained on the rise and fall of the wavelength forms on the computer screen. If this were any other day when he wasn’t less than 20 centimetres tall, he might have been excited at the prospect of recording a song with just Yoongi.
“You don’t know that, hyung,” Yoongi says softly. He pauses the track, suddenly irritated by the bass thumps of the song.
Seokjin taps the smooth glass of the screen where the filename shows. “I can’t record that. Not with this voice. And I can’t promote it looking like this. I’m going to mess this up for all of us.
In the handful of years he’s known Seokjin, Yoongi has probably never seen the older male this pessimistic about anything. Even when vocal coaches scolded him for his singing, even when their frustrated dance teachers left supplemental lessons up to their fellow members, Seokjin had put in more work into improving himself than anyone Yoongi knew.
“What do we do?”
Yoongi leans forward and rests his chin on the flattened backs of his hands, eyes trained to Seokjin. “Whatever it takes. We’ll be with you no matter what.”
Seokjin ends up feigning exhaustion and begs off to bed, but in his current state, Yoongi suggests that just once, they push their beds together and sleep that way. He reasons that maybe Seokjin just needs a good night’s rest and they both know, after having fallen asleep often enough mid-movie marathons, that they seemed to sleep more comfortably in close proximity to one another. They’d surmised, after the first time they’d woken up shoulder-to-shoulder and well rested, that it was probably leftover from years of sleeping in one room with the rest of the members.
The older male doesn’t protest when Yoongi yanks his comforter to the middle of where their beds are flush against each other so that Seokjin doesn’t slip through or get caught in the minuscule gap where Seokjin’s bed ends and Yoongi’s begins. He lets the rapper tuck him in wordlessly before Yoongi crosses the short space between the beds and his desk to complete his work.
“Good night,” Seokjin calls just before Yoongi puts his headphones on again. His dollhouse blanket is just a little short, its top edge not enough to fully cover his chest, and so he curls in on himself sideways, cheek pressed to a fluffy cotton ball pillow.
“I won’t be that much longer. Night, hyung,” Yoongi says from his desk.
***
Cold, is the first thing Seokjin senses as he rouses blearily from sleep.
“Oh, this again,” is the first thing he says when he realizes that he’s completely naked next to Yoongi. His doll blanket looks remarkably like a fluffy hand towel from his current vantage point and there’s a cotton ball stuck in his fringe.
To all of their memories, the only person who had even come remotely to sleeping naked had to have been Hoseok who’d fallen asleep in his boxers while waiting for his turn to shower, or Jungkook who routinely sleeps either shirtless or strips himself throughout the night. Seokjin in the present is a whole different level of bare. He even pinches himself just like the last time he woke up in a predicament exactly a week ago. It still hurts, but at least he’s back to his regular size.
“Get up,” he hisses to Yoongi, trying to grab some edge or corner of his comforter to at least cover up a little. Unfortunately for him, the rapper had effectively swaddled himself in Seokjin’s comforter, probably so that he wouldn’t suffocate the then-smaller Seokjin if he moved while sleeping.
Seokjin does the next best thing and leans over to bite Yoongi’s ear. The rapper stirs and mumbles incoherently, groaning halfway into his pillow. “Get up. Crisis, Yoongi, crisis,” Seokjin says before he bites the other male again, but this time much harder.
“Ow, what the hell,” grouses the younger male, cracking open an eye.
Seokjin grins nervously and shifts closer. “Uh, so I’m not little anymore.”
Yoongi simply replies, “Oh, okay,” before turning away from the other male. A beat passes before he whips himself around to face Seokjin once more. “You’re back to yourself.” One of his hands wiggles out from where he’d rolled himself up burrito-style and rubs at his eyes just in case, and Seokjin looks like the same man prior to one week ago.
“Yeah, I think so. But, uh, you mind sharing the blankets with me? I’m kind of exposed here,” says Seokjin with a soft laugh.
Yoongi glances down for the briefest of moments before darting back up to meet the older male’s eyes. “No kidding.”
Hoseok effectively wakes up everyone in the dorm when he walks into the kitchen for a glass of water and finds Seokjin standing at the stove making breakfast. He, like the rest of the members visiting home, had trickled in late in the night to their respective rooms in time for the end of their weeklong break.
“This isn’t some weird kind of group dream, right?” Jungkook asks. He’s aware that all eyes are on Seokjin, but it still doesn’t deter the younger male from sidling up to Seokjin despite how the rest of them seem to keep pressing closer as if nobody believes that everything is back to normal.
Seokjin smiles. “I highly doubt it.”
Namjoon exhales loudly, relieved. “I walked around for a week like some sort of leashed toddler in the dishes section of a department store!”
“Yeah, I’m surprised you didn’t hurt Seokjin-hyung at all,” Hoseok says with a grin.
Seokjin can say with confidence that he grew up in a very loving home, but the past week with his friends and what they did for him makes him so emotional that he can’t help the tears that slip down his cheeks. He doesn’t have much time to cry when the three youngest start pointing fingers at who made Seokjin cry and he has to laugh at how nothing really has changed.
“We’re glad you’re back and you’re okay,” Namjoon says, clasping a warm hand around Seokjin’s.
“You still could hurt him, though,” says Hoseok to everyone else’s delight.
Taehyung leans in and inspects Seokjin’s ears. “You think it might have been that earring you wore?”
Seokjin nods. He’d had a brief talk about it with Yoongi the night he removed the earring, but because he had remained the same small size, they both thought it might have been that accessories that are part of the body like earrings, would shrink as well. And because he’d been in a bad mood after not changing back, they had both refrained from discussing it further.
“It could have happened to any one of us,” says Yoongi.
“Too bad it didn’t happen to Jimin-hyung,” Jungkook says, snickering behind the safety of Seokjin’s broad shoulders.
And just like that, with an upcoming slew of schedules, nobody has time to dwell on the fact that Seokjin had spent a week like a living figurine; there are too many dance practices, music show tapings, and concert rehearsals.
One thing changes, though.
“You’ve been coming home early for the past couple of days,” Hoseok comments as he passes by Yoongi in the hallway on the way to his room. It’s just past midnight.
Yoongi yawns a bit forcefully. “I need sleep more than working on music right now.” He’s lying and they both know it - they’re the two who check in on Seokjin more than any of the other members, more so after the “incident,” they decided to name it.
“Right,” Hoseok drawls. “Because swagtastic Min Suga suddenly thinks it’s the responsible thing to do by going to bed before ass o’clock.” He winks greasily and that earns him one of Yoongi’s many withering stares, to which he laughs loudly before escaping into the depths of the noisiest room in the dorms.
It’s to Yoongi’s surprise when he walks into his room to see Seokjin pushing their beds together.
“Up for a movie? I don’t think we’re going to be able to sleep with the Mario Kart party going on next door,” Seokjin explains with a slight frown. The fact that he’s already pushed their beds together and has the TV on tells Yoongi that while it might seem like he has a choice, “no” is probably not going to be the right answer. And truthfully, even if he were nearly asleep on his feet right, he still wouldn’t know how to refuse.
“Sure. But I get to choose.”
Seokjin grins at that. “Only if you promise not to hog the quilt.”