Chapter Text
One October morning in the twenty-first century, at exactly ten o’clock, the world was still perfectly fine.
In one corner of the world, children were still playing on a school field, running around with bright faces and laughter untouched by worry. In another, two drivers were throwing punches after one of them ran a red light. Nearby pedestrians tried to break them up before things got worse.
Somewhere else, biotechnology students sat hunched over quiz papers, their faces tense. Exam scores had been awful, and this extra quiz was their only chance to nudge their grades up before the end of the semester.
And in yet another corner of the world, seven people who had once shared their youth in a cramped rented house were spending a rare day off at an amusement park in Seoul.
At least, at ten in the morning, the world really was still fine.
An hour later, when the short hand shifted to eleven, Pandora’s box opened.
And after that, nothing ever went back to the way it was.
“Coming! It’s coming! The eleventh hour is coming! The gate will open, Judgment Day will begin! Fear it, you cowards! Don’t pray for God to save you! Pray that death finds you first!”
Statement from an unidentified man on the Seoul-Incheon train line, three hours before the Break. Witnesses reported that the man laughed, cried, then repeatedly shouted “Judgment Day has begun” before being taken into police custody.
On a bench near the roller coaster, Seokjin and Jimin were laughing their heads off while Hoseok threw up into a plastic bag. Namjoon grimaced as he patted his friend’s back. Jeongguk recorded the whole mess with his beloved black camera, the one thing he almost always brought whenever he went out. Beside him, Taehyung, despite his face being covered by a mask, was clearly giggling from the way his eyes narrowed. Meanwhile Yoongi simply watched the chaos unfold with a tired sigh.
“You brat,” Hoseok growled between shaky breaths. “I hope your LoL rank drops at the end of the season, you absolute punk!”
Jeongguk laughed without a shred of guilt. “This is good! It’s documentation!”
“I’m suffering, you call that documentation?!”
“For historical purposes!”
“What history?!”
“The historic day Jung Hoseok lost to a kiddie roller coaster.”
“That was not a kiddie roller coaster!” Hoseok shrieked. “What kind of ride for children moves that fast?!”
Seokjin laughed even harder, clutching his stomach. “You were screaming ‘let me off’ before we even reached the first climb.”
Hoseok hissed. “Shut up, hyung. You were pale too.”
“That was sympathy. I was feeling your pain.”
“Bullshit. You were pale because you were scared.”
“Scared of what…? A kiddie roller coaster?”
“You know what, fuck you.”
Jimin almost fell off the bench from laughing. Namjoon tried to look concerned, but the corner of his mouth twitched, clearly not sympathy. Taehyung had even turned his back on Hoseok, shoulders shaking in silent laughter.
Yoongi let out another sigh. “We’ve only been here for two hours. Two hours, and already, one casualty.”
From behind the plastic bag, Hoseok weakly raised a hand. “I’m still alive.”
“Technically.”
Jeongguk zoomed in on Hoseok’s face, making the man point at him with a trembling hand. “Jeon Jeongguk, if that video gets out, I’m going to ruin your life.”
Jeongguk only grinned. “Relax, hyung. I’m just keeping it as proof that even a famous dance instructor can lose to a roller coaster.”
“Famous my ass. Half my regular class still pays late.”
“Still famous among your victims,” Jimin added lightly.
Hoseok turned to him with a wounded look. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I’m on the side of truth.”
“Traitor.”
Their laughter broke out all over again, too loud for a morning that was, in truth, still perfectly ordinary, but this was one of only three hundred and sixty-five days where they could all be together.
At first, the plan to go to an amusement park hadn’t even sounded like something that would actually happen. Seven people with their own jobs, schedules, and lives, on the same day, were almost impossible to gather. Namjoon was always getting dragged into ministry meetings that appeared out of nowhere. Yoongi slept in his studio more often than in his own bed. Hoseok taught dance classes almost every day. Jimin took hospital shifts that were nowhere near humane. With his drama shoots and promotion schedules, Taehyung sometimes only appeared in the group chat to send stupid stickers, then vanished for two days.
Jeongguk himself was in the middle of training season, while Seokjin, despite always claiming he had the most relaxed life out of all of them, could still be called into the clinic out of nowhere because a dog had swallowed a sock or a neighbor’s cat decided to give birth at an ungodly hour.
So when, a week ago, Taehyung suddenly sent a message to the group chat, no one believed him right away.
Tae-hyung: got access to the amusement park on sunday morning, before it opens to the public. anyone in?
Yoongi-hyung: is this a scam?
Hobi-hyung: if this is a prank i’m blocking you.
Jeongguk:
hyung, how did you even get that?
Tae-hyung: handsome actor privilege
Jimin-hyung: disgusting. what time?
In the end, somehow, all of them actually showed up.
Namjoon rearranged his meeting schedule. Yoongi finished mixing until dawn and arrived with his eyes half-shut. Hoseok canceled a private class. Jimin used a day off he had been saving for months. Jeongguk got permission to skip half a day of training, while Seokjin closed his clinic with a huge sign on the door that read: THE DOCTOR IS CURRENTLY TAKING CARE OF HIS OWN MENTAL HEALTH. FOR EMERGENCIES, CALL THE NUMBER BELOW.
Taehyung simply arrived in a black mask, a low-brimmed cap, and the deeply satisfied expression of someone whose plan, for once in a very long time, had not fallen apart.
They were no longer teenagers who could spend whole nights in a cramped rented house without thinking about tomorrow, or students eating instant ramen straight from the same pot, no longer young men in their early twenties promising they would meet often even as life started pulling them in different directions. They were adults now, with jobs, responsibilities, and, at the end of it all, sometimes, a kind of exhaustion that sat heavy in their chests. It did not mean they hated the lives they had now. Most of it was more than they could have ever asked for. It was just... life was like that. A person could not be happy all the time, even in the places they loved most.
But that morning, in an amusement park emptied out before opening hours, with cold October air and a sky too bright, they managed to become the same seven idiots they had been back then.
At least for a few hours.
Not long after they got off the roller coaster, the amusement park opened to the public. Visitors began to trickle in. In another hour, the place would probably be packed, since it was a holiday. So they decided to stop going on rides and do something a little lighter instead.
The food court was still quiet. Only two visitors sat far apart, scrolling through their phones.
The seven of them sat around one table, ordered ice cream from one of the open stands. Namjoon grimaced when he saw the mixture of ice cream and chocolate in Jeongguk’s bowl. As if the ice cream itself was not sweet enough, he had added chocolate topping, chocolate cookies, and every sugary thing he could possibly pile on.
“Jeongguk-ah.” Namjoon stared in disbelief. “Is that still ice cream or a diabetes research project?”
Jeongguk, feeling no guilt whatsoever, took a huge spoonful. “It’s called enjoying life.”
“In lethal doses,” Yoongi muttered.
Seokjin glanced at the bowl, clicked his tongue. “Don’t come whining to me if your stomach hurts later.”
Jeongguk smiled at him with mouth still full of ice cream. “If my stomach hurts, hyung will take care of me.”
“So confident.”
“My boyfriend’s a doctor.”
“A veterinarian.”
“Still a doctor.”
Jimin choked on a laugh. Hoseok pointed at Jeongguk with his spoon. “That means if he treats you, you’re officially classified as an animal.”
“He’s been like that for a long time.”
“Hyunggg…”
Taehyung made a disgusted noise. “Please don’t do PDA in front of me.”
Jeongguk raised an eyebrow. “That was PDA?”
“You’re looking at hyung like a puppy begging for attention.”
“I am eating.”
“That’s not the point, idiot.”
“You’re just jealous because no one wants to take care of you if your stomach hurts.” Jimin throws him a playful, half-mocking smile.
Taehyung turned to him offended. “You would take care of me.”
“I’d tell you to take medicine and sleep.”
“That still counts as taking care of me.”
“Bare minimum.”
“Fuck you.”
Seokjin chuckled softly, while Jeongguk simply went back to eating his ice cream with a satisfied smile.
Among the seven of them, Seokjin and Jeongguk’s relationship was not exactly new. It was not a secret shocking enough to make people gasp when it came out, and it was not gossip that needed to be whispered about. They had known each other for far too long for that. Long before Jeongguk grew into an athlete with broad shoulders and an infuriating habit of lifting heavy things, he had been the little boy from next door. The one who followed Seokjin everywhere. Quiet at first, shy, a child who hid behind the fence with a toy camera in his hands and stared at Seokjin with wide, doe-like eyes.
Seokjin was still a teenager then, convinced he was the most grown-up person in their neighborhood. At first, Jeongguk was nothing more than the cute but troublesome kid from next door. He shared snacks with him, helped him retrieve balls stuck between tree branches, taught him how to ride a bike without crashing into his mother’s flowerpots. Then, years later, he realized that the child who used to tug at the hem of his shirt had grown as tall as him. Worse, Jeongguk had started looking at him in a way that was entirely different.
It took them longer to put a name to it. Even longer, to admit it.
When they finally got together, no one surprised. “Finally,” Hoseok only said, in the relieved tone of someone who had been waiting in line for far too long.
“I thought you two had been dating for the past three years.” Yoongi.
Namjoon let out a long sigh. Because he had witnessed them staring at each other, then pretending they had not, far too many times.
Jimin immediately demanded they buy everyone a meal. Taehyung said he felt betrayed because he had not been told first, even though for ages, he also admitted he had known.
That was Bangtan, Bangtan Sonyeondan, Bulletproof Boy Scouts, a name they had once come up with while laughing, never knowing that one day, life would come to collect on the meaning of being bulletproof.
Nothing in their lives had ever started from a clean, obvious beginning. Everything had tangled together little by little, like a mess of threads knotting into one another and never quite coming undone.
Jeongguk came from Seokjin’s childhood. Jimin came with Taehyung from the crowded hallways of middle school, from the same uniforms, from teenage secrets they kept only for each other.
Namjoon and Hoseok met first in college, two people with completely different rhythms of life who somehow always ended up on the same projects. Namjoon, with head full of plans and sentences that ran too long. Hoseok, with enough energy to make even the dullest room feel alive.
Yoongi came later, brought in by Namjoon from a small studio that always smelled of cold coffee, overheated cables, and ambition that might not ever turn into money. At first, he was only the producer helping with music for Hoseok’s dance project. Then he came to dinner, then he came again, then one day, as time passed, without anyone ever officially inviting him, he had already become one of them.
After that, the lines began to merge.
Seokjin met Namjoon through a volunteer project in college. Namjoon brought Hoseok. Hoseok brought Jimin and Taehyung from a small theater event, two audience members who had, at first, only been people to talk to after the show, and then somehow became close friends. Yoongi came along because he said he only wanted to return a hard drive, then stayed until dinner was over.
Jeongguk, who had still been too young at the time to properly join adult conversations, would sit beside Seokjin and listen to all of them making a fuss, eyes shining whenever they argued about heavy topics he did not understand. Every now and then, he would tug at Seokjin’s sleeve and ask unfamiliar terms in a quiet voice. “Hyung, what’s an economic crisis?” or “why did Namjoon-hyung say public policy can fail?” or “do all adults talk this complicated?”.
Seokjin would bend down toward him and explain as best as he could in simpler words, sometimes correctly, sometimes far too simplified. From the other side of the table, secretly, Jimin and Taehyung would listen in, because they did not fully understand either. Their pride was simply too big to admit it—they were older than Jeongguk, after all, how could they lose to a middle schooler? That usually made Yoongi snort from across the table.
That was how they began. Friends of friends, familiar faces who joined meals because they happened to be around, then, slowly, the people called when someone needed help moving, company at the hospital, a place to sleep for the night, or simply an excuse not to be alone.
And then, during the messiest years of their lives, a cheap rented house took them all in.
They called it the old dorm, even though not a single one of them had ever been a trainee or an idol. The name had come naturally, because the place was too cramped, too loud, and so often filled with chaos. It sounded like the shared housing of some group no manager in the world could ever hope to control.
There, they had shared instant ramen straight from the same pot, fought over whose turn it was to wash the dishes, slept in the living room because the bedroom air conditioner had broken, celebrated birthdays with discounted cakes, and promised, half-joking half-serious, that if the world ever became too heavy, they would come home there.
Maybe that was why, even when life eventually carried them in different directions, they never truly left.
Namjoon became a diplomat who spent more time reading crisis reports than getting enough sleep. Seokjin opened a small veterinary clinic full of furry patients. Yoongi became a music producer whose life depended on deadlines and coffee. Hoseok taught dance with energy that made his students fear him and adore him at the same time. Jimin worked at a hospital, often coming home with exhaustion written all over his face, yet still answering the group chat. Taehyung became an actor whose face appeared often on movie screens and television. Jeongguk became an athlete who still carried his beloved black camera wherever he went.
They had grown a lot, but when they gathered like this, around one round table in a food court, with ice cream that was far too sweet, Hoseok still cursing the roller coaster, Taehyung pretending to be disgusted by PDA, and Seokjin quietly wiping the corner of Jeongguk’s mouth with a tissue because there was chocolate stuck there—everything felt like slipping back into the past, back to when they still slept under the same roof.
Forty-five minutes passed, and even though the sun had climbed higher, the air still felt cold.
In the end, they decided to call it a day. The plan after this was to stop by Seokjin and Jeongguk’s apartment, chosen because it had the most food stocked up. The others had not actually been there since they moved a year ago, but they knew enough about the place by now because the two of them kept mentioning it in the group chat. The stocked kitchen, the cabinet full of snacks, and Seokjin’s habit of buying groceries as if he were feeding a household twice the size (hard not to when two people who loved eating lived there, especially when one of them was a greedy rabbit), the most space, basically everything they needed to turn it into a gathering place until night.
On the way to the exit, children walked hand in hand with their parents, some of them clutching cotton candy. A group of teenagers crowded near the photo booth, laughing as they shoved one another into the frame. There were adults like them too, strolling leisurely with warm drinks in hand.
Everything still looked normal.
Until from the direction of the main gate, a scream rang out.
At first, no one paid much attention. An amusement park was a noisy place: children crying, people shouting, staff calling out to visitors, rides moving to the same cheerful music playing over and over again. One scream was not enough to be treated as something wrong.
Then a second scream followed, joined by another, sharp and panicked.
Namjoon’s steps slowed. Hoseok, who had still been complaining about his stomach, stopped mid-sentence. Jeongguk lowered his camera slightly, while Seokjin automatically turned toward the sound. All seven of them turned at the same time. The scream had come from behind them.
They had just passed the main gate and were not too far from the park’s exit yet. Back there, in the area they had been walking through so casually only minutes earlier, people were beginning to gather.
“What is it?” Jimin murmured.
No one answered right away. Out of curiosity, a few visitors stopped, and with a walkie-talkie in hand, a staff member hurried over. A father pulled his child away from the growing crowd. Someone, no, two people, fell to the ground in what looked like a fight. Several others moved closer to break it up.
Taehyung lowered his mask a little, brow furrowing. “Are they fighting?”
“Maybe.” Namjoon did not sound convinced.
Through a gap in the crowd, the staff member crouched down, about to help a visitor who had been shoved to the ground. People around them started shouting, some telling everyone to step back, others pushing closer with their phones raised.
The visitor who had started the commotion looked up.
Seokjin went rigid.
For a split second, he saw it clearly. A pale face, blue veins bulging, bloodshot eyes, and an open mouth stained with blood from chin to collar.
Wrong. It was wrong.
Seokjin’s body understood it before his mind could put together a reason. He jerked back, reflexively hit Jeongguk’s chest.
“Hyung?” Jeongguk caught him by the waist. “What’s wrong?”
In front of them, the person lunged.
The park employee did not even have time to scream before his body was slammed to the ground. The visitor’s mouth opened, clamping down on the side of his neck. In the next second, a scream of pain ripped out so loudly. The entire crowd around them froze.
“ARGH! LET GO! LET—ARGH!”
Blood sprayed across the employee’s bright uniform.
Someone screamed.
The crowd broke apart.
“Go,” Namjoon said.
No one moved.
Eyes were still fixed ahead, face pale, but his voice hardened when he repeated, “Go. Now.”
In front of them, panic spread like fire. People shoved into one another, running blindly, crashing into barriers and ticket booths. A child cried as his mother yanked him away. Another staff member tried to approach, then stumbled back when the body of the first victim, lying limp on the ground, suddenly moved. Twitched.
The body rose with broken, jerking movements, as if something inside it were pulling bone and muscle from all the wrong directions. Head hung for a moment, then lifted. Mouth opened, blood dripping from lips onto the floor.
Jimin drew in a sharp breath. “What the hell is that?!”
No one answered. Because the victim, the person who had just been attacked, was standing again. And his eyes no longer looked human.
Seokjin was the first to move, hand clamped around Jeongguk’s wrist. Namjoon shoved Hoseok and Yoongi by the shoulders at the same time, forcing them out of the frozen shock that had only lasted a few seconds but felt like a fatal mistake.
“The car! Now!”
“We have to help—” Jimin started, but cut off when another person fell near the gate, dragged down by something crawling out from the crowd.
Hoseok grabbed Jimin’s arm. “Don’t!”
Jimin’s face went pale.
Taehyung had already taken several steps back, eyes wide, hand gripping the phone he had somehow pulled out at some point. “I—I’m calling the police.”
“Do it while we move,” Yoongi snapped low and sharp. “Don’t stop here.”
They moved almost at the same time.
At first, a fast walk, then faster, then they were running when another scream tore through the air behind them. Footsteps slammed against the pavement, children shrieked, things fell, glass shattered, and the amusement park music still played cheerfully from somewhere inside the ride area—all of it blending into one mass of chaos.
Jeongguk’s camera hung from his neck, swinging with each step as his hand gripped Seokjin’s tightly.
He glanced back once, just once, and regretted it immediately.
The main gate they had passed through laughing only minutes earlier had turned into the mouth of chaos. People spilled out of it, shoving, pulling, falling, some nearly disappeared under other people’s feet. Amusement park staff tried to pull one of the iron gates shut while shouting into a radio, but another body slammed into one of them from behind and sent him crashing to the ground.
Between the running legs, someone crawled, too fast, wrong, body jerking as if driven by hunger.
And it was not just one.
There were too many bodies moving wrong. Too many people falling, not getting back up. Too many hands grabbing shoulders, clothes, hair, throats.
Near the gate, blood stained the ground, darkening beneath the clean morning light.
Seokjin yanked his hand hard. “Don’t look!”
Jeongguk faced forward again, his chest tight.
The parking lot wasn’t that far. That day, it felt impossibly distant. Some visitors ran for their vehicles. Others froze in the middle of the road, not knowing where to go.
“My car’s over there!” Hoseok pointed toward the row of parking spaces on the left.
“How many cars are we taking?” Taehyung asked, breathing starting to turn uneven.
“Just one for now,” Namjoon answered quickly. “We’re not splitting up.”
“Hobi’s car won’t fit all seven of us,” Yoongi said.
“Mine.” Jeongguk. “Big SUV, end of the lot.”
They knew exactly which one he meant. It was hard not to, when Jeongguk’s car looked like something built to ram into a mountain and still come out winning.
They ran toward Jeongguk’s car, passing rows of other vehicles that one by one, were starting up.
Jeongguk dug into his jacket pocket with shaking hands, fingers nearly slipping before he pressed the unlock button. The car lights flashed twice.
“Get in!”
Hoseok climbed into the back first, nearly tripping over his own feet, followed by Jimin. Taehyung scrambled into the middle row, phone pressed to his ear, the faint sound of an emergency call failing to connect coming through the speaker.
Yoongi shoved the door wider, waited until Hoseok and Jimin were fully inside, then climbed in after them. Namjoon pushed Taehyung further across the middle row before sliding in beside him, already turning to make sure everyone was there.
Seokjin was just about to climb into the front passenger seat when a loud crash sounded behind them. He turned on instinct.
The crowd was surging closer too fast, all of them trying to reach the parking lot. Screams overlapped with blaring horns and the panicked roar of engines.
Between the legs of the running adults, Seokjin saw a little child fall.
Alone. A stick of pink cotton candy was still clutched in her hand.
Seokjin didn’t think.
“Hyung!” Jeongguk called, but he was already moving.
For a split second, everything seemed to happen too fast and too slowly all at once.
Jimin was the first to move after him. His hand was already on the door handle, body leaning out, face draining of color as he saw Seokjin pushing through the rush of people to grab the little child who had fallen in the middle of the crowd.
“Seokjin-hyung—”
Hoseok caught the back of his jacket immediately. “Don’t!”
“He—”
“I know!” Hoseok’s voice cracked. “I know, but don’t get out!”
Jimin turned to him, eyes wide, anger and fear twisting together into one. But Hoseok didn’t let go. His hand was shaking, but still dragged Jimin back into the car.
In the middle seat, Namjoon twisted around, staring out through the windshield. The color left his face when he saw Seokjin lift the child out from under the feet of the adults running past. “Jeongguk,” he said tensely. “Stay close to the car.”
Jeongguk wasn’t listening anymore. He was already running.
“Fuck!” Yoongi swore, immediately grabbing the door that hadn’t shut properly and yanking it closed. “Lock the doors! Lock the doors, now!”
Taehyung, still frozen with phone in hand, jolted. His breaths coming short and fast, eyes never left Seokjin. “He almost—” he stopped himself, unable to finish the sentence.
Outside, Seokjin managed to shove the little girl over to a woman screaming her name. For a moment, relief flashed across Jimin’s face.
Then someone lunged at Seokjin.
“Hyung!”
Hoseok went rigid. Namjoon slammed his palm against the back of the front seat. “Jeongguk!”
Jeongguk got there first, crashing into the person from the side hard enough to tear them away from Seokjin.
Taehyung threw the front passenger door open from the inside before Seokjin could even reach for it. “Get in!” he shouted. “Hyung, get in!”
Seokjin climbed in, breath ragged, nearly collapsing into the seat. Jeongguk followed from the driver’s side, slamming the door so hard the whole car shook.
A bloody palm struck Seokjin’s window. Once, twice. So hard, he could almost imagine the finger bones cracking beneath the skin.
Jeongguk’s car windows were too thick to shatter that easily, but the person kept hitting them anyway, as if pain meant nothing at all.
Jimin covered his mouth with both hands, unable to believe the horrifying sight. Yoongi immediately reached for the lock on the door panel, pressed it twice, even though the doors were already locked.
“Drive.” Namjoon looked at Jeongguk through the rearview mirror. “Jeongguk-ah. Drive. Now.”
In the midst of the chaos, Jeongguk saw it. The torn sleeve of Seokjin’s jacket, the bloodstain near his wrist. Seokjin had blocked the bite with his arm when the person lunged at him.
Jepngguk saw all of it.
He swallowed hard, chest tightening—NO. Not now.
Right now, there was only the way out, the gas pedal, and the six other people in the car he had to get away from this place.
“Hold on,” Jeongguk said, voice low, then stepped on the gas.
The black SUV shot out of the parking space, slammed into a plastic barrier, and sent it flying aside. In front of them, a small car suddenly reversed. The driver was panicking, not looking left or right. Jeongguk jerked the wheel sharply, tires screeching against the asphalt.
On any normal day, Seokjin and Hoseok would have already cursed him out, launching into a long lecture about driving properly and responsibly.
Unfortunately, this was not a normal day.