Chapter Text
Ten years ago, Kim Namjoon swore he would never let another artist go through what he and his friends had endured.
Back then, he was just another trainee in a cramped, windowless basement of a third-rate company — the kind that promised fame but delivered only exhaustion. The air smelled of sweat and mildew, practice mats were torn, and mirrors were cracked at the corners. They ate instant ramen split four ways, scribbled dreams on napkins, and fell asleep sitting against cold walls because going home meant missing practice.
Namjoon had been the leader even then, though no one had given him the title. He kept a dictionary tucked into his backpack, teaching himself English between practices, scribbling lyrics in notebooks until his wrist cramped. One night, when the others had passed out from exhaustion, he whispered to himself, "There has to be a better way. One day, I’ll build it."
Beside him stood Kim Seokjin — beautiful, sharp-tongued, yet endlessly kind. He had walked away from the safety of a university degree to chase what everyone told him was foolish. When the managers screamed about weight, Seokjin slipped an egg into Namjoon’s ramen without a word. When morale broke, he cracked jokes loud enough to echo down the hallway, forcing laughter back into their lungs.
Min Yoongi was the quiet storm. He rarely spoke, but his silence anchored them. His fingers were always ink-stained, scrawling melodies on scraps of receipt paper, coaxing broken keyboards to life. A cigarette often hung unlit between his lips, his shield against the despair clawing at them. More than once, they found him asleep at the piano, head bowed over unfinished melodies, as if even in dreams he couldn’t stop working.
And Jung Hoseok — their sunshine in the dark. His knees were swollen from endless practice, but he refused to stop dancing. “Again,” he’d say, breathless, teaching younger trainees choreography no one had taught him. Once, when his legs gave out mid-routine, he laughed from the floor, insisting, “I’m fine. Let’s go again.” His optimism was reckless, stubborn, and the only thing that kept them from collapsing altogether.
They survived on little more than whispered promises: One day. Things will be different. For five long years they endured a contract that drained their bodies and crushed their hope. They smiled for auditions while skipping meals, sang until their throats bled, bowed to men who looked at them like disposable tools.
When the chance to escape finally came — a loophole buried in paperwork, a single lifeline — they didn’t hesitate. They walked away with nothing but their names, each other, and the fire of survival.
Namjoon and Seokjin led the charge, pooling every ounce of determination to rebuild from ashes. They worked side jobs, borrowed money, slept on office floors, but brick by brick, they laid the foundation of a company that belonged to them alone.
Kim Entertainment was born not out of ambition, but defiance.
Now, a decade later, it was the beating heart of South Korea’s music industry. The glass tower in Gangnam gleamed like a monument to their struggle, its walls echoing with the voices of artists who were not products, but people. Contracts here weren’t cages but promises. Stages weren’t prisons but sanctuaries.
Namjoon was CEO — the sharp mind who had learned to balance artistry with business. Seokjin, his husband, stood as CFO, the calm anchor who kept the empire steady while shielding their private love from a world still too cruel to accept it. Hoseok thrived as the company’s lead choreographer, shaping the movement of a new generation while protecting their health the way no one had protected his. And Yoongi — their Suga — remained the soul of it all, the producer with “Hands of Midas,” whose tracks turned to gold before they even left the studio.
They had kept their promise: no one under their roof would ever suffer the way they had.
Meanwhile, in Busan, two boys had grown up with their own kind of promise.
Park Jimin and Jeon Jungkook had been inseparable since childhood — neighbors who shared rooftops and alleyways, who could read each other’s moods before a word was spoken. They dreamed of stages and lights, scribbling futures into the sea air: Jimin with his body bent into graceful lines, Jungkook with a camera always in his hands, chasing the perfect frame.
When Jungkook left for Seoul to pursue photography, Jimin stayed behind, teaching dance in a small local studio. It wasn’t glamorous, but it gave him purpose — shaping younger dancers, living inside the rhythm he loved. For a while, it felt like a future he could call his own.
But then something happened. Something that hollowed out the place he once called home, turning familiar streets into strangers’ eyes and whispers. Whatever it was, Jimin never put it into words — not even to Jungkook. He only carried it in the tight set of his jaw, the weight in his silence, and the quiet decision that Busan was no longer a place he could stay.
In Seoul, Jungkook had already found family in Kim Taehyung — a model with a reckless imagination and a smile that could talk anyone into anything. When Jungkook finally introduced him to Jimin, the three of them clicked as though they had been waiting for each other all along. Jimin’s quiet steadiness anchored them, Taehyung’s eccentric charm lit sparks in every room, and Jungkook’s relentless drive kept them all moving forward.
They fought, teased, celebrated, and built their own small world — chaotic, loyal, unshakable.
Now, with Jungkook and Taehyung already settled in Seoul and Jimin preparing to join them, the three were ready to begin a new chapter.
What none of them knew was that Jimin’s path would soon cross with the quiet producer at the top of the industry — Min Yoongi — and that everything would change from there.