a lesson in endearment | bts

008 - Namjoon

The members sat down and waited for their boss to speak.

"I've called you today to talk to you about someone that will be coming here from New York, as I mentioned a while ago." The young men glanced at each other, their expressions starting to brighten but said nothing. He was going to tell them more.

"She is a college student whose class is doing research on culture from different parts of the world. Her sub group chose Korea and she was specifically assigned you, since her sub topic is on music and more specifically, K-Pop. Other members in her team covering music will shadow underground hip hop artists and trot singers. What will happen is she will basically become part of the crew that follow you for Channel Bangtan. She will watch you, write down what you say or do. She might ask you questions. All in all, you might get your own chapter in her class thesis." Jin moved to ask,

"How did she even manage to get this placement with us?"

"The university that she goes to agreed to provide credentials to the company that each student is to be working under. She herself stated in a personal e-mail that she was more than willing to mention the company in her actual section of the thesis."

"When does she get here?" Jimin asked. The CEO smiled enigmatically.

"That, I will not tell you. You'll meet her soon enough though." The members groaned. They couldn't stand it when Bang Sihyuk-nim became vague.

"If we don't know when she's coming, there's nothing we can do about it." Namjoon reasoned, looking at each member.

"Let's go back to practice." They all nodded and rose to follow him out of the room. They were prepping for their comeback stage later on in the year and the performance director wanted them to do some things differently.

As they listened to him explain the basic layout of everything they'd do, Namjoon felt his heart beat slightly off time in excitement and terror. As long as he wasn't in any of the more trying routines he'd be fine, but it looked like all of them would be super impossible anyway.

~*~

A few days later, Namjoon found himself collapsed on the floor of the practice room with exhaustion. A cameraman came up to him; he didn't even open his eyes,

"Aching. Everywhere." He mumbled, which seemed to satsisfy the man recording, so he moved on to the other members who were also on the floor trying to recover.

"Are you okay? Do you need water?" A smooth voice asked. Namjoon opened one eye to see a girl he hadn't noticed before hovering over him with three bottles of water. Sitting up, he nodded and said thank you when she handed him one.

Watching her walk away, his eyes were drawn to her plain black tee, her distressed jeans and red trainers. Converse. Well worn and loved by the looks of them. From what he could see, her hair was a really fair, almost blonde colour, with a unique ombre of purple pink and pastel purple. It looked cool. He hadn't focused on her face, so he couldn't really complete the look mentally.

"Thanks. By the way, who are you?" Yoongi asked as he also accepted a bottle of water. The other members gathered around, ignoring the camera crew filming them.

"Me? My name is Yuri. I'm here for research." She introduced herself.

"Ah! Are you the college student that's studying us?!" Namjoon realised.

"Yeah, I mean, yes." She accidentally agreed in English, correcting herself in Korean.

"Do you speak Korean fluently? Would you rather we speak to you in English?" Namjoon asked in English, his low voice clear in the practice room. The other members glanced at each other. If she couldn't speak Korean well...