Tear (Love Yourself Tour - Book 2)

Chapter 5

Namjoon's POV:

Instead of sleeping on the flight over to Los Angeles, where we would be kicking off our American leg of our tour, I kept going over everything that Adeline had said. She was right. No matter how much I hated it, I wasn't just Namjoon, but also RM of BTS. Technically we were all allowed to date due to the new contracts we signed, however, we all knew how well that would go over with some of our fans. Especially the Saesang fans. This was just one of the sacrifices that we had to make because of who we were, members of BTS. As much as it was going to hurt me, I determined that I was going to have to try and distance myself from Adeline because of it. At least until I could figure things out.

When we landed, I went straight to my room dodging Jungkook. I know that I had told him I would explain everything to him when we got to Los Angeles, but I just really needed to be alone, and alone is how I stayed. I stayed to myself the next couple days not leaving my room sleeping the majority of it. When the guys would ask what was up, I would just tell them I was catching up on sleep since I didn't sleep the entire flight to Los Angeles.

Not talking to or seeing Adeline hurt but I was dealing with it. The days spent in my room by myself made it a little easier. Which is why leading up to the soundcheck I was fine. I was solid in my resolve. The moment I saw her in front of me though, it all went to hell.

Without a thought during rehearsals my eyes would always find their way to Adeline if she were assigned for the rehearsal. I would see her out of the corner of my eye getting set up into position to take her shots. Or, when we had a small break, I would see her and one of the other guys talking about something. Sometimes Ella was with her sometimes she wasn't.

Today was becoming a particularly hard one. It became increasingly so as I watched Adeline and Jimin laughing about something. I could feel my heart clench at the sound of it. Her laughter. It sped up my heart because of how I felt hearing Adeline's genuine laugh and drop from me not understanding how she could even be laughing right now. Was I really the only one of us struggling? Why doesn't our distance from each other hurt her as much as it's hurting me? I closed my eyes for a moment trying to calm my racing thoughts. Just as I opened them, I saw her laugh again as she went to smack Jimin for whatever he said to her as she missed. At the carefree exchange I could feel envy well up within me. I clenched my jaw as I looked away.

Our first concert in Los Angeles was tomorrow and I couldn't let my emotions slip or get the better of me. I especially couldn't do so since we were constantly being filmed or photographed for our behind-the-scenes content. Even though it was hard pretending that everything was fine with me when it was far from it, I had no choice. It was for this reason that as soon as rehearsal was done, I walked away and left the arena as soon as possible to get back to my self-isolation.

I was sitting in my room fresh from a shower after the second concert working on my mixtape. Since we had a free day tomorrow, I planned on staying up to work on it. I needed to clean up some of the layering on a few of the tracks. Halfway through the first track I was working on, I heard a knock on my door breaking my concentration. Getting up with a sigh I walked over to the door and pulled it open without even checking to see who it was. Irritation swept through me for a microsecond when my eyes fell on Jungkook. However, I just stepped aside, and he walked inside accepting my unspoken invitation to come in. This was an inevitability that I had avoided for long enough which is why I let him in in the first place. With the door closed I walked back into the room to see Jungkook sitting on the edge of the bed. Walking past him I sat down in the chair at the desk I had my equipment set up at and saved my progress before turning around to face him.

"Are you okay?" He asked me.

I was honestly a bit surprised by his question because I thought for sure the first question out of his mouth would have been, how do you know Adeline.