Music & Butterflies

Bonus Chapter - 3 May 2021

It's been so nice having Astrid and Sophie in our house. God, I love children! There was something about their innocence and cheerful nature that called to my soul – maybe because I was still a child at heart. I may have been labelled as the 'king of sex' by ARMY, but that was only my stage persona; the one I morphed into when performing. While it was a nice escape from my everyday life, it was just that – an escape from the darkness.

There was nothing I wanted more than to have what my brothers had, a soulmate to call my own. But that won't be happening. Since our debut, our years together had been the best and worst. Our years of hard work paid off with BTS becoming the biggest boy band in the world, smashing the glass ceiling of expectations put on us.

But with all the highs, I felt like my whole existence had crashed and burned around me. The stories you read about the pain of losing a soulmate didn't even come close to describing what it actually felt like: imagine a part of you violently ripped from inside your body and the wound left to fester and become infected. It literally felt like part of you died and is rotting in your body. It is not anything I would ever wish on my worst enemy.

The days, weeks and months after I lost my soulmate on that cold, dark day at the start of August 2016, I felt like I had lost control over everything. The only thing I had any power over was how I looked. Many ARMY believed that I developed an eating disorder after seeing too many trolling messages from anti's; but in reality, it was much, much darker than that. Logically, I knew I had so much to live for, but in my head at the time, all I could see and feel was despair, anger and grief. My grief led me to starving myself and pushing my body into doing harder and longer dance practices. It was the only thing I had any semblance of control over, so I grabbed it and pushed my body far beyond its capabilities.

If it wasn't for my members and ARMY reaching out and pulling me from the darkness, I have no doubt that I would have joined my soulmate in the afterlife, even though I didn't want to die. Now, I still had dark days when the grief and pain would overtake me, but through the love and support from my loved ones – and our fans – I have been able to accept and move on with my life. I will never forget my soulmate, whomever they were, but I realised that I had to live for the both of us.

It wasn't as painful now to see my brothers fall in love with their soulmates as it once was. I didn't get that sharp pain in my heart whenever I saw people with their soulmates. I could also talk to Hobi and Yoongi and listen as they got excited about the day that they would finally meet their one true person.

And then there's me.

I know they could see this was affecting me more than I let on, but how can you reach out and tell someone who is so happy that you are in the darkest place they will hopefully never experience and not have them look at you with pity?

* . °•★|∘°∘♡∘°∘ •┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈• ∘°∘♡∘°∘|☆•° .*

I was listening to Iseul and Astrid converse about something or other while the three of us were sitting in the courtyard just off the living room. It was such a nice and peaceful place; one of my favourite areas of the house. Four of the most comfortable chairs surrounded a table, which were nestled in amongst topiaries and plants with beautiful flowers.

'Ah, smells so good here. I should come out here more often now we're on break.'

I wasn't really paying attention to the conversation; not that I was being rude or was bored, but because there was something going on with Yoongi. I've never seen him act like the way he was behaving towards the beautiful woman. I needed to put on my detective hat and try to uncover what was happening.

Luck was on my side when Iseul asked about Astrid's soulmate. I perked up and listened intently as Astrid said that she had not met her soulmate yet. Something inside me was screaming that I needed to ask about her soul mark. Again, luck must be with me seeing as Iseul asked about it.

"It's above my heart," Astrid began. "It's so beautiful even in black. I can't wait to see the butterflies, flowers and notes in colour."

Butterflies.

Flowers.

Notes.

I gasped quietly as I tried to work out what was going on. I have seen one other mark that has all three of these things. It is burned into my memory, almost as vividly as my own. The mark sits on very pale skin, on the left pec muscle above the heart.

I needed to give Yoongi a gentle push to her, but I had to be stealthy. I didn't want to tell him outright they were soulmates. They needed to find it out for themselves.

'Think Jiminssi. Put that big beautiful brain of yours to work!'

The only thing I could come up with at the moment was to observe them during lunch. I needed to see how Yoongi acted towards her and if he looked even remotely interested, I needed to plant the seed in his head to ask her out.

'Good plan Jiminie.'