When I Close My Eyes • Kim Seokjin

i.

"-Jin!"

Jin startled. He'd been zoning out a bit. They had to do so many of these press releases and interviews lately, and they were all blurring together into a long stream of unintelligible scenes, like a movie on fast forward, only sometimes, Jin forgot to hit play.

"Jin?"

"What?" he asked, blinking and looking first at the cameraman before looking at Namjoon, who had been calling his name.

Namjoon just rolled his eyes. "I already have to deal with the extra maknaes. Don't you make my job harder."

"Sorry, what was the question?"

Namjoon just sighed. "We were introducing our visual."

"Oh."

"That would be you."

"Oh. Oh!" Jin caught on and looked at the camera, pasting a smile on his face, the one that was in a million photos online. It was a cookie cutter smile - he only needed one real smile to be able to make countless indistinguishable copies. Only he couldn't remember when the real smile had occurred, or when he had switched out the original for fakes. "I'm Jin!" He did a pose. "I'm the handsome one here."

All the other BTS members rolled their eyes, and Jin waited for the press to stop laughing before he dropped his pose and went back to zoning out.

The truth was

he didn't feel handsome

and he hated saying it

but that was his sole purpose in the group

and, like the smile,

where once had been an original

was now a cookie cutter replica.

***

The press conference finally finished, and Jin retreated to his room while all the other members went to hang out in the kitchen. Normally, he'd be there, eating along with them, but he didn't have enough dough left for cookie cutter cookies.

Instead, Jin went to his room.

He laid down in his bed, and he closed his eyes.