Summary : It's five days before Bangtan's comeback stage when Jungkook turns into a baby.
NOTE : This chapter is not connected to the pervious one
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Taehyung wakes up to the rousing sound of a baby crying.
The high-pitched wailing echoes around the dorm, volume increasing to uncomfortable levels—like the kind Taehyung is subject to when Jungkook gets bored and puts Taehyung's music to full volume when he's listening on his head phones.
Taehyung pulls his pillow over his head, trying to muffle the sound, to no avail. He silently curses whichever member set that as their alarm tone. There are only five more days until their comeback starts, and while they're already swamped with practice, they'll be even busier then. Taehyung wants to accumulate as much sleep as he can, to make up for the deficit he knows he'll have later on.
The crying doesn't stop, though, but someone else is sick of it too, judging from the way Taehyung hears a door slam open and the thud of heavy footsteps on their timber floors. Taehyung hopes that whoever it is will shut the noise up.
They don't.
Instead, Taehyung hears a short shout, and then quicker footsteps, running. He ignores it all in favour of a few more minutes of sleep.
Then, his door slams open and in comes an out of breath Jimin, followed by everyone else in their dorm. Namjoon rouses awake from the commotion.
"What's going on?" Namjoon says, rubbing his eyes.
In Jimin's hands, there's a bundle of cloth, which—when Taehyung looks at it closer—turns out not to be just cloth at all.
The wailing Taehyung woke up to is much closer now, and Taehyung has finally figured out the source.
"It's Jungkook," Jimin says, holding out the baby for everyone to see.
Suddenly, Taehyung is no longer tired.
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They call it the five-year curse.
It happens, randomly, in the year leading up to any kpop group's five-year anniversary. It happened to their seniors, to Big Bang, to Shinee, to EXO, and it'll happen to their juniors too when they finally get close enough to five years. No one knows who it first started from or where.
"It either makes or breaks you as a group," Junmyeon says, voice tinny sounding from the loudspeakers of Taehyung's phone. Everyone has crowded around in the living room, listening intently. "When Sehun turned into a baby, it was chaos. But, we came together and made it work."
Taehyung stops listening, turning his attention to across the room where Hoseok is cradling the baby—Jungkook—in his arms. Baby Jungkook won't stop crying, face red from all his screaming.
"You mean, all our sunbaes went through this and none of them thought to tell us?" Yoongi asks, incredulous, when the call is over.
"It's not a surprise that it's a well-kept secret," Namjoon says. "How many people do you think would want to stay an idol knowing things like this happen?"
Things like this. They all turn to stare at the baby, who's currently trying to struggle out of Hoseok's grasp when Seokjin starts to pull faces at him.
"I don't think that's helping," Taehyung says, which he immediately regrets when Hoseok's eyes laser in on him.
"Why don't you give holding him a try? Everyone else has had a turn."
And they all have. It was an experience, watching Yoongi cautiously hold onto Baby Jungkook, after Namjoon had stayed absolutely still for two minutes, not wanting to make the baby cry even louder. There were hearts in Yoongi's eyes that Taehyung will use to his advantage one day.
