Begin (JJK) BTS 2026 series Book 3 (COMPLETED)

Too Many Thoughts

Jungkook lies in his bed staring up at his ceiling. It's nearly 11am and he is normally up long before now, but he's been lying here staring at the same discoloration in the paint for over an hour, thinking. He's been thinking most of the evening since he left the studio at HYBE after working with Namjoon on some of his songs, and after trying to talk Taehyung out of reaching out to a girl he knows nothing about but is somehow convinced he's going to marry. 

There have been plenty of times in his life that he's had an infatuation with a girl, someone he'd only had a crush on; an actress he saw in a film, a model he saw in a magazine, a singer he met backstage at an awards show. Many of them he'd actually managed to meet and spend time with, a short time, but once the glow of their persona wore off it was always the same, he saw them as just people, not special, not different, not extraordinary, they were just there, and he was bored.

There was always someone else to turn his eye and lead him away from whatever relationship he was in and none of those lasted more than a few months. He had girls who were friends, but if he ever made the mistake of taking that farther, on a night out when perhaps they'd both had a few too many drinks, then that was it for the friendship too. He was always too busy to make time for them again and eventually they faded into the background, his background, his past. No one ever seemed to question this, or call him out on this behavior. Not his company, not his group members, and not even the women themselves. He had gotten use to the idea that he didn't play by other people's rules, and he didn't need what other people needed. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, with who he wanted. He had lived that way for years.

He had felt a little pang of questioning when Namjoon met Sujin. It felt a little strange to have one of them essentially belong to someone else, when it had been only them; the seven of them, for over a decade. In fact, since before he was even fifteen years old, it was just the seven of them. When he did his military service, he even enlisted when Taehyung and Jimin did, despite not needing to for another two years, because he wanted to be with them. He was never without one, if not all, of BTS, and he hoped he never would be. He felt closer to them than he did his own family and that was probably because he left his family at such a young age to become a trainee and they became his family.

He remembers exactly what he thought the first time he saw Namjoon. He was so tall, with such a booming deep voice that seemed so cool. He was so self assured. He spoke so well and had this confidence about him, like he was above everyone else, but not in a pretentious way, just in a way that you knew that he had all the answers.

He had auditioned for a few companies and he was surprised to have really positive responses from all of them, but, when he met Namjoon, he knew that his life would be better if he could be with him, if he could learn from him and manage to grow into an artist with his skill, his determination, and his level of dedication. He had been the older brother he needed, always steering him in the right direction and making sure he was protected. It might be a stretch to think that he was rudderless on his own, but sometimes he felt that way anyway.

When Namjoon got married, it was a real shock to him. It happened while he was in the military and the double hurt was that he wasn't able to get permission to go on leave to attend the wedding. He was frustrated that Namjoon got married in such a hurry that couldn't wait eleven months more for them to finish their service. Only Yoongi, Jin and J-Hope had been able to be at his wedding. He came out of the military just in time for the birth of his son, Sunghoon. Namjoon's priority had been all family from that point on, even though they did work together on BTS comeback albums, and Namjoon was always reaching out to talk about Jungkook's projects, his latest mixtape or the videos he made and released as part of Golden Closet Films. He even came to support him at his art gallery opening when he got around to completing a series of paintings, but something was different, from that moment on; he didn't need them quite as much, and Jungkook felt it deeply.

He managed to fill the void of not being with the others 24/7 and not having that exact same relationship with his hyungs by being with other friends, with girls, having parties and experiences; he went skydiving, he went scuba diving, he drove race cars, he ran marathons. He did all of the things you do when you don't want to be alone with your feelings in the quiet of your own room, your own head. It had worked, up until now, but something wasn't working anymore.

Something was keeping him from feeling good about chasing the next high, the next experience, the next girl. He was only thirty years old. He was fairly sure he was not having a mid-life crisis because of course he was sure he would live to one hundred. He told himself that he had plenty of time. They all had plenty of time, so why were they all suddenly in such a rush to settle down, to find other people to spend their time with, to bring in outsiders who hadn't lived with them day in and day out for the last fifteen years.

After Namjoon had his second child, Jungkook had almost gotten his head wrapped around it. He told himself that because he was the leader, it sort of made sense that he would be the first to have this experience, to want this experience, but then Jin met Jangmi and they got married almost as quickly and he saw a pattern emerging. It felt like a real betrayal. Almost as if he wasn't satisfied being with them anymore. It felt like he needed more, and Jungkook wasn't enough. 

Although Jin was the oldest, he never acted that way, and Jungkook always thought of him as a sort of partner in crime. He was the first to pull a prank in the long hours stuck in the hotel on tour, or to make a bad joke and break the tension when they were nervous about a live performance at an awards show. When he got married, and Jungkook and the others were able to stand up beside him, as his brothers, it reminded him that he was moving on, moving away, and he wouldn't ever have the same exact relationship with him that he once did. Jungkook never told anyone how he felt, but it was a sort of death, of his old life. It was an abandonment that he wasn't sure how to recover from.

He hadn't realized he was scared of change, until this happened. He was always eager for the next adventure, and to overcome the next triumph, or get the next accolade, but those seemed to come so easily to him. He was called the 'golden maknae', and he had taken that to heart because everything he did seemed to come easily to him, it always had. If he entered a race, he won it. If he painted a picture, it was praised. If they released a single, it went to number one on the charts instantly. It was all there for him, without a challenge. It didn't mean he didn't work hard, he had always worked hard, but he had never failed, at least, not yet.