BTS: Lingering Fear

The coming-of-age romance with multiple love interests is now underway. Come check out its companion story, "Xiaoshan."

"I always feel like my life is divided into before I turned fifteen and after."

Before fifteen, Xie Xiaoshan aspired to be a happy little layabout. Her hopes for a future job were simple: good pay, little work, close to home, and a boss who wasn't an idiot.

After fifteen, Xie Xiaoshan was forced to support her family. She worked diligently for over a decade, yet remained a nobody in the entertainment industry. Her fellow debutantes had already made it to the top, bought houses and cars, and found fame and fortune. Meanwhile, she was still a C-list actress with nothing to show for herself except awards, so obscure she wasn't even worth mentioning alongside them.

Xie Xiaoshan deeply regretted not going to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery and debuting with them as a group. Wouldn't she have already achieved her retirement goals by now?

One day, Xie Xiaoshan ran away from home again. Under the username Energetic Girl Li Kui, she posted on her social media, showing off the child-sized runaway backpack Jungkook had bought to make it up to her. Her caption read, "Goodbye, Mom. I'm setting sail tonight!"

In the end, Hoseok found the totally clueless Xie Xiaoshan beneath the S.M. building and dragged her back to the dorm. She was holding a huge bowl of noodles and shamelessly asking Seokjin for another one. Jungkook was about to cry at the sight of how much she could eat, while Taehyung couldn't bear to watch her wolf down food like she'd starved to death in a previous life.

What, when people are mad, they stop eating, but she gets mad and eats two bowls?

Taehyung was mostly responsible for how Baotou came to know Xie Xiaoshan. If he hadn't brought her along, this country bumpkin would never have had anything to do with them. They wouldn't have crossed paths in a million years!

Taehyung: "This is ridiculous. You guys never got looked after by Auntie Wang, so all that food you ate was for nothing?"

The following is the original synopsis.

Everyone at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology knows that Yu Ji, the "Eternal Rose of KAIST" from the Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, is strikingly tall, slender, and fair, with a delicate beauty that makes you want to protect her and an elegant Eastern allure. Every detail is perfectly suited to South Korean tastes, and she has admirers in droves.

Yet she has no interest in romance, and keeps everyone firmly at arm's length. She's as hard-hearted as stone. The young men she's rejected could make up several soccer teams. People think she's arrogant and proud, unwilling to bend or lower her head.

That is, until one day, a group of her friends saw her tugging on a puppy-like boy's school uniform, refusing to let him go. She was shameless, without a trace of a young lady's modesty, and tipped her head back to coquettishly plead for a kiss in a sweet, soft voice: "Ah Jin, kiss me."

Kim Seokjin met Yu Ji in his senior year of high school. At first, she was just a fleeting glimpse of beauty. Later, she became the moon in his heart. Their two years together were nothing but sweet and beautiful. But right before his debut, she left behind only a few words and vanished without a trace.

After debuting, Kim Seokjin refused to talk about anything related to his first love. Yu Ji had left him with only one sentence: "Wait for me to come back." She made him wait five years, long enough for him to go from trainee to idol, long enough for BTS to rise from an obscure group to world-famous stars. Yu Ji still didn't return. So long that Kim Seokjin almost believed she was dead.

But she came back, and stirred the waters of his heart all over again.

A lingering fear in my heart, a lingering... fear...

Completed: "Korean Entertainment (BTS): My Girlfriend Is a Fake Quick Transmigration Character with Five Faces" by Shishoushuai

Ongoing: "Rouge Kiss" by Tianjiong Gu; "Peony Brand" by Xiaopiaoliang

Theme: Just believe that things will turn out well.