Back In Hanbok

Idol on Set

It was supposed to be a standard shoot.

Bright lights. Smoke machines. Fake cherry blossoms glued to scaffolding. And Jeon Jungkook, standing barefoot on a glass platform in a hanbok that cost more than his first car, being told to look "mysteriously celestial" while a wind machine tried to blind him with his own hair.

"Again, from the top!"

Someone clapped a slate. The music rolled in.

Jungkook blinked against the spotlight and tried to summon his inner tragic deity. He lifted his chin, let the silk sleeves fall like waterfalls from his arms, and reached out with both hands toward the sky, or rather, toward a poorly rigged moonlight rig hanging from a crane.

He held the pose.

He held it longer.

"Don’t blink, Jungkook-ssi!"

He blinked.

The director sighed so loudly it echoed. "You need to emote! You're the last prince of a star kingdom, mourning your lost lover! Channel that!"

Jungkook lowered his arms slowly. "I’m literally standing on a floor made of plexiglass above a fish tank. My lover is a boom mic."

Makeup rushed in to reapply gloss.

A stylist steamed the hem of his hanbok midair.

The assistant director whispered, "Fifteen minutes until the storm rolls in. We need to wrap this shot."

Jungkook stepped back from the platform and peeled the flower petals off his sleeves.

Rain tapped lightly against the studio skylight.

"We need celestial melancholy, not existential sarcasm," the director muttered into his headset.

Jungkook wiped his face with a towel and gave a tired laugh. "You want the vibe of a heartbroken alien prince? Try hiring someone who slept more than four hours this week."

No one answered.

His manager jogged over with a phone. "You’re trending again. Dispatch posted that old photo from the VR opera launch. People think you're actually doing a period drama."

"I'm doing a sandwich and a nap. That's what I'm doing."

"They say you looked... haunted."

Jungkook paused.

"Haunted?"

His manager rotated the screen. There it was, a still frame of Jungkook from the last scene. Moonlight on his face. Eyes just barely unfocused. Like he'd seen something that wasn't there.

"That's just me trying not to sneeze. The fog machine had mold."

But still. He couldn’t look away.

There was something odd about that expression. Not rehearsed. Not calculated. Like it had been pulled from somewhere else. Not a character. Not a role.

Him.

But not now.

He frowned and handed back the phone.

"I'm going to step outside."

"The storm—"

"Five minutes."

Outside, the studio smelled like rain and paint and pavement.

The fake cherry trees looked sad now, drooping in their buckets.

Jungkook pulled the hanbok tighter around his shoulders and wandered down the alley, past the loading dock, past the trailers, toward the edge of the property where the fencing was half-collapsed and tangled with ivy.

There was a strange stillness in the air. Not quiet, waiting.

And that’s when he saw it.

A paper flyer. Pinned to the side of a rusted power pole. Damp but intact.

One symbol.

Two stars intertwined.

Beneath it, handwritten:

YOU ARE NOT WHERE YOU CAME FROM.

No date. No website. No logo.

Just that.

Jungkook reached out and touched the paper.

And for a split second, the wind stopped.

The neon hum from the studio flickered. The rain paused in the air like the world had forgotten to move.