#feedback pls and thank u <3 if u excuse me i'll be watching my show and further reduce my sleep into just three hours

[jiminrings]

heartburn; intermission 02.

wordcount: 4k

glimpse: it's about time that he confronts her.

alternatively, jimin ends his emotional affair with eunji but it goes anything but smoothly.

[ part one + intermission + part two + intermission 02 + finale ]

notes: a tiny glimpse at jimin’s pov before part three is released. gonna reiterate again that heartburn and it’s installments will hurt, so pls read with caution xx

as always, lmk what you think <3 send in feedback n love to my askbox anytime!! even replying to this post sends me over the moon :)

The prettiest woman Eunji's ever laid her eyes on is herself.

She knows it because her first memory is from when she was a toddler, suddenly gaining consciousness in the moment that her mother coos to her that she's the prettiest baby her doctor's ever delivered in her whole career, reminiscing about how the staff of the whole delivery room came to take a look at her as soon as they heard her cries.

It's with great pride to know that even freshly out of the womb, she was already pretty. Normally, all the babies that are just delivered look like mush wherein people would take bets to familiarize the features into their parents, when it's apparent that no one could tell.

But with her, just seeing her baby pictures that were first snapped when the doctor was still holding her up barely after her mother's last push, she knows her parents aren't lying. Knows that the hospital staff's reactions are justified. Knows that even through the camera grain and the harsh medical lights, she was born pretty.

Eunji knows it because growing up as a child, she would always be picked as the muses of her sections. Always the one to be photographed wearing the school uniform so it could be displayed in the registrar's office for the parents to know what their daughters should look like wearing it. She rarely ever takes public transportation and it's only when her family's cars are all occupied for the day, but she immediately gets offered a seat even if she's barely set her toe inside the subway.

She knows how she makes people look twice and crane their heads even if she's already walked past them. How she was barely a rookie and yet the veterans of both the beauty and music industry have already heard of her. How she's highly-sought for not even a fraction of her time.

Eunji knows it because all her life, she's always been assured how great she is. Her family is her support system who makes her affirm each and every day how great she is and how no one could ever be at her level, because where she's at is her level alone.

She is the woman of her own dreams.

Eunji has a skip on her step as she walks out of her car holding two cups of coffee in hand because who is she kidding now? All the extra portions she buys anyways are never meant to account Yoongi into the equation — it's only for Jimin.

There's something about Jimin that entices her, something she's never seen quite like it before in all the men she's known. He makes quite the impact whenever he's in the room, gaining attention for himself without even meaning to. There's something about how he holds himself with gravitas and yet humbleness at the same time; knowing just how powerful he is without showing the need to.

At first, she thought she would like Yoongi more but that hope immediately dissipates because he's smarter than her. He's more sensible to the feeling that she feels like he could see right through her.

It's okay, he's not a loss.

Jimin is the exact fit for her anyway.

She struts into the elevator as if she owns the place, humming to herself to fill the space since her bodyguards aren't there with her because after all, this is her personal schedule. Her windows are tinted. She insisted to be alone. It's the weekend, and Eunji comes to the studio.

She doesn't even know if Jimin would be here anyway because she knows for sure that Yoongi doesn't, aware that the two of them have similar work habits, but she takes her chances anyway.

For sure, Jimin would come into work. Just two days ago, the two of them had an hour-long conversation about which airlines, classes, and plane seats are the best (he seems to know an awful lot about planes and she doesn't know why) and she's pretty sure she made him laugh out loud atleast five times. By that evening, Jimin hasn't seen her texts. By the next day, Jimin doesn't even reply.

But Eunji just knows she's made a connection with him somehow, feeling a non-existent telepathic link that he'd be here at the same time she would be.

She rounds the all too familiar hallway to Jimin's studio and rings on his bell because he's never really told her the password (your birthday) to it, much to her half-joking. She would've attempted to powder the keypad with her translucent setting powder, but she's been around enough cameras to know there'd be one in the hallway and she may look a little crazy.

She rings it again with a smile, unused to how compared to the other times she's came here before bearing gifts in the form of food to eat them together, Jimin would normally answer her at the first ring.

She does it for the third time and that's only when she hears the door beep, taking off her shoes to let herself in even if she hasn't heard his sing-song tone to do so.

"Hiii, I brought coffee!"

Eunji drawls and sets the tray on his table, having done it several times before for the past two weeks to know to put it in the middle where an out-of-place large crochet square is, not looking that entirely perfect because it looks like it's just been made randomly. She doesn't know why she puts it there it too, but she's seen Jimin do it the first time they had dinner and found herself following.

She turns to look at him on his seat completely still, not swishing around while sat on it and not following her to the couch either, making her move automatically.

Eunji's just about to put her hands on Jimin's shoulders enough to jostle him slightly, her manicured nails barely even landing on the fabric of his clothes as he seethes.

"Don't touch me."

It's the roughest and snappiest Eunji's ever heard from Jimin, her threaded eyebrows knitting at the middle.

She doesn't realize why he sits so still in his chair is because he wasn't even doing anything prior to her arrival. He hadn't done any work at all because if he were in the process of it, he would've been sitting more comfortably with messier pieces of paper on his desk, countless hums and bits of singing under his breath.

Instead, Jimin is rigid in his seat. He's dressed casually and even if he's done it before, he looks a little more rough around the edges and the bags under his eyes tell that they haven't been the product of reasonable hardwork. His face is dull but his eyes are even more wearisome, a cloud of heaviness engulfing and the people around him whole.

"I only came here to stop whatever it is between us."

Eunji straightens her posture at that as she remains standing, tilting her head at the sudden change of atmosphere in the room that's already turned tensioned even before she walked in.

"Why? What's going on between us?"

Jimin lightly scoffs under his breath because he should've known. Should've seen this coming with the way Yoongi told him on the second day since working together that she feels off. Off in a sense that he couldn't detail into words back then, but off now that he could see exactly through her.

He humors her but it's not with good intention, nodding his head.

"You wanna know what's between us?"

Eunji knows her eyes are pretty but she has an inane talent for making them look expressive but look thoughtless within the next second as she juts her bottom lip slightly, tucking her hands behind her.

"I have a fiancée and yet I wanted to spend more time with you than her," Jimin cuts straight to the point as he breezes through his use of present tense, looking at her directly. "I cheated on her with you and you know that."

If Eunji is surprised, she doesn't let it show.

One of the branches in show business that she hasn't entered yet is acting and she feels like she she should enter it soon enough because she knows she looks pretty when she cries, eyes glazing and lips reddening.

But under Jimin's gaze, she falters. She feels like he can see right through him as if he became a trained eye overnight and managed to overlook all her little stutters in words and in actions.

"You didn't cheat on her," Eunji smiles, unsure if she's reassuring Jimin or herself. She's on her heels and yet she still cowers under his gaze, a quip already forming behind her pearly teeth. "And what do you mean I know that? You mean, I know that I make you happier than she makes you?"

If Jimin looks offended, he lets it show.

He scowls at Eunji in disbelief but she purposely unfocuses her eyes despite setting her gaze on him, not wanting to waver one bit at the insecurity she feels. "That you love talking to me?"

She's been secure her whole life. She's reassured a million times if she's faced with uncertainty for only a hundred. She knows what she wants and what she deserves and she knows that it shouldn't be his scoffs because he should have nothing but admiration for her. "That you love me?"

That's something that makes Jimin glare at her wholly.

He glares at her because he's never been more sure of anything to disprove in his whole life. He knows the exact answer to it and he'd rather talk now than hold his silence forever in order to just make Eunji believe what she wants to believe.

He went to the studio with the intention to break it off. Quickly but surely. No unnecessary intentions and retorts — only wanting to get the words out his mind and heart before leaving her and whatever they had completely.

But this, this just sets Jimin off unlike no other because he knows it's not the truth and he'd rather lose himself completely than tell another lie.

"I don't love you."

The silence is thick but it gets even thicker when he adds, not even taking the time to relish one bit with how Eunji's mouth parts.

"I was infatuated with you," he admits with a bitter taste on his tongue, tasting much of his own that he now lies in. "I was entertained with the idea of you because I'm an asshole that happened to crave the attention."

Eunji doesn't expect the bluntness but she doesn't expect either. the word vomit that comes past her lips, scoffing in offense that it makes her cross her arms across her chest at the feeling of being in front of someone that knows where it hurts.

"Infatuation? Come on, everybody loves me, Jimin."

She says it with much conviction and yet she doesn't know if she's managing to convince anyone at all, much less herself.

She's secure and always has been her whole life — she should not be weak and insecure now.

"Call it what you want, but you were infatuated with me enough to cheat on your fiancée."

It doesn't faze Eunji that she's admitted to Jimin cheating on you with her when just mere seconds ago, she swore up and down to the heavens that he didn't do such a thing.

Even he isn't fazed that she succumbs immediately in attempt to protect her crumbling wall of pride that she's anything but loved and adored.

"I was. I was blinded enough," he clenches his jaw, blinking only once in attempt to remove the image of his house without your things in it, no longer given the definition of a home. "If I loved you, I would've begged you to be with me the moment we were over."

Eunji parts her lips open but this time it's not out of offense or shock — no, none of that. She looks like she's amused, the same smile she gives when she's complimented by a host beyond their script.

"Ah. You and Y/N are already broken up?" she clicks her tongue, disproving her assumption that Jimin's only coming to her now to end their emotional affair because he didn't want to get found out. She hums pleasantly, playfully dropping her eye into a wink as he finds it within her modicum to grin. "Sounds like you're free game to me."

Jimin feels nothing but anger flame at the pit of his stomach that breaches right through his ribs, his protective streak over you weighing heavily on his chest as he repeats her words in his head.

He has perfect pitch. His ears are trained to hear even the slightest inconsistency. Jimin knows what he's heard and by the way Eunji realizes her slip-up, she's far too late to even excuse it.

"How the fuck do you know her name?"

She's frozen because she didn't think that far enough. Became too cocky too quick that she didn't realize she's dancing around in someone else's territory without knowing the safeguards.

She rethinks if she can get out of it this time, much like how she played off the underlying curiosity and misplaced excitement when Yoongi told her that Jimin's already taken with a wife. She could tell him that he told her your name, but even his best friend could tell such a lie that Yoongi would never put you in her way, simply because she is far too low for you to stoop down to.

"Nothing a little basic research couldn't do."

Eunji doesn't necessarily think she's a genius but she knows she's thick-skinned. She's oddly courageous because she knows she has a fallback; countless of people there for her in the event that she slips on her way up.

She's oddly brave even when she whips out her phone to pull up a picture of you from her album dedicated specifically for you, making the room that's already tensioned even more high-strung than before.

Jimin looks at the photo on the screen. You when you were a teenager, in your high school yearbook, with a quote you materialized out of thin air because your parents weren't there to give you ideas. It's a picture you've never posted even for throwbacks or for memorabilia's sake. It's a picture that you didn't like seeing because it brings up bad memories that you can't even remember specifically, but you can feel.

Eunji smiles victoriously to see Jimin look so transfixed on your photo that she's obtained, happy to have his undivided attention even if it's on her phone, which is of course, and extension of her somehow.

"I'm prettier than her, see?"

Not a millisecond later passes that Jimin grabs her phone from her hand and hurls it down to the floor, a sickening crack filling the room when he stomps it with his heel.

She whimpers but it's cut short when he points an angry finger at her, standing up to his full height while she tries to shove away the fact that she looks even more pathetic this way.

"What the hell are you doing this for?"

"To show you what you're missing out on."

Eunji doesn't miss a beat when she replies as if she's been waiting for that question all along; as if she was bred to answer it with her life's purpose, as if her phone wasn't obliterated in front of her mere seconds ago.

"To show you what we could be."

She personally thinks she doesn't have any flaws but if it was required to have one, it would be this. She never admits it but her flaw is to have everything within reach that the second she doesn't have what she has her eyes on, she'll feel herself convulse from the inside out.

Her palms itch with her desire to constantly have more even if she previously insists that her self-worth is based from within and not her capacities to have anything else that she wants.

She haves more than she lacks but it fuels her with even more of the drive to prove herself and her supposed lack of insecurity.

"I'm more than her, Jimin."

"You will never be more than her," he grits through his teeth, eyes flaring in anger. "No one would ever amount to me more than Y/N could."

She has no shame when she attempts to back him into a corner, all for the sake of wanting to prove a point that she's the furthest thing from pathetic.

"But you cheated on her with me."

She uses the term even if she doesn't understand it fully. She owns it completely even if she's barely even touched his arm and all they shared are text messages and not even of the dirty kind. Eunji takes it all, if it means that she'll get to prove herself worthy.

"That's because I'm an asshole who wasn't thinking straight when I invited you in to eat dinner with me," Jimin doesn't falter even once because unlike her, he's already past the stage of residual denial in order to make himself feel better. "And that's because you take so much pride in being the other woman, don't you?"

Eunji, instead of being offended, giggles.

Being the other woman doesn't sound so bad, does it? It implies to her that anyone's willing to drop whatever they have for her, the other woman. It makes her feel seen. Makes her feel secure. Even if her only support system is of herself because she's hidden, it makes her feel special.

"You just love a good chase."

She takes a single step to plant her foot down firmly, arms quickly extending to try and pull Jimin to her hold to kiss him but as her eyes close, she doesn't even graze the pasture of what she wants.

She feels herself stumble a few steps back as she feels Jimin push her and take a step back out of disgust, the vein on the side of his neck growing visible.

"I said don't fucking touch me!"

He's enraged as much as he is repulsed. He wants to get to his house to wash Eunji's grasp away because it feels like she's a pan that's just burnt him without him ever wanting to come near it in the first place.

She's perplexed because she didn't anticipate that she'd be pushed away, quite literally at that, failing to see why she was even distanced in the first place.

"Huh. You just pushed me," she shakes her head.

"Imagine if they learned that my male producer pushed me."

"Imagine if they learned that their beloved idol tried forcing herself on her male producer."

She clearly didn't expect the retort because she thought it'd be enough to make Jimin regret rejecting her in the first place, scoffing as she looks up at him.

"I can ruin your career."

Reflecting to how he looks down on her, he doesn't even blink at her threat or her lousy attempt at it that doesn't even scare him the slightest bit.

"You can ruin me?" he asks mockingly, pouting in a way that gets to her nerves unlike anything. She's the one who's used to mocking, not the one to be the receiving end of it. Jimin only scoffs, rolling his eyes at her. "I can destroy you."

"What do you have that I don't?" Eunji challenges him and she's genuinely curious to find out about his answer.

Jimin has a fanbase but it's not like hers. She's an idol, what she has is much more plentiful that what he could have. She has a support system in which most wouldn't even dare to be critical of her, an unyielding support system that barely weighs down on her morality.

"The regret. The shame," he says truthfully. He feels each one every second of the day and all the shards of it wouldn't even relent as he tries to lay asleep, but Jimin welcomes it. He welcomes the pain and the throbbing because it's what reminds him that he's still there. "The accountability."

"You think I won’t tell the truth to the media?" he challenges Eunji right back, taking a step forward to her that makes her take one backward with a snarl. "You can make rumors about me but I can tell the truth."

Jimin can't bear to say one more lie and he means it with sincerity, knowing that he'd take everything that's thrown to him at this point.

"Drag me down all you want but I’m taking you down even deeper with me."

He doesn't care to consider the logistics that if this whole thing were to happen, he'd be able to bounce back quicker. He's a producer; he could be faceless and nameless for all he cares.

His job is the last thing on his mind.

"I don't care if you defame me because I know I deserve it."

He's certain of the pain that he feels. He's certain that feeling the ache and the stings wouldn't necessarily mean that he's redeeming himself through it or that it would warrant your forgiveness, but he'd rather want it than have nothing at all to remind him of what he did.

He knows what he deserves but he knows what you don't. He doesn't want a single drop of harm nor unnecessary and invasive attention in your life because he'd rather die protecting you it from it all despite being nothing to you, rather than seeing you take it even if he means everything in your life.

"But if you even so much as breathe in Y/N's direction or come near her."

He warns with his tone, his finger pointing directly at Eunji that's struggling by the second to even hide her feelings over his intimidation.

"If you even try and search up her name and do whatever sick plan you have because you want to be mine even if you know you will never have my heart," he spites, eyes not wavering once. "Because you want to be the other woman so bad because you know you'll never be first."

Jimin exhales once, barely able to steady himself with how he can't even wrap his head around how this person in front of him even dares to threaten you in his presence.

"I will make you regret it, Eunji."

She doesn't speak as he stares down on her but she gathers the remaining bit of her misplaced bravery when he turns his back on her.

"You're just as evil as me."

"I'd like to think that I'm the lesser evil," he chuckles as he shakes his head, coming to her one last time as he puts something into his pocket. "People like you never change, Eunji. You are nothing more than superficial."

"Leave Y/N out of this."

"These are my sins alone," Jimin gathers the last of his things and intentionally pushes the button that's been lit red ever since she came here, the realization to Eunji hitting belatedly that he's been recording ever since. "And Y/N will not be the one to pay for them."

Jimin pockets the flashdrive and barely spares a glance at her, pointing to his chest as he makes it clear.

"I will."