Characters / BTS Universe

aka: BU

The BU is a (very confusing) fictional storyline featuring fictional alternate versions of the BTS members. The tropes featured here apply to the characters and the characters only. No tropes about real life people, please.

The seven boys

Back row (from left to right): Jungkook, Yoongi, Jimin, Taehyung and Namjoon. Front row: Jin and Hoseok.

A group of teenagers that met and became friends in school. In a world where Adults Are Useless and There Are No Therapists (useful ones, anyway), they often hung out together... until they didn't.

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• Carload of Cool Kids: In "Prologue" and "RUN". The image of them in the truck (as seen in the image in the work page) is a recurring image in the series, representing the last fleeting moments of happiness they had as teenagers.
• Dysfunction Junction: They all suffer of some form of depression, trauma, abuse, or addiction.
• Free-Range Children: Downplayed; while not exactly kids, they're still minors who wander on the highway, take trips to the beach on a truck, and hang out in the middle of a dumpster at night, all without adult supervision.
• Limited Social Circle: Before the group's separation, they are only seen hanging out together, all seven of them - no mentions of other classmates (see Lonely Together below). Even during the period they were separated, they are only mentioned to hang out at most with one other person each, and only for a while.
• Lonely Together: With financially struggling, neglectful, abusive and/or absent families, plus the presence of Sadist Teachers, plus friendships with other people being rare to non-existent, it's clear that they truly only had each other back in that year they were together. Since Jungkook is the only one who doesn't share a class with any of the others ^note the Notes mention that Jin was held back a year due to having studied in the U.S. and having to adapt to the Korean school system and there's no mention of other friends of his, it must have especially sucked for him when the group separated.

Kim Seokjin/Jin

"If I could turn back time, I want to become the best man in the world".

^{Click here to see the SAVE ME webtoon version} 

Played by: Jin

The protagonist. The oldest of the bunch, Jin (as implied in the Highlight Reels, HYYH Notes, and "Euphoria", and confirmed in The Notes and SAVE ME) is seeking to Set Right What Once Went Wrong over a series of events he feel responsible for, in what involves Time Travel and possibly a Deal with the Devil. He was the one recording and taking pictures of their trip to the beach, and was the first to see Taehyung climbing the tower to jump off. As revealed in the HYYH Notes, he accidentally caused Yoongi's expulsion from the school and possibly the group's separation.

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• Abusive Parents: He's implied to be very afraid of his father, who cares more about the family prestige than anything else.
• Apologetic Attacker: In "Blood, Sweat and Tears (Japanese ver.)", after he throws several punches at Taehyung in the kitchen, the music stops for a couple of seconds, during which we hear him whispering "I'm sorry" in a pained tone.
• The Atoner: Jin wants to fix the events that led to the group's separation and possible deaths and redeem himself, or at least prove to himself that he's still a good person. He feels responsible for Yoongi getting expulsion from school (which he contributed to by accident) as well as his friends' fates.
  "The reason why I needed that flower. There was only one. Because I wanted to make that person happy. Because I wanted to make them smile. Because I wanted to see them happy. Because I wanted to be a good person."
• Big Brother Instinct: Clearly shown to care for the others, especially Jungkook. After he rescues Jungkook from falling from a building in SAVE ME, Jin immediately hugs him and asks worriedly where he has been and what is he doing all alone (though then again he did see Jungkook die two times).
• The Chew Toy: The universe really has a thing against him. See Yank the Dog's Chain.
• Cynicism Catalyst: An early example would be the Choi incident in his childhood, which led to him losing a friend as well as realizing what his father's nature is. Another one is his accidentally getting Yoongi expelled, where the year he spent finally feeling happy abruptly comes to a halt, all (he feels) because of him.
  • After he's given the chance to save his friends, he's fully motivated to do so. However, the repeating loops slowly start to wear him down, to the point that he starts to become more and more jaded, starts caring less about saving his friends and more about escaping the loop, and becoming more and more like his father.
• Deal with the Devil: So it seems, as symbolized by the scene of him kissing the winged statue in "Blood, Sweat and Tears".
  • The plot (as told in SAVE ME) kicks off after a mysterious entity gives him a chance to save everyone. A different entity, however, appears to give him the ability to remember the time loops.
• Failure Is the Only Option: No matter what he tries, nothing ever goes right for him. In "FAKE LOVE", he's seen desperately trying to protect a Smeraldo flower from oncoming destruction, but it turns into ash. See Yank the Dog's Chain below.
• Flower Motifs: seen with white flowers and seven white petals^note same number as the members; in "Awake", he's seen burning them. In the Japanese version of "I NEED U", he's seen lying in a bed filled of flowers, imagery that greatly resembles a coffin.
  • Especially associated with the callas flower, which is used both for weddings and funerals. The way a vase of callas flowers falls in the Highlight Reels (as explained by DKDKTV) can also be seen as a sign of bad luck; indeed, right after that, he goes to a date with a girl only for the girl to get hit by a car.
  • He's also the one most associated with the Smeraldo flower, both in a literal and symbolic sense.
    • He buys Smeraldo flowers in the Highlight Reels and appears with a bouquet in the LOVE YOURSELF posters; he's also seen trying to protect a flower in the "Fake Love" music video).
    • The original tale the Smeraldo comes from - about a man who spent a lot of time in the shadows preparing a flower to give to the woman he's in love with, only for the woman to die before even getting to see the flowers is also a pretty direct parallel to his story in the Highlight Reels.
    • The flower symbolizes "the truth untold" (as the man in the tale was too afraid to reveal his ugly self to the woman and therefore never got to reveal himself or his love for her), which ties to the themes of the LOVE YOURSELF series: Jin appears to have a history of trying to please others (as seen with his father and the school principal in the Notes) and desperately tries to prove to himself that he's a good person by starting anew with the girl in the Highlight Reels without really confronting his mistakes or the friendships he left behind.
• Generation Xerox: In the first Note released from LOVE YOURSELF: Answer, he discovers that his father went through the exact same situation as him when he was young. Jin even finds out through notes hidden in the group's secret room. But while they both tried to desperately fix the mistakes that affected their respective group of friends, Jin's father eventually gave up and forgot.
  • Another Note from MAP OF THE SOUL: 7 also implies that one of his fathers friends ended up in the same mental hospital as Jimin.
  • A conflict that presents itself throughout the whole story is whether or not Seokjin will end up just as cynical as his father. In later Notes from MAP OF THE SOUL: 7, he's getting dangerously close.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Under pressure from the school's principal, he directed the principal to the group's hideout, thinking no one would be there at that moment. There was. This led directly to Yoongi getting expelled.
• Motifs: Aside from the Flower Motifs described above, he's often seen with cameras, taking pictures with a Polaroid or recording with a handheld camera (with photos and recordings taken by him being recurring images in the story as a whole). This includes "Prologue", "Awake" and "Euphoria".
  • This goes to the point of being so caught up in recording memories of their happy times that you wonder how much he's actually living them. Notably, the famous Former Friends Photo of the boys on the truck in the beach is not the actual picture; as seen at the end of "RUN", the actual picture shows everyone minus Jin, who was taking it.
• New Transfer Student: He meets the boys after getting transferred from a school from the US. This is also used to explain why he hangs out with the others despite being older than all of them: due to the "different school system", he has to enter a year behind, placing him in the same class as Yoongi. He also gets transferred due to this school being the same one his father went to; after the group falls apart, Jin transfers somewhere else.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Congrats, Jin, telling the principal about your friends' secret hiding place thinking no one would be there not only got Yoongi expelled, but might have been a contributing factor in your group of friends falling apart.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Played with. Seems to be the only aware of what's happening, but he might be actually losing memories from the repeated time travels.
• Single Tear: In "I NEED U".
• Tempting Apple: In the "Awake" teaser. He doesn't eat it, though.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Prone to this in the videos, as he's the one who's the most aware of what's happening.
• Took a Level in Cynic: While already not the most idealistic at the beginning of the story (where it's zigzagged until he gets the chance to fix things through time travel), Seokjin starts out in the "Groundhog Day" Loop fully intent on saving his friends and going back to the happiness they used to have, but as time keeps rewinding and the horrors he sees keep repeating, this slowly starts to change:
  • As the loops go on, Seokjin starts to realize that this goal is much, much harder to achieve than he initially expected. For a while, as we see in SAVE ME, he starts to have moments where he temporarily breaks down, but eventually, he's reminded one way or another of who is he doing this for and keeps on going.
  • By the Time Skip in The Notes 1, however, he's already lost count of how many loops he's been in and is shown to use increasingly less savory methods to save his friends - manipulating events around his friends for them to save each other, and (most notably) possibly running over Jungkook with his truck for reasons still unexplained. At the end of the volume, he tries to pursue a relationship with a girl he likes by trying to become the person he thinks she would love, in part to make himself believe he's able to make someone happy, but then the events of the Highlight Reels happen, triggering yet another loop.
  • In the second part of the Notes (the ones appearing in the MAP OF THE SOUL series, still unpublished in novel version), he's tried to follow all the hints he's been given but he's still stuck, and has been becoming more and more like his father - even reacting cynically to Hoseok's pleads for him to tell his father to not close the orphanage Hoseok came from. It's also explicitly stated that, for Seokjin, it has become more important to survive and escape than to save his friends.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He was the one who caused the separation by exposing the hideout and accidentally getting Yoongi expelled, indirectly causing the group's downfall and separation for 2 years.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Poor guy. Accidentally getting your friend expelled from school when you were trying to avoid it, and then seeing your group of friends fall apart because of it, is one thing. Getting stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop to save your friends and failing repeatedly? Reuniting with your friends only to have them fall apart after one reveals the incident to the rest? Meeting a girl and going to great lengths to prepare a perfect date - including buying a specific species of flower from the one flower shop that sells it - to make someone happy and reassure yourself that you are a good person, only for the flower delivery truck you got flowers from to take a U turn and kill her while she's crossing the street to meet you, right before your eyes, and resetting time yet again after 4 months? Ouch. Even in "FAKE LOVE", his attempts to protect the flower he's carrying while covering it with his own body from incoming debris fail completely.

Min Yoongi

"Don't come closer; you'll become unhappy."

^{Click for the SAVE ME webtoon version} 

Played by: SUGA

The second oldest. Yoongi appears to be somewhat aloof, but he clearly cares about the others and has a soft spot for the younger members of their group, particularly Jungkook. He lives with his father, with whom he has a strained relationship. Like his real-life counterpart, he plays the piano.

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• The Alcoholic: Appears several times drinking in videos and in supplementary material. He appears visibly drunk in "RUN" and the Highlight Reels. He's either the angry kind of drunk, or he tends to drown his sorrows often.
  • He indeed appears drunk in several scenes of SAVE ME, making a scene in a bar.
• Bungled Suicide: In The Notes, it's mentioned in passing that, in one of the past loops, he threw himself to the flames and survived.
• Character Tics: In The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes, he tends to bite his nails when he's anxious or thinking, to the point that he has raw cuticles.
• Commonality Connection: With Jungkook. In The Notes, after their talk about dreams and noticing that both of them tend to bite their nails to the point of getting their cuticles raw, Jungkook wonders if Yoongi wants to give up on the world, too, and both end up bonding over Yoongi's music. Later, Seokjin notes that despite the age difference and Yoongi's seemingly less approachable nature, both of them have the same look in their eyes and thus have an understanding that draw them to each other. Seokjin exploits this in later loops by having Jungkook save Yoongi from suicide and not interfering in their interactions.
• Cooldown Hug: In "RUN", Jungkook attempts this on Yoongi when the latter gets violent while drunk. It doesn't work.
• Delinquents: Said to skip class with Taehyung to fight kids outside the school in the Notes.
• Dissonant Serenity: In "I NEED U" (original version), he barely reacts to burning alive from the fire he started.
  • Similarly, when giant flames appear in front of him and start to engulf the room in "FAKE LOVE", he's shown simply staring at them, smiling. According to the Notes, fire in general reminds him of his mother - who died in a fire he escaped from when he was younger -, so it's a mix of Survivor's Guilt and wanting to erase himself both so he doesn't have to suffer anymore and so no one else gets hurt because of him.
  • In Episode 6 of SAVE ME, when he sets the hotel room on fire, he smiles.
• Driven to Suicide: In a rather brutal manner in "I NEED U (Original version)". See also Dissonant Serenity above.
• Drowning My Sorrows: In The Notes, he's shown to be drunk hours after leaving the hospital where Jungkook is after his car accident.
• Heroic BSoD: His reaction to finding out about Jungkook's accident in The Notes. He gets flashbacks to his mother's death, finds himself crying and barely registers his surroundings, and his apparent Survivor's Guilt kicks in full-force. He gets drunk not long after, and spends days like this.
• Interrupted Suicide: In "Euphoria", he's rescued from the fire in "I NEED U" by Jungkook, who drags him out of the room while Yoongi is unconscious. In the Notes for Answer, however, whether Jungkook makes it in time is unclear.
  • In the Notes, he also calls Jungkook just as the younger is about to jump off the roof of a building. Whether Yoongi's timing was accidental or not remains to be seen.
• It's All My Fault: See My God, What Have I Done?. He also harbors guilt for the death of his mother, and keeps others at arm's length because he believes getting close to him will only lead to misfortune.
• Missing Mom: There was a house fire when he was young. He managed to get out; his mother didn't.
• Motifs: Associated with fire, appearing frequently with a lighter or among smoke. His mother died in a fire that burned down his house and he seems to have developed an obsession with the element, as it reminds him of her. There's the Self-Immolation example below. His room in "FAKE LOVE" is consumed by a sudden fire.
  • He's also associated with the piano - which also has ties to his mother -, with Yoongi playing the piano himself. Sometimes, the piano too is on fire (because his mother's piano was also destroyed in the fire that killed its owner).
    • The piano is also a motif he shares with Jungkook, as it's a key element in their relationship.
  • To a lesser extent, butterflies, as seen in the WINGS Tour trailer and the HYYH pt. 2 concept pictures; the video for "Intro: Nevermind", featuring Suga, also heavily features butterflies. Note how the WINGS Tour Trailer shows Jungkook opening a notebook with a painted butterfly, too.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In The Notes, Yoongi's reaction towards seeing Jungkook in the hospital, as he thinks of the younger's car accident as a consequence of Yoongi approaching him a months earlier.
• Not So Stoic: Despite generally acting aloof, he breaks down in tears after seeing Jungkook in the hospital. According to The Notes, he didn't remember the last time he cried before that.
• Plot-Triggering Death: His original fate is one of the events that send Seokjin on his quest to set things right.
• Rage Against the Reflection: In "RUN", he furiously throws a stool towards a mirror nearby, breaking it.
• Self-Immolation: In "I NEED U".
• Survivor's Guilt: He seems to be affected by this due to an incident that happened to him when he was younger; namely, the fire that killed his mother and destroyed his house, yet Yoongi survived. It still haunts him, judging by his general demeanor around fire (especially "I Need U", "Prologue", the "First Love" teaser and "Fake Love"). Some passages of the Notes - as well as the quote above - indicate that it's also a source of much self-hatred for him, and that he has a debilitating fear of having others rely on him, since he believes he only gets people hurt.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Tends to do this whenever he stares at fire or is surrounded by anything that reminds him of his mother's death. Very noticeable in the bonfire scene in "Prologue" and in several scenes of his room in "Fake Love" (particularly one in the extended version).
• Tragic Keepsake: A piano key, what's left of his mother's piano after the fire that killed her. He throws it out of the window in a fit of anger after getting expelled, and never manages to recover it.

Jung Hoseok

"If you can shine, I'm okay."

^{Click for the SAVE ME webtoon version} 

Played by: J-Hope

Third oldest. Hoseok has a naturally sunny disposition that hides years of trauma due to a childhood incident. Has a particularly strong bond with Jimin, to the point that, as seen in the Highlight Reels, they're somehow the only ones who managed to stick together after the group's separation. Like his real-life counterpart, he's a dancer.

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• Escapism: Dancing seems to serve as this for him, according to the Notes, allowing him to forget about his real-life problems.
  • If the scene where he eats a Snickers bar after finding no other escape to his room (and then drowning in a sea of them) in "Fake Love" is anything to go by, the Snickers and the pills (with the former possibly representing the latter) might also function as this.
  • His general approach to serious issues seems to be to simply ignore and avoid confronting them as much as he can. When he finds out that his childhood friend is leaving overseas... he just leaves, not feeling able to talk to her about it. He grows out of it in The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes ... but it's rendered moot by the Reset Button at the end of the book.
• Foil: Both he and Jimin have childhood traumas with Trauma Buttons that still affect them to this day that involve some sort of denial, but they deal with it slightly differently. Everyone knows about Hoseok's narcolepsy, but he puts on a smile and never explains why he has it; Jimin doesn't tell the others about his seizures. Hoseok often takes pills he doesn't need (because his narcolepsy, as we learn in The Notes 1, is fake; Jimin, much to his displeasure, is frequently in the hospital for the seizures he gets due to his trauma. Hoseok is tied to the past, never leaving his hometown, and has trouble accepting the incident that caused his trauma (namely, that his mother won't come back); Jimin is forced to constantly change schools and remain unattached to anyone, and anything that reminds him of the Garden Arboretum triggers his seizures. This even extends to their relationship with dancing, which both indulge in for different motives: Hoseok uses it as an escape, while Jimin uses it as a measure of self worth.
  • Their dynamic as Foils is illustrated rather neatly in one of the LOVE YOURSELF posters.

• Missing Mom: Abandoned at seven years old by his mother. She told him to close his eyes and count to ten and never came back, only leaving a Snickers bar next to him.
• Motifs: Associated with imagery of maternity as well as pills and Snickers bars, all associated to his trauma and fears.
  • One he shares with Jimin is hospital beds. We see in "RUN" that they kept company with each other in a mental asylum at some point, Jimin for his seizures and trauma, and Hoseok for his Münchausen Syndrome (which also implies the older's there willingly).
• Münchausen Syndrome: Diagnosed by a doctor as this in the WINGS teaser for "MAMA", and often associated with pills. He mentions in the Notes that he often takes pills he doesn't need, and in The Notes novel, reveals that his narcolepsy is fake.
• Mushroom Samba: In the "MAMA" teaser, he takes a pill and gets what is pretty much a Disney Acid Sequence.
• Parental Abandonment: See Missing Mom above.
• Stepford Smiler: Of the Depressed type; he's all smiley and friendly, but he's traumatized by Parental Abandonment. He mentions in the Notes that he hides his sadness, only feeling like himself when he dances.
  • The "MAMA" teaser shows him facing the picture of the trees (associated with Jimin's trauma), eating a Snickers and smiling at it.
  • His actions in "FAKE LOVE" (attempting to run, eating a Snickers and then adopting a Troubled Fetal Position) in The Notes and his reaction to the dancer girl leaving show that his instinctual approach to problems related to his past is running away instead of confronting them.
• Trauma Button: At the age of ten, a few years after being abandoned, he had to count to ten out loud in class. This reminded him of the incident, as he was made to close his eyes and count to ten by his mother, as in playing hide-n-seek, only for no one to be there after that. He found himself unable to count to the end, instead panicking and fainting. Even now, he's never been able to count to ten.
  • Several elements related to the incident in his childhood seem to fall into this. See his reaction in "Fake Love" to seeing himself surrounded by amusement park games in his room.
• Troubled Fetal Position: He's seen lying like this on a floor covered by Snickers bars in "Fake Love".
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: See Trauma Button above. His immediate reaction to his surroundings in "Fake Love" (pieces of amusement park games scattered around) is going straight to the door and desperately try to get out.

Kim Namjoon

"I only watch you from behind, because now is not the time."

^{Click for the SAVE ME webtoon version} 

Played by: RM

The most reflective one in the group. Namjoon has a particularly strong bond with Taehyung, with the two often getting in trouble with authority. He's looked up to by the others as the most mature one, but he feels he's anything but. He writes the Arc Words "You need to survive".

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• Berserk Button: Treating him as lesser for his poverty. It ends up getting him in trouble.
• Can't Spit It Out: In the "Highlight Reels" and The Notes, he anguishes over a girl he sees on a street, in an elevator and on the bus, and even hangs on to a hair tie he bought as an excuse to talk to her, but he never gathers the courage to do so.
• Delinquents: Shown to often go out with Taehyung to spray paint the walls in the streets, then getting in trouble with the police.
• Fatal Flaw: Ironically enough, he seems to suffer of a lack of initiative/ability to take responsibility. He has an impoverished family with a troubled situation he runs away from, he never dares to talk to the girl in the Highlight Reels, and his lack of action is implied to have led to a split between him and Taehyung.

• Loss of Identity: Seems to be a theme. His room in "Fake Love" has him seeing a more orderly or "perfect" version of himself in the mirror, looking much more like the kind of respectable young man that's expected in a conservative society or circle than the Namjoon we know.
• Motifs:
  • Mirrors, particularly broken ones. He finds himself among a Hall of Mirrors in the "Reflection" teaser and we briefly see him laying among many, many broken mirrors in the "WINGS Tour Trailer". And then there's "Fake Love" (see Loss of Identity above).
    • Interestingly, Taehyung is shown staring at his reflection in one of the LOVE YOURSELF posters.
  • One he shares with Taehyung is phones (of any kind), representing Namjoon's role as the younger's Reasonable Authority Figure, and his failure to live up to it due to his own issues.
    • This is most evident in the appearances of the Recurring Camera Shot of WINGS (also present in the Japanese versions of "I NEED U" and "RUN") of a phone cabin where the phone's ringing - from a call implied in the "Stigma" teaser to be by Taehyung (made explicit in the WINGS Tour performances and VCRs). In "Reflection", it appears tied with chains, making answering it impossible for Namjoon; as he despairs, an inscription in red appears on a wall, saying "LIAR".
    • In the second video of the Highlight Reels, Taehyung reminisces about Namjoon. Immediately after, we see him playing golf a la "Prologue" with his own phone right in front of an incoming train.
  • Another one he shares with Taehyung is the Arc Words "I'm fine" written in a typography that makes it so it reads "Save me" when upside down. Though it's more associated with Taehyung than Namjoon, it appears in one of the LOVE YOURSELF posters, connecting them both, and Namjoon sees the "I'm Fine" graffiti painted by Taehyung on a bus stop in the Highlight Reels.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Played with. The others look up to him as such, especially Taehyung; Namjoon sees that Jin has responsibility in Yoongi's expulsion from school, but reacts calmly and tries to understand why he did it; the only reason Tae keeps quiet about a conversation he eavesdropped on involving Namjoon is because he trusts Namjoon to know better. However, Namjoon often gets in trouble with Taehyung, he tends to avoid dealing with problems going on in his family, and "Stigma" and "Reflection" imply he failed to respond to Taehyung's call for help (implied to be after Taehyung killed his own father). When Jungkook asks him to teach him how to be a real adult, Namjoon doesn't think he can, but doesn't have the heart to tell him, either.
• The Reliable One: He fills this role within the group, being the one others go to for advice and whose trailer Taehyung uses for shelter. Seokjin outright describes him as reliable in The Notes. Even in SAVE ME, after the group's separation, he's the one with a job (along with Hoseok), Seokjin counts on him to take care of Jungkook while he goes somewhere else, Taehyung goes to him to hide from police, and the container he lives in becomes a meeting point. The only reason he ends up where he is in the original timeline is because a client pushed him to the edge by humiliating him and mocking him for his poverty, a Berserk Button for him.
• Too Desperate to Be Picky: The Notes show how his family's poverty forces him to move with them to wherever there's an affordable hospital for his father, dropping out of school to get a job. After the group's separation but before the events of SAVE ME, he lives in a village where he takes works in delivery, taking the most dangerous jobs in the middle of winter to win just a slightly higher amount of money.
  • He also discusses this trope in The Notes: he hates how poverty reduces people into giving up things that should be precious, especially after he sees the circumstances that lead into his co-worker's death, and the reaction of the people on the village afterwards.
• Tragic Dropout: Due to his father's illness, he's forced to drop out of school early to move with his family and work to maintain them. After he comes back, he works at a gas station and lives in a container. The Notes mention he still goes to the library often.

Park Jimin

"I lied, because there's no reason to love someone like me."

^{Click for the SAVE ME webtoon version} 

Played by: Jimin

The third-youngest member, Jimin often changed schools prior to the start of the series due to seizures, which he has because of a traumatic incident he suffered in the Garden Arboretum as a child. He has a particularly strong bond with Hoseok. Like his real-life counterpart, he's a dancer, though with much less training due to his circumstances.

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• Abusive Parents: Of the emotional kind, as revealed in SAVE ME. His mother doesn't care about him or his feelings, blames him for his condition and treats him like a burden. After she decides she and her husband can't take care of him anymore, she forces Jimin to stay in a hospital, with no visits from friends, until he "gets better". By the beginning of SAVE ME, he's been alone in the hospital for 2 years, with no signs of his mental health improving.
• Face Your Fears: In the Notes, he's shown going with Yoongi to the Arboretum to finally face his trauma. As seen in the Highlight Reels, though his Trauma Button persists.
  • In the Notes, rather than talk about his trauma, even to his doctors, he lies and pretends he doesn't remember what happened.
• Foil: Both he and Hoseok have childhood traumas that still affect them to this day, but they deal with it slightly differently. Hoseok often takes pills he doesn't need to the point of suffering from narcolepsy which turns out to be fake; Jimin, much to his displeasure, is frequently in the hospital for the seizures he gets due to his trauma. Hoseok was abandoned by his mother and is tied to his past, while Jimin has to move frequently with his family due to his seizures without enough time to make connections to other people. The incident that caused Hoseok's trauma haunts him and he has trouble accepting that his mother won't ever come back, while anything that reminds Jimin the Grass Flower Arboretum incident triggers his seizures. This even extends to their relationship with dancing, which both indulge in for different reasons: Hoseok uses it as an escape, while Jimin uses it as a measure of self worth.
  • This dynamic is illustrated in one of the LOVE YOURSELF posters.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Downplayed. As revealed in SAVE ME, his parents forced him to stay in a hospital until he "gets better" (so they don't have to take care of him anymore), which ended up being 2 whole years of doing nothing and receiving no visits. This only trapped him with his already existing mental illness and seemingly made it worse.
• Motifs: Water. Seemingly attempts to drown himself in a bathtub in "I NEED U", and is occasionally seen underwater in imagery. In "FAKE LOVE", his room is themed as a bathroom, with a gigantic amount of water suddenly flooding it from the walls in the climax. Might have to do with whatever happened in the Arboretum.
  • SAVE ME also shows him to have frequent nightmares/hallucinations of him being pulled underwater by a dark figure, which is directly related to the Arboretum incident.
  • As confirmed in SAVE ME, the bathtub is where he goes to feel clean. See Trauma Button below.
  • One he shares with Hoseok is the hospital beds we see in "RUN" and throughout WINGS. We see in the former and in SAVE ME that the two managed to be together in a mental hospital at some point, Jimin for his seizures and trauma, and Hoseok for his narcolepsy.
• Scrubbing Off the Trauma:
  • His first reaction after seeing blood is desperately washing his hands in the Highlight Reels.
  • In SAVE ME, he frequently sees dark, dirty splotches of water coming from his feet, which he tries to clean to the point of scratching them raw.
• Tempting Apple: In the WINGS teasers and concept pictures, and the Japanese version of "Blood, Sweat and Tears" videos. Unlike Jin, he eats it.
• Trauma Button: The Arboretum. Something happened there. In The Notes, Yoongi notices Jimin reacting strangely to a sign pointing to the Arboretum on the path the group is walking through - according to Yoongi's narration, Jimin becomes completely still and unresponsive, dripping with sweat and looking about to collapse. It's only after Yoongi makes the group change plans and go somewhere else that Jimin starts moving again.
  • The other time Jimin's trauma is shown to be triggered is in the Highlight Reels (and his narration of the incident in the Notes), when he collides with the female dancer during rehearsal. His reaction is immediately rushing to the bathroom to wash his blood off his hands without even thinking of checking on the girl.
  • In the SAVE ME webcomic, in one of the loops Jin manages to get him out of the hospital, but when Jimin sees a sign pointing to the Arboretum on the direction Jin is driving, he gets out of the car in panic and runs towards a construction site, presumably to his death.

Kim Taehyung

"Would you not have left me if I had made a different choice?"

^{Click for the SAVE ME webtoon version} 

Played by: V

The second youngest, and the closest thing the series has to a Deuteragonist (and possibly Antagonist). Taehyung a particularly strong bond with Namjoon, the two often getting in trouble, though Taehyung seems prone to do that on his own. He's a major instigator of the separation of the group, with key events being his father's murder at his hands in "I NEED U",his apparent suicide attempt in "Prologue" and, later, his reveal of Jin's role in Yoongi's expulsion in The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes.

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• Abusive Parents: He has an Alcoholic Parent who physically abuses him and his sister, to the point that Taehyung has a scar on his back and Namjoon has seen bruises on the back of his neck.
• Biblical Motifs: Associated with devil/fallen angel imagery, particularly in WINGS.
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: At the end of "I NEED U".
• Break the Cutie: He was a naturally happy, playful kid raised in an awful background with an abusive father, until he finally snapped and went on to murder his father to defend his sister. The Notes show him as a child happily greeting his father only to be hit against the wall. He feels guilty for his desires to murder his father, seeing it as having inherited his father's violent tendencies. His reaction to his deed as shown in "I NEED U" and "Prologue" shows this trope very well.
  • SAVE ME and The Notes add in his nightmares about events occurring in previous and current loops where he sees his friends dying. He suspects them to be real and is tormented by them.
• Delinquents: Shown to go out with Namjoon in the middle of the night to spray paint on the streets and then running away from the police, and often doing so alone. In "Stigma" he gets caught scratching the word "Abraxas" on the metal doors of a closed store. He also mentions skipping class with Yoongi to fight with other kids in the Notes.
• Deuteragonist: The story is pretty balanced for all members, but (besides Jin) he's the closest to being the protagonist. His actions in "I NEED U" and "Prologue" especially affect what happens in the rest of the series, with the Most Beautiful Moment in Life arc focusing significantly on him. As revealed in SAVE ME and The Notes, he's affected by Jin's Time Travel, having dreams about events that happened in previous loops or that haven't happened yet.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: In The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes, he dreams about the death of the girl Jin meets days before it happens. Ominously, the epilogue shows him having a nightmare/vision of the entire section where Namjoon lives being on fire, and of Namjoon himself lying dead inside his trailer.
• Flash Sideways: "Euphoria" implies he might be actually getting some awareness of what's going on. In the Notes, it's revealed he has nightmares about events in previous loops, such as Yoongi dying, Jungkook getting into an accident and Namjoon getting into a fight, with the first two being events we've already seen in "I NEED U" and the latter an event we see in SAVE ME.
  • In SAVE ME, he lightly yet cryptically mentions dreaming about events we've already seen, which we later see is true: not only does he have constant nightmares about his friends dying, but he also dreams of events that haven't happened yet, which leads him to Jin's door.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: How he kills his father.
• Improvised Weapon: Grabs a broken bottle in the room to kill his father.
• In the Blood: In the Notes, he fears that this is the case for his father's violent urges.
• Missing Mom: His mother left her children and abusive husband in the middle of the night, which he always felt bitter about.
• Motifs:
  • Phones of any kind, a motif he shares with Namjoon. Likely representing their relationship, with Namjoon failing to live up to his role as Taehyung's Reasonable Authority Figure, with Taehyung calling him and Namjoon never answering. In the Highlight Reels (set after the group's separation), he replicates Namjoon's "hit an object like a golf ball" with his own phone. Towards an incoming train.
  • In WINGS, he's associated with the character Abraxas (from Demian) and Icarus. See also Biblical Motifs above.
  • Also associated with the Arc Words "I'm fine", which upside down read "Save me", seen in the LOVE YOURSELF posters, the Highlight Reels, and the "Fake Love" music video.
  • Interestingly, he's shown staring at his reflection (one of Namjoon's motifs) in one of the LOVE YOURSELF posters.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Downplayed. The Notes show him putting on his "dumb" smile to avoid directly confronting serious issues, like his father's abuse or his eavesdropping of Jin possibly outing them to a teacher and Namjoon finding out yet not confronting him about it. Overlaps with Stepford Smiler.
  • In SAVE ME, his first mention of seeing Yoongi in his dreams appears to be a joke, which we find out one chapter later that it isn't. Namjoon clearly doesn't take him seriously, but Jin does.
• Psychotic Smirk: Very good at this. Sports one in "Stigma"◊, the original version of "Blood, Sweat and Tears"◊ and the WINGS Tour trailer◊. It helps that in the latter, he appears as a devil.
• Sad Clown: While often acting goofy, he's been stated (both by Namjoon and himself) to joke around in order to avoid talking about his issues. In particular, he's never talked to the others about his situation at home.
• Self-Made Orphan: He kills his father with a bottle in "I NEED U" (and the original sequence of events).
• Slasher Smile: Sports one in the Japanese version of "Blood, Sweat and Tears", while he attacks Jin with a knife.
• Stepford Smiler: Downplayed (overlapping with Obfuscating Stupidity). He's shown in The Notes playing dumb by putting on his signature smile when trying to avoid confronting a subject directly, like his father's abuse (not that he's fooling anyone with that one) or what he saw and managed to hear, from Jin and a teacher's and Jin and Namjoon's conversations.
• These Hands Have Killed: He's seen crying and staring at his stained hands in "I NEED U", and fruitlessly trying to clean the blood off in "Prologue".

Jeon Jungkook

"The direction my heart steers, the day I want to run towards that place."

^{Click for the SAVE ME webtoon version} 

Played by: Jungkook

The youngest of the group. Jungkook gravitates towards the others - who are his Only Friends - and has deep love and admiration for them. He has a particularly strong bond with Yoongi, often seen at his side while the older plays piano.

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• Abusive Parents: The Notes mention his stepbrothers bullying him while his stepfather and the stepfather's family treat him like he doesn't exist. According to Jungkook, his biological mother doesn't really care about him and only pretends to in front of other people, and has been that way since his father left. Namjoon describes him as a kid who never received affection.
• Anxiety Dreams: In the Notes, he has a nightmare about Yoongi's bed being on fire, with Yoongi on it, while going through a fever. He wakes up screaming and crying. It's not clear if it's a memory from him rescuing Yoongi in that loop or a Flash Sideways.
• The Baby of the Bunch: The youngest of the group, like his real life counterpart. He's also shown to be wide-eyed and playful (sometimes messing with the others without much consequence); he looks up to the others, who in turn take care and have a soft spot for him (most notably Yoongi and, in WINGS era, Namjoon). He appears somewhat childish in some of the imagery (balancing himself on railings in "I NEED U" and "Euphoria", sitting and playing on swings in "Blood, Sweat and Tears" and the WINGS Tour Trailer, and being the student to Namjoon's teacher in "Blood, Sweat and Tears"). He describes the others as his friends, but also his family and teachers.
  • In SAVE ME, Jin treats him a lot like a little brother, worrying and caring for his safety; after he first rescues Jungkook from falling, Jin hugs him in relief and starts asking him what he's doing all alone, which reminds Jungkook of his mother.
  • Also defied. He appears facing a door alongside the rest of the group in the WINGS Tour VCRs, with the others going forward without him, and Jungkook struggling to catch up; as shown in the Notes, he wants to become a real adult (due to his desire to overcome his fear of losing his friends), and asks Namjoon to help him. His appearances in the symbolism-heavy WINGS-era videos and teaser, where he's shown drinking what seems to be absinthe and dipping his fingers in an odd black substance and sucking on it, appear to represent his seeking of knowledge and possible corruption.
• Break the Cutie: Feeling unwanted by his family, he clings to his friends, having the classroom they all use to hang out as the only constant in his life. Then Yoongi gets expelled, the group separates, leaving him to watch it all fall apart, and he's left alone. Then years later, he reunites with Yoongi, and it doesn't go well. By the time we first see him in SAVE ME, he's hit the Despair Event Horizon.
• Commonality Connection: With Yoongi. In The Notes, after their talk about dreams and noticing that both of them tend to bite their nails to the point of getting their cuticles raw, Jungkook wonders if Yoongi wants to give up on the world, too, and the two end up bonding over Yoongi's music. Later, Seokjin notes that despite the age difference and Yoongi's seemingly less approachable nature, both of them have the same look in their eyes and thus have an understanding that draw them to each other. Seokjin exploits this in later loops by having Jungkook save Yoongi from suicide and not interfering in their interactions.
• Cooldown Hug: Tries this on Yoongi when the older gets in a drunken rage in "RUN". It doesn't work.
• The Cutie: Being young and wide-eyed, with his worst fear centering around losing his friends, he fits this role.
• Deal with the Devil: In the Notes found in Tear, it's revealed that Jungkook made a deal with a mysterious figure right after the car crash in order to stay alive.
• Despair Event Horizon: In "I NEED U", as revealed in The Notes and SAVE ME. Years after the group's separation, he believes himself unwanted, wanders alone, intentionally gets beaten up by strangers, and (in the original events changed by the time loop), he kills himself. In "I NEED U", when we see his face right before he gets hit by a car, he just stares at it, unmoving.
• Disappeared Dad: As shown in The Notes, his father left home when Jungkook was still a child, saying that he the world had become too heavy to bear. Jungkook has blamed himself for that since.
• Driven to Suicide: As "Euphoria" and The Notes imply and SAVE ME confirms, he throws himself off a building in the original timeline. In the subsequent time rewinds, Seokjin has the misfortune to see him die. Twice. He's also shown by the narration in The Notes to have been depressed and suicidal for quite a long time prior.
• Family of Choice: To Jungkook, the other boys became his only real family.
• Foil: The girl Yoongi meets in the Highlight Reel videos is this to Jungkook. The way she takes his lighter away from Yoongi to keep him from smoking has similarities to the scene of Jungkook blowing out the flame in Yoongi's lighter in "Prologue". The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes goes further by describing the girl as assertive and very blunt in her expert critiques of Yoongi's music - with the latter having to work extremely hard for her to say a song of his is "nice" -, while Jungkook has a very hard time expressing himself and (not being an expert) likes pretty much everything Yoongi makes.
• Friendless Background: As mentioned in the Notes, in the past Jungkook hanged out pretty much all the time with one or more members of the group, or sometimes just hanged out alone at the room they used as their hiding place. He was also the only one who didn't share a class with any of the others ^note the Notes mention that Seokjin was held back a year due to having studied in the U.S. and having to adapt to the Korean school system, so he shares a class with Yoongi here and there's no mention of other friends of his. When he's shown entering school in SAVE ME, he never interacts with any of the kids around him. Taking both this and his family situation into account, things seem to have really sucked for him after the group separated.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Tries this after his Cooldown Hug doesn't work with Yoongi in "RUN". Doesn't work, either.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Downplayed. He asks Namjoon to teach him how to be a real independent adult, and tries to become more self-sufficient.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: His attachment to the others is implied to be due to a lack of affection from his family combined with a Friendless Background, making the trope a possible interpretation of this.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: His main motivation seems to be his older friends (or hyungs)'s happiness and well-being, as well as recovering what they once had, as they were his only friends (see Friendless Background above). As seen in the Notes (and implied by the "RUN" music video), he was particularly affected by seeing the group fall apart.
• Interrupted Suicide: In SAVE ME, Seokjin rescues him in the time loop when Jungkook is about to throw himself off a building. In the later loop in The Notes 1, he instead receives a call from Yoongi when he's about to jump.
  • Appears in "Euphoria" rescuing Yoongi from the flames in Yoongi's suicide attempt; this is how Yoongi is rescued in the later loops according to The Notes 1.
• It's All My Fault: Blames himself for Yoongi getting expelled after he hit a teacher and the ensuing fallout according to the Notes, because Yoongi did it to defend him.
  • As revealed in The Notes, he thinks his father abandoned him because Jungkook was too much of a burden to bear.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Defied. The others are this to Jungkook, being the only ones who ever really gave him affection, and he has become reliant on them as a result. He, however, wants to become a real adult to learn to live without them.
• Motifs: One he shares with Yoongi, which is the piano, a key element in their relationship.
  • He's also associated with drawings, which he's seen making himself. These include a drawing of Yoongi and a painting of someone (confirmed to be Yoongi, too) in the "Begin" teaser, and a painting of a butterfly, seen in the WINGS Tour trailer - with butterflies being a motif associated with Yoongi.
  • A recurring image - up to the point of being a Recurring Camera Shot - that has appeared in the VCRs for the WINGS Tour and the LOVE YOURSELF-era WINGS Tour final concerts, as well as the "FAKE LOVE (extended ver.)" music video, is the older members simultaneously walking through some kind of door, unflinchingly looking forward, and Jungkook being the last to catch up while anxiously looking at the others.
• Plot-Triggering Death: His fate in the original timeline (plus two more) is one of the main things that make Jin set out to make things right.
• Self-Harm: As revealed in The Notes, he as a child kept picking on a wound taken from a knife cut on his finger, and has made an habit of hurting himself since.
• Undying Loyalty: He's very attached to the others. Even after a teacher hits him asking him if he keeps hanging out with his friends, he remembers the beating Yoongi suffered to protect him and decides to endure the beatings while refusing to lie. When it all falls apart, he's crushed.

Taehyung's father

Taehyung's unnamed only parent. He's killed by Taehyung in "I NEED U" (Original version).

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• Abusive Parents: Oooh, boy. As stated by Taehyung in the Notes, he becomes unrecognizable and violent against his son and daughter when he's drunk... and we always see him drunk.
• Alcoholic Parent: See above.
• Asshole Victim: He's hitting his daughter when Taehyung intervenes and stabs him with a bottle numerous times.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Viciously stabbed with a broken bottle on the stomach.
• The Faceless: Downplayed. His face can be seen a couple of times, but from afar and only from a Dutch Angle. In "Stigma", it's obscured by the camera angle and focus.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: The way he dies.
• Karma Houdini: In "Euphoria" (shown more clearly in the Notes and a deleted scene), an alternate timeline has Hoseok stop Taehyung at the last minute, allowing Tae's father to run away.
• No Name Given: Like any other characters who are not the main seven, his name is never mentioned.
• Plot-Triggering Death: His death (or rather, his murder at the hands of Taehyung) is one of the original outcomes that lead Jin to try to set things right.

The girls

The unnamed girls. Characters each girl appears with, from left to right: Yoongi, Namjoon, Jin, Taehyung, Jungkook, and Hoseok/Jimin.

Six unnamed girls who made their first appearances in the Highlight Reels videos and The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes. Each one meets one of the seven boys (or two of the boys, in some cases) in various circumstances during the time the boys spend separated.

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• Death by Irony: As The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes reveals, the girl Jin meets is killed by the delivery truck for the Smeraldo flowers Jin ordered for their date. The truck took an U turn after Jin called again when he found that card he had ordered with the flowers was missing. To make things worse, he went out of his way to get the flowers because he wanted to believe he was a good person by making someone else happy.
• Delinquents: The girl in Taehyung's section.
• Foil:
  • The girl in Taehyung's section is a runaway. Taehyung becomes a protective figure to her the same way Namjoon was to him, and like with Namjoon, the two get in trouble for spray-painting on walls. Unlike Namjoon and himself, however, Taehyung tries to take responsibility for her, so he pays for the things she stole in a store and later turns himself in to the police so she doesn't get caught.
  • Like Yoongi, the girl that appears in his part of the story is a musician (she's shown singing and playing a guitar). She, however, seems more proactive than Yoongi, seems intent on taking care of him, and keeps him from smoking (to his displeasure).
    • Her interactions with Yoongi also make this to Jungkook. The way she takes his lighter away from Yoongi to keep him from smoking has similarities to the scene of Jungkook blowing out the flame in Yoongi's lighter in "Prologue". The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes goes further by describing her as assertive and very blunt in her expert critiques of Yoongi's music - with the latter having to work extremely hard for her to say a song of his is "nice" -, while Jungkook has a very hard time expressing himself and (not being an expert) likes pretty much everything Yoongi makes.
  • The one in Jimin and Hoseok's section is a dancer, like them, and is Hoseok's childhood friend. However, she differs from Hoseok in that, while Hoseok seems fixated on the past and his current relationships, she has set goals for the future, leaving to a foreign country in order to pursue her dream.
    • Her easygoing nature and closeness to Hoseok also makes her this to Jimin, who appears to keep more to himself and puts more of a sense of self-worth in his dancing ability.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Taehyung and the girl he meets.
• No Name Given: Even in the narration of The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes, they're only referred to as "she/they" or "person/girl/kid".
• One Head Taller: There's a very noticeable height difference between Taehyung and the girl he meets.
• Put on a Bus: All except Jin's girl, who dies.
  • In HYYH: The Notes, the girl in Jimin and Hoseok's section leaves the country to join a dance group overseas.
  • The girl in Taehyung's story gets separated and they never hang out together again. In the Notes, Taehyung finds an X drawn over the graffiti paintings they did in the bus stop they had as a meeting place; he interprets the X as hers, meaning that all of what they did together was a lie. They never meet again.
  • In Jungkook's section, he brings the girl flowers only to find an empty room. No one tells him where she went or what happened to her.
  • A quite literal example in Namjoon's section: he never brings himself to talk to the girl, so he gets off the bus while she goes on her way.
  • Yoongi brusquely yells at the girl in his story to go away. That's the last we see of her.
• Satellite Character: The purpose of their brief appearances in the "Highlight Reels" and The Notes seems to be to (intentionally or not) make each one of the boys confront his personal failings.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Of all of the girls, the one in Seokjin's section is the one with the least amount of screentime, appearing in only two scenes. Her second scene is the one where she dies.

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