ALL IN BLOOM || VMINKOOK ✅

8

JUNGKOOK POV

As much as Jungkook wanted to get straight down to it and start meeting the contestants one-to-one.

The courtship committee was insistent that, given the numbers involved,group activities were the only way to go.

Joon had missed at least half of his group activities due to prior engagements that couldn't be rearranged.

Jungkook had no such luck.

And while Kai would have thought nothing of skipping out on these events, he didn't have that luxury.

Thankfully, everywhere he went, so too did his group of navy sailors and royal guards.

It meant he didn't get mobbed the second he stepped out of his rooms, though it did seem like every beta and omega eye in the palace was constantly watching him.

His plan was to whittle down the group as quickly as possible.

His father and the committee had other ideas, vetoing his sending home of this or that person because of family connections.

The only ones they didn't have a problem sending home were the ones he wanted to hold onto.

Jimin and the other omegas he'd picked out. At a stalemate, he could only play along with his father's plan, sending one or two home every day as the first week trudged by at a snail's pace.

That was his first problem.

His second was Jimin.

The omega was like a thimbleful of oil thrown into a vat of water.

He didn't mix, he didn't mingle.

He stood out and not for good reasons.

Sometimes, it was what he wore, his outfits just a little out of step with what the others were wearing.

He always stood apart from the rest of the group, often wandering away during a talk or demonstration.

He was missing for half their meals and left early at the rest.

And when he was there, he spoke to no one. Except Tae.

Tae seemed to have a knack for drawing the omega out, and he was the only reason he hadn't just pulled the plug on their whole plan and sent Jimin home.

"He's adjusting," Tae said one evening as they sat in his rooms.

"He needs to adjust faster," he grumbled.

Taehyung gave an exaggerated shrug, his shoulders sagging.

"I don't know what to tell you. Or how to speed up the process. He spent seven years living alone on an island. He'd have been more comfortable if we'd dragged him out to sea with us than he is here. But he's very determined to do this. And he is making an effort. You saw him today, at lunch. He actually made a joke."

That was true, he had, drawing the attention of the room when the table full of omegas burst into startled laughter.

"It was one joke. We have a maximum of six weeks to reach declarations of undying love."

"We'll get there. As far as the other omegas are concerned, he's just painfully shy."

"The betas and alphas are torn between him being dumb, weird, or incredibly stuck-up."

"None of those qualities will endear him to the courtship committee. They've already suggested I cut him, twice."

"What did you tell them?"