Abby

Abby is a tattoo artist whose shop becomes a practical setting for Jungkook’s movement toward skilled, legitimate creative work. She first appears as someone already familiar with him, handling his piercings with confidence and treating the controlled pain of the procedure as part of his established relationship with body modification. Later, she becomes his trainer and an encouraging professional presence, giving his interest in tattooing a direction beyond the violence and instability that have shaped much of his life.

Identity and Professional Setting

Abby works in a tattoo shop and is responsible for both the technical preparation of clients and the instruction of an apprentice. When Jungkook visits her, she prepares the equipment, has him lie beneath the black ceiling of the salon, disinfects his nipples, and pierces them one after the other. The scene presents her as practiced and matter-of-fact: she completes the work efficiently, checks that it is finished, and receives Jungkook’s thanks without turning the procedure into spectacle. Her role is therefore grounded in skilled bodily labor, where needles, disinfectant, and controlled pain are handled as part of an ordinary professional process.

Her shop also functions as a place where Jungkook can test a different identity. After spending time with Connor at Crafty Craft, he decides to become an apprentice at Shadow, finding that tattooing interests him more than expected and that he feels genuinely at home in the field. Abby takes charge of his training. She recognizes that he learns quickly and that his ability is already promising, although he has not yet begun tattooing skin. Her approval is practical rather than exaggerated: she sees the quality of his work while maintaining the boundary between preparation and professional practice.

Training Jungkook

Abby’s most consequential contribution is her role in teaching Jungkook a craft. She gives him access to tools, procedures, and a workplace in which concentration and technique matter. By the time he speaks with Shelby, he expects that Abby will allow him to begin working the following week. That prospect marks a concrete transition from apprentice to working tattoo artist, even though the transition remains conditional on continued training and demonstrated readiness.

The first tattoo Jungkook performs for Shelby shows how Abby’s instruction is put into practice. Abby welcomes Shelby into the shop and leads her to Jungkook, who has already prepared his equipment. After Abby leaves them to work, Jungkook designs the tattoo on a tablet, converts the drawing into a stencil with a thermal copier, puts on black latex gloves, places the stencil on Shelby’s right shoulder blade, and operates the tattoo machine while reassuring her. The scene makes Abby’s influence visible without placing her at the center: the apprentice now controls a complete sequence of professional actions, from design and transfer to hygiene, placement, and execution.

Abby also understands that the shop is a social workplace rather than merely a room containing equipment. She notices Jungkook and Shelby’s intimacy, smiles at their exchange, and leaves them alone when he kisses Shelby before beginning the appointment. Her light teasing does not undermine her professionalism; instead, it allows Jungkook to work while preserving the couple’s trust and comfort.

Connection to Shelby and Jungkook’s New Life

Abby becomes familiar enough with Shelby to offer her a warm welcome whenever they meet. Shelby is nervous before receiving her tattoo, worrying about the pain, whether she might faint, whether she has eaten enough, and whether Jungkook could bear to see her cry. Abby’s presence helps frame the appointment as a supported professional encounter rather than an isolated test of endurance. Jungkook then reassures Shelby physically and emotionally before beginning, while Abby withdraws so that the couple can work together.

Outside the tattoo appointment, Abby contributes to Jungkook and Shelby’s shared life through small acts of social knowledge. She tells Jungkook about a drive-in cinema, inspiring him to surprise Shelby with an outing. He blindfolds Shelby and takes her to the drive-in, where the screening is Scream, a film he knows she likes. Abby’s suggestion thus becomes part of Jungkook’s effort to create tenderness and ordinary pleasure rather than defining his relationship through crisis alone.

Her influence continues as Jungkook moves toward independent employment. After Noah reserves space for him at N’s Ink, Jungkook settles into the new shop, meets his colleagues, and works on a flash book for clients. He explains that he expects to tattoo his first client there before considering his professional transition complete. Abby’s earlier training supplies the foundation for this step: she is the person who recognized his aptitude, taught him the work, and helped him imagine a future in which his hands produce art rather than harm.

Narrative Significance

Abby occupies a supporting but structurally important position in Jungkook’s development. The story repeatedly places him in environments organized around bodies: the illegal fights at Ares Garden, the injuries and fear attached to those fights, and the tattoo shop where pain is controlled, chosen, and transformed into design. Abby belongs to the third environment. Her work does not erase Jungkook’s history, but it offers a disciplined alternative in which physical intensity is governed by consent, technique, preparation, and artistic purpose.

Her function is also relational. Sunmi and Namjoon respond to Jungkook through concern, care, and attempts to understand his destructive behavior, whereas Abby meets him through labor and skill. She does not appear to cure him or explain him. Instead, she gives him a place to learn, a standard to meet, and a profession in which his unusual tolerance for pain and his interest in tattoos can be redirected toward creative competence. The result is a modest but decisive form of change: Jungkook begins to see himself not only as a fighter or a damaged young man, but as someone capable of becoming a tattoo artist with clients, colleagues, and a craft of his own.