Chapter Text
Week 3 - 35 Weeks Remaining
Jun-hee stares at the two pink lines.
She doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe.
The world doesn’t narrow or sharpen or blur, it just stops, suspended in the static moment of recognition that hasn’t quite clicked into meaning yet. She angles the test toward the light like she needs more proof, like more light might change the answer.
It doesn’t.
Her mind is blank in a way that feels physical, like someone stepped inside her and wiped her clean from the inside out. No thoughts, no feelings, just the echo of silence filling every corner of her.
There’s no narrative forming yet, no conclusions being drawn, just the sheer immovable fact of what she’s looking at. The lines are pink. Both of them.
She sits hunched on the closed lid of the toilet, elbows braced on her knees, the test cupped in her hands like something fragile, like it’s alive.
The light in the bathroom is soft, the only real source of it coming from the small frosted window above the sink where the last edge of daylight cuts in at an angle and brushes the white tile with a dull yellowish cast. But it doesn’t make anything warmer.
Her eyes are wide and her jaw is slack with a kind of numb disbelief that doesn’t quite fit her. Her mouth is parted, like a word might drop out if she could just find one that fit. But she doesn’t speak – there’s no one here to talk to. And even if there were, she has no idea what she’d say.
A breath stutters in through her nose, shallow and uneven, and her shoulders rise with it, marking the beginning of something that won’t stop unfolding now. Her chest feels tight. Her ribs feel too small. There’s pressure building where she can’t release it, like her body is trying to catch up to a truth her mind hasn’t given permission for yet.
The test feels heavier than it should, too small for the weight it carries. Plastic and flimsy and unassuming, and yet it might as well be made of stone for the way it sits in her hands, dense with meaning. It’s nothing – an object, a tool – and yet, it’s everything.
It’s a window closing, or maybe opening, or maybe shattering entirely.
She finally swallows, mouth dry and jaw tight, and something in the movement of her throat feels mechanical, like her body is trying to remember how to function. She glances around the bathroom like she’s checking for an audience or a witness, but of course, there’s no one. Just the fan humming in the ceiling and the presence of her own reflection in the mirror across from her.
She stands, slowly. Her knees tense in protest, and her thighs feel tight, like she’d been sitting there much longer than she should have. The movement doesn’t feel natural, it feels deliberate, like stepping out of one version of herself and into something new, something uncertain. The test stays in her hand, clutched too tightly now, each motion stiffer than it needs to be.
She doesn’t look down. She doesn’t look at the test. She doesn’t look in the mirror.
The hallway outside the bathroom is dim, lit only by the haze of early evening seeping through the open window in the living room. The apartment is still, quiet, and familiar. But the familiarity feels thin now, like it could peel away if she thought about it too hard.
The couch is still a mess, the blanket crumpled where she left it, and the mug on the coffee table is the one she meant to wash after lunch yesterday. There’s a plate in the sink, a few other dishes stacked around it. All of it unchanged, all of it exactly how she left it.
And still, it feels different.
She crosses to the couch and sinks down, slow and heavy, into the spot she always curls into.
Her eyes drag back to the lines on the test like they might have disappeared in the time it took her to move from the bathroom to here.
They haven’t.
The pink lines are still there, undeniable and insistent.
Her hands are trembling now. It’s not fear – or, not just fear. It’s something more tangled than that. The nerves, the shock, the too-much-too-soon of it. The vastness of how fast her life just tilted sideways.
She swallows, throat tight, and the air tastes stale.
This wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She hadn’t planned for it, hadn’t expected it. Not now, not here, not while everything is unraveling at the seams.
The last few weeks have left her raw and half-splintered, sifting through the wreckage of things that used to feel solid. Her finances, her relationship, her sense of control – all of it eroded by decisions they both made and can’t undo.
Myung-gi hasn’t looked her in the eye since it happened. Since she’d screamed at him in the middle of his apartment, her voice cracking on his name, her hands shaking as she pointed out the obvious truth he refused to own: that it was his idea, that he talked her into it, that they’d both lost everything because he couldn’t admit when something sounded too good to be true.
She remembers the way he sat there, slouched on the couch, face blank, fingers picking at the seam of the cushion like he could pretend he wasn’t there. Like if he didn’t speak, it wouldn’t be his fault. Like silence could be some kind of shield.
She thought he’d apologize, that he’d come back a day later with red-rimmed eyes and the words you were right forcing their way out of his mouth. That he’d offer to make it right, or at least help sweep up the mess.
But he didn’t. He shut down. Shut her out. Slipped away and left her circling the drain on her own.
And now she’s sitting here, holding this thing in her hands like it’s a verdict written in ink she can’t scrub off.
Her fingers curl around the edges of the test, and still she doesn’t let go.
She drops her head into her hands and her hair spills forward around her face like a curtain. Her breath catches at the top of her chest as she tries to take a deep breath, but it comes shallow and shaky. She tries again, slower this time, drawing air in until it stutters past the tight band of her ribs. Her exhales feel like giving something up.
She doesn’t cry, but her eyes sting in a way that says she could if she let herself tip a little further in any direction. It’s not sadness, not exactly. It’s too layered for that. It’s fear and frustration and disbelief all woven together, tangled so tightly that she can’t find the edge of any one emotion without pulling the others loose along with it. It’s too much. Too big. Too real.
She wanted this once, years ago. In the soft, blurry version of her future she used to play out in her head when things still felt possible, when she was younger and more certain of the shape her life would take. Back when she thought she’d have a partner who wanted it too, who’d be steady, who wouldn’t flinch when things got hard. Back when the idea of a baby came packaged with structure, with love, with a name already picked out in an old diary.
It was never supposed to look like this.
Not while everything is falling apart. Not while the person who’s supposed to be beside her won’t even meet her halfway. Not while her savings are gone and her pride is cracked down the middle and the only future she can see clearly is the one she didn’t choose.
She loses track of time sitting there, hunched on the couch with the test resting between her fingers. Ten minutes might have passed, or maybe thirty. Or more. The sky outside the window shifts, the light sinking toward night.
Nothing else around her changes, but something in her chest does. There’s a new weight there now. Something solid, something that wasn’t part of her before this moment but has settled in like it belongs, like it’s been waiting for her to notice it.
She uncrosses her legs slowly, her knees stiff, then draws them up to her chest and folds herself around them, chin resting against her knee. Her arms wrap around her legs, and her fingers remain curled loosely around the test.
She’s not gripping it, but she isn’t setting it down, either. It’s just there, the two pink lines still clearly visible. Her thumb brushes over them, as if touching them might change something. She wonders, briefly, if she should take another one. Just to be sure.
But she already knows. She’s known since the nausea hit her out of nowhere two mornings ago, bending her over the toilet with a mouth full of acid and a breath she couldn’t catch. Since the dull ache in her lower back settled in and refused to leave. Since the growing sense of unease started curling around her when her period didn’t show up and didn’t show up and still didn’t show up.
She didn’t want to connect the dots. Not until she had to. But they were always there.
And she remembers that night with Myung-gi, too. The way they stumbled into it without thinking, too distracted and too stubborn to bother finding protection. The way he’d muttered something about it being fine, because it had been fine before, and everything already felt like it was spinning too fast to stop. They hadn’t talked about it, hadn’t second-guessed it.
And now she’s sitting on the couch with a test in her hand, staring down the ripple effects of it.
She breathes in again, slower this time, and her lungs still don’t fill all the way. Her shoulders rise with the effort, then fall again, but the tension doesn’t leave her body.
Her hand moves toward her stomach, tentative, not a cradle, not a caress, just a simple, curious gesture. Her palm settles flat against it, and she waits for something that doesn’t come. There’s no signal, no bump, no difference beneath her skin. Still her body, still her. But not for long.
Maybe.
She closes her eyes and leans back against the couch, the fabric cool against the back of her neck. The quiet in the apartment stretches out around her, holding her and the knowledge sitting heavy in her chest, undeniable now, unavoidable.
Everything is still. But nothing feels the same.
She leans forward and finally sets the test down on the coffee table. It lands with a slight shift of her fingers, the movement careful but final, like putting it down might pause the weight of it, even just for a second.
But the sight of it on the table doesn’t feel any less intrusive than when it’s in her hands. It takes up too much space for something so small. She watches it like it might blink or buzz or offer instructions, but it only sits there, pink lines glaring in the low light.
So she reaches for her phone. She hesitates with her fingers just above the screen, suspended in the space between impulse and action. Then she picks it up and unlocks it, the screen lighting up like an invitation she’s not sure she should accept.
She scrolls. Not far, but she still has to. He isn’t at the top anymore.
Myung-gi’s name looks different now, sitting in its little bubble of silence like it’s waiting for something. They haven’t talked in days, not since the last time they fought. Not since she stopped reaching out first.
She taps the message thread and it opens with an almost cruel kind of neutrality.
She types: I’m pregnant.
The words sit heavily on the screen, black letters on white background, as solid as stone. They look too clinical, too bare. Her thumbs hover, then fall away, and she stares at them for a long stretch of seconds, trying to gauge their weight, their shape, their tone. They feel cold. Distant. Like something someone would say to a stranger.
They don’t sound like her.
So she deletes them, one letter at a time, backspace after backspace, like maybe if she goes slowly enough, she can walk reality back, too.
She tries again.
Can we talk?
It looks better, but only on the surface. The vagueness is its own problem – it could be about anything. The money, the silence, the fights. He might think it’s a trap. He might think it’s nothing. He might ignore it altogether, pretending it’s not specific enough to warrant a response.
She deletes it.
Her thumb rests on the screen like it’s weighing the next move. Her other hand comes up to press against her cheek, and she chews at the inside of her mouth until the sting reminds her to stop.
There’s no right version of this conversation. No perfect phrasing that will make it easier to hear or easier to say.
She already knows what he’ll do, how his brain will short-circuit in the space between disbelief and denial. He’ll panic, or he’ll spiral, or he’ll get loud, or detach, or worse – go completely quiet. And he won’t give her the support she so desperately wants.
She types another message.
Can you come over?
That one works.
It’s plain. Neutral. It doesn’t explain, it doesn’t ask for too much, and it’s the most she can manage without unraveling herself entirely. She doesn’t add anything to soften it, no exclamation point, no emoji, nothing to ease the weight of what she’s actually saying.
She stares at it for a second longer, then taps send.
The message goes, and she’s left staring at the small gray checkmark, silent and plain.
She exhales through her nose, her chest rising and falling like a reflex more than a choice. It’s not relief that she feels, it doesn’t feel like anything close to that.
It’s a surrender. A quiet admission that she can’t carry this moment alone, even if she’s already preparing for the possibility.
The phone slips from her hand and lands in her lap. She watches the screen dim and go dark, the soft reflection of herself barely visible in the glass.
She slowly leans back into the couch, the cushions shifting under her weight, and folds her arms over her chest. Her eyes lift toward the ceiling, tracing the uneven lines in the plaster without seeing any of them. She isn’t looking for anything in particular, just trying to anchor herself somewhere outside of the test, the text, the tension coiling in her chest.
Her phone buzzes.
She jumps slightly, her hand darting to grab it even before her brain catches up to the motion. Her heart jolts in a single, uneven thud that rattles somewhere near her throat.
The text from Myung-gi reads: ok
Then another: why
Her thumb hovers above the screen, her eyes scanning the messages twice, three times, like maybe there’s a hidden message in them she missed.
But there isn’t. They’re flat and emotionless. They’re the kind of response you give when you’re annoyed or busy or don’t care.
She swallows, and the effort feels jagged. Her throat aches.
Maybe she should have been clearer or given him context. Typed it all out in neat, bulletproof words and hoped for the best.
Because there’s no scenario where he reads between the lines. He never has. He can read the rise and fall of the stock market, predict trends before they hit the news, analyze risk like it’s a sixth sense. But when it comes to her, when it comes to the small, difficult things that require patience or empathy, he’s never known what to do.
Her stomach turns over with a slow, tense wave of unease that makes her press her phone to her chest without thinking. Her fingers curl around the edges of it, like holding it tighter might steady something inside her. It doesn’t.
She types again.
Just want to talk
She stares at the words for a long time. They look like nothing, like filler. But it’s not a lie – she does want to talk. She wants to say it out loud, to have it received, to not have to carry the weight of it alone for one more second.
She sends it.
Her jaw tightens. A wave of heat climbs up the side of her neck, her skin prickling with tension as the pressure builds again behind her ribs.
Her fingers are trembling when she locks the screen and sets the phone back down, face-down this time. She doesn’t want to see if he reads it right away. Doesn’t want to know if he doesn’t. She'll just wait until he knocks at the door.
If he knocks at the door.
She folds her arms across her stomach again, curling inward slightly, because whatever happens next, it’s already in motion.
She reaches for the TV remote. The screen lights up the room with flickers of movement and a wash of color that doesn’t really settle anywhere, painting the walls in distraction more than anything else.
She scrolls without aim, flicking through thumbnails of shows she doesn’t register and titles she doesn’t read. The action becomes rhythm, something to do with her hands, something that mimics purpose well enough to stand in for it.
She pauses eventually, though she couldn’t say why. Her finger hesitates over one of the tiles on the screen and she clicks play without taking the time to check what it is.
The sound picks up around her, bright and performative, voices speaking lines that were written to mean something but don’t land in her ears as anything more than static.
She isn’t watching. Her eyes are facing the screen, but they’re not following the images. She couldn’t recount a single plot point if someone asked.
Her body stays where it is, but her mind splinters in a dozen directions, each one looping through questions she hasn’t formed into words yet.
She curls her legs beneath her, shifting into the corner of the couch like she’s trying to occupy less space.
The throw blanket draped over the cushions gets pulled across her lap, bunched around her knees, then smoothed out again with the same restless hands that keep needing something to do.
It’s too warm, too heavy. She kicks it off, then pulls it back when the air against her skin feels exposed in a way she doesn’t like.
Nothing feels right. Every part of her body wants something different, and none of it satisfies.
The episode ends. She doesn’t notice.
Another begins, the autoplay countdown barely a blip in her peripheral vision. The characters change. The set changes. The voices change. The story lurches forward without her, and then that episode, too, comes to an end.
She blinks slowly and the light of the television washes across her face like it might leave a mark. The noise blends into itself until it’s all the same. Scenes bleeding into each other, lines of dialogue lost in the churn of her thoughts.
She stays still, caught in the pull of inertia, her pulse thrumming somewhere in her chest like it’s pacing without her.
Then there’s a knock at the door.
Her spine goes rigid. Her fingers tighten reflexively around the edge of the blanket, clenching the fabric in her fists like she’s bracing for a physical impact. The tension hits hard, rising from her stomach to her throat in a wave that’s too fast to stop. Her breath shortens, her body curls inward without thinking, and for a long second, she doesn’t move. Her eyes stay on the screen like if she just focuses hard enough, she can ignore the thing she’s been waiting for.
Another knock follows.
And with it, the end of pretending.
She pushes the blanket off her lap with both hands, movements slow and deliberate, her joints aching from how long she’s been sitting in the same position once again. She uncurls herself and stands, the weight of her own body settling into her legs. Her bare feet hit the floor, and she crosses the room on unsteady legs.
She stops at the door. Her hand finds the knob and holds it. She closes her eyes for a second, not to collect herself, but because the space between hesitation and action feels thinner and easier to pass through with her eyes shut.
She inhales through her nose and lets her lungs expand until they press against her ribs, the air stretching the tightness in her chest like it’s trying to make room for something she hasn’t invited in.
Then she exhales, loosens her fingers, and opens the door.
Myung-gi is standing there, hunched slightly into himself like he wasn’t sure how close to the door he was supposed to be when she opened it. His hands are deep in the pockets of his jacket, shoulders rolled forward like they might shield him from whatever expression he finds on her face. His hair is slightly rumpled, and his eyes are guarded in the way they always are when he thinks he’s walking into trouble but doesn’t want to admit he knows it.
They look at each other.
It lasts only a second, but in that second, everything she wants to say is already pressing at the back of her teeth, held there by the pressure of how important she knows this moment actually is. Her face stays still and unreadable. His gaze flickers, as if he’s waiting for a reaction she hasn’t decided to give him.
She doesn’t speak.
Instead, she turns around and walks back inside, leaving the door open behind her in a way that gives him the choice to follow – or not.
The silence that enters with him is dense. The kind that carries weight. The kind that speaks for him before he says a word.
He steps into the apartment with a slowness that’s almost tentative, like he’s trying to remember the rules of a place he’s been a thousand times but hasn’t visited since everything went sideways. His shoulders lift with a breath, and he takes a few steps forward, not bothering to take off his shoes, pausing when he gets to the edge of the living room like he’s waiting for instructions that aren’t coming.
He hovers awkwardly, his hands still buried in the fabric of his jacket like he doesn’t trust them not to fidget. He doesn’t sit.
Jun-hee walks back to the couch without looking at him. She doesn’t gesture, doesn’t explain. She picks up the remote from where she left it, bringing the volume down until the noise is low enough to fade into the background.
Then she sinks back into her corner of the couch, pulling her legs up again, not for comfort this time but for containment, like drawing herself into a smaller shape might make this conversation easier to hold.
“So…” he says, the word hanging limp between them like it showed up uninvited and doesn’t know where to go next.
Jun-hee glances at him with a quick flick of her eyes that barely lands before she’s looking away again.
The silence that follows is heavier and more pointed, like they’re both waiting for the other to crack first.
He rubs the back of his neck with one hand like he’s trying to push back the tension curling up his spine.
She chews the inside of her lip, suddenly unsure if she should speak for fear that anything she says will just make everything worse.
He steps forward, half-sitting on the arm at the far end of the couch, perching on the edge like he’s not sure how long he’s staying. His eyes flick toward the TV, fixed but unfocused, like he’s only staring forward because it’s easier than looking at her.
She watches the movement of his hand against his knee for a moment, then drops her gaze and picks at the loose thread of the throw blanket crumpled beside her.
The silence stretches, taut and uncomfortable. Her voice is flat when it finally breaks through. “So… how’s everything?”
He shrugs, one shoulder barely moving. “Fine. I guess.”
She nods once. “Your channel still getting views?”
“Yeah,” he says. “People are pissed, though.”
“I bet.”
The words are clipped. Not sharp, not yet at least, but clipped. Controlled. Measured to avoid spilling over.
He glances over. “Have you been eating?”
She lets out a breath, part huff, part attempt to cool her temper before it catches. “I’ve been too nauseous. But yeah.”
He watches her for a second longer. “You sick or something?”
She doesn’t answer, and she also doesn’t look at him. Her eyes stay on the screen, even though the colors blur and the movement doesn’t register.
The silence grows thicker again, less passive now. Charged, like it’s picking up weight with every breath.
Then he exhales and says, “Is this about the money?”
She snorts before she can stop herself. The sound is bitter. “Oh, you mean how you lost all of my savings?”
“I didn’t lose–” he starts, but cuts himself off, jaw flexing once before he continues. “I didn’t make you invest.”
She turns to him sharply. “You told me it was safe. You said, ‘This one’s solid. You trust me, right?’ And I was stupid enough to believe you.”
He leans forward, elbows braced to his knees, voice climbing with defensiveness. “Yeah, and I lost everything, too. You think I’m not dealing with an insane amount of shit right now?”
She laughs, short and hollow. “Yeah, I’ve seen the comments. That livestream meltdown where you killed the chat ten minutes in? That was a good one. Really made me feel like I made the right call hitching my future to yours.”
“That’s not fair,” he shoots back, sitting upright now, voice sharper.
“No, what’s not fair is that I backed you. I believed you. I listened when you said you knew what you were doing. And now I’ve got nothing to show for it.”
His jaw tightens as he looks away, eyes fixed somewhere over her shoulder. “You think I wanted this to happen?”
“I think you didn’t think it could,” she bites back, the words slipping out too quickly to be softened.
His voice flattens. “Jesus, Jun-hee. You really think I planned for everything to go to shit? You think I wanted to lose everything?”
“I think you liked the attention,” she says, sitting up straighter, heat creeping into her voice. “I think you liked the views, the platform, the idea that people thought you knew what the fuck you were talking about. I think you got high on being right. And I think you didn’t care enough to wonder what would happen if you weren’t.”
He laughs, and the sound is bitter and sharp, a sound used for defense. “You think this is about attention? You think I’m sitting on some pile of crypto money while everyone else burns?”
She stands too fast, too suddenly. “You made money off people who trusted you. People like me. And you walked around like you were leading us to salvation, like you were some kind of genius and we were all just lucky to be along for the ride.”
He stands too, matching her energy. “I made you money for years! You didn’t complain when the returns were good!”
“I wasn’t putting everything I had into your stupid fucking coin back then!”
“Yeah? Well, I lost everything I had in the end anyway, right?” His hands lift, gesturing wildly before falling back to his sides. “The money, the channel, the brand deals. It’s gone. All of it’s gone. So get in line, Jun-hee. You’re not the only one who got burned.”
She freezes, and the anger doesn’t fade – it sharpens. It centers. Her eyes lock on his, and her voice drops lower than before. “Get in line?” she repeats, every syllable cut clean. “Are you fucking serious?”
He throws his hands up like the gesture might clear some of the chaos piling up between them. “I’m saying you’re not the only one hurting.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Her voice lifts before she can control it, every word laced with a disbelief that’s been festering since the first red flag he ignored. “You think I haven’t been watching this train wreck unfold in slow motion, praying for you to act like any of it mattered to you? You haven’t even looked me in the eye, let alone apologized. I lost everything, Myung-gi. My savings, my safety net, everything I had to feel secure in life. And it all went up in smoke because I trusted you.”
He flinches at that. His mouth twitches like he wants to deny it, defend himself, rewrite the past into something more palatable, but nothing comes out.
The silence stretches for a beat, thick and uneven, like it’s trying to decide whether to retreat or combust.
Then she says, quieter now, but no less sharply, “You’re an asshole.”
He folds his arms across his chest like a shield. “You’re not exactly easy to be with either, you know.”
She lets out a short, brittle laugh that carries more venom than volume. “Yeah. I’m sure it’s so fucking hard having someone in your life who cared about you and thought you were decent.”
“You always expect everything to go your way,” he snaps, a defensive edge climbing into his voice. “You’re impossible to please!”
“Oh, fuck off.”
They’re standing too close now, hearts pounding, voices rising with every sentence that lands harder than the last. It’s spiraling fast, gaining momentum like a rockslide, and neither of them knows how to stop it – only how to shove harder.
“You think this was easy for me?” he shouts. “You think I’m enjoying any of this? My name is tanked! My face is everywhere! I can’t post anything without getting death threats. And you think I’m sitting here celebrating that?”
Her hands are trembling. She shakes her head like the words offend her on a cellular level. “You still know what to do. You still know how to play the stock market, you still have your faceless ‘buddies’ and ‘connections’ that will get you into other deals that will make your money back eventually. Meanwhile, I’m staring at an empty bank account and wondering what I’m supposed to do next.”
“Plenty of people lost money,” he says, voice flattening like he’s shifting into some rehearsed line he’s used to justify this to himself. “That’s what investing is. It’s a risk.”
Her body recoils, shoulders pulling tight, her weight shifting like she’s physically resisting the urge to lash out. “You seriously think I did this to myself?”
“I think you made your own choices,” he says, and this time there’s nothing casual or conciliatory in his tone, only cold detachment, like he’s throwing up walls as fast as she tears them down.
She laughs once, sharp and humorless. “Right. My choices. Like the one where I listened to you, because you’re supposed to be my boyfriend. Or the one where I took your word for it, because you talked like you knew what you were doing. You’re acting like I pulled this out of nowhere, like I got here without you.”
“I didn’t force you,” he snaps, and the words land heavy in the space between them.
She steps forward. “No, you just sold it like it was foolproof. You talked to me like I was stupid for hesitating. You made me feel like I’d be the idiot if I didn’t go all in. Do you even remember that? The way you said it would change everything?”
“I was trying to help you!” His voice hits the walls of the apartment like it’s trying to claw back ground he already lost. “I thought it would work! It always worked until that one time!”
“Well, it didn’t work,” she says, voice catching as it rises again, and she can feel that she’s starting to not talk about just the money anymore. “You talked me into it, and now I’m the one dealing with the consequences. You get the chance to talk about lessons learned and rebrand your way into sympathy. Meanwhile, I’m eating toast for dinner and dodging medical bills because I can’t afford to fucking exist.”
His mouth opens and shuts again. Nothing comes out.
She keeps going.
“You want to talk about those consequences?” Her hands lift, gesturing toward herself like the evidence is right here. “Let’s talk. Let’s talk about how I haven’t been able to grocery shop in two weeks. How I canceled a doctor’s appointment last week because I couldn’t cover the co-pay. How I lie awake at night running through every mistake I’ve made and wondering if this is the one that finally ruined me.”
He’s staring at her, but the words keep coming.
Her voice strains, rising with the force of it. “I’ve been waking up nauseous every goddamn morning, and I’m too anxious to eat, too stressed to breathe. I can’t think straight. I can’t plan ahead. I don’t feel like myself anymore. My body doesn’t even belong to me anymore.”
Her voice breaks. It cracks hard on the last few words, and she clamps her mouth shut like they escaped without her permission.
Myung-gi blinks, completely thrown. His body tips back slightly, like the words shoved him off-balance. “What the fuck are you even talking about?” His voice is defensive in a different way, like he’s grasping for footing he didn’t realize he’d lost. “What the fuck does any of that have to do with me?”
She looks at him, and for the first time since he walked in, she doesn’t speak with malice. She doesn’t spit the words or throw them like weapons.
She says them evenly, like a truth too heavy to hold any other way.
“I’m pregnant, Myung-gi.”
The silence lands hard. Thick and weighted, the kind of quiet that feels like it’s pressed into the very air between them.
Jun-hee watches him closely, eyes locked on his face as she says it again, softer this time, the words catching in her throat even though she already forced them out once.
“I’m pregnant,” she repeats, her voice thinned by exhaustion and something deeper, something hollowed-out and raw. “And I canceled a doctor’s appointment last week because I couldn’t afford it. Because my savings are gone. Because you convinced me to throw everything I had into your fucking coin.”
She doesn’t cry, but her face tightens, jaw clenched like she’s holding everything in by force, like if she lets even a single tear slip, the rest might not stop. Her posture doesn’t change, but something in her frays at the edges, like she’s holding herself together one breath at a time.
Myung-gi stares at her with wide eyes and a slack jaw, like the words didn’t land right in his head, like he’s still buffering through their meaning. It takes him a moment, long enough for the pause to settle into something uncomfortable, before he speaks.
“You’re… pregnant?” he says finally, and the flatness of it hits harder than she expects. There’s no warmth, no panic, no awe. Just confusion, and beneath that, something dull and empty, like he’s trying to get a grip on the word itself before acknowledging what it means.
She nods once.
He drags a hand down his face, exhaling with enough force to move his shoulders. He takes a step back, then forward again, like he can’t decide whether he wants to be closer to this conversation or further from it. “I mean – fuck. Are you sure?”
A sharp breath escapes her, the kind that burns on the way out. She leans forward, grabs the pregnancy test off the coffee table, and holds it up in his direction like a piece of damning evidence.
“Yeah,” she says, biting the word off with quiet force. “I didn’t just guess, Myung-gi.”
“I’m just – I’m trying to understand here,” he says quickly, already moving into damage control mode, his voice picking up speed like he thinks he can outrun what she just said. “Like… how did this even happen? I thought – fuck, I don’t know, I thought we were being careful.”
“We weren’t,” she says flatly, the words sharp and immediate. “You didn’t pull out. You know that. We both knew that. You said it’d be fine, because it had been fine every other time before that. Remind you of anything?”
He doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t nod, either. He just stands there, head shaking slightly, eyes wide, mouth opening like he wants to say something but can’t find the words in time. “Shit,” he mutters.
She watches him and waits.
There’s a pause, and it’s long enough that she starts to think maybe he’s going to say something meaningful, something real. Anything that might tell her that he cares and he’s going to make things right.
“I’m just–” he starts again, and now his voice has taken on that rushed, skittering quality that comes right before a deflection, right before a mess gets swept under the rug. “I’m just trying to make sense of this. I thought you were still on something, or – I don’t know, if you thought there was a chance, you would’ve taken something after, right?”
He doesn’t look at her. His gaze drifts just over her shoulder, eyes fixed on some indeterminate spot on the wall like it might offer him an easier version of this conversation.
“I mean, we’ve had scares before,” he continues, his tone loosening into something far too casual for what he’s saying. “You’ve handled it before. It was never a big deal. I just figured if it was serious, you’d do something about it.” He shrugs, a slow lift of one shoulder that feels calculated, like he thinks it softens the impact of what he’s about to say. “I don’t know. I thought you were the type to… take care of it.”
She stares at him.
Her expression doesn’t shift. Her mouth doesn’t move. There’s a stillness to her now that’s deeper than before, the kind that roots itself in her limbs and weighs everything down from the inside. Her mind catches up in pieces, one fragment at a time, each one settling with a heavier drop in her chest. It’s not anger – it’s a kind of clarity that feels even worse.
“Is that what you want me to do?” she asks calmly. “Take care of it?”
The question doesn’t sound rhetorical. It doesn’t sound like an accusation. It just floats there between them, unvarnished and plain, like a match on the table that hasn’t been struck yet.
He doesn’t answer.
His eyes shift again, sliding toward the TV but not landing on it. His shoulders twitch like they want to roll back into something smaller, and then he shrugs in a weak, lazy motion that barely counts as movement at all. His mouth flattens into a tight line. A line that doesn’t lean toward guilt or support or apology. Just absence. As if this isn’t his to weigh in on.
As if the weight of this belongs to someone else.
As if he has no stake in it at all.
And she waits. Not because she thinks he’s going to fix it, or say something reassuring, or reach for her in a way that might change the shape of what this has become – but because she doesn’t have anything else to hold onto. No plan, no clarity, no conviction.
She doesn’t know if she wants the baby. Doesn’t know if she doesn’t. She doesn’t even know what she’s feeling yet – everything is too new, too loud, too unresolved to name. She only found out an hour ago. She hasn’t had time to decide what it means. And yet here she is, watching his face like it might give her a direction. Like his expression might carve out a path she hasn’t been able to find for herself.
But there’s nothing there.
He shifts again, slower this time, like the moment is finally starting to register somewhere beneath the panic. He rubs at the back of his neck, eyes cast down, his weight rocking from one foot to the other. His hands slip into the pockets of his jacket and stay there, like he’s anchoring himself with the one thing that won’t ask anything of him.
And that’s the answer. It’s not the words – it never is with him. It’s in the space between them. The way he won’t look at her. The way he won’t step forward. The way he’s backing away without moving.
It’s absence.
The empty shape of something that should be here and simply isn’t. Reassurance. Accountability. Even a question. Something that would make this feel less like it’s all hers to carry.
And it’s nowhere to be found. Not in him.
Her lungs ache as she exhales, a slow, barely-there release of air that feels more like giving up than letting go. Her shoulders pull forward slightly, a small shift inward, like something folding itself smaller to keep from spilling over. The fight leaves her muscles, and the ache sharpens behind her ribs.
Of course he doesn’t want it.
She stands like that for a while, silent and still, feeling the realization settle into her body one inch at a time. Her arms wrap tightly across her chest, a gesture that keeps him out more than it holds her together.
“I’m tired,” she says finally, her voice worn out like she’s scraped herself too thin by trying to keep pace with something that was never only hers to fix.
He senses the shift immediately – the curtain coming down, the end of whatever thread she was willing to pull, the conversation narrowing to a close.
She doesn’t look at him, and the angle of her body says everything. Turned slightly away, chin tilted down, eyes unfocused, gaze somewhere in the no-man’s-land between the television and the floor. It’s not passive – it’s final.
He hovers there like a guest who overstayed and doesn’t know how to leave without making it worse. One foot half-turned toward the door, the other still planted like it matters. He waits, maybe hoping for her to say something, to give him an out.
But she gives him nothing.
So he fills the silence himself, softly, like it might make the question easier for her to swallow. “So… you’re gonna take care of it?”
The flicker across her face is too fast to name. It’s not surprise, and it’s not rage, but resignation. A quiet settling, like she’s giving up the idea of hearing anything else from him.
She doesn’t look at him when she answers. Her eyes stay low, trained on the floor like she’s memorizing the weave of the carpet. Her mouth presses into something tight and unmoving, and her voice is flat when it comes.
“Whatever.”
He nods, slow and shallow, like he’s tucking it away as confirmation. “Right,” he says, starting his retreat. “Yeah. Okay. Just… let me know. I guess.”
She doesn’t move.
He lingers a second longer, standing near the door, hands still in his pockets, shifting his weight from heel to toe like the act of leaving is harder than it should be. Or maybe he’s trying to find one last thing to say and keeps coming up empty.
“Okay,” he repeats, quieter this time. Like it might land better if he says it twice. “I’ll, uh… I’ll talk to you later.”
She nods, barely.
He lets himself out. And when the door clicks shut behind him, soft and final, the silence that takes its place feels louder than all the noise that came before.
She doesn’t move at first. Just stands there in the center of the living room, arms wrapped around herself, gaze pinned to the door like something might change if she stares hard enough. Like if she waits just a few seconds longer, it’ll swing back open and he’ll be standing there again, rubbing the back of his neck, shifting on his feet, saying something like ‘I didn’t mean that ’ or ‘I didn’t know what to say’ or ‘I panicked, I fucked up, let’s talk.’ Something. Anything. She watches the door like it owes her an apology, like it has one more chance to open and fix everything.
Her throat tightens, and she swallows hard against it, trying to force the ache back down where it came from. Her jaw clenches, and she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, arms tightening around herself like pressure might cancel out pressure.
For a moment, it feels like it might work. The air stays even in her lungs, and her hands stay steady.
But then she blinks.
And there it is – that sting behind her eyes, sudden and immediate, sharp like something catching under her skin. Her vision goes soft around the edges, the blur creeping in before she can blink it away. Her chest pulls tight, a constriction behind her ribs like something cinching slowly, inch by inch, and her breath stutters on the way in.
She holds it and counts one, two, three, four, five.
But the numbers barely form before the air collapses out of her in a thin, broken exhale. Her shoulders lift again, but the next breath doesn’t land right, snagging on something. Her lips part, and the sound that escapes is closer to a gasp than anything else, caught between inhale and sob, sharp and unplanned.
Her hands rise to her face and she presses her palms hard against her eyes like that alone can keep the rest of her from unraveling. Her breath hitches again, and she braces for it, trying to bite it back, to force herself still.
But a sob barrels through before she’s ready. Loud, cracked, and raw.
The tears follow fast, rushing up and over like they’ve been waiting for the release, the breaking point, the moment she stops trying to keep the whole thing sealed up with willpower alone.
She wraps her arms around herself again, tight across her chest like it might help hold the rest of her in place, but the sound keeps coming, louder with each breath catching and skipping like it’s tripping over itself.
The sobs tear out of her, deep and uneven, the kind that don’t sound like they belong to the moment so much as every moment that led up to it. They come from someplace deeper than the fight, deeper than the test, from weeks of tightening her jaw, forcing herself upright, pretending like this might be okay if she just stayed one step ahead of it. Her whole body shakes with the force of it, rocking forward slightly, curled around herself like she’s trying to make her body smaller than the grief breaking through it.
And all the thoughts dissolve. The decisions, the money, the question of what comes next – gone. There’s nothing in her mind except the sound of her own cries, the feel of her fingers digging into her ribs, the tears on her cheeks, the weight of everything collapsing inward. She cries like she hasn’t let herself cry in years, like she’s finally admitting how afraid she is, how heavy all of this has become, and how far away it suddenly feels from anything she thought she could handle.
She stays like that, her arms clutching her own body while she pours her sobs into the silence.
Then comes the knock.
Two sharp taps against the door.
She freezes, the sound stopping her breath mid-inhale, her body still curled tight, her mind still swimming. Her breath catches in her throat like another sob, but she half-chokes back whatever was about to escape next.
It has to be Myung-gi.
He came back, realized what he said, how he said it. Realized what he left behind and decided to make it right.
Her heart flares, and it’s not hope exactly, more like her body is trying to skip ahead to a version of this story where he changes his mind and means it.
She moves without thinking, wiping her face quickly with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, rough and frantic, her breath still hiccupping in short, erratic bursts. Her eyes are red and swollen, her lashes damp, her lips trembling and raw. She doesn’t even try to fix herself, doesn’t check the mirror, doesn’t brace herself. She just crosses the room and flings open the door.
But it isn’t Myung-gi.
Dae-ho stands there, one hand lifted like he was about to knock again. His hair is ruffled, the wind having pushed it across his forehead, and he has his usual casual expression on his face, mouth just starting to curl into a greeting – until he sees her.
And everything about him changes in an instant.
His brows draw together and his mouth parts like he was about to greet her with a joke or a stupid nickname, but the words die somewhere between his throat and his lips. He steps forward like he wants to do something but doesn’t know what yet. His face is full of open, startled concern that he doesn’t bother hiding.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, quiet and stunned.
The tears come back all at once. No buildup this time, no silent bracing, just a sharp inhale that catches in her chest, and then she’s crying again. Her face crumples and a sob rips out before she can stop it, before she can even try. It’s louder than she wants it to be, raw and exposed in the quiet space between them.
He steps into her apartment and wraps his arms around her like it’s instinct, like this is the most natural thing in the world. He pulls her close to his chest, firm and warm and solid.
“Hey,” he says gently, barely above a whisper. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”
And she folds into him instantly.
He holds her tightly, like he can take some of the weight from her without needing to be told where it hurts.
His chin rests lightly on the top of her head, the curve of his cheek pressed against her hair. One of his hands cradles the back of her head, the other moving slowly across her back in wide, soothing circles. Not shushing, not trying to fix it.
He doesn’t fidget, doesn’t shift his weight like he’s thinking of leaving. He just stands there in the entryway of her apartment, holding her like he has nowhere else to be, like this is the only thing that matters to him.
Her sobs come in waves, shaking through her like something being wrung out, all the pressure that’s been building since she saw those pink lines finally finding a crack to escape through. She curls tighter into his chest, burying her face in his t-shirt, and when her fingers twist into the fabric like she’s trying to anchor herself to something, anything, before she completely slips under, he lets her. He rests his cheek against the top of her head.
He doesn’t shush her. Doesn’t try to talk her down or ask what happened. He just stands there, holding her, anchoring them both in place. The weight of his arms feels like something solid to lean into, something that won’t shift under her feet, something that’s here because she’s unraveling and not in spite of it.
She sobs harder. Louder. The kind of sobs that rip up from somewhere deep and brittle and full of splinters. The kind of cry she doesn’t let herself have, not even alone. The kind that leaves her gasping, her knees going weak, her body caving in on itself in a series of exhausted trembles.
His palm is warm through the fabric of her shirt, the rhythm of his hand slow and steady. He breathes with her, quiet and careful, as if any sudden movement might shatter her into pieces too small to gather up again.
And she clings to him.
The tears don’t slow, but her breathing starts to shift. Still broken, still jagged, but less frantic now, like the flood has peaked and is beginning, slowly, to recede.
She doesn’t speak. She can’t.
And he doesn’t ask her to.
There’s no pressure in his silence, no expectation. He doesn’t prod her for answers, doesn’t press her for details. He’s not asking an explanation – he’s just here. Present, willing, and unmoving.
And for the first time that evening, she doesn’t feel like she has to explain herself to anyone.
She just cries into his chest, and he just lets her.
Eventually, the sobs start to lose their rhythm. Her breathing evens out, still shaky, but steadier. The tears taper off, the raw edge of her crying softening to occasional gasps, hiccuped exhales, and one long, trembling sniffle.
She stays pressed into him for a moment longer, eyes shut tight, her forehead tucked into the warm curve of his shoulder. The front of his shirt is damp with her tears from where her face had been buried, but his arms stay wrapped around her like he means to keep her here, like anchoring her against his chest is the only way to help settle whatever storm he walked in on.
Finally, she pulls back. Not all at once, but gradually, like it costs her something to do it. Her hand lifts and swipes awkwardly across her face, catching on the mess of tears still clinging to her cheeks. She blinks hard a few times, like the tears haven’t entirely stopped, like they’re caught somewhere behind her eyes, waiting for the next collapse.
“What–” Her voice stumbles out on a cracked inhale, raw and hoarse at the edges. “What are you doing here?” She hears how broken she sounds, the way her words splinter at the edges, and it makes her jaw tighten like she could muscle her way back to composure.
Dae-ho’s brows pull together, the faint crease between them deepening, though everything else about him remains soft – his voice, his stance, his expression.
“We were supposed to game tonight,” he says, quiet and even, like it’s nothing more than a small note in a larger conversation. “You didn’t log on, and you didn’t text me back.” He shrugs, the motion subtle, almost casual, but not dismissive. “So I came over to check on you.”
She stares at him for a second longer than she means to, then lowers her gaze and wipes under her eyes again with the cuff of her sleeve. Her next breath catches on the way in, but this one doesn’t break her.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, eyes on the floor.
His head tilts, and he shakes it gently, like the very idea of her apologizing unsettles something in him. “Don’t be, I’m just glad you opened the door.”
They stand there like that, like the space between them hasn’t quite settled into something normal again, and her hands start to drift toward the hem of her sweatshirt, fingers twisting around the edge like she’s trying to keep them busy. Her breath is still uneven, a little shaky on the exhale, and the back of her throat burns with everything she has to tell him.
Dae-ho doesn’t press, he just watches her with that quiet steadiness that she’s come to depend on without ever really acknowledging it out loud. He has the kind of presence that makes silence feel like a held space rather than an empty one, and for a moment, she lets herself rest inside it.
Then, slowly, he lifts one hand, the movement careful. His fingers reach for the strands of hair stuck to her face, brushing them back with the gentlest touch, grazing the edge of her temple and tucking the pieces behind her ear.
“Want to talk about it?” he asks, like he’s offering something and not asking for anything in return.
It’s the smallest invitation, barely more than a suggestion, but it’s enough to crack something wide open.
Her mouth twists as a choked sound slips out, a half-laugh dragged over broken glass, and she covers her face with both hands, dragging the sleeves of her hoodie across it in one rough motion. Her entire body heaves with a high-pitched groan that bursts out of her, sharp and exasperated, somewhere between a cry and a scream that never makes it past her teeth.
“Shit,” she mutters, muffled into her palms. She takes a single step back, just far enough to pull in another breath, just far enough to feel her own weight in her limbs again.
She scrubs her hands down her face and then exhales hard, dragging it out through parted lips until her lungs feel like they might start working again. Her eyes are still wet, rimmed with red, lashes sticking together, and her nose is runny. Her voice is shredded, her throat feels like it’s been clawed open from the inside, and every part of her aches with the exhaustion of a day that never gave her room to catch her breath.
But she looks him in the eye, and her arms flopping to rest at her sides.
“I’m pregnant.”
For a moment, he just looks at her, like the words haven’t quite landed yet, like they’re still moving through the air between them, slowly stretching themselves out into meaning. His expression stays still, held in that open kind of suspension that leaves her bracing for a reaction, for anything that might give her a hint of where this is going.
And gradually, and then all at once, his face shifts.
It starts with the faintest rise of his eyebrows and a soft twitch of his mouth. And then the full smile breaks across his face, bright and sudden and utterly unfiltered.
He lifts his hands like he’s going to reach for her again, going to pull her into another hug, but he stops himself mid-motion, his fingers curling in, his arms lowering with a kind of slow, visible restraint.
His voice is soft and careful when it comes. “How… how do you feel about that?”
She exhales, the sound closer to a sigh than anything else, and her shoulders sag under the weight of the question. Her arms come up again, wrapping around her chest like they’re trying to keep everything inside, like she’s afraid that letting go might spill too much out all at once. Her gaze drops to the floor, eyes locking onto the space between her feet like the answers might be hiding in the pattern of the wood grain.
“I don’t know,” she says quietly, her voice scratchy at the edges from crying, like the words are coming from somewhere raw and tender. “I only found out like… an hour ago.” Her eyes lift to his. “It doesn’t feel real yet. I haven’t had time to think about it.”
He nods, his posture loose, his expression unchanged, the corners of his mouth still lifted with that quiet thread of joy he’s trying not to let overpower the moment.
“My life’s a mess. I have no money. My relationship is essentially over. And now…” She gestures vaguely, as if the enormity of it all defies language, and then lets out a single, humorless laugh, sharp and flat and void of any real amusement. “It’s not exactly ideal timing.”
Again, he nods, but this time there’s something steadier behind it, something that says he hears her and understands exactly what she means.
And even though the tension hasn’t lifted entirely, even though it still sits in the space between them like something waiting for a verdict, she feels a slight shift. A loosening. One arm falls away from her chest, dropping to her side like she’s testing her own steadiness.
She looks at him, and this time, there’s something behind her eyes that wasn’t there before. Something tentative.
Jun-hee breathes a little easier, though it’s still uneven, the lingering tremble of adrenaline and sadness still curling beneath her ribs like smoke that hasn’t cleared yet. She’s not fine, not steady, but with Dae-ho here, she’s able to sit in it without feeling like she might fall apart.
She sinks slowly onto the couch, tucking one leg beneath her and hunching forward slightly, her shoulders drawing in toward themselves as her hands busy themselves with the hem of her pant leg. Her fingers find a loose thread and tug at it absently, her eyes fixed somewhere near the edge of the coffee table, seeing and not seeing in equal measure.
Dae-ho drops onto the cushion beside her. He waits in that quiet, watchful way of his, like he knows there’s more sitting behind her silence and she’ll get to it when she’s ready.
She doesn’t look at him when she speaks. “I told Myung-gi.”
His head turns slightly. “Just now?”
She nods, eyes still on the table. “Right before you showed up. You probably passed him on the street.”
He doesn’t respond right away, and she doesn’t look up to see what kind of reaction she’s pulled out of him. But she feels the change in his energy, the way his attention sharpens, how he takes on a different kind of weight.
Then, after a pause, his voice comes, quiet and careful like he already knows the answer. “What did he say?”
Her throat works around a swallow. Her jaw shifts once, like she’s trying to find the words that won’t make it worse to say out loud. “He made it pretty clear that he…,” she murmurs, “That he… wants me to get rid of it.”
Dae-ho nods once, slow and measured, not surprised. When he turns his head to look at her, there’s something steady and intentional in his gaze. “Is that what you want?”
The question sits in the air between them.
She doesn’t answer immediately. Her lips press together and her shoulders lift slightly, more shrug than breath. Her fingers keep pulling at that thread, winding it around her thumb.
“I don’t know,” she says, and it comes out smaller and quieter than she means it to. “I haven’t had time to… decide yet.”
He leans forward a little, elbows resting on his knees, his hands laced together between them. His voice is even when he speaks again, grounded and calm in a way that lets her settle into it. “You don’t have to decide yet. You have time.”
She doesn’t look at him, but her breathing changes, just slightly. Like something let go.
“And whatever you end up deciding,” he adds, his voice still quiet but firmer now, “it’s your choice to make. Not his.”
That draws her gaze. She lifts her eyes, startled by the way his words cut cleanly through all the noise in her head. His face is open, patient, not guarded by any expectation or opinion. There’s no judgment waiting behind his eyes, only space. Room for her to be uncertain. Room for her to not have any answers yet.
“But,” he adds, and his voice softens again, almost like he’s giving her a secret, “if a part of you is wondering what it might be like to keep it… then you’re allowed to wonder.”
Her brow furrows slightly, like she wasn’t expecting that. Her eyes hold his, caught off guard by how gently he says it, how easily he offers the thing she hadn’t been able to give herself: permission.
“You’re allowed to think about it,” he says again, clearer this time. “To take your time. To not know yet.”
She doesn’t respond, but her whole posture shifts. Her shoulders drop, her hands stop fidgeting, and the tension in her spine loosens. She leans back against the couch, and the breath she releases is quieter than the one before it.
Dae-ho shifts too, just slightly, and then reaches his foot over to gently tap hers. She glances sideways at him and lets out something close to a laugh. It’s not relief, not quite, but it’s something.
After a moment, she continues. “It’s just… it wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Her voice is steadier than before. “Losing my savings. Losing my relationship. Then sitting here like this, wondering if I’m gonna be someone’s fucking mom.”
“Yeah,” he says softly. “It’s a lot.”
She nods slowly, eyes unfocused again. “I don’t even know how to… like, I keep waiting for it to feel real. Like it’s just gonna hit me. But it hasn’t. Not yet. I just feel... I don’t know. Tired, I guess.”
“You know, one of my sisters cried for like three days after she found out she was pregnant.”
Jun-hee lifts her head slightly, eyes sliding toward him with a faint crease in her brow, like she’s trying to decide if this is supposed to be comforting or a warning.
“She didn’t even know why,” he goes on, voice light but steady. “She just said everything felt too big. And also too small. Like her life was suddenly shrinking and expanding at the same time. And she cried even more because she couldn’t figure out which part scared her more.”
She exhales through her nose, a tired, amused sound. “Wow. Inspiring.”
He grins, lazy and unapologetic. “I’m not saying that’ll be you.”
“I should hope not,” she mutters, shifting her weight as she wipes her hand down her face, catching the dampness at her chin and around her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. “I’ve got a one-day crying cap.”
“Liar.”
A short laugh escapes her, small and real. It doesn’t linger, but it cuts through the haze she’s been stuck in with clean, unexpected sharpness. Her fingers pause at her cheek as the laugh fades, her face still puffy and warm from crying, but her eyes, while rimmed in red, have stopped brimming.
Dae-ho nudges her foot again, tapping against hers with gentle insistence. “You want me to leave so you can go to bed?”
“No,” she says quickly, and then her voice softens. “I don’t… I don’t want to be alone right now.”
He nods like he’s been waiting for her to say that, like he already knew and just needed her to hand it over in words.
He looks around the room once like he’s scanning for something to offer, something to fix or suggest or bring into focus, and then he lands on something that usually helps at times like this.
“Wanna go get some gimbap?”
She blinks. “Right now?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs, easy and sure, like comfort is its own kind of urgency. “We’ll go to that place on the corner that you like. The one with the weird yellow lighting and the old lady who stares at you the whole time but always gives extra danmuji.”
Jun-hee narrows her eyes slightly. “You just want that spicy tuna roll.”
“I deserve that spicy tuna roll,” he jokes, placing a hand dramatically over his heart. “I walked here in the cold!”
“Oh, yeah, you’ve been through so much tonight.”
He tips his head like he’s considering that, then shrugs again. “I’m doing better than Myung-gi though, aren’t I?”
She chokes on a laugh before she can stop herself, covering her mouth with one hand like the sound slipped out by accident. Her face twists, part grimace, part reluctant amusement, torn between the burn of what that joke means and the ease of letting herself laugh at it anyway.
“Too soon?” he asks, watching her carefully.
“Extremely.”
“Duly noted.”
She sighs, dragging her hands down her face like she’s peeling off the last of the weight from earlier, then leans forward and pushes herself up from the couch. Her body is still heavy with exhaustion, but there’s a flicker of momentum in her now, a will to move forward, even if it’s just for gimbap.
“Alright,” she mutters. “Let’s go.”
Before she can make it to the door, Dae-ho is beelining toward the coat hooks and plucking her jacket off the peg like it’s a ceremonial garment. He shakes it out once, carefully, as if handling something fragile, and turns toward her with exaggerated reverence.
He holds it open with both hands. “Madam.”
She shoots him a look, half a glare, one brow arching as if to say she’s got just enough energy left to kick his ass if he keeps up the nonsense. “Absolutely not.”
“Oh, come on, Jun-hee,” he says, grinning like he can feel her giving in. “Let me have this.”
With a dramatic sigh, she turns and shrugs into the sleeves, rolling her shoulders slightly as the jacket settles over them. He pulls it up the last few inches with a deliberate gentleness that manages to feel less like a joke and more like something else, like care hidden in the shape of a bit.
“I hate you,” she mutters under her breath.
“You’re welcome,” he says, still beaming like he’s just saved the day.
She grabs her phone and keys and tucks them into the pocket of her jacket.
Dae-ho opens the door for her without comment, one hand braced against the frame.
The building feels quieter than usual, the hallway stretched and subdued in a way that makes every step feel louder and heavier, like they’re both walking through the shell of something that used to be familiar.
Dae-ho falls into step beside her. His arm brushes hers once as they round a corner, and again as they step out onto the street, but he doesn’t pull away from it. He walks like this is something they’ve done a hundred times, like the shape of her beside him fits easily into his periphery, like his role tonight isn’t something he has to define with words or questions or big, emotional gestures. It’s just to be here, close enough to hold her if she needs it, quiet enough that she never feels pushed.
Outside, the city is still moving, slower than usual, but steady. The low whirr of a passing scooter blends with the occasional car, and the glow of neon from the laundromat makes the sidewalk glow faintly in places where the concrete dips unevenly.
They don’t talk. There’s nothing pressing to fill the space with. Jun-hee just keeps walking, and Dae-ho walks with her.
When they reach the intersection, she sees the yellow glow of the gimbap shop, the flickering neon sign mounted above the door, crooked at one end like it’s been ready to fall for years but has never quite managed to. It bleeds gold across the sidewalk, lighting up the chipped tile entryway and casting a pale hue over the foggy glass windowpane.
Dae-ho opens the door with a push that sets off a metallic jingle overhead.
The old lady at the counter, hunched on her stool behind the register, squints at them like she always does, eyes sharp behind thick glasses, expression unreadable except for the subtle lift of her chin that always lands somewhere between suspicion and reluctant recognition.
Something in Jun-hee’s chest eases, just a little. Not fully, not completely, but enough to feel it. Enough to stand a little straighter.
They slide into a booth by the window, one wedged near the heater. The laminated menu is already on the table, stained and crinkled from years of use, but Jun-hee doesn’t bother picking it up. Dae-ho is already ordering danmuji, an order of fried mandu, and barley tea.
She leans back in her seat, the vinyl cushion cool beneath her, and lets her eyes trace the edge of the window where condensation beads along the bottom. It’s a tiny pocket of calm, nothing more. It won’t fix anything. It won’t undo the last two hours, or the last two weeks, or the last two years. But it exists. It’s real.
When the tea arrives, Dae-ho slides one of the cups toward her, nudging it just far enough into her space that it bumps against her hand. She doesn’t say thank you.
He doesn’t need her to.
He already knows.