Chapter Text
Episode 1: The Sixteen Hundred Hour
The sterile white of the delivery room swam into a blurry focus for Steven. In his trembling hands, a pastel-colored bag overflowed with tiny clothes, each stitch a promise of a future that had just been brutally snatched away. A choked, disbelieving laugh escaped his lips, a sound that bordered on hysteria.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kim, but Mr. Jay Lawrence… he couldn’t make it. We did everything we could…” The doctor’s voice was a low, somber drone, a death knell to Steven’s fragile hope.
“‘Everything you could’?” Steven’s voice cracked, each word laced with a raw agony that made the attending nurses flinch. He shoved past the doctor, his eyes blazing with a desperate fury. “You’re telling me you did everything, and yet… he’s gone? Let me see him.”
“Mr. Kim, he lost a significant amount of blood. His breathing ceased moments after the delivery,” the doctor explained, his tone laced with a weary empathy. “His body just… couldn’t recover. You can see him now.”
A guttural sound tore from Steven’s throat as he stumbled into the room. The sight that greeted him was a cruel parody of peace. Jay Lawrence lay still on the pristine white sheets, his once vibrant tan skin now a ghostly pallor, his beautiful face serene in its finality.
“You told me to go get our son’s clothes,” Steven whispered, his voice thick with unshed tears. He took a hesitant step closer, his gaze drinking in the stillness of her form. “You promised you’d be here when I got back. You promised we’d start our family.”
He sank onto the edge of the bed, his hand hovering over her cold cheek before finally resting there, his touch feather-light. “You’re a real… a real heartbreaker, you know that?” Steven said, a choked sob escaping him as he wiped away the tears that had finally breached his defenses. “My beautiful, stubborn Jay Lawrence.”
He gently took his cold hand in his, his large fingers enveloping his. He brought it to his lips, pressing a tender kiss against his still knuckles, then held it tightly against his chest, as if trying to reignite the warmth that had so tragically faded.
“Baby… *mahal ko*… why did you leave me?” he pleaded, his voice a broken whisper. “Why did you leave us? Our son… he needs his Mama.”
A profound silence answered him, the only sound the rhythmic beeping of the monitors that had so recently tracked a life now extinguished. But in the stillness, a sudden chill enveloped Steven, a cold gust of air that seemed to wrap around him like an embrace. “You know I love you so much, right?” he murmured into the silence, a desperate affirmation into the void. And in that chilling embrace, he felt it – a fleeting presence, a whisper of warmth against the cold.
“I will take care of him, Jay Lawrence,” Steven vowed, his voice gaining a newfound steel amidst the grief. He looked down at the bag of tiny clothes, a fresh wave of sorrow washing over him. “I will take care of our son. And I will take care of Daisuke. I promise you.” The weight of his new reality settled upon him, heavy and irreversible. His love story had just begun, and it had already been shattered. The future stretched before him, a daunting landscape of single parenthood and a grief so profound it threatened to consume him. The sixteen hundred hour. The hour his world irrevocably changed.