Archive of Our Own

"Are you busy?" Junho asked, doing his best to suppress the growing nervousness that had been tightening his throat ever since he picked up the phone, his fingers clenching around the cold plastic surface of the device as though he could squeeze out even a fraction of reassurance or clarity from the simple act of holding it.

"Just a little," Gangseok replied, his voice carrying that familiar tone of mild preoccupation that never quite tipped into impatience, always leaving Junho feeling as though no matter how strange or unsettling the topic, he was not about to be dismissed outright. "But go ahead, if it’s urgent."

"It actually is, well, a little urgent. I mean, it’s...important," Junho corrected himself quickly, stumbling over the words as he realized that trying to soften the situation was only making it harder to explain the sheer oddity of what he was about to confess. "There is a baby in our apartment."

"Again?" Gangseok’s voice sounded carefully measured, as though he was restraining the impulse to sigh too audibly, and Junho could almost picture the way he probably pinched the bridge of his nose for a second, trying to gauge whether this was yet another in a long line of improbable creatures Junho had somehow ended up rescuing.

"No, I mean an actual baby this time," Junho repeated with a deliberate firmness, the syllables coming out too loudly in the stillness of the kitchen where he had been pacing in circles for the better part of twenty minutes, trying to decide whether he was hallucinating or simply reliving some particularly vivid stress dream.

"All right, I understand," Gangseok said, after a pause that felt a little too long, as though he was quickly rearranging whatever plans he had for the day. "I’ll come over in a couple of hours and bring something for it. Is it a boy or a girl?"

"...I haven’t checked yet," Junho admitted, his voice hitching with a note of nervous humour that bordered on hysteria, because somehow Gangseok’s measured response made it even clearer how much he himself was failing to estimate the magnitude of this entire mess.

At least Junho could console himself with the undeniable fact that he had, in all seriousness and with admirable discipline, kept his promise not to bring home any more stray cats, no matter how pitiful they looked.

"Fine. I’ll come over and then we’ll take the baby to a clinic," Gangseok said in the same even tone, which, instead of calming Junho, only made the unreality of the moment sharpen around the edges. "It definitely doesn’t have fleas?"

"It looks well taken care of," Junho answered, feeling absurd even as he said the words, because it wasn’t as though he had any expertise in assessing the status of an infant.

"Maybe it already has parents somewhere," Gangseok suggested, with the faintest suggestion of hope, the same way he sometimes tried to rationalize how a box of kittens on the stairwell surely belonged to someone who had merely stepped away for a minute.

"That would be nice, but I have serious doubts," Junho replied, his free hand rubbing at his temple in slow, tight circles, as if the friction could somehow dislodge a better explanation for why, precisely, there was a baby lying in the middle of their living room floor as if it had simply materialized there out of nothing. "Anyway, really, can you come soon?"

"Is it...violent somehow? You should make sure it doesn’t wreck the curtains. We are not buying blackout ones again if those get torn up," Gangseok added, and there was just enough genuine exasperation in his tone that Junho’s mouth twitched in a humourless little smile despite the absurdity.

"It’s not violent at all," Junho clarified, exhaling slowly as he watched the baby, who in turn was watching him with a depthless, unblinking gaze that made him feel both strangely moved and uncomfortably scrutinized. "It’s just lying there, not moving, just...looking at me. But it’s creeping me out a bit. Really, come as soon as you can. How long until you get here?"

"I’ll be there in an hour," Gangseok promised, the words carrying that quiet finality Junho always found reassuring in the middle of any crisis, large or small.

"I’m waiting," Junho said simply, and then he ended the call with a deliberate tap of his thumb, feeling the kitchen fall back into that tense, disorienting hush that seemed to have settled over every object and surface in the apartment the moment he discovered the baby.

The baby—an actual child, not a cat Junho might have been more accustomed to encountering in unexpected places—was still staring up at him from the makeshift nest of a folded blanket. Its eyes were impossibly dark and solemn, the kind of gaze Junho would not have expected from any infant he had ever seen, as though it had been watching him for much longer than the few minutes since he first realized it was there.

Strictly speaking, Junho knew he should probably get up and check the rest of the apartment, just to be certain there wasn’t anything else lurking behind the curtains or crouched in the shadowed corners. Part of him half-expected that, at any moment, Inho might emerge from behind the thick drapes with that infuriating, triumphant look he always wore when he thought he had executed a particularly clever prank, and say something like, "Surprise!" in the exact same tone little Junho had once used to announce he’d smuggled a stray dog into Inho’s old apartment.

Inho had always had terrible jokes.

All right. This was fine. Junho reminded himself that he had managed to deal with worse situations than this, situations that involved far more blood and far less clarity. This was just...something new to endure and sort out, and he would manage, because that was what he did.

Junho looked at the card again, unable to stop his gaze from returning to the thin piece of plastic resting there on the edge of the kitchen counter, and he wondered, with a sort of exhausted incredulity, whether it would be considered remotely appropriate, or even justifiable, to step away for literally fifteen minutes—no more than that, truly—so he could walk down the street to the nearest ATM and confirm that the balance was what it claimed to be. Of course, from every outward indication, it really did seem as though this was precisely the card he had been told about, the one that supposedly contained forty-five billion, an amount so preposterous that even standing here, staring at it in his very ordinary living room, he felt a crawling disbelief that any of this could be true. But still, it would be immeasurably reassuring to see the numbers with his own eyes, to watch them flicker onto the screen in the sterile glow of the ATM monitor, because then at least one part of this surreal situation would be verifiable, something he could grasp with both hands and say, Yes, this is real, this is happening, and I am not simply losing my mind after too many years of stress and the kind of unrelenting pressure that eventually grinds down even the most practical instincts.

And then there was the absolutely ridiculous fact that the card bore his own name, printed neatly in the corner in the same impersonal font that all banking institutions seemed to use, and he could not stop the looping, unanswerable question from repeating itself in his head: was it even legally possible to open an account like this, in his name, without any of his personal involvement whatsoever? Was there some obscure loophole that allowed someone else—someone like Inho—to walk into a bank and set this up as though Junho were merely an incidental detail, an afterthought to be informed later? And beyond that puzzle, he kept returning to the final, somehow most unsettling question: how had Inho managed to get inside the apartment at all, without so much as leaving a scratch on the lock, without triggering even the most basic alarm, without any indication that the door had been forced or tampered with? The smooth, unbroken latch made it look as though the place had simply been left open, waiting for someone to slip inside and deposit an infant on the living room floor like a parcel that no one had ordered.

"What is your name, anyway?" Junho asked into the hollow quiet, his voice sounding strangely thin and brittle, the words seeming to hang in the air just above the child before they dissolved into nothing.

The baby did not answer, of course—Junho had no idea why he’d even bothered to phrase it aloud, as though there were any chance the child could respond—but instead gave a small, flickering grimace, the kind of expression that suggested some private discomfort or vague complaint against the world, and the sight of it made Junho tense automatically, a brief wash of apprehension tightening in his shoulders.

After a moment of standing there, clutching the edge of the counter as if he needed the stability, Junho let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, crossed to the nearest chair, and sat down heavily, feeling the muscles in his legs give way in slow increments as though they had finally decided he had been upright long enough. He did not look away from the baby, not even for a second, because there was something about the unwavering way it watched him that made it feel necessary to hold its gaze in return, as though if he looked aside, everything would evaporate into some elaborate hallucination.

When the baby eventually began to fidget, its little limbs moving in uncertain, half-formed gestures of protest, Junho felt a low thrum of alarm start up in the back of his mind. He leaned forward, hands hovering uncertainly for an instant before he decided to do the simplest, least intrusive thing he could think of: he pulled the blanket back just enough to uncover the child’s torso, hoping the removal of the heavy layer might somehow alleviate whatever had started this subtle distress.

To his mild astonishment, the baby stilled almost immediately, the small mouth unclenching from its restless pout, and for a few heartbeats, there was a fragile hush in the room that felt almost like relief. Then, almost shyly, the corners of the baby’s mouth curved upward into what Junho could only interpret as a tentative smile—an expression so incongruous and sudden that he felt a matching twitch of his own lips before he could stop it. He smiled back as if to reassure the child—or perhaps just himself—that this was manageable, that no matter how surreal this moment was.

The baby let out a small, burbling laugh, a quick and unsteady bubbling sound that made something in Junho’s chest loosen with reluctant fondness, and then it began to wave its hands in the air, soft fists opening and closing in gestures so uncoordinated they seemed almost ceremonial.

A strange thought passed through Junho’s mind then, unbidden and absurd: this was kind of a funny kid. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to keep it.

Junho tilted his head very slightly to one side, studying the baby with a new, speculative focus, and to his surprise, the child watched him back with the same grave attentiveness, as if it understood the question he hadn’t voiced.

He tried, briefly, to imagine whether it could possibly be Inho’s child, but every time he traced the thought to its logical conclusion, he kept getting stuck on the single detail he still didn’t know how to explain: the bold lettering on the card that had said "Winner" and the number "222." There was something about that word, stamped so cleanly in block capitals, that made his scalp crawl with incredulity. They couldn’t actually have involved a child in that nightmare on the island, could they? Surely even those people had limits. Surely there were lines that no one could cross, not even in that place where everything human seemed to disintegrate under the weight of greed and spectacle.

They couldn’t have done that. It would have been, quite literally, massacre of the innocents, and even now, even after everything he had seen, Junho struggled to believe that the Games had sunk to that particular depth.

Of course, he had no real way of guessing how old the baby actually was. He looked at it again, measuring the size of its limbs and the shape of its face, and tried to guess. Probably not more than a year, though he had no real expertise—maybe, he thought vaguely, a year and a half… or two at most. Then again, he had no idea what children were supposed to look like at any given age.

And what did children even eat? The question hit him with the suddenness of a slap, and for a moment, he just stared, feeling the edges of his thoughts fray.

Roughly speaking, it was clear the baby was older than...some minimum. A month, probably. Or more. He was fairly certain it was not a newborn, because it didn’t look quite as small or as fragile as the images he remembered seeing of actual newborns. So he guessed, trying to sound reasonable even in his own head, that the child must be somewhere between half a month and a year and a half old. Two years old at the very most. Probably.

God, he thought, swallowing hard, he wished Gangseok would get here soon.

Junho reached for his phone with a shaking hand and began searching for images and descriptions, trying to match the baby’s features to any reference he could find online. Within a few minutes, he had managed—by sheer process of elimination—to shorten his estimate: less than a year old, but more than three or four months. And besides that, there was the simple, undeniable fact that the baby was exceptionally calm. Almost unnervingly so.

But the calm did not last.

The first warning came when Junho caught the sharp, unmistakable scent of something foul, an odour so immediate and so rank that he felt his stomach twist in reflexive dread. He turned his head just in time to see the baby’s face contract into a look of profound dissatisfaction, and though it had not yet begun to cry, the small restless shifting of its body and the pinched, quivering mouth were more than enough to tell Junho exactly what was about to happen.

He was going to have to face the inevitable.

It was terrifying as hell. The sheer, unfiltered panic that swept through Junho’s entire nervous system in that moment, undone by the prospect of what he was about to attempt, undone by the reality of this tiny human being whose life, however briefly, depended on his thoroughly unqualified hands. He kept repeating under his breath, in a low, uneven voice that sounded barely like himself, that everything would be fine, that he could do this, that it was just a matter of following instructions step by step, even though he could feel the tremor in every syllable, and he knew perfectly well that he didn’t really believe a word of it.

He reached for the disposable pad, the last of a package they had bought month earlier when they were trying to keep the bed clean for a kitten they had found mewling under the stairwell, and spread it carefully over the rumpled coverlet, smoothing it down with slow, deliberate strokes as if that small ritual could lend him any sense of preparation or calm. Even the crinkling sound of the plastic seemed too loud in the hush of the room, each little crackle underscoring just how absurdly unprepared he was for any of this.

When the pad was finally in place and the wrinkles flattened, Junho turned to the carrier, feeling the soft strain in his back as he bent to lift it again, his arms looping under the handles with the same fearful care he would have used if the contents had been made of fragile glass. He carried it into the bedroom, the soles of his socks brushing almost soundlessly over the worn floorboards, and for a moment he stood there, simply looking down into the carrier, willing himself to move, to do the next thing, to remember what he had knew about this matter at all.

Finally, he swallowed hard, slid one hand beneath the baby’s shoulders, but still supporting its neck, the other beneath her hips, and lifted her free, every muscle tensed in anticipation that he would somehow drop her or fumble the grip, though the child did not seem even remotely concerned. Junho’s breath was ragged in his chest as he lowered her carefully onto the centre of the disposable pad, his heart still hammering so loudly he wondered if the baby could hear it.

It turned out that unfastening the tiny snaps on her clothing was significantly harder than he had imagined, partly because his fingers felt swollen and clumsy, every motion halting with the caution of someone trying not to set off a hidden alarm. In the back of his mind, he realized with a dull, almost rueful clarity that he was completely unequipped for this, not just in terms of supplies but in any broader, more existential sense. He had been the youngest in his family—no younger cousins had needed tending, no nieces or nephews had ever been left in his care, and all his cousins were older than he was anyway. The closest he had come to this kind of responsibility was trying to bottle-feed that litter of stray kittens, and even that had been stressful enough to make him question whether he was the sort of person who should be trusted with something alive.

"Well, you could at least give me a hint about where this damn fastening is," Junho muttered under his breath, the words directed more at himself than at the solemn little face watching him, and after what felt like an eternity of fumbling and cursing softly, he finally managed to peel the tiny outfit away from her small, warm body.

Once he had maneuverer it into the bathroom, Junho unfolded the diaper with a sense of grim resignation, bracing himself for whatever unpleasantness lay ahead, and it was then, in the harsh brightness of the overhead light, that he saw definitively that the baby was a girl. A real, living little girl who did not belong to him, who had been left in his care without the slightest preamble or instruction.

This, Junho thought blankly, was the kind of shit he had never been forced to confront before.

Disgust was definitely present, hovering around the edges of his determination like a low-grade nausea, and he was sure he must have been doing something incorrectly, because it felt improbable that any adult could perform this task for the first time and do it well. But he forced himself to follow the tutorial he had pulled up on his phone, the small screen propped precariously on the edge of the sink, and he cursed whoever had thought it necessary to pad the beginning of the video with nearly five minutes of irrelevant introductions. There was no way to skip forward when he was holding the baby aloft in both hands, her tiny body squirming with a patient discontent that somehow made him feel even guiltier for how inept he was.

In addition to being startlingly calm, the baby also proved to be impressively patient, and Junho had the irrational sense that she understood on some basic level that hurrying him would only make things worse. He kept glancing down at her face, half-expecting tears, but though her expression tightened and relaxed in small waves of discomfort, she never started crying outright, and he felt a wave of gratitude so intense it nearly made his eyes sting.

When at last the old diaper was off, Junho tied the plastic bag shut with elaborate caution, twisting the handles into tight knots, and then, just in case, slipped that bag into a second one and tied it again, because if there was anything he felt confident about in this moment, it was that he did not want to risk the smell escaping. He had no idea what category of waste this technically fell into, or how it was supposed to be sorted for disposal, but he (or more precisely he with Gangseok) would worry about that later. For the moment, it was enough that he had completed the procedure without dropping the baby or inadvertently injuring her.

He set her down once more on the pad, trying not to let his hands shake visibly, and for the first time in what felt like hours, he allowed himself a long breath. The baby looked up at him, her small mouth curving again into that tentative, radiant little smile, and it struck Junho as absurd and sweet in equal measure that she could seem so pleased after such an ordeal.

He knew he should dress her again, but he also knew that he didn’t have any fresh diapers, and the idea of redressing her only to immediately have to undress her again was almost more than he could handle right now. So he left her as she was, lying on the disposable pad with her small bare bottom exposed to the faint drift of air from the hallway, and she did not seem to mind in the slightest, smiling up at him with untroubled composure as if to assure him that she did not hold any of this against him.

Probably she needed to eat. Or at least have something to drink. He didn’t have a proper bottle, obviously, but surely there must be something he could improvise until Gangseok arrived.

On that note—this bizarre, anticlimactic moment of standing over a naked baby on a bed—Junho heard the unmistakable sound of the key turning in the lock, the solid click of the bolt sliding back, and for a split second he felt an emotion he could only describe as unadulterated relief. He had never been so glad to hear Gangseok coming home in his entire life.

"You just stay right there, don’t go anywhere," Junho murmured in a voice that was half a plea, half a shaky attempt at humour, his tone pitched low as if he were trying not to spook her, though she looked no more likely to bolt than a loaf of bread. He stepped away from the bed, one hand pressing absently against the card he had tucked deep into the pocket of his trousers, feeling the thin rectangle of plastic under his fingers, an absurd reminder that as overwhelming as this was, it was all somehow real.

Kim came into the apartment with a small plastic bag that gave off a soft, intermittent chiming noise as something inside it shifted against the thin walls, the handles of the bag twisting slightly in his fingers as he closed the door behind him with the same calm efficiency that seemed to accompany him everywhere, no matter how bizarre the circumstances he was walking into. A colourful toy—one of those simple fishing-rod contraptions with a dangling plush animal attached to the end by a string—was sticking conspicuously out of the bag, bouncing a little each time he shifted his grip.

"Hello," Gangseok said, his voice as low and steady as it always was, the kind of tone that seemed designed to make everything feel less precarious just by virtue of how unbothered he sounded, as though he were greeting Junho at the end of an ordinary workday rather than stepping into a situation that defied any reasonable description. "I bought a few things for the baby." As he spoke, he extended the bag a little toward Junho.

"Hi," Junho replied, nodding in greeting as he bent to pull on his shoes, feeling the familiar ache in his lower back from crouching over the baby for so long, though he tried to ignore it as he straightened up again. Without really thinking about it, he leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to Gangseok’s cheek, the gesture feeling automatic and necessary all at once, a wordless acknowledgement that he was grateful to see him, that some part of the unmanageable tension in his chest loosened every time Gangseok walked through the door. "I’m going to step out for about fifteen minutes," he added as he tugged the laces tight, his voice pitched low so as not to startle the baby in the next room. "Keep an eye on her for me, all right?"

"All right," Gangseok said, smiling in that soft, almost indulgent way he sometimes did when Junho was flustered or when the world seemed determined to throw one improbable scenario after another into their path. There was nothing in his expression that suggested surprise or frustration, nothing that implied he considered this moment stranger than any of the others they had weathered together.

Junho did not wait for further reassurance. He turned and practically shot out of the apartment with the restless momentum of someone who knew that if he stood still for even a second longer, he would start second-guessing every choice he had made since opening his eyes that morning. He took the stairs two at a time, his hand wrapped tight around the edge of his phone, and by the time he reached the first landing, the screen lit up with a new message from Gangseok, the familiar notification tone somehow absurd in its normalcy.

Gangseok <3

There is a baby on our bed

yeah

I put her there

OK

This simple answer, the single syllable that perfectly encapsulated the quiet way Gangseok accepted the impossible, the way he never made Junho feel like his life was an escalating series of catastrophes that anyone sane would have run from by now.

It was exactly this quality—this steady, imperturbable acceptance—that made Junho love Gangseok so much, and sometimes he wondered if, in some equally inexplicable way, it was the same thing that made Gangseok love him back: the fact that no matter how much chaos seemed to orbit around Junho’s every decision, no matter how many improbable complications took root in their shared home, Gangseok never recoiled or complained or seemed remotely inclined to leave. Or maybe, Junho thought as he crossed the street toward the bank, Gangseok simply enjoyed that there was always some unpredictable madness to keep life from becoming too ordinary. Or, if he was being honest, it could also just be that Gangseok found Junho ridiculously attractive in a way that made all this mess feel like a small price to pay, that he could not imagine his life without the handsome, chronically unemployed ex-detective who kept finding new ways to surprise him.

Junho supposed the truth was probably somewhere in the middle.

And then, just as he reached the sidewalk in front of the ATM, a new thought presented itself with the clarity of something both absurd and somehow appealing: wouldn’t it be genuinely noble if he wasn’t merely unemployed, but actually became a stay-at-home father? The idea sounded so implausibly serious, so downright respectable, that for a moment he felt almost giddy at the thought, as if adopting that label would transform this chaos into something dignified and admirable.

But there was also the quiet, unsettling suspicion that no matter how flexible Gangseok had always been, there had to be a line somewhere—a point past which all the indulgence in the world would no longer be enough to keep him from thinking that Junho had finally, irreversibly lost his mind. He could only hope, as he stood there in the cool shadow of the building, that this was not that line.

He stepped up to the ATM, feeling his pulse trip into an uneasy rhythm, and slid the card into the slot, watching the machine swallow it with a mechanical hum that somehow sounded judgmental. For a moment, he hovered over the keypad, trying to steady his breathing, and then he typed the numbers slowly, one by one, each press of the button accompanied by a tiny, irrational hope that all of this would turn out to be some elaborate misunderstanding.

"0222," he entered, because once, long ago, Seong Gihun had told him during one sloppy, half-remembered night of drinking how he had come back from the Games and typed in the his Player number with the zero, still half-believing it would all vanish if he looked away.

The screen flickered, and Junho braced for the balance to appear, imagining for a split second that maybe it would say zero, that this would all be some prank, an incomprehensible practical joke at his expense.

Instead, a window popped up—an unexpected warning box with a neat border—and for a few seconds, Junho could only stare at it blankly, his brain refusing to process anything beyond the fact that it wasn’t the number he had been expecting. His first, startled thought was that yes, this had to be a prank, some final twist to underline how gullible he was. But then, without really intending to, his eyes began to scan the text, picking out the phrases about fraud protection and the importance of safeguarding personal information, and he realized it was just a generic caution about scammers and account safety.

Without thinking too hard, he clicked "OK."

And there it was.

₩45,600,000,000.

For a full heartbeat—maybe longer—he couldn’t feel anything at all, as though his mind had gone abruptly blank, wiped clean by the sheer implausibility of the figure. He couldn’t decide if the number looked more preposterous here, glowing in white background of the machine, or if it had been worse that time he had seen nearly the same amount piled in cash, bundled in thick, rubber-banded stacks that looked like props in some unconvincing crime film. Either way, it felt unmistakably like disaster.

All right. Fine.

At least this was something. All of this was proof that Inho was still out there somewhere, that he had left this clue deliberately, that he still remembered Junho and, in some impossible way, still believed in him in some way.

With hands that shook in small, traitorous spasms, Junho removed the card from the slot and tucked it carefully back into the slim envelope, folding the flap down with unnecessary precision, as if neatness could make any of this feel less surreal. He slipped the envelope into his pocket and took a breath that made no difference at all to how unsteady he felt.

He turned away from the ATM on legs that felt like they didn’t quite belong to him, and began walking back to the apartment, his mind trying—and failing—to make any coherent sense of what was supposed to happen next.

By the time he reached the door, some of the numbness had worn off, replaced by a cold, buzzing awareness that nothing was going to be simple again for a long time. Junho returned home, the quiet of the stairwell and the corridor seeming thicker and more expectant than usual, as if the walls themselves were aware that something momentous had shifted in the hours since he last passed them. He slipped the key into the lock with careful precision, turned it, and let himself inside, taking a slow, steadying breath that did little to loosen the tight ache in his chest.

When he stepped into the bedroom, he found Gangseok there already, standing beside the bed with one hand braced lightly on the headboard as though he were trying to ground himself. His expression was composed, almost serene in that particular way he had that always seemed to say nothing could shock him so much that he would stop trying to understand.

"Where did this child come from?" Gangseok asked evenly, his voice low and calm, carrying no accusation, no panic, only the same patient curiosity he might have applied to any of Junho’s other inexplicable discoveries. The little girl lying on the bed made a soft gurgling noise, her small arms waving in aimless, cheerful motions, and Junho felt a reluctant swell of something that might have been affection.

"Would you believe me," Junho began, drawing the words out as he moved closer, "if I told you that I walked in and she was already here?" His tone was a little dry, a little incredulous, as if he were still testing whether speaking the story aloud would make it sound any less absurd.

"Yes," Gangseok answered without even a fraction of hesitation, the absolute conviction in that single syllable settling something deep in Junho’s chest, as if, whatever else happened, at least they shared this—this trust that never seemed to erode.

"Well, that’s pretty much how it went," Junho said, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture, then lowering himself carefully onto the edge of the mattress, mindful not to jostle the baby more than necessary. He took a long look at her, the small, round face, the delicate, still-creased hands, and then he drew in a breath and continued, "With her, there was a card. Forty-five billion won. I think her parent was a winner. I suspect it might have been a woman—someone who couldn’t live with what she’d done to survive the Games, and who either entered them already pregnant or gave birth not long before."

"What are we going to do with the child?" Gangseok asked gently, his voice carrying none of the weariness that Junho sometimes expected to hear when he brought home chaos, only a quiet openness that somehow always made the impossible feel a little more manageable.

"Maybe we could keep her," Junho said, his voice pitched a little softer, the words sounding almost tentative as he lifted his gaze to meet Gangseok’s. From this angle, sitting lower on the bed, he had to tilt his chin up to look at him fully, and there was something unguarded in that moment, something that made Junho feel both foolish and hopeful at once.

"Is this connected somehow to your brother?" Gangseok asked, and though his voice didn’t break, there was a faint shadow around the edges of the question, a suggestion of exhaustion he rarely showed outright. He didn’t sigh, but Junho still heard the ghost of a sigh in the quiet between them.

Junho didn’t answer. He didn’t have to, because the silence he offered instead felt more honest than any explanation he could have tried to give. It was a silence that carried all the things he hadn’t said: the suspicion, the fear, the old grief that never seemed to fade even when he tried to bury it under work or routine or the small, mundane details of shared life.

"Was there a birth certificate with her?" Gangseok asked after a moment, his tone careful and practical, as though they were merely discussing any other piece of paperwork they might need to file. "Any medical records?"

"Nothing at all," Junho said, rubbing the back of his neck where tension had gathered in a dull, insistent knot. "Just the card with my name on it."

Gangseok lifted one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, his thumb pressing into the inner corner of one eye as if he were trying to will away a headache before it could take hold.

"All right," he said finally, the word as even as everything else he said, though Junho could see the fatigue behind it now. "Maybe we can get her documented through my contacts."

He didn’t wait for Junho’s reply. Instead, he sighed—this time aloud, the sound quiet but unmistakable—and reached for his phone, already scrolling through the contact list as if he were simply confirming dinner reservations instead of preparing to make calls that would bind them all to something much larger than either of them had planned.

While Gangseok stood there, murmuring into the phone in that calm, level voice Junho had always found almost absurdly comforting, Junho turned his attention to the baby. He knew perfectly well that nothing would be resolved quickly.

So Junho did the only thing he could think to do: he stayed close, close enough that the baby could see him when she turned her head. With nothing better to fill the waiting, he pulled up a list of names on his phone, scrolling slowly as he read each one aloud, pausing to watch for any sign of recognition in her small, serious face.

He skipped over the names that sounded frivolous or overly sentimental to him, the ones that didn’t seem to fit the quiet gravity of this child who had been left in their care with no explanation at all. When he tried "Hyunju," there was a little flurry of movement, the baby’s mouth curling in something that might have been the beginning of a smile, her eyes blinking slowly as she turned her head toward the sound. "Seonga" produced the same subtle reaction—a faint, startled interest, as though she were trying to work out whether she knew that name already. When Junho said "Junhee," she wiggled again, a brighter spark of recognition or curiosity making her twist her head to follow his voice.

"All right," Junho murmured, his voice going softer without him meaning to, "we might have something here." He felt almost foolish, as if he were pretending the baby could truly understand him, but he kept reading the shortlist aloud anyway, because he had nothing else to offer except the reassurance of his voice.

The longer he spoke, the more restless she became—not the cranky, full-throated crying he had feared, but a series of small, impatient protests that sounded almost offended. Junho guessed, with the creeping dread of someone who knew he was about to face yet another task he was unprepared for, that she was hungry.

That would be a problem.

He tapped quickly at the screen of his phone, pulling up a search for what babies around this age were supposed to eat. The results made his head spin in the worst way—formulas and schedules and lists of bottles and sterilization methods he had never learned—but he clung to the realization that before he could even attempt to feed her, he needed to know exactly how much she weighed.

Moving carefully so he didn’t startle her further, Junho bent to tug the bathroom scale out from where they kept it beneath the bed. He set it in the middle of the floor, pressed the power button, and waited for the display to clear to zero.

Then he stepped onto the scale alone, reading the number without thinking about it, filing it away automatically. The second reading was more awkward. He bent to lift the baby, arranging her against his shoulder as though she were a fragile parcel that might split open if he held her too tightly, and stepped back onto the scale with both arms wrapped around her.

When he read the new number and did the quick subtraction in his head, he felt something in his chest loosen, just a little. Approximately seven kilograms, he thought, repeating it in his mind as if committing it to memory could somehow make him better prepared to care for her. Seven kilograms of something he did not understand but already, in the strangest, softest way, could not quite imagine giving up.

Behind him, Gangseok’s voice carried on in the background—low, calm, always steady—negotiating logistics that would have overwhelmed Junho if he’d had to tackle them alone. And even with the uncertainty pressing in around them from all sides, Junho felt a small, unexpected flicker of warmth, as though somewhere beneath all the confusion and fatigue, there was still room for the quiet conviction that they could do this together.

Junho began to add items to his Coupang cart almost methodically, though there was a dazed, detached feeling behind every choice, as though he were performing a task from memory rather than learning everything for the first time. He started with a selection of different formulas in small packages, reasoning that he should try a few to see which ones the baby would actually drink without fussing, because even the product descriptions were full of ominous warnings that some infants simply rejected certain brands for no reason at all. Then he scrolled through the listings for bottles and paused, genuinely startled by the revelation that there were different kinds of nipples designed for every age and developmental stage, each with slightly different flow rates and shapes.

Of course, he supposed it made sense. The logic was obvious once you stopped to think about it. But Junho had never in his life stopped to think about it, and it struck him now with a faint, uneasy awe how much there was he didn’t know—how many thousands of tiny, consequential decisions he and Gangseok were going to have to make without any prior experience to guide them. He put a few different sizes of nipples into the cart just to be safe, resisting the urge to apologize aloud to the baby for not having any idea what he was doing.

He added several packs of diapers, choosing a small range of sizes because he could not bear the thought of getting it wrong and having nothing in the apartment that fit her properly. Then came the special disposal bags designed to seal up each used diaper.

He added a soft towel that looked cute in the product photo, a couple of creams that were bundled together with baby shampoo and a bottle of hypoallergenic body wash, telling himself it was better to be overprepared than risk needing something in the middle of the night and having no way to get it quickly. But when he reached the section for clothes, he hesitated, his thumb hovering over the screen.

The baby on the bed was watching him with wide, solemn eyes, and for a moment he felt absurdly as though she could sense how little he understood about any of this. Clearing his throat, Junho offered a soft apology that felt inadequate—"Sorry, I just need to check,"—and then leaned over to lift the hem of her little shirt enough to glimpse the tag. It was easier than guessing, at least, and once he had the size, he added two bodysuits and a couple of pairs of footed pants, hoping they would be soft enough.

When the door opened again, Gangseok stepped into the room with that careful, quiet composure that Junho had come to rely on in ways he didn’t always admit to himself. Junho looked up from the screen, feeling the tightness in his shoulders loosen just slightly, as if Gangseok’s presence alone made everything less precarious.

"How should we register her?" Gangseok asked in the same steady voice he always used when they were working out something complicated together, the kind of tone that never sounded impatient or exasperated, no matter how improbable the situation. "Through adoption? Or as though she were your biological daughter?"

"What’s easier?" Junho asked, tilting his head a little as if that might help him sort through the tangle of conflicting thoughts.

"Biological," Gangseok replied after the briefest pause, as if he had already weighed the options and discarded the harder one without needing to explain why.

"Then let’s do that," Junho said, giving a small, resigned shrug. "It’s not like any of this is going to feel normal anyway." He turned the phone around so Gangseok could see the screen, tapping at an open listing. "What do you think about this crib?"

"It looks fi-" Gangseok began, but then his eyebrows lifted slightly, and he leaned closer to squint at the price. "How much does it cost?.."

"That’s about average for all of them," Junho said with a sigh that was more weary than frustrated. "I haven’t even shown you the strollers yet. All the reviews say you really have to test those in person. And look at this sling—"

"It doesn’t look very sturdy to me," Gangseok interrupted gently, his voice a shade more thoughtful than critical. He reached for the phone, scrolling with careful flicks of his thumb. "What about this one?"

When Junho took the phone back and turned it over in his hands, he saw that Gangseok had pulled up an ergonomic carrier, the sort with thick padded straps and a structured seat that looked almost absurdly secure. It was bulkier than the ones Junho had been looking at, but he had to admit it inspired more confidence than the flimsy fabric wraps he’d been considering.

"That actually looks good," Junho murmured, adding it to the cart without another thought. He wasn’t sure whether it was relief or something softer, but the fact that Gangseok had taken the time to look and pick something out himself made something warm uncurl in Junho’s chest.

He kept scrolling, picking out more odds and ends—packs of soft wipes, a set of burp cloths, another pair of pyjamas just in case—and by the time he finally stopped, the total at the bottom of the screen had climbed past a million won. He stared at it for a long moment, then exhaled slowly, telling himself that considering the crib made up the bulk of the cost and they were paying for express delivery, it really could have been much worse.

When it came time to fill in the fields for the mother’s information, they chose a name almost at random—Kim Gangsun, a neat fiction that would hold up long enough for the paperwork to process—and for the father’s section, they entered Hwang Junho. He watched Gangseok type the letters on his phone, feeling an unfamiliar tightness in his chest at the sight of his name in that box.

He wasn’t sure what he felt. Not regret exactly, but not certainty either—more like a cautious wonder that they were really doing this, that there was no turning back from the moment he clicked "Send."

When Junho tried to ask for Gangseok’s opinion about names, he scrolled to the list he had started earlier, running his thumb down the screen with slow deliberation. "Do you have any thoughts?" he asked, his voice softer than he meant it to be, because somehow it felt like asking for permission.

Gangseok only smiled a little and lifted one shoulder in an easy, unhurried shrug. "They all sound good to me," he said, his tone so sincere it made Junho’s throat feel tight. "I’m sure I’ll like any name you pick."

It struck Junho then how different this moment was from anything he’d ever imagined about family. There were no guarantees, no careful plans laid down years in advance. There was only this—the quiet acceptance, the willingness to try, the sense that if he was going to stand on uncertain ground, at least he wasn’t doing it alone.

They had no real experience with children. That fact hovered between them, unspoken but undeniable, a kind of shared acknowledgment that everything they were doing was improvised. Yet there was also something reassuring in knowing that neither of them was pretending otherwise, that they were stepping into the unknown together without any illusions about how difficult it might be.

Junho glanced at the baby, who was still awake, her dark eyes tracking them both with a soft, unblinking focus that made him feel an irrational flush of responsibility. She had no idea how unprepared they were. Or maybe she did, and she simply trusted them anyway.

He looked back at Gangseok and found him watching the baby too, his expression thoughtful but not overwhelmed, and something about that made Junho feel, if not confident, at least not alone.

Junho, for his part, had mostly set his heart on the name Seonga, partly because he liked the sound of it—something bright and certain in the way the syllables fell together—and partly because he found a private satisfaction in the interpretation of the name as meaning "victory" or "success". It felt like a small, defiant promise that her life would be something other than an echo of those Games. But as he sat there beside the bed, his phone cradled loosely in one hand and the list of names open on the screen, he began to notice, almost in spite of himself, that whenever he spoke the name Hyunju, there was an almost imperceptible shift in Gangseok’s expression—nothing overt, nothing anyone else would have marked, just a softening around the eyes and a faint, thoughtful curve at the corner of his mouth, like the name stirred something gentle in him that Junho didn’t fully understand but already, in the quietest corner of his heart, trusted.

Junho considered Junhee for a moment—after all, the baby had responded to it with a bright curiosity the first time he’d said it aloud—but in the end, he set it aside precisely because of how close it sounded to his own name. He could already imagine how confusing it might be when she was older.

He decided he wanted her to have a name that belonged only to her, something with no trace of the Games, no echo of the old ruin he was still learning how to live with.

So in the end, it was Gangseok who quietly sent word to his people, instructing them to begin the documents for Hwang Hyunju, while the two of them remained in the bedroom, sitting shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the bed, their shared silence more intimate than any spoken promise. Junho thought, not for the first time, that it was a strange sort of grace to be loved by someone who never demanded explanations, who could be handed the raw chaos of a new life and still meet it with the same unflinching calm.

The so-called express delivery turned out to be anything but, and by the time the first packages actually arrived, Hyunju had worked herself into a frazzled state that was less a full-throated meltdown than a kind of resigned, cranky unhappiness, her little face drawn into a tight frown as she twisted and wriggled on the bed. She didn’t scream, didn’t thrash—there was something almost dignified in how she seemed to hold herself together, as if she were determined to keep a little composure simply because Gangseok was there, standing so calmly beside her, his presence an invisible tether that made everything a fraction less frightening.

Junho understood her so much with this one.

It turned out she could already roll over on her own, a discovery that startled them both when she did it without preamble, and after exchanging a wide-eyed look, they reached almost simultaneously for their phones, each of them tapping hurried searches into Google, trying to confirm that this was a normal milestone. The results offered a reassuring range of ages, and armed with the collective wisdom of a hundred parenting blogs, they began to test, very carefully, what else she could do—holding out fingers to see if she would grasp them, lifting her upright to gauge whether she could bear any weight in her legs. She seemed pleased by this new attention, her face brightening in little flashes of delighted recognition every time Gangseok bent to meet her eyes.

Junho watched the way she lit up for him, the way her gaze tracked Gangseok’s movements with such obvious trust, and felt a thin ribbon of something he could not quite name unspool in his chest. It was not envy, exactly—more like a quiet, humbled awareness of how quickly children decided whom to trust, how easily they seemed to sense the softness in another person. But the longer they sat there, the more her composure began to fray, the little huffs and plaintive noises rising in volume until she was making a low, fretful sound that made Junho’s pulse stutter with guilt.

When the knock finally came at the door, Junho exhaled in relief that bordered on dizzying. He rose to his feet in one smooth motion, feeling the blood rush to his head, and crossed the flat to answer, unlocking the door and stepping aside to let the delivery workers in. He showed the code on his phone, signed for the packages with an impatient scrawl of his name, and accepted the first of the large cardboard boxes into his arms.

The crib remained where they left it, still sealed in its box in the hallway because neither of them had found the will or energy to assemble it yet. But Junho managed to manoeuvre the rest of the delivery into the kitchen, stacking the enormous plastic bags of baby supplies against the cabinets. He filled the kettle, switched it on with a decisive click, and then paused with one hand braced on the counter, feeling the reality of everything catch up to him in a wave that left him briefly, helplessly stunned.

It was happening. All of it. And somehow he was here in the middle of it, the person responsible, and Gangseok had not once asked him to explain why this had become their life.

He blinked hard, swallowed the ache in his throat, and bent to tear open one of the diaper packages, pulling two out before heading back down the hall to the bedroom. Behind him, Gangseok was already in motion, unpacking the sterilizer and setting the bottles aside in neat rows. Junho watched for a second from the doorway, absorbing the quiet competence in the way Gangseok moved, the little gestures—checking a label, wiping down a surface—that conveyed a kind of steady faith that if they just kept doing the next necessary thing, everything else would follow.

Back in the bedroom, Junho sank onto the bed beside Hyunju, who greeted his return with a small, damp-sounding sigh. He tried to reassure her with a gentle murmur, setting the diapers within easy reach, but his hands hesitated on the fresh one as he tried to remember exactly how the edges were meant to be fastened. He knew the basic steps, had read them twice over, but now that it was time to actually do it, the idea of pulling the tabs too tight made him second-guess every motion. He was so preoccupied with making sure the fit was snug enough without hurting her that he barely noticed how intently she was watching his face, her little hand coming to rest against the sleeve of his shirt as if to remind him she wasn’t nearly as worried.

He tried to smile at her, but the unease didn’t quite fade.

Part of what unsettled him was how easily she seemed to accept both of them, how she reached out without hesitation, as though it had never occurred to her to be afraid of these two strange men who had appeared in her world. Junho couldn’t decide whether it was proof that everyone in her life so far had treated her with gentle hands, or whether—far more painfully—this was the first time she had been shown such careful attention at all.

He chose to believe the first explanation.

From the kitchen, there was the sound of running water, a cupboard opening, and the muffled clatter of glass against metal. Hyunju’s expression shifted, her mouth pressing into a quivering line as her small body went tense with a new impatience. Junho rocked her carefully in his arms, whispering a series of half-formed assurances, promising in a low voice that Gangseok would be finished soon, that everything would be fine, that she wasn’t alone.

He found himself pressing a slow kiss to her temple, a gesture he hadn’t planned but somehow felt instinctive, as if the softness of her skin under his mouth could anchor him as much as it comforted her.

When Gangseok finally reappeared in the doorway, carrying the bottle with a practiced balance that made it look as if he had been doing this for years rather than minutes, Hyunju’s thin cries stopped so abruptly that Junho almost laughed from the relief of it. He lifted his gaze and met Gangseok’s eyes over her small head, feeling something warm move between them that had no name but felt a little like grace.

He held her out to Gangseok without another word, and when their hands brushed in the handover, Junho felt the last of his tension loosen. Gangseok’s fingers were warm and steady, and in that moment, Junho could almost believe this would not be as impossible as it had seemed.

Gangseok settled onto the bed with the same unhurried care he applied to everything, arranging Hyunju in the crook of one arm and guiding the bottle to her mouth with a gentleness that made Junho’s throat tighten with something unsteady and bright. She latched on immediately, her whole body going soft and contented against Gangseok’s chest, and when he glanced up again, there was the smallest, quietest smile on his lips.

Junho cast a brief, thoughtful glance at the bag of cat toys left sitting near the entryway, the brightly coloured fishing-rod toy, and he felt a faint, incredulous warmth bloom in his chest as he considered, not for the first time, just how astonishingly lucky he was to have found a person who never flinched, never rolled his eyes, never questioned all the inexplicable chaos he seemed to invite into their life as though it were the most natural thing in the world. There was a quiet kind of grace in the way Gangseok accepted everything—kittens hidden in the laundry room, strangers showing up at their door needing help, and now a baby girl whose existence had never been part of any plan—and Junho had come to realize over time that he could not imagine trying to build any kind of future without that steady, undemanding acceptance at his side.

He harboured no illusions that their life would remain unchanged with a child in the middle of it. There had never been a moment when he believed they would somehow slip back into the easy rhythms of before, when it had been enough to share meals in companionable silence and drift into sleep with nothing more urgent to worry about than whose turn it was to buy groceries. Even so, he was surprised sometimes by just how quickly the contours of their existence had reshaped themselves around the small, relentless demands of caring for someone so new to the world.

The polished floors he had once chosen for their clean lines and minimal fuss were now hidden under an uneven patchwork of soft interlocking mats, their bright colours jarring against the muted decor but essential all the same, because Hyunju had taken to launching herself forward in determined scoots across the floor, her little hands slapping at the foam in fierce concentration. She had also begun to pull herself upright few months later in hesitant, quivering attempts that sent Junho’s heart into his throat every time, and though they tried to keep their voices calm and encouraging, it was clear to both of them that it was only a matter of weeks before she would be standing on her own—an inevitability that made the neighbours on the floor below seem ever more present in Junho’s mind whenever she practiced her clumsy thumping steps.

The guest bedroom—once the small, quiet refuge Gangseok sometimes slipped into when he came home late and didn’t want to disturb Junho sprawled diagonally across their shared bed—had been transformed almost overnight into a nursery, the walls hung with simple fabric banners to soften the space, the narrow shelves filling with folded blankets, spare diapers, and all the other small necessities Junho would never have thought to purchase on his own. He had been astonished, more than once, by how much of parenting seemed to revolve around lists—lists pinned to the fridge reminding them of when to start introducing solid foods, lists of the correct proportions for mixing formula, scribbled notes recording the names and phone numbers of the best paediatricians because Gangseok preferred to double-check.

Gangseok’s work had shifted too, though he never spoke about it as if it were a sacrifice. Missions had become rarer, the most dangerous assignments turned down without discussion, and though Junho had once felt a dull, persistent guilt every time he broached the subject of whether Gangseok might consider reducing the risks he took, now it was Gangseok himself who declined the more volatile jobs. Instead, he stayed closer to home, guiding new recruits through training exercises, keeping up his contacts without ever letting the work consume him the way it once had. There were mornings when Junho woke to find him already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed with a faraway look on his face, and though they rarely spoke about it directly, Junho knew they were both learning how to be men who chose to stay rather than to run.

The money—the impossible sum left behind for Hyunju—had been invested after long, careful consultations with a financial adviser at the bank, whose expression had never quite lost its wary curiosity as Junho explained, in the most neutral terms he could manage, that the funds were for his little daughter. He had withdrawn only fifty million in cash, enough to cover the renovations and the flood of expenses that had come with building a life around someone so small. It probably wasn’t fair, he thought sometimes, to draw on her inheritance for these things, but there were practical realities to consider—like the price of forged documents convincing enough to get her admitted to a hospital without too many suspicious questions or the cool disdain of the administrators who pretended not to judge when Junho admitted he had no idea whether she had received any of the standard vaccinations.

Their neighbours, too, had seemed almost theatrically surprised when it finally became impossible to pretend nothing had changed. For weeks, no one had said a word, but then one afternoon, when Junho left the stroller just outside the door because he didn’t have the strength to carry it all the way into the hallway, a quiet flurry of interest erupted up and down the corridor. Even then, it was a restrained curiosity, the kind that revealed itself only in the slightly longer greetings, the polite questions disguised as idle observations, the way people glanced at Gangseok a little differently as though trying to decide what kind of friend he must be to go along with all this.

Hyunju herself had remained almost miraculously serene, even through the roughest nights when her gums were swollen and her small hands fisted around anything within reach. When her first teeth began to push through, she never screamed the way Junho had braced himself to expect. Instead, she whined in soft, exhausted little gasps, her round face pinched in discomfort, and though it broke Junho’s heart to watch her suffer, it was impossible not to marvel at how composed she remained, as if she had already learned that the world was easier to survive if you simply endured it quietly.

Of course, they bought everything they thought might help: little silicone teethers chilled in the fridge, special gels with reassuring labels promising relief, even a vibrating toy shaped like a rabbit that hummed softly against her gums. Yet for all their efforts, what struck Junho most was her stubborn, improbable resilience, the way she seemed determined to greet every discomfort with the same brave steadiness.

It was during those long evenings—when he sat with her in his lap, gently pressing the cool teether to her mouth while Gangseok brewed tea or scrolled through articles about sleep regressions—that Junho felt the shape of their love most clearly, not as something dramatic or all-consuming but as a quiet willingness to do the unglamorous work of caring. There were times when Gangseok would come to stand behind him, resting one hand lightly on his shoulder, and the simplicity of that contact made Junho feel steadier than any reassurance in words.

But there was a seriousness in Gangseok too, a reflective hush that settled around him more often these days. He watched Hyunju with the same patient attention he gave everything, yet when she calmed herself so easily, when she lay down without protest and seemed content to drift off to sleep without being rocked or patted or shushed, there was a gravity in his expression that Junho could not pretend not to notice.

"Sometimes I think," Gangseok said one night, his voice low and almost hesitant, "that it might just be her nature. Some children are quiet. Some are like that from the start."

Junho looked up from where he was folding one of her new shirts, waiting for the rest of the thought he could feel was coming.

"But sometimes," Gangseok continued, his gaze fixed on the small bundle of blankets in the crib, "it reminds me of the children I met in places where there were never enough adults to care for them. The ones who learned early that being quiet meant they were less likely to be left behind."

He didn’t say more. He didn’t have to. Junho felt the words settle into the space between them like something delicate and solemn, a reminder that love was not always enough to erase what had come before.

Junho understood the worry well enough—he recognized it in Gangseok’s expression, in the quiet hesitations that sometimes interrupted their evenings together, in the way certain topics trailed off unfinished between them—but he also shared it, if he were honest, in that peculiar, unavoidable way that all parents shared the worry that they were never quite doing enough. He knew it intimately, the way it settled in the back of his mind like a stone he could never quite put down. And yet, despite that, Junho also knew that he was already devoting nearly every hour of every day to caring for Hyunju, and he could not think of anything more he could have done to ensure she was safe, comfortable, and loved in every possible way. He could have driven himself to exhaustion and still been left wondering whether it would ever feel like enough.

Although Junho would have been lying if he claimed that the fact of having a quiet, calm child—a daughter who met each milestone with steady confidence, who never gave them more trouble than a soft whimper of impatience—troubled him in any profound way. He did, sometimes, pause to wonder whether she was too self-contained, too watchful for a baby her age, and whether that was a reflection of something she had endured before they knew her. But more often, when he was honest with himself, he felt only a quiet gratitude. Because if she had been loud, shrieking, prone to tantrums and impossible to soothe—if she had been anything like he himself had been as a boy, irritable and stubborn and always testing boundaries—Junho knew perfectly well that he would still have loved her with the same unyielding certainty. Yet all the same, he was grateful, perhaps selfishly so, that their daughter was exactly as she was.

But even with all the contentment, Junho would admit, if only to himself in the hush of late evenings, that sometimes he missed how it had been when it was only the two of them. He missed the days when they could sit together in the all-night diner, nursing cups of coffee that grew cold between them as they planned their next move, or when they walked side by side along the endless stretch of ocean, linked by a single purpose. He missed the nights they could drink too much without worrying who would wake first to tend to a child, the breathless hours when they could kiss without restraint, when nothing tethered them but the fierce gravity that had always drawn them back to each other.

He told Gangseok this one night, his voice hushed so as not to carry through the thin wall where Hyunju—wonderful, sweet, almost impossibly good Hyunju, who was already nearing her first birthday—slept on the predictable schedule they had so carefully built for her. It was a night like any other, except for how close they were pressed together, their hands tangled in the dark, the kind of nearness that made Junho feel at once safe and unsteady. He told him, haltingly, that he sometimes longed for that simplicity, for the way they had once been able to lose themselves in each other without measuring every sound, without worrying that the smallest noise might wake her. He felt vaguely ashamed even as he said it, worried it would sound ungrateful, but when he looked up, Gangseok only listened in that serious, patient way of his, nodding once with an understanding so absolute it made Junho feel ridiculous for ever thinking he needed to apologize.

The next morning, as though it were the most obvious solution in the world, Gangseok arranged for Hyunju to spend the afternoon and evening (or maybe even a night if they feel like it) with one of his old friends—a man Junho had met a few times in passing, who had a patient wife willing to help—and he came home after the baby’s swimming class with a quiet smile that told Junho he had already made all the arrangements. He told Junho to get ready, that they were going out for a real date, one where they could drink if they wanted to, one where they would not have to hush their laughter or measure their voices. Junho tried to protest, tried to say it wasn’t necessary, but Gangseok only tilted his head and said, in that calm way of his, that it was necessary precisely because they still deserved it, because he did not want either of them to forget that their life together had always been more than just surviving.

That evening turned out to be better than Junho had imagined, because for the first time in months, they could sit in a restaurant without thinking about nap schedules or feeding times, and when they walked home, hands brushing together in the dark, Junho felt something that had nothing to do with nostalgia and everything to do with gratitude that this was the man who had chosen him, again and again, in every circumstance. It became a ritual after that: every few weeks, they would send Hyunju to stay with the same friends, who always sent photo updates so Junho could see she was fine. After a while, Junho stopped feeling the tight knot of anxiety every time he handed her over (though Gangseok still, without fail, checked his phone every half hour, his expression relaxing only after each new picture appeared).

Sometimes, when their friends were busy, it was their friends’ teenage son who came to stay in their apartment instead—an arrangement that was invariably more work, because he had the restless energy of someone who had never yet learned how to be still. But even then, Junho and Gangseok never complained. It was enough that they still made time for each other, that they could look across a table or a bed and know that nothing had shifted between them in any way that mattered.

And all the while, their small princess—because that was what she had become to them, their little queen of the house—grew stronger and more certain every day. She started taekwondo, her small limbs learning discipline and grace in ways that made Junho’s heart clench with pride he never quite voiced aloud. She called Junho “papa” in that clear, bright voice that always made him feel a little off-balance with wonder, and she called Gangseok “appa,” a distinction she had chosen herself without prompting, as if some part of her had simply always known who each of them was meant to be. She was a healthy, good-natured child who adapted easily to nearly everything life threw at her, and in all the time they raised her, she only ever had one true meltdown—the kind of inconsolable, tearful explosion Junho had always assumed would happen far more often—when she became utterly distraught over a stray cat she had spotted outside the convenience store near their building.

That night, when even Junho’s calmest reassurances failed to soothe her, Gangseok had disappeared without a word into the dark, returning more than an hour later with an orange cat cradled against his chest, having tracked it down across several alleys and finally coaxed it into a carrier with nothing but a can of tuna. He had taken the cat to the twenty-four-hour veterinary clinic two neighborhoods away while Junho stayed behind, trying—mostly unsuccessfully—to coax Hyunju back to sleep.

Sometimes, in moments when Hyunju was occupied with her books or her toys, Junho would watch her from across the room and think there was something in her that she caught up from him. But there was mostly undeniable stillness in her nature that felt purely Kim: a thoughtful, deliberate calm that reminded Junho, in ways he couldn’t quite articulate.

And though life was no longer simple, no longer just the two of them moving through the world without attachments, Junho could not imagine any other way he would rather have it. Because every time he looked at Hyunju, every time he met Gangseok’s eyes above her dark head and saw the same quiet certainty there, he felt something unshakable settle in his chest—a sense that no matter what new uncertainties came, they would meet them as they always had, side by side, hand in hand, with all the ordinary, everyday devotion that had made their improbable little family real.