Chapter Text
The day Yongrae was born, Jinu cried.
Not the TV-drama, cliche happy tears of a proud and excited dad.
An overwhelming, ugly flood of emotional release he hadn’t realized he’d been holding back, that led the nurses to take the baby back away from him and Rumi trying to comfort him even though she’d just GIVEN BIRTH and it should’ve been the other way around.
And to his horror, the baby cried with him, as though she could sense his distress.
Bobby found him outside the hospital room, staring into space as he debated with himself whether he’d calmed himself enough to go back in or not.
A look of alarm crossed the manager’s face when he saw Jinu’s expression. “Jinu? What’s wrong? Are Rumi and the baby okay?”
“They’re fine,” Jinu forced himself to smile. “They’re–they’re healthy, they’re doing great. Everything’s good.”
Bobby stared for a moment, thoughtfully, before taking Jinu by the arm and guiding him down the hall. “Hey. Walk with me. Is something wrong?”
Jinu stared at the ground as they went, his feet steady even as every part of him inside was shaking. “...Me,” he mumbled, almost too quiet for Bobby to hear.
They walked a few more steps, as Bobby motioned toward the window.
“I’ve been a dad less than an hour and I’m already a failure,” he finally confessed, miserably.
“Hey,” Bobby’s tone was comforting. “You’ve got dad jitters. It’ll be okay. Hell, my brother-in-law fainted when my nephew was born. Ended up in another bed next door.”
Jinu had to smile a little at that. Comparatively, maybe he wasn’t doing so bad. “My–my baby cried because of me,” he admitted, ashamed. “What do I do if that happens again?”
Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have kids. But, it can’t be that different from helping an adult calm down,” he reasoned. “Be the calm one for them, take them for a walk, be the voice of reason.”
Jinu rolled his eyes halfheartedly. “I think babies are a little different, Bobby.”
“I mean, I’m not a baby expert. But I know YOU, and if my sister and brother-in-law could figure this out, I’m sure you and Rumi will be just fine.” He elbowed Jinu and whispered, hand covering his mouth, “You’re way smarter and more prepared for this than they were, but don’t tell them I said that!”
Jinu sighed, feeling a wave of tightness in his chest slowly start to release. “I hope so. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it’s…I guess I’ve been human for a while now. But it’s the first time it felt…real.”
He shook his head, blinking quickly.
“Demons can do…and fake…a lot of things. But having a baby isn’t one of them. In four hundred years I never…I couldn’t imagine…” he heaved a breath. “I never thought anything good could come from ME.”
A fresh wave of tears rolled down his cheeks, as he scrubbed them away with his sleeve. But unlike the previous time, he seemed calmer afterward. Relieved.
Bobby snagged him a cluster of tissues from the nurse’s station, hero that he was, and Jinu took them with an appreciative sniffle. “You’ve got this, Jinu. Everyone keeps telling you what a good dad you’re gonna be, right? Well, if it was easy, nobody would be telling you that.”
Jinu gave him a watery smile, feeling some sense of calm starting to return. “Thanks, Bobs.”
“You gonna head back in there?”
Jinu nodded. “Wanna come?”
Bobby pumped a fist in the air. “Thought you’d never ask.”
They walked in and Jinu’s eyes widened at the scene.
Rumi was the one in tears, trying to hold their baby in bed as the nurses coaxed her to feed it while the baby continued to wail.
Her eyes met Jinu’s, blank with fear and worry. “I can’t calm her down,” she moaned, her voice heavy with exhaustion. “She won’t stop crying and she won’t eat and I don’t know what to do!”
Something in Jinu shifted, and he stepped forward, an almost eerie sense of calm replacing his earlier anxiety. “Let me try,” he said softly, as the nurse backed away allowing him to scoop his baby up.
Her tiny wails trembled against his chest, her whole body small enough to fit in his two hands. He turned, noting that Bobby had, apparently, sensed he was not needed at this particular moment and had taken his leave.
“Hi, Yongrae,” he murmured against her tiny, bare head. “Anneoynhaseo. What’s wrong? Are you scared?”
Yongrae gave the tiniest hiccup, yet somehow enormous for the size of her small body, and it was the most adorable thing Jinu had ever heard.
“You’ll be okay,” he reassured her gently. He felt a little stupid, talking to this brand-new tiny person who almost didn’t look like a person, while the nurse and Rumi looked on, probably staring at him like he was crazy. It felt like talking to a very lifelike doll.
But he’d read that babies could recognize voices even from the womb, so there was no reason to think she couldn’t understand him now.
“You’re gonna–you’re gonna be okay, and you’re gonna be brave, and strong, and eat lots of milk so you can grow. Okay?”
Her hiccups grew more frequent, as her cries grew less, and eventually softened into shuddery, tiny breaths, one after the other. Jinu peered down. Her dark, milky-blue eyes cracked open the tiniest bit, like she was fighting to stay awake. Staring directly up at him.
He broke into an involuntary smile, before moving closer to Rumi and sitting on the edge of her bed.
Rumi sighed in relief, leaning back against the pillows. “Thank god,” she groaned, shifting uncomfortably from soreness.
With a few cues from the nurse, Yongrae was soon suckling away, wrapped between both Jinu and Rumi’s hands like a tiny baby kimbap.
Jinu’s excited eyes met Rumi’s tired ones. “I think, as long as only one of us freaks out at a time, we’re gonna be great at this,” he grinned.
She huffed a pained laugh. “God, I hope so.”
“We will,” he reassured her confidently. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “I’m so proud of you, yeobo. Get some rest, I’ll take care of you and baby.”
A small smile crossed Rumi’s lips, before she nodded off to sleep.