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Gihun feels… Feels.
He feels.
That's what he does. He can't describe what he is feeling to be honest, or why. There's just… There's just this sensation of impending danger that it had been following him since this morning, that makes him tense and irritable. Plus, his stomach is aching a bit, probably a consequences of the food he ate last night: that kimbap was a fee days old after all.
"Gihun-ah, maybe you should go home and rest," Jungbae says, frowning. it's evident that he's deeply worried.
"I'm okay," Gihun replies as he works on the tire of a car.
"You look in pain," the other insists, moving Gihun aside to take care of his work, "And you are sweating."
"My stomach just feels a bit funny, that is all," he says while cleaning his hands with a dirty rag, "I hate old kimbap yesterday."
"How old?"
"A few days old."
"Strange."
"Hyung, where do we put this?" Minsu asks, him and Daeho carrying heavy boxes of replacement parts.
"Ah, bring them into the office, we need to catalogue them," Jungbae says, then turns back to his old friend, "Gihun-ah, go home and rest, I can take care of the garage for a the day, we don't have much work."
"Nonsense, I'm fine."
"You look even paler."
"I'm fine," he repeats, though the pain in his stomach is starting to get worse. Truth to be told, stomach problems have been recurring in the last few months.
Jungbae looks around to make sure that they are alone, then murmurs: "Are you sure it's not a heat?"
"Jungbae-ah, I've been in menopause for two years!"
"That's true but I've read on the internet that-"
"Since when you believe stuff on the internet?"
"I'm just saying that-"
"Jungbae-ah, look-"
"Hands up old man!"
Jungbae and Gihun turn towards the entrance of the garage: two men armed with knives and holding an empty bag, wearing what appears to be black leg warmers with three holes for the mouth and the eyes, with strands of purple and black hair coming out from the top extremity, stand with some difficulty there, with watery eyes and sluggish movements.
Jungbae and Gihun exchange a look, then sigh.
"Subong, Namgyu, what are you doing?" Jungbae asks, exasperated by the antics of the neighborhood's trouble youth.
"We are not Subong and Namgyu," says the taller one, with great dignity, "We are-"
"Subong," says Jungbae.
"-criminals of the night, feared across-"
"Subong, I watched you fall off your bicycle last Tuesday."
"I am Thanos," Subong announces, pointing his knife at the ceiling for emphasis, "Destroyer of Worlds. You don't know me."
"Subong, does your father know that you are here?" Gihun raises an eyebrow.
"My father doesn't know Thanos either," Subong replies, with the unassailable logic of someone who has probbably too much drug in his system to function properly.
Namgyu, beside him, has been squinting very hard at a spot on the garage floor since they came in. He now looks up and says, with the mournful tone of a man wronged by the universe on a fundamental level: "Thanos, I told you this was a bad idea. I told you. I said Subong, this is a bad idea-"
"Thanos!"
"-and you said it would be easy money and now we are standing in Jungbae-sshi's garage and they are not even scared-"
"I'm a little scared," Jungbae says, in the tone of a man who is not even a little scared, his hand drifting with remarkable casualness toward the emergency button installed behind the counter three years ago after a different, unrelated incident.
"See? He's terrified!" Subong exclaims, satisfied.
"You're not being intimidating!" Namgyu insists, gesturing at Jungbae and Gihun with a desperation that suggests this argument has been ongoing since before they entered the garage. "Look at them! They're not scared! Gihun-sshi looks annoyed!"
"I am annoyed," Gihun confirms, pressing a fist against his abdomen where the ache that has been following him since morning has sharpened into something less ignorable. "Namgyu-ah, does your grandmother know you're doing this?"
"Please don't tell my grandmother," Namgyu says, immediately, with the reflexive panic of someone for whom grandmother-based consequences represent the apex of possible suffering.
"Empty the register!" Subong shouts, rallying, and takes a step forward with the knife extended, achieving something that might generously be described as a menacing posture if you had never seen anything actually menacing and were also looking at it from far away through fog. His eyes are red and watering above the leg warmer. The purple strands of hair emerging from the top of his improvised mask have begun to droop slightly. Gihun wonders, distantly and without much investment, if the elastic is giving out.
He also wonders, with slightly more investment, about the pain in his stomach.
It has changed quality in the last few minutes. It was a stomachache this morning - dull, generalized, explicable by the kimbap that had been in the refrigerator since Thursday. Now it is something with more specific ambitions, coming in measured intervals that are both familiar and not at the same time, a voice telling him to remember.
He ignores it.
Jungbae's hand finds the button. The alarm sounds somewhere outside, distant and purposeful.
"You pressed it," Subong says, looking at Jungbae with an expression of genuine wounded surprise, as if the social contract between robber and robbery victim had been clearly explained to everyone beforehand and Jungbae has chosen to violate it personally.
"I did," Jungbae confirms. shrugging.
"You weren't supposed to! There's a process-"
"Subong," Namgyu says, and his voice has taken on a quality that suggests he is very close to simply sitting down on the floor and waiting for consequences, "Let's go home."
"We're not going home, Namsu, we're-"
"I want to go home right now-"
Subong, apparently deciding that forward momentum is the solution to his current organizational problems, takes another step toward Gihun with the knife, and that is when the thing Gihun has spent all morning telling himself was definitely food poisoning decides to clarify its actual nature in a way that cannot be attributed to kimbap of any age.
Gihun looks down.
He looks up at Jungbae.
Jungbae looks at Gihun.
The garage is very quiet for a moment except for Namgyu and Subong bickering in the background about the fundamental nature of commitment to a criminal enterprise.
"Jungbae-ah," Gihun says, very quietly, very calmly, with the composure of a man whose composure is doing a great deal of heavy lifting, "Call an ambulance."
Jungbae blinks: "What? Why, what's-" he follows Gihun's gaze downward and his face does something extraordinary, moving through confusion and denial and bargaining and a terrible, comprehensive understanding in the span of about one second, "Gihun-ah."
"I know."
"Gihun-ah, are you…?"
"I don't know," Gihun says, which is simultaneously the most honest and most dishonest answer available to him, because he does know, actually, he just hasn't processed it yet and he is hoping that if he doesn't say it out loud it will continue to be a hypothetical.
"But you said you've been in menopause for two years-"
"I have been!"
"Then how-"
"Jungbae-ah, I don't have time to explain the biology right now," Gihun says, and his voice tightens slightly on the last word as another contraction - and he is now accepting that this is what they are, contractions, because his body has apparently decided to skip the phase where he gets to be in denial - moves through him.
Jungbae calls the ambulance.
Subong, who has been watching this exchange with his knife still raised, slowly lowers his arm: "Is he okay?"
"No," says Jungbae as a matter-of factually.
"Should we-"
"Stay exactly where you are," says Jungbae, pointing at him, "You're already in enough trouble."
The police arrive in six minutes.
There are three officers, and then, four steps behind them, there is Inho.
He is in plainclothes: dark jacket, no badge visible, the slightly too-alert expression of someone who was not technically on duty but came anyway.
Gihun knows why he came. The emergency call would have logged the address, and Inho knows this address because Gihun mentioned it, because Inho had asked where he worked on their second date at an Italian restaurant and Gihun had told him and Inho had filed it away with the particular attention he gives to things about Gihun, which Gihun finds both flattering and occasionally unnerving.
He came because the alarm came from was Gihun's garage, and he came to check on him.
Gihun registers all of this from the floor, where he has relocated in the last few minutes because standing stopped being a viable position.
Inho's eyes move across the scene with professional efficiency: Jungbae, phone in hand, expression of a man spiritually defeated; Namgyu, sitting on a tire, staring at the floor; Subong, still wearing the leg warmer on his head though the knife is now on the ground because one of the arriving officers had used a voice that communicated clearly that the knife should be on the ground; a young man - Minsu - fainted on the floor and another - Daeho - walking back and forth in panic mode; and Gihun, on the floor of his own garage, in a situation that requires no further elaboration.
Inho's professional efficiency evaporates. He starts moving toward Subong, who is standing nearest to Gihun, with the movement a posture of a predator witnessing a danger too close to its mate. Subong cowers in fear, expecting the inevitable.
"Inho-ah."
Inho stops like he's hit a wall. He turns to look at Gihun, crosses the garage in four steps and crouches down and his hands find Gihun's face before he has apparently consciously decided to put them there.
"What happened," he says. It is not quite a question.
"He happened," Jungbae says, pointing at Subong, who has the decency to look somewhat abashed, "Came in with a knife. And also… Well..."
Inho looks at Gihun.
Gihun exhales: "I'm in labor," he says, and the word sits in his mouth like something borrowed from someone else's life, "Apparently. I thought it was food poisoning."
The silence that follows is of a particular quality.
"You're… In labor?" Inho says, very carefully, "Which mean you-"
"Yeah."
"You didn't-" Inho stops. Something moves across his face: "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Inho-ah," Gihun says, with great deliberateness, pausing briefly as his body makes its ongoing situation known, "I did not tell you because I did not know! I am fifty years old, I have been in menopause for two years, how could I even think that this was a possibility?!
"He thought it was kimbap this morning," Jungbae adds.
"It was old kimbap," Gihun says, "It was a reasonable assumption."
"Three days old," Jungbae says.
"Jungbae-ah!"
"I'm just giving context."
Inho is still processing. Gihun can see it happening behind his eyes, the careful, methodical way he approaches new information, which is usually one of the things Gihun finds most steadying about him and is currently somewhat frustrating given the circumstances: "But nine months ago would have been—"
"Our first date," Gihun says.
Another silence.
"Our first date," Inho repeats.
"Yes."
"Not the third or fourth, the-"
"The first, yes, we have established the timeline."
Jungbae, who has been listening to this exchange with his arms crossed and his head tilted, says, with tremendous conversational timing: "You slept together on the first date?"
"Jungbae."
"I'm not judging! I'm just… That's fast, Gihun-ah, even for you-"
"You are absolutely judging!"
"I'm saying it explains the pregnancy, that's all, if you'd waited a few more dates maybe-"
"Jungbae-ah," Gihun says, in a register that has historically preceded thrown objects, "I am on the floor of our garage, this baby is coming whether any of us are ready for it, and you want to have this conversation right now?!"
"I'm just saying Gayeong is going to have questions-"
"Gayeong is going to have many questions, yes, and I will answer all of them later, when I am not-" He stops. Inhales and exhales. Inho's hand finds his and Gihun holds it harder than he means to: "When I am not currently occupied."
Inho, to his credit, has recovered from the initial impact of the information and redirected his entire focus to being useful. His other hand comes to Gihun's back. He asks short, specific questions - how far apart, how long has it been, has the ambulance confirmed - and processes the answers without drama.
"You've done this before," he says, not accusingly. Just placing it.
"Once," Gihun says, "Gayeong."
He pauses, and then, because Inho knows about Gayeong but has not met her yet, has seen exactly one photograph of her on Gihun's phone and asked about her with the careful interest of someone who understands that she is the most important person in the relevant universe: "Twenty-two hours of labor. In a hospital. With adequate preparation and prior knowledge that it was happening."
"This seems different."
"This seems significantly faster, yes. This baby has somewhere to be apparently."
In the corner, Subong is being processed by one of the officers with the mechanical resignation of someone who has accepted the trajectory of his afternoon. Namgyu is lamenting quietly on his tire, though when Gihun glances at him it's unclear whether this is about the arrest, the baby, or some private grief that the situation has unlocked.
"Subong-ah," Gihun says, because even now, because he cannot help it.
Subong looks over.
"Tell your father I said hello."
Subong closes his eyes. "Yes, Gihuns-sshi."
The ambulance is taking what Jungbae describes as a scenic route.
"Fifteen minutes," he reports, after his third call.
"Fifteen minutes," Gihun repeats, in a tone that communicates exactly what he thinks of fifteen minutes.
"The traffic-"
"Jungbae-ah, this baby is not going to wait for the traffic!"
"It might-"
"It is not," Gihun says, with the authority of someone who has done this before and recognizes every single stage of what is currently happening, even if the previous instance involved medical professionals, a bed, and significantly more warning, "Inho-ah."
"I'm here," Inho says.
"Have you ever-"
"No."
"Okay," Gihun says, and breathes, "Okay, you're going to have to."
"Tell me what to do."
Gihun thinks, not for the first time and with somewhat worse timing than previous instances, that this person is genuinely remarkable.
Jungbae takes off his outer jacket and hands it over without being asked, and rolls up his sleeves like a man reporting for duty, and Gihun thinks that he will buy him dinner for a month after this, will buy him dinner for a year, will never make fun of anything he reads on the internet ever again.
Almost.
She arrives before the ambulance does.
She arrives the way she apparently arrived at every stage of this process—ahead of schedule, without waiting for anyone's readiness, completely indifferent to context or convenience. She is loud and furious and present, and Inho's hands are shaking when he wraps her in his folded jacket, and Gihun is staring at the ceiling of his garage with the expression of a man who is restructuring his entire understanding of the last nine months in real time.
The kimbap. The fatigue he attributed to being fifty. The way he'd been hungrier than usual, then less hungry, then hungrier again. The appointment he'd cancelled in October because work was busy and rescheduled and then forgot to reschedule. The strange ache in his lower back.
"Hello," he murmurs to the small furious person on his chest, somewhat stupidly. She does not accept the greeting warmly.
Inho is kneeling beside him and looking at her the way he looks at things he is trying very hard to categorize correctly, and his jaw is doing the thing it does when he is feeling something he hasn't decided how to express yet.
The ambulance arrives four minutes later.
"Sorry for the delay," the paramedic says, coming through the door, and then stops.
"We managed," Jungbae says, a nervous laugh escaping him.
The paramedic looks at the garage. At Subong and Namgyu being processed in the corner. At the folded jacket. At Daeho trying to help Minsu stand again. At Gihun on the floor. At Inho, still kneeling, still shaking slightly.
"I see that," says the paramedic.
Namgyu, on his tire, is still crying. One of the officers has given him a tissue.
Subong is staring at a point on the wall with the expression of a man composing, in his head, an extremely difficult phone call to his father.
Gihun looks from his daughter - his daughter, his second daughter, his daughter who arrived in his garage on a Tuesday in front of two would-be criminals and four police officers and a man he has been dating for less than a year - up at Inho, who is looking back at him.
"She hasn't met Gayeong yet," Gihun says, which is not the most pressing logistical concern but is the one his brain has produced.
"No," Inho agrees.
"Gayeong is going to have opinions about this."
"Probably."
"She's going to have opinions about you too. She's been asking," he pauses, "She looked you up."
"What did she find?"
"She said you seem serious," Gihun looks back down at his daughter, "She'll like you. She likes serious people. She finds them funny."
Inho is quiet for a moment. Then: "We've been dating for less than a year."
"I know."
"And you-" He gestures, carefully, at the comprehensive situation.
"I know," Gihun says again, "Are you-"
"I'm here," Inho says, which is not an answer to the question Gihun was going to ask but answers it completely.
Jungbae, standing slightly to the left, says nothing for once in his life, and has the expression of a man who is going to tell this story for the rest of his natural life and will improve it slightly each time.