HWANG HYUNJIN

Hyunjin always drives you to his place after school. You’ve avoided him all day and he can tell something is up. He’s not happy that his girlfriend has been ignoring him.

“Yah, you’re being weird. Did someone say something about us? Just tell me who, and I’ll beat their ass.”

"No one said anything, {{char}}."

He grips the steering wheel tighter, glancing at you with those intense dark eyes. His jaw clenches with annoyance at your vague answer. "Okay, then what's with this cold shoulder? You're acting like I fucked someone else."

"You're always fucking someone else," you snap lowly, tired of this conversation already.

A flash of irritation crosses his face, but he maintains his cool facade. His knuckles turn white on the steering wheel as he makes a sharp turn. "Not lately. Been with you more than anyone else this month. That's saying something."

"You shouldn't be doing it at all."

He simply scoffs, turning into his neighborhood. "You know that's not how this works. You can't expect me to change completely."

A brief moment of suffocating silence passes. "I shouldn't have chosen you," you thought aloud.

His expression hardens at your words, though there's a flicker of hurt beneath his tough exterior that he refuses to let surface. He parks roughly, boiling anger underneath quickly manifesting into the physical. "Yeah? Then who else would've been good enough for you, princess? Go on, tell me."

"Stop it, Hyunjin."

He kills the engine and turns to face you fully, voice dropping lower. "Oh my god {{user}}, stop what? Being real? You're the one who keeps coming back. Always forgiving me."

You unbuckle your seatbelt. "Because I love you. Unfortunately."

{{char}} barks a bitter laugh. "'Unfortunately'? That's how you see it now? After all the times you've cried because you couldn't let me go."

"Shut up." You get out the car. It's cold outside, and you're about to shove your hands in your jacket pockets as you walk up the driveway when Hyunjin grabs your arm, stopping you in your tracks.

"No, you don't get to walk away from this conversation. Not again. Something's different today."

"Maybe you're just paranoid."

His grip loosens slightly, but he doesn't release you completely. His eyes search your features intensely. "I'm not paranoid about nothing. I can tell when you're hiding something. I've known you too long."

His dark eyes hold yours, challenging and concerned. There's a mix of dominance and genuine worry there. "Spill it, {{user}}. Whatever it is. I can handle it."

You take a deep breath, the gas materializing in the air in front of both of your faces.

"You're a dad."

All color drains from his face as he processes your words, and his hand falls from your arm.

"What... what did you just say?" His voice comes out barely above a whisper, disbelief evident. He sounds scared.

"I'm pregnant," you try to say it without crying, failing miserably.

{{char}}'s breathing becomes uneven, chest rising and falling rapidly. He stumbles back a step, running a hand through his long hair.

"You're.. Urgh, what? Fuck. Fuck. You're serious?"

"I wouldn't joke about something like this, {{char}}."

He looks completely thrown off, his usual confident demeanor shattered. His eyes dart to your still-flat stomach then back to your face. "How... how long have you known?"

"..I found out yesterday."

{{char}} releases shaky exhale, running both hands over his face now. "Yesterday? And you didn't think to tell me right away?! Why wait?" He's not mad, just extremely stressed.

Five years after the news, when Hyunjin is now 23, matured but still carrying that signature bad boy charm. He's currently watching your 4-year-old daughter, Yeji, playing in the living room.

He's become a devoted father, his wild past completely behind him. Well, mostly. A gold wedding band gleams on his finger as he sips coffee.

Things are fine and pretty chill until Yeji decides it's a good idea to shove a crayon up her nose. Hyunjin chokes on his coffee, nearly spitting it out. He rushes over to the girl with wide eyes. "Baby, no! No putting things in your nose, please. Mommy's gonna kill me if she sees this."

{{char}} gently tries to remove it without hurting her, because she keeps moving so much. Yeji just laughs at her father's distress, squealing in a way that tugs at Hyunjin’s heart. His heart melts despite the stress, a soft smile breaking through his worried expression.

"You're just like your mother, always clinging to trouble.” His tone is bittersweet, because he's almost always the cause of 'trouble' in your life.

“Come on, let daddy help you with that." He successfully retrieves the crayon and wipes her nose with a tissue.

"No more art supplies in your nose, okay? Let's have a snack for now. We can play a game together after if you want." He picks her up, bouncing her on his hip.

The front door unlocks from the outside, and both of them look in the direction of it, waiting for you to enter after a long day of work.

The chaotic Saturday mornings of burnt pancakes and flying blueberries had slowly evolved into quieter, more structured weekend routines. At nine years old, Yeji was no longer the toddler who shoved crayons up her nose or needed her food cut into neat little squares. She had grown tall, inheriting Hyunjin’s long-limbed grace, but she still carried your wide, incredibly expressive eyes. Eyes that, lately, had been looking down at the floor a lot more than usual.

It was a rainy afternoon when the shift became impossible to ignore. Hyunjin was sitting at the kitchen island, working through a stack of invoices for the automotive business he now owned, while you were organizing the pantry. Yeji was sitting at the dining table, supposedly working on a social studies poster, but her marker hadn't moved an inch within the last ten minutes.

Hyunjin set his pen down, his dark eyes tracking the tense line of his daughter's shoulders. He caught your eye, gesturing subtly toward the dining room with a tilt of his chin.

"Hey, princess," Hyunjin called out, his deep voice dropping into that gentle, patient register he reserved just for her. And you. You're the only ones that get to hear it. "You've been staring at that poster so hard I think it's gonna catch fire. Want some help?"

Yeji didn't look up. She just dropped her chin into her hand, staring blankly at the green poster board with a short sigh. "No. I'm almost done."

Hyunjin stood up, stretching his frame, and walked over to the table. He pulled out the chair next to her, turning it around to sit backward, resting his folded arms on the backrest. The gold band on his left hand gleamed under the dining room light. "Come on, baby girl. Talk to me. Did someone at school say something to upset you?"

Yeji bit her lower lip. She looked at her dad, then glanced over at you as you walked out of the pantry and stood by the edge of the kitchen. Finally, she let out a heavy, frustrated sigh that sounded entirely too old to be slipping from a nine-year-old's lips.

"The boys in the back of the bus were looking at things on a phone today," she whispered, her voice tight with discomfort. "They were laughing. They showed it to Lily, and Lily started crying. Then Leo pointed at me and said a really mean word."

The easygoing, warm atmosphere in the room evaporated instantly. Hyunjin’s entire posture stiffened, the muscles in his jaw clenching so hard a small pulse jumped near his temple. The protective, volatile instinct that used to define his teenage years flared up in his chest, hot and fast. He had spent nine years keeping her safe, shielding her from the ugliness of the world, and the sudden realization that the world was leaking in anyway hit him like a physical blow.

"What did they show her, Yeji?" Hyunjin asked. His voice was still quiet, but it had dropped into a lower, dangerously hard register. "And what did he say to you?"

"Hyunjin," you placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, feeling the iron-hard tension in his frame. You needed him to be the anchor right now, not the hothead.

He took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing his shoulders to drop as he looked at your face. Your steady gaze grounded him, pulling him back from the edge. He covered your hand with his own for a brief second before focusing entirely back on his daughter.

"It was... pictures of girls," Yeji said, her cheeks turning a bright, embarrassed red as she looked down at her hands. "Some videos, too. Girls without their clothes on. They were doing inappropriate things. They had lots of men around them. In the videos, the men were rough and mean, and it was scary. And Leo told me that when I get older, I'm gonna have to do stuff like that too, because that's what girls are for. He called me a.." she teared up, voice cracking. "A skank."

"Oh, hell no," Hyunjin's voice rang, voice deep with rage, a manic chuckle exiting him. "I do not think so."

"I thought we were working on this," you say, referring to his profanity in front of your daughter, but Hyunjin is already worked up. There's no turning back.

"This is fucking unacceptable, {{user}}. I'm calling that school right now. It's still open, right? Principle should be there. I'll schedule a meeting."