The Truth

            Kyuhyun couldn’t think of a tier day he’d ever had.  For the last week and a half, he’d held out some hope that his boss was bluffing and didn’t mean it when he said he’d either have to go to Beijing or quit working for the company.  After working so hard, year after year, to get to the position he was in, it apparently didn’t matter. 

            He had a sneaky suspicion that Siwon had hoped he’d take the job in Beijing and that it would lead to his ‘girlfriend’ breaking up with him.  His boss was jealous that he wasn’t single anymore, that was obvious.  If Siwon thought he’d get the satisfaction of breaking him and Ryeowook up though, he was wrong.  Then again, Ryeowook had been avoiding him so much the last couple weeks, Kyuhyun was afraid that Ryeowook intended to break it off with him anyway.  He just didn’t know why.  Still, Siwon wouldn’t be the cause of it. 

            The snow was starting to come down hard when Kyuhyun got off the train and headed down the sidewalk to his apartment.  Ryeowook hadn’t answered any of his texts throughout the day.  It was becoming the norm, but it still hurt.  Just when Kyuhyun had begun to feel Ryeowook was coming around more, he had become oddly distant again.  Kyuhyun wasn’t exactly sure how much more of this his heart could take. 

            When he reached his apartment building, he balanced his box and briefcase in one arm as he unlocked the door.  Then he walked up the flight to his floor and struggled to open the door to the second floor.  Belatedly, he wondered if he shouldn’t have stopped at a bar first.  After all, he had nothing to look forward to at home.  There was nothing—and no one—waiting for him.  The lonely walls of his apartment were bound to make him even more depressed.

            Halfway down the hallway, he heard crying.  He came to a halt and peered over his box.  Ryeowook was sitting on the floor in front of his door with tears falling from his eyes.  Kyuhyun rushed over and dropped the box, crouching down in front of him. 

            “What’s the matter?” he asked, cupping Ryeowook’s face and forcing his boyfriend to look up at him.  “Are you hurt?”

            Ryeowook shook his head.  “No,” Ryeowook said, sniffling.  He wiped the tears from his cheeks with his hands.  “I…I just…I need to talk to you.”

            “If you have bad news, I don’t know if I can handle it right now.  I’m having a horrible day,” Kyuhyun confessed, being honest. 

            Fresh tears fell from Ryeowook’s eyes.  “Well, I…it might be…”

            “Are you breaking up with me?”

            “No.”

            “Did you sleep with someone else?”

            Ryeowook quickly shook his head. 

            “Then it can’t be that bad.  Come on and get off the floor,” Kyuhyun said, grasping him under his arms and helping him to his feet.  Kyuhyun unlocked his door and ushered Ryeowook into the apartment.  He picked up his box and briefcase and set them just inside before taking off his coat and damp shoes.  Then he helped Ryeowook out of his and grabbed his hand, leading him into the living room.  Kyuhyun sat down on the couch and then pulled Ryeowook down onto his lap.  Reaching over to the end table, he grabbed some tissues and began to whip away what remained of Ryeowook’s tears.  Eventually, Ryeowook stole them away and blew his nose.  His complexion was pale, his eyes red and puffy, and Kyuhyun swore that he looked a little skinnier.  Had his stomach been bothering him?  Was he sick with something more serious?  Fresh worries raced through Kyuhyun’s thoughts.

            “Are you going to tell me what this is about?” Kyuhyun finally asked, when his lover had calmed down.

            Ryeowook wrapped his arms around him and pressed his nose into Kyuhyun’s neck.  “Please, don’t leave me.”

            For the first time all day, a smile finally spread across Kyuhyun’s face and he tightened his hold on his little lover.  “Don’t go to China?”

            “Yes,” Ryeowook said, sounding on the verge of sobbing again.  “I don’t want you to go.”

            “Ryeonggu,” he said with an abundance of affection, “I had no intention of leaving you.”

            “You didn’t?” Ryeowook asked, pulling away just enough to look at him.

            “No, I didn’t,” he confirmed, leaning in to press his lips against Ryeowook’s.

            “But I thought they were going to fire you if you didn’t go,” Ryeowook pointed out, breaking away from the kiss.

            “Actually, I resigned.”

            Ryeowook frowned.  “I’m so sorry.”

            “Don’t be.  I don’t want to stay at a company that does business like that.  I’ll just look for a new position in a company that treats their employees better.”

            “Thank you.”

            Kyuhyun chuckled at this.  “You don’t have to thank me.  What the hell kind of boyfriend would I be if I left you for so long?”

            “Some guys do.”

            “Then they’re not as in love as I am.”

            Ryeowook rested his head against Kyuhyun’s shoulder.  “I wonder if you’ll still be saying that when you hear the news I have.”

            “I thought that was your news,” Kyuhyun said, running his hand through Ryeowook’s soft hair, “that you didn’t want me to go.”

            “That was only part of it.  The other part is much bigger and I’m afraid of how you’ll react to the news.  I’m afraid you’ll change your mind and go to Beijing after all.”

            “It can’t be that bad.  You said you didn’t cheat.  Right?” Kyuhyun asked, just to be sure.

            “No!  Why are you so worried about that?”

            Kyuhyun figured that wasn’t the best time to ask Ryeowook about Yesung, so he simply shrugged his shoulders.  “I just get jealous easily.  You know that.  What’s this news?”

            Ryeowook got off of Kyuhyun’s lap and stood up.  He began to pace the room.  “I think I told you, a while back, about my friends Leeteuk and Heechul.  They’re fellow professors at my university, medical doctors that specialize in fertility.  Heechul has been working on a drug to enable men to have children for the last several years.”

            Kyuhyun nodded.  “You mentioned it when you went to visit Heechul at his lab.”

            “Of course I did,” he grumbled.  “Well, his newest attempt at male fertility treatments is a drug—a pill—that a man takes that inserts a certain amount of female hormones into the body.  It enables men to be impregnated.  The problem is, it’s only worked once, for my colleague’s husband, Donghae.  They’ve tried it on several more couples and only one other one became pregnant, but they miscarried a couple months into it.”

            “Doesn’t sound very effective then.”

            “Not effective enough to get any serious backing from a drug company for more concrete testing, but my friend does not want to give up on his only successful fertility treatment.  He just hadn’t had enough people to test it on.  Well, on the day I went over to visit Heechul in his lab, he apparently slipped me the drug in my coffee without my knowledge.”

            Kyuhyun suddenly sat up, paying far more attention to his lover.  “What do you mean, he slipped you the drug?  The fertility drug?  He gave it to you?”

            Ryeowook nodded.  “I had no knowledge of it.  According to our other friend, Leeteuk, he realized he shouldn’t have done that a few hours afterwards, but by then the pill would already be wearing off.  There would be no way of reversing what might have already been done.”

            Kyuhyun grabbed Ryeowook’s hand the next time he walked past and forced him to sit next to him on the couch.  “This was the day that you came back to my place?