note: I can't help myself. The tropes just seem to come out of their own volition haha. Thanks again for new subscribers/comments!

+

"Noona? Are you alright?"

"Hmm?" she hums, snapping out of the reverie and the temporary long-sightedness of her vision as she looks up at Seo Joon and realizes, for quantitatively the eighth time, that she's been stuck in her own headspace yet again, when she really should be working on practicing her line delivery. "Sorry, Seo Joon-ah. Let's go again."

Seo Joon's too polite and too aware of their age and standing to call her out on how unprofessional she's being, so all he says is, "We can always take a break, if you want," even if she does see the momentary rise and fall of one of his eyebrows, an irritated tic.

"No, it's okay," she shakes her head, because a break will only give her more time to be distracted by...matters, so she's not going to take the risk. "I've just got a lot on my plate right now. I'm sorry."

"It's fine," he says, smiling gently, and then his mouth opens, and closes again, as if he's pulled back to mull over his words more critically, before he finally says, "If you don't mind me asking—how far along are you?"

She almost doesn't register that again—the headspace calling her back in, because she's now an eternal caricature of her title of Mong Ji—but when she does, she almost asphyxiates on a little bit of spit. "What?"

"Sorry! I didn't mean to be intrusive," Seo Joon quickly apologizes, and if he really wasn't so pretty, she'd probably have stomped on his foot already. "But you've been doing the same mannerisms my sister-in-law did when she was pregnant, so I just thought—"

"Fifteen weeks," she admits, because he's blabbing, and she's also too tired to lie. It feels a bit freeing, actually, to tell someone about it without having the accompanying dread of expecting dire consequences; for all of his rising Hallyu star status, he can't get her fired, and he doesn't know—and doesn't have to know, more importantly—about who the father is, so this is almost like small talk. She likes that her illegitimate pregnancy with Kang Gary can be considered as small talk. "Is it that obvious?"

"Not really," he says, taking a sip from the straw of his drink, which is really just more ice than anything. "It's just the little things that matched up to me. And I've been around you for most of the whole day, so I had more time to look."

"Sorry," she says dryly, and stares forlornly at her own melted drink. The outside temperature was boiling today. Or maybe that was the hot flashes talking. Pregnancy or pre-menopause? Unclear. "I really don't mean to make you suffer in my presence for that long."

"Ah, noona, it's not like that," Seo Joon laughs, sheepish. "I didn't mean—I was just saying that if it's a case of you not wanting anyone else to know, then I think you'll be fine. I was mostly just guessing when I asked you, anyways."

The director calls for scene, and Seo Joon wipes the condensation off his hands with the cloth of his pants, offers one for her to take to help her stand up. It's sweet, and gentlemanly, but the vocal part of her that values her independence grouses slightly, doesn't need preferential treatment just because he'd guessed her out correctly.

They act their parts out; not flawlessly, because it's the first shoot, and even if she's already technically kissed him at the end of a 10 inch gummy worm before, having a 24-minute makeout scene as the first one you film for a new drama is still a little awkward. At least he tastes like mint, she thinks absently as the camera man bends almost inhumanely to capture the perfect shot of Seo Joon's tongue entering , and then, thank god I'm over tasting like puke.

"Excellent," the director claps, barely looking satisfied. "Leads, take another five."

"Your boyfriend doesn't mind the kiss scenes, right?" Seo Joon asks, and the genuine concern on his face almost neutralizes the sheer ludicrousness of the question. "I know we're acting, but I've seen enough guys get a little weird when their girl's pregnant."

Almost, because what Seo Joon's explicitly implying here is that Kang Gary—not that he's her boyfriend, or that she's in any way, shape, or form his girl, what even—would be jealous of whoever she's kissing, and that's—absurd. Mightily, extraordinarily, terribly ing absurd. "Trust me, he won't care."

"That's good," Seo Joon nods gregariously, "I wouldn't want to be ambushed in the middle of filming and get boxed by a crazy boyfriend. That'd be an experience."

Her whole body tenses at that, because Kang Gary boxes. Kang Gary excels at boxing. He was an amateur boxer once, before he'd decided that reviving the Korean rap game was his true calling. They've had a few boxing stints on Running Man, and he always looked good doing it: the easy confidence with which he strapped his gloves on, the way he anticipated an opponent's move a second before the actual hit, the swift and agile careen of his body left and right when he's dodging punches; the look of total concentration on his face, the firm lock of his jaw, the flex of sinew and muscle underneath the skin of his arms—

Jesus, no. That's not where her mind's supposed to go. Her mental destination had originally been does Seo Joon know it's Kang Gary?, but that bifurcation of thought was a bit more disseminating, and infinitely more perturbing than Seo Joon confirming the baby's paternity would ever be.

Get a ing grip, she tells herself. "He's not like that," she tells Seo Joon.

"Hopefully not," Seo Joon chuckles, and there's an ingenuous quality to the way his head drops backwards in his laugh, confirming two things: 1) this guy was really handsome, lord, and 2) he doesn't know jack about Kang Gary being the father of her baby.

Her nerves mellow down its travel through her bloodstream, only to be replaced by a sudden flush of heat that she's familiar with; so familiar that she's shunned it away after an overexposure, because that's what got her inundating Kang Gary as the father of her baby in the first place.

Seo Joon has a serious girlfriend, the voice in her head scolds, and then provocates, You know who doesn't, though? Kang Ga—

Stick to being paranoid, she forestalls it coldly. Not only has she taken to talking to herself out loud, but now she's also making up alter egos to fight with in her head. Pregnancy's left her completely ing nuts.

And horn— the voice adds.

You need to stop, she grieves, and walks away from Seo Joon before she can say or do something she'll regret, or possibly be sent off from set for indecent behavior and harassment.

+

"What you need," Young In says, voice soft and patient, but not any less like she's making fun of her through acres of power lines and telecommunication devices. "Is a good, thorough lay."

"Oh my god," Jihyo says, faceplanting onto the cold surface of her kitchen counter, regretting her boredom and sentimentality induced decision to reconnect with Young In during the two week period of Dr. Byun's rest order for her, but hey—at least it combats the heat. "No. Just no. That's the whole reason why I'm in this situation, first of all, and second, who the hell would want to date someone pregnant with another man's child?"

"When did I say that you should date?" Young In asks innocently. College is a long ways and a lifetime back, but Jihyo hasn't forgotten the devilish grin that comes over Young In's mouth whenever she takes that tone. "The father of the child will do."

"Okay, reuniting with you is fun and all, but I'm drawing the line right there," Jihyo growls, "I didn't tell you all of my dilemmas just so you can throw them back in my face."

"Sorry," Young In says, sounding truly apologetic for a second, but then she laughs and destroys the mirage. "It's just—you have to admit, it's a little funny."

Jihyo scowls vicariously at the immortalized Young In on the class picture she'd discovered in her storage room during the break. One more wisecrack, and she's putting it in the shredder, nostalgic teenage memories be damned. "Ironic? Yes. Funny? No. Far from it."

"You getting pregnant by the other half of your loveline that you really, really hate? Definitely both," Young In says cheerily. "But alright, I'll give you some actual advice: go get laid."

"Young In," Jihyo shrills. Off to the shredders she is, then. "I swear—"

"I'm serious," Young In says, "Go find someone to date, let loose, have fun. I'll even set you up if you want," there's some rustling over line, a finger flicking through pages of those archaic address books that Young In always used to keep, "Oh, remember Si Hyuk? Tall guy who tried to get into modelling but had too much stage fright? Last time I talked to him, he said he owns a law firm in Seoul now, can you believe that? He's looking even better too, the he has—"

"This is embarrassing," Jihyo groans, pressing her cheek against the edge of the counter. Maybe she'll accidentally cut herself, bleed enough to faint, and then she'll be spared from hearing any of this ever again. "You're telling me that an established lawyer would want to go out with me? What am I, some kind of pro bono child custody case?"

"Please, Si Hyuk's been in love with you for years," Young In snorts. A child wails in the background, followed by a slew of vigorous shushing noises. "Sorry about that, Young Sun's acting fussy, but they always do at this age. You better pray to god your kid gets your disposition," Young In sighs, and Jihyo gets this weird flash of a premonition of her future self, trying to handle a child whose permanent setting is on scream, and even she has to release a sigh of sympathy to that.

"But anyways, what was I—oh, yeah, Si Hyuk. The guy was smitten, Jihyo, and just between you and me, I think he still is. He was asking about you when we met, the whole twenty questions of romance: if you had a boyfriend, or if you got hitched, or if there's really something between you and that guy from LeesSang," Young In's voice picks up again at that last part, "Which, considering, I probably should've said—"

"If I agree to go out with him, will you finally shut up?" Jihyo asks, already resigned to one merciless fate: it's either she indulge Young In in whatever social experiment she's trying to impose here, or endure more baseless ribbing about her and Gary—who, by the way, she does not like in any sense beyond the platonic. Dr. Byun was wrong, those palpatations weren't emotional; it had been just hormones, because how else can she explain this?

She's been hormonal, and Gary's just always somehow there around her, all the damn time, and it was just...infatuation, or comfort, or whatever it is you feel when someone you've known for a long time and didn't quite care for either way started acting differently towards you and showing you sides of himself that you wouldn't ever have seen if not for the one-night stand baby you're both about to have. She's not going to say it's lust, because that's ing crass, and just joining the words together to form the thought that she may be lusting after Kang Gary—which, okay already, he's never been ugly, that's just the show taking a gag too far, and he's always had a special charm to him that she's personally witnessed girls (other girls who aren't her. Of course.) be captivated by at the most inopportune moment—is the dictionary definition of uncouth, so that word's definitely out of the picture, leaving her with her first resort, and that's—

Infatuation. That's what it is. She's getting to know the real Kang Gary now, and it's only natural that she take some interest, only natural to be impressed by his not-so-new but positively improved personality.

College is a long ways and a lifetime back, yeah, but here she is acting and thinking in words only the greenest and most pathetic of freshmen would use. Ugh.

"No guarantees," Young In says, and Jihyo's phone chimes through the receiver, Si Hyuk's contact info already sent to her with a mixture of blushing emojis, and a combination of two hand ones that's too vulgar for her to even acknowledge. "I'