note: cop-outs? Cliches? I love them haha. (Thanks again for the new subscribers!)

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At approximately 7:34 p.m. on most nights of the next seven days after that, Gary sends her a text.

On Tuesday, he says: jihyo, can we talk? just hear out what i have to say first, i— She hits the trashbin icon on the corner of her screen before she can finish reading.

i cant believe youre doing this without even considering my opinion, his Wednesday text reads, arent i the father? shouldnt i be responsible? shouldn't i— She deletes that one, too, afraid to read more, afraid of reading a promise that neither of them can keep.

Thursday, she's in a good enough mood—she'd only vomited once, wasn't even before, during, or after meal time, and her manager's just told her that the writer of one of the better scripts she's perused in her career has her in mind for the lead female role—so she decides to read this one in full. i know youre worried. i know itll be harder for you. im sorry. She stares at the last word for a while, the guilt starting its broil in her stomach—or was that her dinner? Who really knows—and almost replies until she continues reading and sees, but its not like its easy for me, either. can i be selfish? can i ask you to think about what i want? and starts to feel angry again, so she leaves it unanswered, but doesn't press delete.

He doesn't text her on the Friday night. It makes sense to her: he was probably out clubbing again, trying to promote his upcoming album across all his influential circuits, making more connections, business or otherwise, to benefit him further on in the future. Which is fine. It's not like she was waiting for his text, anyways, or that she even wants the texts, because all they do is uselessly chip at a decision that's already been hardwired into her system.

She doesn't care what he does. She had her life, the one she's choosing paths for all by herself, and he still had his. That was the point she'd been trying to make all along, so it shouldn't bother her that he seems to have forgotten it all already, shouldn't bother her that she lies in bed the whole night and doesn't hear an alert for a text notification even once. 

But on Saturday, it starts again, comes in a series of consecutive texts that would make her laugh, on a normal day—after seven years, this was the most he's texted her, the most he's reached out, and it'd be funny to her that they had to resort to a disaster to be able to talk to each other so honestly, so candidly, if it also wasn't all so ing pathetic. 

im sorry. this isnt about me. i'm sorry that i made it about me, comes his first text. i know it doesn't mean much now, or that you even believe me, but i do want this baby, is his second, and despite herself, her breath hitches at the reminder. but if thats not what you want, then who am i to tell you no? i dont deserve that. you dont owe me anything, his third, and finally, even if i dont want you to go through with it, ill respect your decision. i have enough experience to know that mothers always know whats best for their children. so ill trust the mother of my child to know whats best for it. She reads it over, and over, and over, until the screen dims out in low battery, her eyes stinging from staring at a source of bright light for too long, and then she falls asleep with her fingers still curled around her phone.

On Sunday, she mistakes his text for Kwangsoo's, because she's in a hurry to check all her texts for an important one from her new drama's director, only skims through names, reads do you have anyone to go with you to the clinic tomorrow? and automatically assumes that it was Kwangsoo coddling her again. She replies with a, no, im going alone. but ill be fine, so dont worry about me kwangsoo-yah and only realizes that it isn't Kwangsoo when her phone rings for a call and it's Gary's name flashing across the screen.

"Does Kwangsoo know?" he asks immediately when she picks up, no nonsense, no greeting.

She closes her eyes, berates herself inwardly for being so careless. "Yeah. I told him."

"Before me?" he asks, scratchy through the receiver, but there's something else to it that isn't purely technological; like maybe it bothers him that she did, that he hadn't been first priority in that, either.

"Does it matter?" she says, because she's tired, and she has to go through an abortion in 24 hours, and she doesn't need more things to misjudge and feel guilty about when she already has so much.

"It doesn't," he answers flatly, and without seeing his face, she can't gauge if he actually means it. "Do you want me to go with you tomorrow?"

She can't tell what he means by that, either. "Aren't you mad at me?"

It takes him a number of seconds to answer, but the words he prepares in the static all come out sincere when he finally speaks, "I was. A little bit. Not anymore." There's shuffling over the line, a rustle of blankets, as if he was getting ready for bed too; a bit early, though, for him, so she drops the thought. "I'm not going to pretend that I understand your decision, but I won't say anything more to it either," he breaks again, like he's pondering over the things he'll say next, and then adds, "I'd still like to take some responsibility, though, help you out. If you'd let me."

"You don't need to," she says, lies down on her bed face-up. The pamphlets said that pregnancy causes fatigue, but she didn't know it'd come this fast, didn't know that she'd be this drained. "Honestly, I'm—it's hard enough as it is."

She's not heartless; maybe that's her admission. She can set her shoulders back and jut her chin and snap out the semantics of this pregnancy A to Z, but none of that makes her care less, makes her able to cut herself away from this without being attached, first and foremost. She'd lose everything if she kept the baby, but that doesn't mean she loses nothing here; all that she'd wanted, all that she'd envisioned