It was a sunny May morning when you found out you were going to be a mother. You’d been having nausea every single morning for a week without fail, so despite the fact that you and Kihyun were always very careful, you started to wonder if maybe your birth control had failed.

The idea was more than a little frightening to you, since you both led very busy lives what with him being in Monsta X and you being a makeup artist in the Kpop industry who currently worked for several top groups, including Monsta X, while maintaining your own side business of styling idols personally on a consultant basis.

Apparently, though, your eggs didn’t care about your busy schedule, or at least one of them didn’t, because that renegade egg had happily gotten itself fertilized at the first opportunity. 

You could no longer deny the truth of what was going on in your body when you saw the results of your pregnancy test. So, while Kihyun was sleeping peacefully in your bedroom, you were standing there in the bathroom gawking at the pregnancy test results and wondering what to do.

It wasn’t that you were upset. You were overjoyed, really, since having a mini Kihyun was something you had never dared to even dream of but now it was happening, and you had always loved children so you couldn’t wait to be a mom. The problem was the fragile state of your relationship with Kihyun.

You loved him dearly, but your time with him so far had been very stressful. Meeting Kihyun had been the best thing to ever happen to you, but you couldn’t deny that there were huge obstacles to your happiness as a couple. Not only were you Black while he was Korean, you were taller than him, too, by a good four inches. When you wore heels you towered over him. 

Everywhere you went together people stared at you, wondering how you two were together and why. You felt like you were always being judged negatively for who you were dating and you were sure he must feel that way, too.

You knew that Kihyun was sensitive to the opinions of others, but surprisingly he never once mentioned your physical differences, so you did the same. You just didn’t talk about those things either, and you ignored it when other people did. This was how you had gotten by for almost a year, but there would be no ignoring it now. Your differences would soon have to be faced in a major way.

You couldn’t help thinking about the last time you had faced the bias against your relationship. It was when Kihyun took you home to meet his mother. You had prepared religiously, hoping against all hope that you would do everything right and say everything right and miraculously she would like you. She had seemed to.

She talked with you and smiled at you and looked you in your eye and everything. You thought everything was going well, until you were coming back from the bathroom and overheard Kihyun and his mom talking in the kitchen while she was preparing to serve dessert.

“Well? What did I tell you? She’s great, isn’t she?” he asked. “Don’t you just love her?”

Kihyun’s mom sighed.

“What? What is that sigh?” he asked.

“Well, she seems nice…..for a black girl.”

Now Kihyun was the one to sigh.

“But I just don’t know, Kihyun. I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”

“Why? Why are you worried? What do you think is going to happen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen,” she said, sitting down the tray of food and giving him a pleading look. “Could you just rethink it?”

“Mom….”

“I just don’t trust this. I don’t trust her. I realize that it’s your life and you can do what you want but…I just really think you should rethink this.”

“How do I rethink being in love with someone? How am I supposed to do that?”

His mother didn’t have any answer for that. She just gave him a tortured look and shook her head before leaving the kitchen, and leaving him standing there looking confused and upset.

Since that day, you’d noticed things had been a little strange. Kihyun and his mom were not outright fighting, but she wasn’t calling him as much as she normally did, and whenever she spoke of you or to you she had a nasty biting tone.

Kihyun always told you that his mother liked you and when you questioned it he hugged you and said “she does like you, she’s just struggling with accepting someone different. She will come around. My mother is just stuck in her ways but she will come around, I know it.”

You admired his optimism, but you just weren’t so sure. You knew deep down in your bones that she hated you. She truly believed you would do something horrible to her child simply because you were Black and that really hurt your feelings.

The other reactions to your relationsh