A few days, a week and months passes. But Hyeri is the same, everyday seems the same for her after she lost Jiyong in the unexpected accident. The blame has gone none but to the drunk driver, for what I’ve had been told by the policeman who is in charge for this case, the driver has finally faced his consequences, counting his days behind the cell. However, I’m sure it is not enough for us, especially for Hyeri. It wont bring Jiyong back, and it wont definitely bring the father of her’s child back.

Everyone tells me she needs her time. Her attitude tells me she needs time, but I know my daughter too well, she does not need any time of grief. She needs help, and help is what I’m trying to give her for the past three months but not a single thing has changed. Hyeri is still the same, and time keeps going on and on, giving us no help at all. And endless cycle of sleep, wake, bear the hidden agony she’s been feeling, and repeat. I desperately hate the fact that day passed without much help I could lend to my only daughter.

Jiyong has been gone for three months, and so does Hyeri’s soul. It has been travelling to no places and everywhere. Every day, for her is sensory deprivation, drawn out and torturous from the beginning to end. The first month, she has been crying her eyes out. Never once days passed without a puffy look of her face and a sadism red eyes of her. She barely has a food down and sometimes she keeps herself shut in her room without any food or drink. It brings a bad result to her body, especially when it is affecting her baby.

Her loss as well her shutdown of the world has brought quite a chaos to Jiyong’s company. With the mutual agreement from Jiyong’s mother, Dongwook is taking the CEO place in K Construction and my wife, Thalia also is currently working in the company in replace of Hyeri’s position. Akita, Dongwook’s wife has already resigned her job in Japan but luckily she is accepted in one of the hospital nearby. Through the darkness we have been through right now, I could not begin to forget being thankful of how our family becomes more united than ever. Everyone is doing their role to keep everything in check and to help Hyeri coming back to her sense.

Despite of all thing that happened in our family, never once a day passes bringing a peace into my old heart. Two month after the loss, Hyeri’s condition starts to be worsening than before. Her nightmares worsen. Shrieking and wailing in the middle of night are considered normal already. Plus, Several times she passes out as her body is slowly losing the nutrition both her and the baby needed. She looks more fragile than ever when her body keeps shrinking. But thanks to Akita’s expertise, she’s keeping Hyeri’s condition in check every day, making sure she could survive another day. Injection after injection is given to Hyeri’s to keep her healthy for how long, I could not find the answer. She’s still losing her appetite and sometimes she only eats not more than three spoonful of porridge I’d made for her. I could not lie myself, it hurts me thousand time seeing my little kid is having a hard time alone. I just wish I could even bear a bit of her suffer. In that case, I could make out for all the silence I’ve kept before for silence I made actually hurting her even more.

Now, it has been three months since she her permanent loss of her husband. Every day is still the same, Hyeri doesn’t show any emotion or talk a word. It is a Sunday morning, when I preoccupy my time waiting for her to wake up with a tray of breakfast beside me. As she opens her eyes, it takes her a few seconds to recognize her surrounding before the melancholy expression comes haunting herself. She stays still in her bed, focusing on the drops of snowflakes dropping from the sky. Cautiously, she turns over and finds the space beside her empty. A stab of disappointed clearly cut through her face.

Unable to witness another heartache she’s experiencing, I take the tray and walk to Hyeri’s side.

“Good morning, sweetheart.” I smile at her, ignoring the obvious eye bags below and the messiness of her hair. When I reach beside her, I cradle the tray on my lap to give myself a space to kiss her forehead.

Still, Hyeri does not show any expression or even care to figure out the breakfast I’d made her. For a moment I miss the moment back then when she’s still full of colour and spirit. I just miss the old Hyeri so badly.

“Look what I’d made for you today, sweetie. It’s my signature sandwich.” I say in high-spirit, in a hope she would at least have a pin of happiness in her damaged heart.

Hyeri did look at me for a split of second before turning away, focusing on the snowflakes outside the window again.

“Ahhh, it has been snowing since last night. Aren’t you cold?” I know that much how meaningless the chatter is but that’s all I could do for the moment.

My shoulders droop, and Hyeri is being the same.

“Akita’s going to check on you later. So, sweetheart, please make sure you eat your breakfast, okay?” My tone severely drops, feeling sick at heart.

“I should get going first, sweetie. Make sure you eat, okay? You must eat, honey.” The final words I’d said brings nothing changed in her behaviour. She’s still staring lifelessly outside the window, seeing through the snowing maybe searching for some meaning in days she spends. Before I stepping out from her room, I do not forget to give her warm hug and a small kiss on her forehead. “I love you, Hyeri.”

******* 

“Daddy, I need to talk to you.”

Akita comes rushing to the living room when I am reading the daily newspaper in the kitchen island. The trouble that flashes through her eyes brings discomfort to my own self. I fold the newspaper and put it down beside the coffee at my side.

“What’s wrong?” I stand, the chair creaking against the floor allows a loud echo in the open space.

“Something’s wrong with Hyeri.” Akita spurts nervous tone in voice of hers. “Hyeri’s condition is very, very, very bad for both herself and her baby. The reading for the sugar in her blood is very low and looking at his zombie appearance, daddy, I don’t think the baby would last. The baby doesn’t get enough nutrition from her body. She has to take something at least for her child.”

I hold my chest, hoping the beat of my heart could stop pounding so hard. I am worried for her, for the baby and for Hyeri’s future. I don’t think she could take it if she lost another person in her life. This is too much already for her!

“But you’re injecting supplement every day, right?”

“It’s not enough, dad. She HAS to eat something to get enough nutrition. The medicine cannot help her forever.”

“What should we do, Akita?”

“Just let her eat a full meal, dad. She HAS TO. Or else she will miscarriage her baby.” 

The news I received from Akita this morning is really totally burdening. I have been cracking my mind on how to tell this to Hyeri and expectations of her reaction keep reaching my head. After all this while, I totally could not understand my daughter why she chooses to ignore her health as a pregnant mother. I am in utter confusion whether she still remember she is expecting Jiyong’s baby. I try to convince myself that maybe over time, she would regain her old self and would be responsible to her baby. I thought everything would be under control but I was wrong. Hyeri’s mental condition is seriously severed and I’m completely out choice of how to settle this mess without making it worse for her.

For lunch, I make Hyeri her favourite food, bibimbap. She loves it when I put shrimp in it and I try to make it as tempting as I can. I want her to eat till the last bite, she has to eat this time. I could not bear to forsake the chance whereby I still could do something for her and the baby. The ache in my heart doesn’t disappear for I am worried to death about her. The tear I’ve been holding all this while finally finds its way to roll my cheek. What kind of father I am…

As usual, I knock Hyeri’s door before entering her room, carefully stepped in with the tray in my hand. The room temperature in this winter drops and I could feel my feet shivering underneath. Hyeri doesn’t use the heater again. I walk to her bed and put the tray on the lamp table before on the heater. It is quite dark because of the snowing blocks the sunlight from appearing. As I sit at the edge of Hyeri’s bed, I turn on the lamp light. I look at my daughter who hugs her pillow and zooms out the space.  Unnaturally still and pale, with an obvious dark eye bags, I pull my poor daughter into a comfort hug. I could feel her body trembled for a second, but it stops when I could feel a force pushing me into distance.

“Hyeri?” I call for her, even I know she would not reply. Or even look into my eyes. “Hyeri, listen to me sweetheart. You have to eat properly for the sake of your baby. You are too thin now and the baby needs to survive.” As expected, the words go by like a night breeze. I watch her face while I concentrate on what to say to her about her condition and the baby.

“Sweethe…”

“I don’t want the baby.”

My eyes widen, and I turn to stare at her with a shocked expression. As miraculous it was to hear her voice after three months, she doesn’t fail to shudder me with her statement. How could she not want her baby? “Don’t say such terrible thing, honey.”

“No, I don’t care about the baby. I don’t ing care about myself too. So don’t care about me.” Her eyes are cold dead, and the way she looked into my eyes makes me scared, scared that she is determined by what she said. Her eyes look watery and it brings more pain to my chest.

“sweetheart…”

In a very pitiful way and tears rolling down her cheek, she asks, “why are you doing this to me?”

“it’s because I love you. You are my daughter.” I reply, my tone is careful.

“I don’t want to love you, or anyone else anymore. I’m sick of killing everyone I’d loved.”

“sweetheart, you are not killing anyone. It wasn’t your fault Jiyong’s dead.”

I watched nauseatingly as an enigmatic range of emotions ripples across her face. Her tears never stop falling like sickening waterfall. Something is bothering her- what happens to my positive and strong girl?

“It is my ing fault. I’m a death omen.”

The words slap me hard in the face like big, solid log swung in. “Hyeri!”

“At least mommy agrees with it,” she said, and her tone is falling when she mentions about Thalia.

I raise my voice for my tone is disapproving. “CHOI HYERI!”

“Let we go, dad. I beg you.”

The shaky voice that slammed my ears sounds extremely ridiculous but it doesn’t fail to make me freeze in shock while the pain ripped through my torso and my chest. Choi Hyeri who I knew never beg me for anything, never once in her life she asks me for something. And now,,she begs me for something I could never let her to do, not in this life. The tears in my eyes threaten to fall. This is all my old heart can take it. Hyeri ahh…

“Please end my suffering,dad...”