~*~

"...you're not the father of this child."

A painful silence echoed across the room. I could almost taste the tension. Feel it. Smell it. My last words resonated so loudly, as if it was recorded and replayed for everyone's convenience. With much difficulty, I looked away from Park Jungsu, because the look on his face was unbearable.

"If Jungsu's not the father, then who is?" SM's CEO, Kim Youngmin, broke the temporary aftermath of my confession. And then after him, everyone resumed their endless inquiries.

"Is he a celebrity?"

"Is he from SM?"

"Who is the father?"

"You have another boyfriend?!"

My ears were bleeding from all the questions, and more than ever, I felt the knack to just runaway. But there was no benefit to such cowardice. The problem was already here, and my best option was to face it head-on. They continued to hammer me into answering who the father was so that I was already shaking my head from the overwhelming emotions playing inside me.

"He's not from SM," I finally answered in a quiet voice. Their angry voices overpowered my soft tone, yet I seemed to have been heard crystal clear.

"Thank God."

"JYP? Loen? Cube?"

"Is he an actor? A model? A singer? An idol?"

"In that case, we can't care less about who's the father," Chairman Emeritus Lee Sooman voiced out, silencing the table. He looked at me and crossed his hands, leaning on the table -- his gesture when he was deeply planning and thinking. "Either you get an abortion or get yourself a goddamn good lawyer who can win you a million dollar lawsuit."

"President, madames, sirs, please have mercy! Don't do this," Hwang Miyoung stood up and cried out. She came to my side, walking past Park Jungsu. I had already forgotten oppa was still here, and when I looked at him, I saw that he was ice-frozen, white and completely speechless.

Soon, the elders began discussing the legalities of the situation, the casualties, the aftermath, the possible fixes. I was getting overwhelmed, because amidst the diversity of the topics they discussed, one thing was definite -- they wanted me to get an abortion, or SM would sue.

"I will keep my child, and my decision is final," I shouted at the top of my voice, intent on getting my message across. I was heard, because by the next second, all eyes on the suddenly silenced table were on me. "Please act as you see fit, and I will do the same. Thank you for meeting with me. Have a good day."

With that, I bowed out of courtesy, even if the last thing I felt about these executives was respect. I couldn't bear to last one more second in their presence, listening to them plan and strategize how I should get rid of the life inside me. I walked towards the door, removing myself from Tiffany's touch. Jungsu's gazes begged for me, but I ignored him, and I walked past him too.

"Taeyeon wait," he called out, speaking for the first time since my confession.

"Sis wait for me!" Fany called after me too.

"Kim Taeyeon!" they shouted together, but I ignored them and continued on my way.

In my peripheral vision, I saw how the entire business watched me run away from the conference room. I heard some of them call me, chase after me. Maybe they were our staff unnies, or manager and dancer oppas, but I chose to proceed without stopping or looking. Successfully, I was able to bring myself to the parking lot, and finally in the comforts of my car.

Once inside, locked and alone, air failed me and I struggled for life just as the tears torrentially raced out of my eyes. I bawled my heart out all by myself. I allowed the initial tears flow out, and then I decided to quickly drive out, because I knew that very soon someone would catch up to me. I pulled out, drove towards the exit of the underground lot. But my road was suddenly blocked.

"Stop the car! Please babe!" Jungsu oppa demanded, standing just in front of my bumper. "Let me drive for you!"

But I pressed the horn and stepped on the brake, causing him to unblock my way by instinct. He ran after me, tapping my window and screaming, "Damnit! Wait up!"

I drove on, and on, but I was slowed down as I was scared to harm him. He continued to catch after me, and the next thing I know, the passenger door opened. Somehow he managed to slip himself inside the moving car. I speeded up, and now we were finally free on the streets.

"Let's switch places--"

"Leave me alone! Just leave me alone Jungsu!"

"Don't you think I deserve this conversation? This moment? This time where you explain to me just why you would deny my paternity?" he asked, voice coated with emotions as he buckled up.

"I'm not denying it. I'm eight weeks pregnant, and it's been tested and proven. So tell me, if I'm already 2-months pregnant, then how can you be the father?" I calmly explained to him, my eyes stamped on the road before me.

"You're lying. Y-you're making excuses to protect me from this. You're lying to spare me--"

"I WISH I WAS!" I screamed, finally deciding to pull over the immediate curbside. I locked the doors and cried a little on my own, before I could even continue explaining myself.

"I WISH YOU ARE THE FATHER! OR IF I CAN'T HAVE THAT, I WISH I HAVE THE THICK CONSCIENCE TO PRETEND ALL OUR LIVES THAT YOU ARE THE FATHER!"

He was shocked by my exclamation, and he could only stare back at me, study me. I chose to keep my gaze on him too, so as to get the point that I was telling nothing but truths. When he kept looking at me with such a soft and tender longing, I couldn't bear the guilt that was bubbling up in my stomach. I looked away.

"No. That's not true. Stop this babe. I--"

"It's the dream, isn't it? Starting a family. Living a quiet life. Reaping what we sowed in that white picket fence house situated in the suburbs. A baby boy. A baby girl. Two princess dogs. One huge dog. It's our dream, right?"

As I reminisced all the dreams we made and shared, an indescribable pain began to shoot from within, drawing an intense wound from my head, to my chest, to my spine. The memories of just lying down on a bed, cuddling and talking, making our dreams and future... they all flashed before me, causing the pain to worsen.

"God how I wish I had you, and that dream, to look forward to, amidst the ugly media and public execution awaiting me. I didn't even fear what the public would say, or what the media would write, when I thought you were the father of this child. I was fearless! Dauntless! Hopeful. Selfish. Happy. I really thought we could live the dream. I want to live the dream," I continued, my voice constantly breaking with every three words or so.  

Now I looked at him again, and saw that he was crying silently, looking somewhere far outside. I saw the reflection of the diamond Cartier earring I bought him. The symbol of our secret love. The diamond we both shaped up for each other, an earring for him, and a bracelet for me.

"...but this is not yours. You're not responsible for this. I can't ask you to be. This is not fair to you, and you don't deserve any of this. This is all me, my burden, my fault, my punishment. Because I cheated on you. Because I slept with someone else. Because I hurt you."

"Why?" was the first word out of his mouth, and he almost choked while saying it. "Why did you do it?"

I wished he said something else, or asked something else, because his question was one that had a stupid answer. It took me a minute to recover myself, and I struggled for words. He asked me why again, so I blurted out, "I don't know. I don't remember. I was..."

The memories rushed back -- the ones I had already compartmentalized at the back of my head.  

"...inebriated... broken-hearted... I wanted to forget that hollow and intense pain of thinking we couldn't possibly be together again... because you'd be so broken and empty from all your loss. There's no excuse oppa--"

"So you slept with another man during the time I was grieving for my family?" he asked with a tone of disbelief, and my tears just rushed out torrentially once more. I couldn't breathe now that I was caught in my foolishness and unfaithfulness.

"There's no excuse. I'm sorry Jungsu. I'm so sorry! If I could bow and offer myself to you, I would."

"Who is it?" he asked, again a forbidden question.

"I c-can't--"

"Is he a friend of mine?"

"No. Don't ask please."

"Then who is he?"

"I can't tell you--"

"WHO THE IS HE?!"

"I'M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU!"

We both got taken aback by our screaming voices, and the silence came. I heard our combined thirst for air. I wiped my face that had now been soaked with my tears, and I saw that he did the same.

"Do you love him?"

"What?! Of course not! He doesn't even know."

"He doesn't know?" he was truly bewildered, almost speechless. After a while, he asked, "Are you going to tell him?"

"No. I don't want him involved in all this," I told of one more truth. If I could help it, G-dragon, and the whole world, shall never know he fathered the life in my stomach. I shuddered just at the thought of the whole world finding out.

"So he's a stranger... not even a friend of yours..." Jungsu concluded. Of course. What else could be the reason why I never wanted even the father himself to know?

"Y-yes."

"Damn it Taeyeon," Jungsu answered so calmly, almost in a whisper. And his next words caused me to bawl out the hardest all this time. "Just how many times are you going to break my heart?"

"I'm sorry oppa. I'm... I don't... I don't deserve you. You deserve better than me and my baggages. I've done nothing but hurt you," I self-pitied. I was the one who broke up with him two years ago. I closed my heart on him. I refused to get back together with him when he chased me the entire year of 2013, through romantic letters and telephone calls from the military base. Then I cheated on him. What other things could I do to hurt him more?

"I... I need time... to figure this out," he muttered after the long silence.

"Of course."

"I was going to give you my name, my future, my dreams. Then you broke me again just like that."

And then he put on his cap, sunglasses, and hoodie. I heard my passenger door open, and before I could even stop him or at least say goodbye, he was already gone. He left me in that spot just in 56th Street, crying alone for hours before I could even gain the energy to drive towards the Airport.

~*~

WHY DID TAEYEON CLOSE HER INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT?

1. [+31,702 / -6,083] Oh My, Jessica disabled her Weibo too. Yuri, Sunny and Hyoyeon privatized their Instagrams. What's happening to Soshi?

WILL KIM TAEYEON QUIT SNSD?

1. [+37,739 / -10,384] Five of the major Taeyeon fan sites shut down! Why? Is the bullying rumor true? What's happening to SNSD's teamwork? I guess what we see is just face value.

SNSD DISBANDMENT RUMORS COME TO LIGHT!

1. [+53,792 / -12,369] I heard Taeyeon tried to commit suicide, or maybe Hyoyeon, because they were being bullied? I can't believe the Soshibond was just for show! This is shocking. 2014 is the year Soshi falls.

RECENT PHOTOS OF TAEYEON FUEL PREGNANCY RUMORS, SM STAYS MUM

1. [+71,730 / -9,463] If it's true that she's pregnant and she tried to commit suicide, then I guess we've been idolizing the wrong kind of person all along. Kim Taeyeon, I hope you think about it before taking away the life of a child. Your fame and SNSD are not more important than a baby's future. He or she could be the next President, the next Kim Yuna, the next Bang Kimoon, or even the next SNSD. Don't be a murderer.

~*~

I have long figured out I was a masochistic.

I liked slapping my mistakes and stupidities on my face, burying my head with shame and regrets, reminding myself over and over again of things I did wrong or could have done. Just like now, when I was caught up in my tablet, reading the headlines and absorbing all the online comments one by one. From a murderer -- to a monster -- to an axis of evil -- I've been named names, cussed and spat on, a million times. Until it felt as if I didn't recognize who was the Kim Taeyeon the public persecuted.

I don't know how, I don't know why, and I don't who did this. Somehow, the press got wind of the internal conflicts in SM and SNSD. Hyoyeon's assault scandal, Tiffany's dating scandal, they both got buried with the new hot issue that broke to the media on the morning of April 12, 2013. SNSD is in turmoil. Kim Taeyeon wants to quit. Is Kim Taeyeon pregnant?

Could it be SM's own noise marketing? Could it be SM's way to threaten me, make me scared to death, of showing me just how much they could ruin me in the eyes of the media and the public? If so, it was effective. Not only was I hurt, insulted, regretful, I was also scared. Scared to come out and show myself to anyone -- not the SM and SNSD staff, not the Sones, not Jungsu oppa, not my family, not my members, not the public.

It was only 11am in Korea, and in the last one hour, only those speculations were known to the public. Once they accessed my medical records, interviews "insiders," or put the pictures together, by sunset today, the rumor would grow bigger, the entire story would be written, the picture would be painted... the fabrications, lies, theories, they would all multiply. I was so scared, because as the seconds passed me by in my bedroom, SNSD's image was slowly going down the drain. This was our 6th consecutive scandal since January, and the biggest one at that. Where would our group be by the end of this week?

I'm sorry to you, my friends. I'm sorry that I was selfish and irresponsible. I cried to myself. I realized this was SM's retaliation. Two days ago, I told them to act as they see fit. And now they were.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

My phone rang for the umpeenth time since the news broke out. I probably have received a thousand missed calls, messages and emails. I answered none, read none, as I had been too engrossed witnessing how the scandal unfolded before my eyes. I watched the first breaking news from Osen, Dispatch, Newsen, Sports Seoul, and yTN, and I had witnessed how one comment multiplied to fifty thousand in one hour. The caller insisted, and one look at my phone told me my manager was calling. I didn't know why of all the people reaching out to me, I picked up his call.

"Y-yes oppa?"

"You need to be in Thailand by tonight. If we veer away from B-ing's contract, it'll cost us $500,000, and will put more fuel to the fire. We have to proceed as normal, if you don't want to worsen the situation."

What's funny was, my luggages for my Thailand trip were all ready. I guessed unconsciously, I was not as brave as I thought I was. I still wanted to call truce with SM. So I told my manager he could pick me up tonight. I decided that for the last time, I would do whatever was printed in my daily planner. CF shoots. Last minute recording. Last minute broadcast. Last minute performances. As long as I have not talked to a lawyer or officially launched my case for the contract termination, I was still enslaved. And SM Entertainment was teaching me a lesson. Because just as they could easily build and ruin someone, they could as easily rebuild a tarnished name.

They were breaking me now. And if I allowed myself to be scared and enslaved, then I would get the abortion they wanted. Then they would execute a grand restoration plan and crisis management that would miraculously save the falling grace of Girls' Generation. That's how powerful SM Entertainment was. If I get an abortion, which I would not.

"Here I was, thinking you were just gaining weight and appetite," a voice made me me jump and catch my chest. Of course it was Choi Sooyoung, the only one who could tease me like that.

But when I looked up, it wasn't just Sooyoung. There behind her, just outside my bedroom door, were the seven other members smiling at me. I gathered myself and slid out of my bed, but Sunny and Sooyoung immediately came to my aid, as if I was sick, as if I was already in labor.

"I'm okay," I told them, yet they insisted on assisting me on both sides. We all walked together towards our other friends. And as if we haven't seen each other in a long time, we all hugged like we missed each other.

"I'm happy for you unnie," said Seohyun.

"Congrats mommy unnie," said Yoona.

"So you're pregnant and fat, aigoo," teased Sooyoung.

"God has rewarded you," said Yuri.

"Our first Soshi baby!!" cheered Hyoyeon.

"We're aunts now. I can't believe it!" Sunny exclaimed.

"I hope the suicide rumors are truly unfounded. Because if you ever reached that state of mind, then it only means we haven't been very good friends," Jessica said, her first direct words to me in a very long time.

I was still caught off guard with the first time Jessica addressed me since our friendship fell out years ago. I wanted to say something, and I didn't want to say the wrong words, afraid to spoil this rare moment. But just as I was formulating in my head the appropriate response, my vision had been blocked. I sniffed the flowery scent of Kenzo, and I knew that no other than Tiffany Hwang had taken ownership of my small and frail body.

"I'm sorry sis. Gosh, I'm so sorry," Fany cried out, embracing me so tight and speaking while burying