“No way,” Eunmi says firmly. “Out of the question, Ji.”

He gives her an exasperated and rather pitiful look. It’s March by now, the weather starting to warm up, and the two of them have taken Nayoung to the park. She’s getting better at walking and so she’s toddling around after a few other children roughly around her age, laughing happily, giving her parents a chance to talk.

“Why not?” Jiyong demands, his too-long bangs flopping into his eyes. Eunmi has to resist the urge to brush them back. “I want Nana to know who her grandparents are, and her aunt. She has a relationship with your family. I feel like it’s only fair that she also has a relationship with mine.”

Eunmi sighs, glancing up at where a little girl, maybe three or four, is helping Nayoung up the slide. “It’s not that I don’t want her to get to know your family, Ji. It’s just, your parents live so far away.”

“They live just outside of Seoul,” Jiyong points out with a wry little smile. “It’s really not that far.”

“It is, actually,” Eunmi retorts. “And I don’t know that I’d be okay with being away from Nana for an entire week.”

“So come with us,” Jiyong suggests nonchalantly.

Eunmi snorts into her coffee at that. “Yeah, that would be really great. ‘Hey mom and dad, here’s my daughter and the girl I slept with that once that is her mother.’ I’m sure they’ll really appreciate that.”

“I slept with you a lot more than once,” Jiyong reminds her – as if she could have forgotten. “And I wasn’t exactly going to tell them that Nana is my daughter. I’m not really sure how accepting my parents will be, to tell you the truth.”

Eunmi can’t say she blames him. Her own parents had all but disowned her when she’d gotten pregnant, but they hadn’t been the best of parents to begin with. She figures she’s better off without them. “So what are you going to say?”

“I was just sort of going to introduce you as my friend and Nana as your daughter,” Jiyong admits with a sigh. “Do you think that’s cowardly of me?”

Eunmi does think it is a little cowardly, but she doesn’t hold it against him. “It’s fine,” she assures him. “I’ll ask off from work and we can go.”

That’s how, a week later, she finds herself in Jiyong’s car with Nana in her carseat in the back, speeding through traffic towards the Kwons’ house on the outskirts of town. To say she’s nervous is the understatement of the century. She’s never met Jiyong’s family before, even when the two of them were together back before she got pregnant, and she’s not sure what to expect.

“Relax,” Jiyong says, reaching across the console to lace his fingers intimately through hers. He’s warm and steady and somehow reassuring. “Everything will be fine.”

“Your parents are probably going to hate me,” Eunmi mumbles, although she’s not so sure why it matters whether his parents like her or not. It’s not like she and Jiyong are dating, at any rate. Their opinion of her isn’t important. The only important thing is that they’re good to Nayoung.

Jiyong laughs and the hand in hers squeezes reassuringly. “You worry too much.”

In next to no time they’re pulling into the drive of a two-story house with quaint little flower beds out front and laundry drying in the back. Jiyong gets out and stretches, then immediately removes his daughter from her carseat in the back.

He’s just straightening up with the toddler when the front door opens and his mother comes out, wiping her floury hands on an apron. “Jiyong!” she exclaims happily, and she promptly envelops both him and the baby in a hug. “This must be Nayoung,” she says, tweaking the little girl on the nose. Nayoung giggles. Then Jiyong’s mother turns to Eunmi with another smile. “And you must be our Jiyong’s girlfriend. It’s so nice to meet you. We’ve heard so much about you.”

Eunmi shoots Jiyong a confused, almost accusing look as his mother envelops her in a hug as well. Jiyong simply shrugs in response to the unspoken question; it was probably easier to explain Eunmi’s presence as his girlfriend rather than the mother of his child.

“Well come in, come in,” Jiyong’s mother says, grabbing one of the bags from the boot of the car and leading the way inside. “We don’t want the little one to catch a cold out here.”

Though Jiyong’s father and sister are at work at the time, his mother makes them feel quite welcome. She feeds them and then takes their luggage up to Jiyong’s room.

“We’re sharing a room?” Eunmi demands when his mother disappears upstairs.

Jiyong shrugs; Nayoung is in his lap and he’s trying to feed her, so he’s a little distractedly. “It’s fine. She thinks we’re dating, so it’s okay.”

“But we’re not dating,” Eunmi reminds him.

He flashes her a grin. “You can sleep on the couch, if you’d rather, and Nana and I will snuggle in bed.”

Eunmi wrinkles her nose at him in dislike but the couch doesn’t sound all that comfortable.

Jiyong’s sister, Dami, gets home from work before his father does. She’s a few years older than Jiyong and Eunmi and, according to Jiyong, she works as a fashion designer, operating her own store and everything. She greets Jiyong with a slap upside the head and a reprimand for not visiting sooner, but then she sees Nayoung and she scoops the little girl into her arms and immediately begins to entertain her.

Things are a little bit more tense when Jiyong’s father arrives an hour later, but he greets Eunmi politely and doesn’t comment on the fact that his son is dating a single mother, even though they’re not really dating and, if she thinks about it, Eunmi isn’t technically a single mother anymore. Jiyong helps out a lot since he’s come back into their lives.

“See?” Jiyong whispers when they’re all tucked into his bed that night, the baby sleeping peacefully between them, Jiyong’s fingers teasing at Eunmi’s above Nayoung’s head. “My family loves you. You were worried for nothing.”

Eunmi is silent for a moment, and then she says, “Why did you tell them we were dating?” she demands.

Jiyong takes a minute to answer, as if mulling over his response. “Because we are,” he finally says.

She sighs and pulls her hand away. “Ji, we’re not dating. I told you before that I can’t.”

“Why?” Jiyong demands. “Because other girls look at me? I can’t help that, Mimi. I’m a musician.”

She shakes her head. “I can handle other girls looking at you, Ji. You know I’m not that jealous. What I can’t handle is you flirting with other girls. Touching other girls, kissing other girls, sleeping with other girls. I can’t handle that, and I’m not going to put myself into a position where I have to try.”

“I haven’t been messing around, you know,” he says after a moment of silence. “Not for a few weeks now. I want to make this work.”

She takes a deep breath and turns away, turning her back on him. “I appreciate that you want to be there for Nayoung, but you don’t have to pretend to have feelings for me. It’ll be better for if we don’t pretend, you know.”

“I’m not pretending,” he assures her, but she doesn’t answer. Mostly because there is a painful lump in .

Jiyong goes out with his parents the next day, so Eunmi and Nayoung are stuck at the house with Jiyong’s sister, Dami.

Eunmi is nervous. She’s almost more nervous around Dami than she is around Jiyong’s parents. Dami is shrewdly intelligent like her brother, and it probably won’t take much for her to put two and two together and realized that Nayoung is biologically her niece. They look practically identical, after all.

But when Eunmi wanders downstairs, she finds Dami sitting in the living room floor with Nayoung, playing dolls.

“Eunmi,” she says when the younger girl appears. “I have a favor to ask you.”

Eunmi is instantly nervous. “O-oh, really? What kind of favor?” Stay away from my brother, you is the first thing that pops into her mind.

But that isn’t what Dami says. “So, I don’t know if Ji told you, but I’m a fashion designer,” she begins. Eunmi nods; Jiyong had told her that the day before. “I’ve been working on this new line of family-wear, and I have a photo shoot coming up but I haven’t been able to find models that I like. I was wondering if you and Nayoung would model for me. You both have the most fantastic bone-structure. Also, I want to show people that you can have a baby and still have a rocking body like yours.”

Eunmi flushes at all the compliments. “M-model?” she repeats. “Me? I’ve never done anything like that before…”

“I’d pay you, of course,” Dami assures her. “I always pay my models quite well. I can show you some of the designs, if that will help you decide.”

Not knowing quite what to say, Eunmi nods. So Dami fetches her sketchbook, where she has the designs mapped out in pencils and chalks, and the two spend the morning discussing Dami’s fashions. In the end, Eunmi agrees to model with Nayoung. It’s a little extra cash, after all, and she can’t see the harm in it.

She’s in the process of getting measured when Jiyong and his parents return, loaded down with groceries from the nearest market.

“What’s going on?” Jiyong asks with a curious little smirk.

Dami hardly looks up from where she’s got a tape measure wrapped around Eunmi’s calf. “You didn’t tell me your girlfriend and her daughter were so freaking gorgeous, Ji,” she accuses instead of answering.

Jiyong’s smirk widens and he winks at Eunmi. “I’m a lucky guy like that.”

Eunmi has to roll her eyes.

“So you’re really going to model for my sister?” Jiyong asks when they’re tucked into bed that night. Nayoung is sleeping in her portable crib and so it’s just the two of them, Jiyong’s arms s familiarly around Eunmi.

Eunmi shrugs, snuggling closer despite the fact that they’re definitely not dating. “She seemed to really want me to and I had no real reason to say no,” she admits. “Besides, it could be fun. I’ve never modeled before.”

“Dami likes you,” Jiyong says next. “She’s never asked somebody to model for her before. She always goes through her agency to find models.”

“She said she couldn’t find any models she liked for her line of family wear,” Eunmi mumbles.

“Because none of those models are actual mothers,” Jiyong replies. “There’s something that real moms have that you can’t just fake. And you’ve got it.”

Eunmi slaps him. “I’m not fat, if that’s what you’re saying.”

He pretends to get offended. “Who said you were fat? I think you’re gorgeous.”

She blushes. “Shut up,” she mumbles in embarrassment.

Jiyong does as he’s told, but he’s smiling as he snuggles closer and buries his face in the small of her back. And, as much as she hates it, Eunmi is smiling too. 

Here is a picture of GD with his sister ^^