Standing in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom door, Sora turned first this way and that, examining her body in the mirror. It had been over a week since she’d gone to the doctor, and it still hadn’t fully sunk in that there was a little creature living inside her.

For the most part, she looked the same as she always had: skinny waist, thin hips, not much of a to speak of. But, if she were perfectly honest with herself, there were subtle changes. Her s, for one thing. They were bigger than they’d ever been before, and darker. For another thing, her waistline was definitely expanding. It was hard to believe, because, according to Dr. Lee, she was only in her third month, but there was a pooch. Already her pants were starting to get tight. That, more than anything, made it seem more real to her.

There was a knock on the door, and Sora jumped. “Just a second!” she called, scrambling for her clothes. The last thing she needed was for someone to see her. It would probably be lost on Dami and their father, but her mother would probably know at once.

“Hurry,” Dami’s voice called through the bathroom door. “You’ve got a phone call.”

Sora frowned. “You answered my cell phone? You know you’re not supposed to do that!”

“It’s from the hospital, so I thought it might be important,” Dami answered, and Sora froze. From the hospital? What if Dami knew now? What if- “I think it has something to do with your flu.”

Sora sighed in relief. If Dami suspected something, she surely would have said it.

Finishing dressing, Sora threw open the door and grabbed the phone. She waited until she was safely locked away in her bedroom before giving a breathy, “Hello?”

“Sora? This is Dr. Lee,” the doctor said politely. “I’m calling to see if you had made a decision regarding your condition.” It was as if she knew that Sora wanted to keep it a secret, because she never mentioned anything that would give away the fact that Sora was pregnant.

But of course Sora hadn’t made a decision. She hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was going to do about her little leech, as she had already started calling it.

Dr. Lee took her silence as a negation. “I’m going to schedule you an appointment with the counselor here at the hospital,” she said. “She’ll be able to discuss your options in more detail with you, and she’ll help you come to an informed decision. And you’ll also need to start looking for obstetricians. I’m only a general practitioner, and you need someone who specializes in this sort of thing.”

“Okay,” Sora nodded numbly.

“Great. I’ll schedule you for an appointment at four o’clock on Friday, in the same building as my office,” Dr. Lee said. “The counselor’s name is Mrs. Yoo. Can you make that?”

Again, Sora gave a mumbled answer of acquiescence and said goodbye.

So, after school on Friday, Sora said goodbye to her friends at the school gates and headed for the hospital. They were all going out to see a movie and were quite put out when Sora said she couldn’t go with them, but she played it off as needing to go have a check up regarding the “flu she just couldn’t shake.” The ginseng capsules Dr. Lee had prescribed had helped a lot with her morning sickness – which was really inappropriately named because it happened the whole day through – but she still got sick on occasion.

She found Mrs. Yoo’s office with ease and waited nervously in the waiting room until she was called back.

Mrs. Yoo turned out to be a friendly woman in her mid-thirties with curled hair and horn-rimmed glasses. She had posters of kittens on the walls of her office, and everything smelled comfortingly of vanilla. “Hello there, Sora. I understand you’re here to discuss your options regarding your pregnancy?”

Sora swallowed. She didn’t like anyone calling it her pregnancy. It was easier to handle if she pretended it was happening to someone else instead of her. She nodded.

“Alright, well let’s talk about abortion first,” Mrs. Yoo said kindly. “Are you religious, Sora?”

Sora shook her head. She’d gone to church once with a friend when she was small, but she hadn’t found it to her liking and had never gone back.

Mrs. Yoo nodded. “Then you’ll have no religious objections to it. What about morally? How do you feel about it?”

“I don’t know,” Sora mumbled. “I don’t know much about abortion.” She shuddered. “Is-is the baby alive? Do they kill it?”

Mrs. Yoo folded her hands neatly on her desk. “Well, that’s a subject of much debate, I’m afraid. Some people insist that a fetus is not alive, while others say that it is.”

“What do you think?” Sora demanded.

Mrs. Yoo hesitated. “We’re here to discuss you, Sora, not me.” But Sora gave her a pleading look and she relented. “Personally, I think they are alive. This is just an opinion, mind you, and not a fact. Most research seems to indicate that a fetus in the process of abortion tries to save itself, indicating that it does have some sort of intelligence and self-preservation even at a very young age.”

“Does it…does it hurt them when it happens?” Sora asked, eyes wide.

Mrs. Yoo shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid no one can know the answer to that one, Sora.”

A long pause followed that statement. Sora took a deep breath. “What about adoption? That seems like a good idea, right? Not to kill it, but to give it to a good family that can’t have kids of their own?”

“That is a very good option,” Mrs. Yoo agreed. “However, I’m afraid that adoption isn’t as easy, emotionally, as one might think. If you carry your child full term, you will get very attached to it. Of course adoption is possible, but it’s very difficult, and it’s a burden to many mothers who do it. You need to make sure that you are emotionally ready if this is the path you choose to take.”

“And what if I decide to keep it?” Sora asked, surprising even herself.

“You’ll find that keeping it might be the hardest of all your options,” Mrs. Yoo answered honestly. “Children are physically and emotionally draining, and you’ll spend a lot of money on them. If you don’t have a good support system in place, it will be nearly impossible to raise a child on your own.”

Sora looked at the counselor. “So basically you’re telling me that none of these options are good?”

Mrs. Yoo smiled tiredly. “Yes, well, your position isn’t the best, I’m afraid. With you being still in school, any of these options are going to be incredibly difficult for you. If you choose to get an abortion, you’ll have to take time off from school to recuperate from the surgery. It’s fairly invasive and, so I’m told, there is a bit of pain that follows. If you choose to carry your child to term, you’ll have to deal with missing school for doctors appointments. And, though it’s rather unpleasant to think about, school will probably be very hard for you, socially.”

As if Sora hadn’t already thought about that. She couldn’t imagine what people would start saying about her if they knew the truth, knew why she was sitting there in that office.

“So what do I do?” she asked helplessly.

“The decision is yours alone, Sora,” Mrs. Yoo said gently. “I am here to help you make an informed decision, but I cannot choose it for you.” She pulled out some pamphlets from one of her desk drawers and passed it across to Sora. “Take these home and look over them. We’ll meet again soon and see if you’ve come to a decision.”

Sora tucked the pamphlets into her school bag, thanked Mrs. Yoo half-heartedly, and headed home.

She told her mother she wasn’t feeling well – that much was true, at least – and she holed herself up in her bedroom. She rested one hand on her slightly distended abdomen, tapping her fingers along it almost absently, and unfolded the first pamphlet about abortion.

Though of course it was supposed to be pointing out the positive side of abortion, the photographs of aborted fetuses were downright horrifying and she threw the pamphlet down in disgust. The pamphlet about adoption was even less helpful, just showing photographs of actors very obviously posing in various states of happiness. They were entirely unhelpful.

Sora groaned and flopped back among her pillows. She was no closer to reaching a decision about what to do than she had been when Dr. Lee had first delivered the life-altering news.

She fell into an unpleasant sleep, haunted by nightmares of aborted fetuses and small children wearing huge, fake, sharp-toothed smiles chasing her around a hospital.