JIMIN’S POV

“Daddy?” Haru’s tentative voice woke me up from my nap on the couch. “Daddy, are you awaked?”

I sat up and rubbed my face in my hands. Haru giggled and tried to pull my hands away. I let her climb up into my lap.

“She had a good day.” Jin’s voice came from the doorway. I looked over to see him standing awkwardly in the entryway, Haru’s belongings in his hands.

“Thanks for picking her up today, Jin.” I said quietly, my voice thick with sleep. I cleared my throat before continuing. “I meant to call you. I got home earlier than I thought I would.”

“It’s okay. It’s always nice to see my princess, right?” He smiled in Haru’s direction.

Haru turned pink and buried her face in my chest.

“She hates me.” Jin chuckled.

“She loves you.” I corrected. “My daughter has a full-fledged crush on you. I thought you would have realized this by now.”

“Where’s your wife?” He came and sat next to me. Haru crawled over to him and began to his shirt. He let her, mainly because she couldn’t get past the top button.

“Sleeping, I think.” I stared down at my hands.

He nodded. “Yeah, she told me she wasn’t feeling well when she asked if I could pick up Haru today.”

“Sorry for inconveniencing you.” I mumbled. “You wanna stay for dinner? I’m making salmon.”

Jin nodded once more. “Yeah. Better than hanging out alone in my apartment.”

I let out a tiny noise of disbelief. “I don’t know. I would be happy to have a night to myself.”

“You alright?” Jin ran a hand through Haru’s curls. She climbed off of him and went into her bedroom, presumably to play with her toys. I think she knew something was up. She was never this quiet.

I shrugged. “I’m fine. I’m just…married.”

Jin smacked the back of my head. “Ungrateful brat.”

I shoved him away and rubbed the back of my head. “, Jin. That hurt!”

“Your wife is great.”

“I’m aware.” I said dryly. “Doesn’t make her any less moody.”

“Well, she’s pregnant.” Jin said wisely, nodding his head. “That’ll do that to you.”

“Right.” I agreed, a little sarcastically. “Because you know so well.”

“What’s the matter? Why are you so edgy?”

I fiddled with my fingers before slowly answering. “I don’t know what’s going on with her. One moment, I think we’re fine. And the next, she’s crying about how she misses Busan and wishes we were in love like we used to be.”

Jin let out a low whistle.

Haru appeared with three stuffed animals in her arms. “Daddy! Can we play wif dese?”

“Of course, little love. What do you want Daddy to do?”

“Um…make a pillow tent!”

“A pillow tent, huh?” I stood and began to pluck the cushion from the couch. Haru dropped her stuffed animals and clapped her hands. She sang a little excited song as she hopped around the living room.

“Pillow tent, pillow tent! I love pillow tents and Daddy. Uncle Jin is a boy and Mama is a girl.” She stopped abruptly and looked at me. “Daddy, is you a yeetle boy?”

“Nope. I’m a grown-up.”

“I’m not a grown-up. I’m a yeetle girl.”

“That you are, lovebug. That you are.” I put the finishing touches on our little pillow fort. Jin helped out by grabbing a blanket and throwing it over as the roof.

“Alright, daisy chain! Come step into your new home.”

“My new home?” Haru peeked in curiously, where her uncle Jin and I were waiting with smiles on our faces.

“Yup. You’re gonna live in here from now on. What do you think?” I scooched over to make room for her. She sat down in between us and patted the ground happily.

“Is good.” She decided. “I’m gonna live here wif you and Mama.”

“What about me?” Jin asked, pulling her cheek.

Haru peeked up at him shyly. “You wanna live wif me, Uncle Jin?” She placed her hands on his legs and looked up at him with a smile. She reminded me of Yukon. “You wanna have a sleepover?”

“Oh, of course!” Jin nodded enthusiastically. “I’d love to have a sleepover with you.”

“Where’s Mama?” Haru asked. She took my hand and pulled on my pinky finger.

“Ow, Haru, that hurts.” I pried her finger off of mine and she giggled evilly. Haru had started this new thing she liked to do: hurt people. She got a quick out of it whenever me and her mother said ouch or told her to stop.

“Jimin!” My wife called from the bedroom. She still sounded slightly groggy.

“Coming!” I called back.

I groaned and squeezed my way out of the pillow tent. I peeked back to see Haru and Jin snuggling together.

My wife was lying in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin when I came in. I sat down on the bed next to her and her hair.

“Jimin, I’m sorry.” She whispered, taking my hand and twining our fingers together.

I laid down next to her and pressed my chest against her back. She leaned in to me as I wrapped my arms around her.

“You mad at me?” She asked quietly.

“Mmm…” I trailed off. I was mad at her.

She heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“Well, you’re pregnant. Not much we can do about that.” I reached up to tuck a curl behind her ear and a tear brushed my finger. “You crying again?”

She sniffled. “Yeah.”

“I don’t like when you’re sad.” I murmured, burying my nose in her hair. “I don’t like when you cry.”

“I’m having a hard time.” She sat up and held the photo album in her hands. I guessed she had been looking through it while I thought she was sleeping.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed. Why are you having a hard time?”

“I don’t know.” My wife said miserably, brushing her hair back from her forehead. “I just feel like we never have time for each other anymore. I miss spontaneously hanging out with you. All we ever talk about anymore is Haru or work or what we’re gonna cook for dinner. I don’t want this. I don’t want this day in, day out . I want to go out to eat whenever we feel like it. I want to giggle with you in our bed at two in the morning and not have to worry about getting up the next morning. I feel like I just woke up and realized that I’m not young anymore.”

I took the photo album from her and flipped through more of the pages. Anger slowly simmered in my gut. She sounded impossibly selfish to me.

“You’re twenty-eight. You’re still young.”

“You know what I mean.” She said softly. “You know.”

“Yeah, I understand you perfectly. You wish you weren’t a parent.”

“I don’t wish that.” She said in a voice so small I had to strain my ears to hear it. “I love Haru.”

“Then why the hell are you having a temper tantrum?” I stood up and tossed a pillow at her. “Grow the up.”

She hugged the pillow tightly against her chest as tears streamed down her face and wet the fabric.

“Why did you marry me, Jimin?”

I lifted my shirt over my head and tossed it into the laundry basket. It was overflowing with all our dirty clothes; the two of us had always, always been bad at doing laundry.

I didn’t answer her, but instead threw open a drawer of my dresser and yanked out a sweatshirt. It was mine and it was ancient, holes in the sleeves and a mysterious stain on the collar. I didn’t normally wear clothes in such a state of disrepair, but this one had sentimental value. Gemma had given it to me on my sixteenth birthday and told me if I ever got rid of it, we would stop being friends.

My wife hated this sweatshirt, so I made sure to wear it whenever I felt like pissing her off.

I shut the drawer with an angry, exasperated sigh.

“Why are you asking me this question? Do you really not know why I married you? Or do you need reassurance? Because I am not in the mood to give it when you’re telling me you’re unhappy with our life right now.”

“My book got rejected.” She whispered, her head hung low.

I blinked, startled. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

“Did your editor say why?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes swam with tears. “She said the content wasn’t interesting. That my story had been done a million times before in a million different ways and that if I wanted to write cliché love stories, I should write paperback romance novels.”

“Oh, baby.” I murmured, sitting down next to her. I wrapped my arms around her shaking body and tucked her head underneath my chin. “Don’t listen to her.”

“She’s right, though. I have nothing original to offer. I’m living a tired, clichéd life. I love it, but it’s only special to me.”

“Is that why you’ve been like this all day?”

She hiccupped. “Yeah. I just keep thinking what if my life had been different? What if I’d gone to all those countries I’d planned to go to? What if I’d lived alone in a new city where I didn’t speak the language? What if I’d gotten my master’s in literature like I had thought about before I found out I was pregnant? I had all these plans, Jimin. And now I have nothing to show for it.”

“You have me. You have Haru.”

“But you have your own life, outside of me. You have Bangtan and a solo album and tours. You’ve achieved your dream, Jimin. And Haru is only mine for a short while. In fifteen more years, she’ll be out of the house and I won’t have anything left to live for. I’ve failed at my dream, Jimin.”

I kissed her hair. “There are other editors out there.”

“She’s right though.” My wife said brokenly. “She’s absolutely right, and that’s what hurts the most. I can’t even argue with someone I agree with, deep down.”

I rocked her gently in my arms as she continued to pour out her heart to me.

“I don’t mean to hurt you when I say this, but I never wanted this life. I never wanted marriage or children. I wanted to travel and write and read all the great books. I moved out of my parents’ house because they wanted me to settle down and find a nice man and go to church every week, but I felt like the world was my church, that waking up in a foreign land every morning was my religion, that the poetry always flowing so freely from my fingertips was my prayer. I love Haru and I love you, but I still feel deeply unfulfilled.”

I had to admit, it stung hearing those words come out of . I think she could sense it, because the next question she asked put her situation in perspective.

“Would you still be happy if you had never had Bangtan? If you never got to stand on the stage? If you could never dance?”

I paused for a moment. “I get what you’re saying, but you’re making it sound like Haru and I are responsible for your life turning out the way it has.”

She pulled back and looked up at me, hand cupping my face, eyes pleading with me.

“Would we have gotten married if I wasn’t pregnant?”

I touched my forehead to hers, quietly kissing her once. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” She mumbled. “I think I’m having a midlife crisis.”

I laughed and she kissed me again.

“I wanted to marry you when we moved in together.” I informed her, kissing her a couple more times.

“Did you?”

“Didn’t you? Well, I guess not. Seeing as how we broke up over it.”

She let out a shaky laugh and wound her arms around my neck. “I didn’t want to get married until I turned twenty-eight.”

“Were you just going to live together with me for that long?”

“Yeah.” She sighed dreamily. “I was. I was going to somehow convince you to move to Rome. We were gonna live in a garret and hang silk sheets from the walls over our bed like a canopy. You were gonna work in a bakery and join the underground European dance movement. And I was going to work in a bookshop until eventually the elderly owner who had fallen in love with me died and left the store to me. Every so often, we would pool our resources and catch a flight to a random country. I always wanted to go to India with you. You go by yourself all the damn time, but I’ve never been even once.”

I laid her out on the bed underneath me and kissed her neck as she wove me deep into her web of dreams.

“I used to travel all the time before I met you. I lived in Brooklyn and L.A. I spent a summer in Uganda and stopped by in Rwanda. Rwanda’s so gorgeous, Jimin. They call it the land of a thousand hills. I wanted to move there.” She shifted underneath me so I could get better access to her skin. “I wanted to live in Ireland with you. I have a friend who lives there and she told me it’s so green and beautiful. I wanted to visit Malaysia, too. And, oh, just everyone. I’m so envious of you. You get to go to all these beautiful places and you’re living your dream at the same time. I know it’s tiring and I know that you don’t get a lot of time for yourself or for us, but you’re, I don’t know. You’re special, Jimin. And I am not. I am a wife and a mother and a failed author.”

“Being a wife and mother isn’t something shameful.” I murmured against her stomach, sending my love to the baby inside.

“I’m not ashamed. I just wish I had done more with my life.”

“There’s still time.” I scooched forward and kissed . “We can go to Rome and live in a garret.”

“With Haru? And an infant?” My wife asked skeptically. “Jimin, that sounds horrible. Absolutely no privacy. Haru will be sleeping in the same bed as us all the time. And the baby wailing? No thanks.”

“Yeah, we can’t go to Rome and live in a garret.” I agreed. “Do you wanna move? You said you wanted to live in Hongdae, right? Wanna move to Hongdae?”

“Yeah. But only if we can keep this apartment, too, because I love it so, so much. It’s Haru’s baby home.”

“Haru’s still basically a baby. She can have a new baby home. Besides, this place is kinda small for two kids. And the eventual third child I’ll talk you into.”

“Why are you so wonderful?” She sighed and kissed me. “Why are you the most generous, beautiful, loving person in the world?”

“I have a nice mom and dad.” I rubbed my nose against hers. “And you’re pretty.”

We kissed for a while until a thought occurred to me.

“Did you propose to me because you were worried you were pregnant?” I stared down at her with a little frown on my face.

A furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “Don’t be stupid. Do you even remember what I said when I proposed to you?”

I smiled and nuzzled my nose against her cheek. “Mm…you said you needed someone to cook and clean for you.”

She laughed. “You .”

“Nah, I’m just playing. I know what you said. You said…you loved me. That I was your family. And you wanted to be my wife, whether you were pregnant or not.”

“Yeah.” She said so softly, warm fingers stretching up to caress my face. “Most lovey-dovey I’ve ever said to you.”

“That’s not true.” I leaned my forehead against hers, so close that our noses were touching. Her eyes brimmed over with warmth. “You act so bad, but you melt like butter whenever I look at you.”

“Are you still mad at me?” She curled her fingers in my hair, gently tugging on the strands.

“I can never stay mad at you.” I murmured.

I made her promises in between kisses, promises that we would see the world together, that she’d learn and find a million more things to write about, that Haru wouldn’t be disappointed to have her as a mother, and that I would always love her.

I promised her that we would be happy. Maybe we wouldn’t always giggle or stay up late or go to young, wild parties, but we would be happy. Deep down, deliciously satisfied happy.

“Jimin?” She whispered later as we laid side by side, her fingers slipping underneath my sweater.

“Yeah, baby?” I threaded a hand into her curls, staring into her impossibly dark and impish eyes.

“Why did you marry me?” Her voice was quiet, small and fragile.

“Because you were pregnant.” I told her, chuckling when she smacked me on the side.

“No, really. Did you really marry me because I was pregnant?”

I looked at her for a while, taking in her long, black eyelashes, the full and perfect curve of her eyebrows, her normally devilish mouth tugged down into an uncertain pout. A dusting of freckles scattered across her nose, the slightest wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, eyeliner smudges in the corner of her eye.

“I married you because you make me happy. Even when we’re fighting, even when you’re being a little , even when Haru wakes us up at three in the morning screaming and crying. Even when I wonder whether you even still want to be married to me. You make me happy. Deep down, deliciously satisfied happy.” I answered her quietly, tenderly. “Without you, I’m alive and breathing and functioning like a normal human being. Hell, I can even laugh and have a good time without you. I could move on, baby, but I could never be happy without you. Not like this. No, not like this.”

She pulled me close, our arms wrapping around each other as she fit perfectly underneath my chin, just like the first time we had laid next to each other all those years before. She breathed in deeply and I felt like she was trying to memorize my scent.

“You are home to me, Jimin. No matter where I live, you will always be home to me.”

I leaned down so our foreheads touched, shaggy bangs rubbing against each other. She was so familiar to me, so lovely and real and dark and dimpled.

“We belong to each other.” She whispered, staring deep into my eyes.

“Says the woman who was threatening divorce a few days ago.” I teased, nibbling at her nose.

“Ew, Jimin, stop.” She sneezed and I burst into giggles. When I calmed down, she continued. “Also, I thought you had broken our bond, so I was completely justified.”

“You’re really into monogamy. I thought you wanted to make out with Hwasa.”

She frowned at me. “You’re more into monogamy than I am. Besides, polyamory doesn’t include cheating, . You have to communicate with your partner beforehand. Unless you’re in an open relationship. But that doesn’t even apply to us, because we legally agreed to monogamy. So deal with it.”

“I’d love to be monogamous with you.” I replied easily, kissing her nose, her chin, in between her eyebrows. “Sounds like it’s the best damn thing I could do with my life.”

“I love you.” She tilted her head up and pressed a loving kiss against my mouth.

“I love you more.” I whispered, lips against her cheek.

“I love you most.” She took my hand and laid it against her swollen stomach. I rubbed my thumb along her soft skin, glad that I was here for this moment, here for this baby.

She made me content with life, and for that, I could never thank her enough.