note: ...you guys are going to hate me, lmao. My excuse: artistic license! I see that some readers are a little annoyed with how stubborn Jihyo's being (I feel you all, I really do), but /realistically/, I think the loveline's given them too many roadblocks to be able to smooth sail into a relationship so effortlessly. I probably sound like a broken record now haha, but we're at week 18 of the pregnancy, just about halfway through, so there's still ample time for things to (re)develop!

Thank you once again for the comments/votes/subscribers! I honestly can't believe how awesome you guys have been. <3

+

When she'd said the idea was enough, she'd meant that it was enough.

Expanded meaning: she doesn't do anything about it. She lets the idea lie, doesn't call Gary for the next three weeks, doesn't do anything besides sit on the thought and ruminate extensively over how the cons far outweigh the pros—18 to 2, her charts tally, because she'd actually made charts—if she were ever to do something proactive about the newfound knowledge of her kinda-sorta-maybe wanting to be with Kang Gary.

She's not avoiding him. She's better than to stoop to that level of juvenility, for one, and it's not really avoiding when the person you're allegedly trying to avoid isn't even there to be avoided by; he doesn't call her, or text her, or show up unannounced to her apartment, like he's suddenly gained the habit of doing, during the three weeks she was very definitely not avoiding him. She also very definitely doesn't miss him due to this, because that's just lame, and if she'd went a near two years being completely fine with not seeing him for more than twice every five months after he'd left the show, why wouldn't she be able to be fine with a mere three weeks of no generalized social contact with him?

She's definitely fine. So ing fine, in fact, that when his album officially drops in the middle of the second week of her very-definitely-not-avoiding-him, she isn't even piqued enough to send him her usual text message of congratulations, pre-composed in her drafts from all the other times she'd had to perfunctorily acknowledge a project he'd just launched, much less does she actually listen to the damn thing.

She—okay, so she listens to it, but only to some songs, just to the two singles he'd chosen for release and five others which beats had caught her interest when she'd quickly skimmed through the list and another three that she'd forgotten to delete from her phone that had coincidentally started playing in her car—through shuffle, not because she had her music app set on his album, why would she—when she'd been driving off to film for her drama's next episode. That means she'd only listened to, like, a partial bit of it, because there were thirteen songs on his album, and three of them were instrumentals and she'd skipped all of those, so really, she'd just listened to—

She'd listened to all of it. Well, .

"It's a pretty different direction from his old stuff," Jongkook explains to her unprompted during the downtime in between taping Running Man the following week, still touting himself as her personal courier for the latest news and updates on Kang Gary even now that she doesn't really need it, not now that her and Gary are...whatever it is that they are, but she respects his hustle just for the simple fact that he respects her privacy well enough not to pry into how things are going between the two of them to find out if she still had gaps in information about anything there is that concerns him. "He's never really been fixed on one sound, but I think he really experimented with this one. Paid off pretty well, too. You should give it a listen if you haven't yet, it's really good."

She doesn't say anything to it, because she already knows, because she's listened to the entire album—once, twice, thrice, maybe more than thirty-six times, but that's just because she was too busy to take it out on loop, whatever—and because it's not as if any track on Gary's discography can ever be classified as anything but really good, anyways. That's just objective fact; she's not biased, not because his absence had made her heart grow fonder on his music, least of all has it made her fonder on him. Nope.

"There's this one song, though," Jongkook broaches, after a few minutes of technical music jargon that she tunes out without suspicion through a series of well-timed head nods and strategically inserted hums of ah, yeahs and I sees. If there was ever anyone to miss Gary—because it's not her, that's very definite—it'd be Jongkook, probably, since he'd lost the only person he could talk to in the cast about the intricacies of song production and the importance of keeping moderation on bass. "The album's as cohesive as it gets, except for that one song. It's like it was added into the track listing last minute. It's probably something really personal, if he'd chosen to squeeze it into the record like that."

She starts paying attention at that. "Why do you say that?"

"He's not much for disjointedness," Jongkook says, gives her a look that says that maybe he had suspected her of not listening to his earlier tangent, and that he's a little offended, if not curious, about why she'd start caring about this topic now. "The whole reason why he'd even delayed his album was because he'd cut half of his songs out from the initial release. He told me it was because they didn't fit in with the sound he's trying for, but the song I'm talking about isn't even close to following that sound either. Only reason why he'd risk the cohesiveness of the album would be if he really wanted to put that song out there, wouldn't it? To make a statement?"

She's not a musician, nor is she in the know with how music analytically works, but she still has a pretty good guess on which song Jongkook's talking about, has noticed something off with how the last song on the track list sounds, but nothing about its lyrics; it's littered with clever wordplays, but the overall message is actually kind of generic: something about fate and the future and how he's waited for it patiently through the years, and then he'd started talking about love and replacements so she'd pressed next, because she didn't want to contemplate over what that meant, or who it's written about, or whether or not he still felt the same way about that muse, or—

Or it could have been the sound. It was definitely the sound, Jongkook was right, because despite all that she's been deliberating about, they're not actually in a relationship, so what right did she have to know about every single ex Gary's had? That's just something crazy, possessive girlfriends do, which she isn't one, excuse you, because she's sane and libertarian and most importantly, not Kang Gary's girlfriend.

Yet? No, no yets. She isn't Kang Gary's girlfriend. End of discussion.

"Maybe he just thought it'd chart well," she offers noncommittally, with a shrug, just for something to say that's not too implicative of her vested interest in the things Kang Gary does. "Not everything's that deep."

Jongkook laughs, crumples the foil the steamed bun he'd been eating had been wrapped in with the same hand he uses to tug at the ends of her hair playfully before walking away to pester Kwangsoo for the film's soundbyte. "That just tells me how little you really know about Kang Gary."

It's true, still, but she wishes she knew about him even less.

+

Prenatal checkup with Dr. Byun tomorrow, her phone flashes in reminder, the fifth time it's done so in a span of twenty-five minutes. She swipes towards Snooze again, flips the device on her table with the screen faced down, and resumes chewing at her thumb with enough vigor to probably be considered as a mild act of self-cannibalism.

She'd told him that she would call him the next time she had a doctor's appointment. Not just that, but she'd also told him that she'd meant it, which she did, at the time, but very much less so now, not after—not after everything that's happened between them, everything that's shifted in the conceptualization of what it is that she wants.

One would think she'd have learnt something about how quickly things can change and revert within a month after the whole ordeal of her being fired from Running Man, then being reinstated until the cancelling of the show, and then everything being uncancelled altogether, and yet here she is now, stuck on whether or not to involve him in the pregnancy yet again, and passionately hating herself for it like the circumspect coward that she is.

Fearless Ace. What a joke that's turned out to be.

Her phone vibrates, the reminder popping up again after the five minute interval, and the thought grounds her, has her turning her phone back around to finally press Dismiss and search through her contact list to dial up his number. Circumspection can be lifelong, just as how she'll always mean it when she tells him he'll be the father of their child, but cowardice isn't, shouldn't, can't be, so she tries to put her fears aside to do what's best for the baby, the one thing on her list of wants that'll never be displaced.

His phone rings once, twice, a couple more times, and then she's being sent to his voicemail, the automated voiceover recounting instructions on how to leave a message for the call's recipient, and then an echoing beep blares, signalling the go ahead for her to speak.

She hangs up instead, because regardless of what she knows about the traits she should and shouldn't keep, cowardice is still a character flaw that's pretty ing hard to shake.

Three hours and seven bars of chocolate later—she's pregnant, sue her—she gets a shot at redemption when her phone rings for a call, too absorbed with her own self-loathing to check her caller ID before answering, "What?"

"It's nice to talk to you again, too, then," Gary's voice says, and she hits the crown of her skull against the rails of her headboard with a loud thunk when she tries to sit up in bed. ", Jihyo—are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she says, takes one hand away from the two that's holding her phone up to her ear to rub at the spot she'd just rammed against hard steel, which makes her realize that she'd been holding it a little too close, with an enthusiasm reminiscent of a dog greeting its owner after a long period of separation, and then promptly proceeds to hate herself even more. "What do you want?"

"You called me first," he says, calm, benign, and it's like nothing's even happened—there's no tension to his voice, no uneasiness in how his end of the conversation flows, and it's...jarring. All that time she'd spent worrying about how she can even talk to him after what they've done, what's been said, and he doesn't even sound like he remembers. "I'm just returning it, so I should be the one asking you that."

She starts doubting the idea— Haha, honestly, for planting it in the first place—and a sudden bout of anger capsizes over her, renders her response short, clipped, "I'm going for my checkup tomorrow."

"Okay," he says, dragging it out, like he's unsure of what she's trying to say. "And do you...want me to come?"

Irritation joins in on the fray, because why the hell else would she risk blundering over the phone just to say it? "If you're busy, you don't need to—"

"I'll come. I was just making sure that it's what you want," he says, and it's a mirror of her own peeved tone, before it goes back to normal when he says, "Thanks."

"I told you you could," she says, defensive, because she's broken enough of her bigger promises. Fulfilling all of the smaller ones is the only way she can balance it out. "9 p.m. tomorrow."

"Okay," he says again, more assertive this time. "Do you want me to pick you up?"

"No," she says, no hesitation. She doesn't even want to imagine how awkward that car ride's going to be. "You can just meet me at the clinic."

"Alright. 9 p.m., got it," he says, which should be the end marker of their call, their business having been adjourned, but something inside her waits, keeps her hand pressing her phone up to the shell of her ear, so she doesn't hang up, not until he does, at least.

But he doesn't hang up either. "You're fine, right?" he asks, after a period of