note: I swear I'm really trying to make things sweeter, but the ideas in my head won't let them be lmao. Apparently I subconsciously (and maybe consciously too, haha) think that Gary and Jihyo aren't really the sweet types—both individually and to each other—so I'm just gonna go with it lol. I'll try harder after this, though! (while keeping within the boundaries of what I believe their characters to be, ofc lol)

Thanks again for the new subscribers/votes/comments! I really appreciate you all. 

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If she'd thought the way the reveal had panned out that night had been parodic, then how she tells Jaesuk and Sukjin is a downright ripoff of some low-budget soap opera airing on the most basic of channels that cable television has to offer.

Two weeks after Haha and Jongkook find out, she goes to work. In between those two weeks, she goes to work even more: officially signs on for top billing on that new drama which script she'd been eyeing, gets called up immediately for its first table read three days later, films back-to-back episodes of Beauty View in two consecutive days after that. There's Running Man to shoot as well, and the missions for that particular week had been grueling, a near sixteen hour day with not enough breaks to compensate for some of the extensive trekking they do. Kwangsoo and Jongkook hadn't been more than three steps away from her all throughout, and even Haha had uncharacteristically sprung up beside her with a bottle of water any time she'd so much as lagged an inch behind the group. It had gotten her enough inquiring looks from the PDs, so she'd tried even harder than her usual standard, exerting as much energy as her reserves could take, even as she could feel three pairs of eyes gazing at her disapprovingly from the back. There'd been an easy fix to that, anyways: she just didn't turn around, ignorance as bliss as knowing that she was doing this for a greater good, whatever that good may possibly be.

By the end of the week, she's completely fatigued. It doesn't help that she spends the week after that with the worst bouts of morning sickness she's had ever since she became pregnant. Nothing stays down in her stomach, as hungry and willing to eat literally anything as she is; her only sustenance for the following days consist of ginger tea—because she's finally restocked, that's some future mommy brownie points reclaimed—dried seaweed, and raging against whichever medical ing hotshot coined antepartum nausea and vomiting as morning sickness when her head's in the toilet regardless of whether it's the sun or the moon that's hanging watchfully—tauntingly, really—on the skies above.

She actually considers calling in sick for the next Running Man shooting for a good three minutes, before reminding herself that variety isn't high school, and she's only allowed the luxury of a sick-day if she's either in the process of dying, or already dead. The last episode she'd missed, it was the former—hooked on an IV drip and strapped to a call bell on a hospital bed—which she guesses had started the pattern, because that's exactly what happens to her again, six years after the fact.

To make a long story short: she goes to work exhausted and sleep-deprived and moderately to severely dehydrated, all of those factors compounded by the unwavering heat of July, and by the second hour of just standing under the sun, she feels simultaneously leaden and airy and generally, completely ing unwell.

"Noona," Kwangsoo says, feels more than sees the hand on her elbow even with him being within her line of sight, her vision gone all spotty. "Noona—are you okay? Do you need to sit down? You look—"

"'M fine," she slurs, tries to bat her hand to signal that he shouldn't worry, but even that's apparently too tiring for her, because all she manages is a twitch of her fingers. "Honestly, it's just—I'm—you know—"

It's a good thing that Kwangsoo's already holding onto her, because that's when she faints, knees liquefying and dropping her to the ground, out from all of her senses and mental processes besides the one overriding thought of: rest, finally.

+

"...something else to it...you looked like she was going to die when she...Kwangsoo even yelled at the PDs..."

She catches their conversation in snippets, once she groggily comes to, but it pieces well enough together for her to snap fully awake, accidentally pulling on her IV line when she sits up. The machine it's hooked to beeps incessantly beside her, and all she can do is sigh when five heads turn around from where they were facing each other across the room, five bodies marching up to her bed not more than a half minute right after.

"You should've just told us you were sick," Sukjin immediately scolds, but the small smile on his face belies his consternation as anything but a cover for his relief. "You're too old to be overworking yourself like this."

"Hyung," Kwangsoo says, cowed, grabbing at Sukjin's arm to shake, "She just woke up. At least wait a little bit before you drag us all into your retirement settlement fantasies."

"Don't listen to Sukjin-hyung," Jaesuk tells her, with a fatherly pat over her head, even as Sukjin starts griping in the background about not being that much older than the rest of them, or something age-centric to that effect. Ever since Sukjin'd turned fifty, he's been a little sensitive to the air of youths and ten year gaps between peers when he never used to be. Everybody has a hill to die on, and that was his, apparently. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I'd just passed out in the middle of work and now have to replace half of my body weight in fluids," she says, her voice hoarse from underuse, so she clears . "How long have I been out?"

"Not that long," Jongkook says, who's relocated around to the other side of her bed, Haha right beside him. "A couple of hours. Still well within the time frame set for filming."

It suddenly well and truly dawns on her that all five of them are there with her, not just the usual three's-a-crowd of Kwangsoo and Jongkook. They didn't all need to be there; they weren't, the last time this happened. She feels a pang of sentiment first—they really had become family, hadn't they—and then gnawing guilt—she wasn't as much of a factor in Running Man anymore, as much as fans had raised hell when she'd been cut without warning over a year ago, as much as she still enjoyed doing the show, so she knows they could continue on filming without her and not have anything be compromised when they edit everything for broadcast. Might even get her some sympathy, if they fix up the clip of her fainting with the right suspenseful music and an appropriate amount of out transition screens, but that's not really what she's caping for, so she puts that bit to rest.

"You guys really don't need to stay," she says, untwisting her IV line as she does, the machine still clamoring for professional assistance in unblocking the bubble of air that's formed inside of it with her abrupt movement beforehand, "I'm fine now. I'll just get a little more rest, and then I'll be going home."

"Don't be a saint now," Haha says, with a fervor she doesn't expect. "You've been busting your these last two weeks as if you're out to prove something to someone. Go Eun was like that too, the first time she'd been—"

He stops, at the same time that her eyes widen, her hand reaching out to grab onto Jongkook's arm for—something; to have him forcefully shut Haha's mouth with a cover of his hand, override the IV machine so that the noise it makes drowns out whatever's coming out of Haha's big damn mouth, kick Haha hard enough on the shin for him to lose his speaking ability for a good few hours. Anything, she'll take, just as long as Haha's not spilling out the taboo of Kang Gary impregnating her with a damn baby.

And then she remembers: the baby. The baby. She'd been weak and she'd fainted and she has a baby inside her and her pamphlets had said—Dr. Byun had said—

"Is it—" she starts, looks to Kwangsoo, Jongkook, and Haha, who were all looking back at her with the same alarm that she feels, doesn't know if it's still because of Haha's near slip or because of what she realizes now, doesn't care if Jaesuk and Sukjin do find out, not at this point. "Is it okay? Did I—did I lose it?"

They take some time exchanging looks between the three of them. Her chest tightens in fear, her gut coiling, but then Kwangsoo's shoulders descend from their past hike, a denial of her scare, and she closes her eyes in the wake of his respite. "Everything's fine, noona. You didn't lose anything."

She takes a deep breath, Jongkook's hand comfortingly up and down her arm as she recalibrates. All this hiding, this secrecy, for what she thought to be for the greater good—it could've harmed her child. And who was she kidding? It'd all only been for her own sake, to protect herself from a monster she'd been running away from for far too long. There was no bravery, no greater good in that.

For a few solid moments, she hates herself. She bites at her lip to keep from crying, squirms away from Jongkook's touch, undeserving of the reassurance he's giving.

"Jihyo-ssi?" Dr. Byun's voice comes from the door, filtering through the sound of the IV machine. She was probably there to tell her that she's going to be a terrible mother, as if she even needed the reminder. "Oh, hello—would it be alright if you could all just step out for a few minutes so I can talk to Jihyo-ssi about her condition?"

"She's alright, isn't she?" Jaesuk asks, eyeing between the two of them curiously. She knows he's picked up on something with what's happened, but she's not sure if he knows it in exact and truthful detail. Yet.

"Yes," Dr. Byun chirps, looking like she'd just found the cure for cancer as she talks to Jaesuk, awestruck. Jihyo rolls her eyes, her self-loathing put on hold, knowing that Dr. Byun was as susceptible to the limelight as Jihyo'd thought she was. It could be good collateral for later, if information leakage poses a problem for her; Jaesuk wouldn't mind helping her out, and he's always been forthcoming to his fans. "Everything's alright. I'd just like to talk to her about what to do in regards to her and the b—her health, moving forward."

Jihyo'll commend her for catching herself and being cryptic in the face of someone she admires, but she still cuts her a glare, even if she's never really told her who to keep it confidential with. "I'll be fine, oppa. You guys go ahead."

Jaesuk's eyes narrow for a bit, before he nods decidedly, "Alright. We'll go and get you some food while you talk."

"Oppa—" she calls, not really in the mood to eat—she'd probably just puke it all out, going by this last week's personal history—but Jaesuk's rallied the rest of the guys out of the room before she can complete her protest. She sighs again, shifts her attention to Dr. Byun instead, swallows dryly as she asks, "Seriously, how—how's the baby? I didn't—"

"The baby's completely fine," Dr. Byun says, pulling at a chair to sit beside her bed. "I checked everything, and the heartbeat's strong and healthy. If anything, I'd say it was because of it that you're here now, recovering.