note: I'm not sure if anyone's confused about the timeframe that this is set in (because I know I am haha!). If no one is, then I'm going to clarify for my own sake lol: the story starts sometime in April 2018 (Soul's expected first birthday, when they /conceived/ the baby lol). In this chapter, Jihyo should be around 11-12 (13?) weeks pregnant.

Thanks again for the new subscribers, and especially all the comments! I was glad to see some of you say that you appreciated the two of them arguing (because I like it too, if it wasn't already obvious lmao), but I do know that they can't continue arguing in every chapter, because then it'd just be going in circles lol. Hopefully the ideas in my head have them progressing past that soon haha!

+

They monitor her for two more days until her blood pressure and symptoms stabilize, and then her discharge gets mandated, Dr. Byun keeping one eye on her that Jihyo guesses is supposed to be intimidating as she keeps the other on the papers she's signing off for her documentation.

"Remember what I said, Jihyo-ssi," Dr. Byun says, dotting a last i with her pen before tapping it against the railing of Jihyo's bed. "Bed rest for the next two days—that means no getting up and out of bed unless you need to go to the bathroom, or if it's an emergency. Another thing: please, please eat. I understand that it's been difficult with the vomiting, but you and the baby cannot get by with the minimal nutrients you've been consuming these past few weeks. I've ordered you medication to help you slightly with the nausea—it's completely safe, nothing that will affect the baby—but if you find the feeling to persist, just try and eat small but frequent meals, avoiding anything greasy, spicy, and acidic."

Dr Byun signs off on another sheet of paper, hands it over to her, and the Rx on the top left hand corner confirms it as a prescription even if all the actual writing at the center of the page amounts to is an illegible toddler's scribble that only other doctors and kindergarteners can probably understand. "It's important that you rehydrate yourself as well. If you find that stomaching fluids is difficult with the morning sickness, try on some ice cubes instead until you feel better enough to drink."

Jihyo pockets the prescription a little too eagerly—if she could get hooked on anti-nausea pills as her drug of choice, she probably would, has had enough of seeing the pits of her toilet bowl day in and day out—but she hopes her resultant frown masks enough of her ideation of being the first paranoid freak to ever be addicted to prophylactic meds. "How am I supposed to do all of that if I'm not allowed to leave the bed?"

"I would count hunger and malnutrition as an emergency," Dr. Byun responds cheekily, and Jihyo updates her list of constants: Kwangsoo being there for her as the first, always, and then Dr. Byun being a predictable source of annoyance coming in a close second. "But ideally, I recommend that you call someone to stay over with you to help out."

Dr. Byun's also seem to have mistaken her for the baby in this whole situation. "I don't need to be taken care of. And even if I did, everyone I know who'd be willing to do so is too busy, anyways."

"How about your family? I saw in your chart that you have a couple of of-age siblings," Dr. Byun says, scratching something down on her clipboard that Jihyo can't even be bothered to speculate about. She's probably marking her down as non-compliant, which Jihyo'll take as a compliment, considering who it's coming from. "I'm sure they wouldn't mind watching out for you for two days."

They wouldn't, naturally, but she definitely would. Even if she's decided that it's time to tell, having her very traditional mother—whom she loves dearly, of course, she's a darling woman, most of the time—tell her that marrying Kang Gary was the right thing to do, and that it's about time you settled down with a fertile man isn't really something she can tolerate being quarantined with for 48 hours straight. Her siblings would be even worse: they'd just laugh at her plight for a solid day and then try to goad her into making them the godsibling over everyone else the next, because that's the type of competitive, opportunistic people they've grown up to be. She's stir-crazy enough as it is, thanks, so she'll have to reject that trigger nightmare with a resounding, "That's not an option."

"Understandable," Dr. Byun says, and the built-in extrasensory radar that comes with carrying the most scandalous baby of the year pings wildly in Jihyo's head when Dr. Byun looks to her with an unassuming little smile, "How about the father? It's the least a partner can do during times like this."

"He's not—" my partner, she doesn't finish, because she's already told her this before, and she's had enough of correcting millions of people, an entire TV syndication audience's worth, of what they think Kang Gary means to her. If they haven't figured it out by now, then that's not on her anymore. She's told her truth. "Considering that he's gotten me accidentally pregnant, I think he's done enough."

Dr. Byun shrugs, expression back to diplomatic, her mischief managed. Jihyo makes it a point in her head to check Dr. Byun's credentials later on, make sure that she's actually a licensed practitioner rather than the comedian she's more and more aspiring to be.

"It's just a suggestion," Dr. Byun says, "I can allow short walks within your apartment to get yourself food and drinks, but only if you truly have no one you can call up for that purpose. Having someone help out is still the best option to take here if you're serious about returning back to full health for your baby's sake."

Now she was resorting to emotional blackmail. Even worse is that Jihyo's a complete er for it. "Fine. I'll find someone."

"Excellent," Dr. Byun says cheerily, hands over the rest of her discharge papers to her in a flourish, as if she really was withholding it from her intentionally just a second ago and not just because she really needed to sign them. "I'm going to trust that you'll also listen to me when I say to take the next two weeks off from work. I've booked you another general checkup for after that two week break, and all the details for it are in the files that I've given you. How are you getting home tonight?"

"I have a drive," Jihyo answers, which is true, somewhat. She still needs to call her manager and let her know that she needs to pick her up for discharge, and also to tell her about...her condition. Which is another thing she's not looking forward to. She'd almost say that she'd rather vomit every morning for the rest of her pregnancy than have to rinse and repeat her revelation, but the thought of telling her manager, the one person in charge of whether or not this could be the end of her career, already makes her sick anyways, so even going to that extent is a useless sacrifice to make.

At this point, she really was becoming the living embodiment of damned if you do, damned if you don't. A walking, talking, pregnant idiom. Or idiot. Same difference.

"Even more excellent," Dr. Byun says, smiles, and pockets her hands into her lab coat definitively. "Well, I guess we're all set here. Do you have any questions you have to ask me before I let you go?"

How does one tell her manager and possibly the entire world that she's been accidentally knocked up by the guy that everyone thinks she's dating but is not actually dating and doesn't ever want to date but is still keeping the baby? Asking for a friend, she thinks, but her and Dr. Byun don't have that kind of rapport—thank god—and it's not something she can probably answer with collaboratively researched empirical facts, anyways. It's her problem, and only she can find a solution. "No."

"Okay," Dr. Byun says, pats Jihyo's hand twice, "Take care of yourself, Jihyo-ssi. I'll see you in two weeks' time."

She leaves the room, and everything quiets down enough for Jihyo to be bombarded by the what now of it all. She doesn't want to call her manager, but she can't stay in the hospital past the time on her discharge papers. She can probably take a taxi, but that doesn't seem to be...safe, in the grand scheme of things. Her team's managed to keep her hospitalization hush-hush from the press during her whole duration there, and immersing herself into the public would just undo all of the work they've done, which would just make her manager even more likely to cut ties with her for insubordination. Maybe she could call Gary, but—no. She's not even going to think about that. She is not calling him, and that's not up for internal debate.

It leaves her with one option. She grabs her phone from her bedside table, unplugs it from the charger, and stares at it for a good five minutes, if she has to approximate. Her manager's number dims out on the screen from the period of inactivity, but it flashes again when it's her manager who calls her first, because coincidence is funny that way, and all managers, dictatorial as they were, have a homing device that alerts them to when something's wrong with their clients. She loves her manager, truly, but she's no exception to their type of bat control.

She takes a deep breath, and gets ready to hold it in for the rest of the call, "Hello?"

+

"You hate me," her manager says, the towel she's thrown over her face after Jihyo's told her everything that's happened, in detailed, chronological order, muffling the words, but not the long-suffering tone she delivers it with. "This is payback, isn't it? You're getting revenge for all those times I'd agreed for a Monday Couple appearance on your behalf without talking to you about it first."

"Yeah," Jihyo answers with a roll of her eyes, because her manager's not looking, so she can get away with doing it, for a change. "I purposefully planned to get pregnant with the most inconvenient person that I can have a baby with because that's really how I can stick it to everyone that we're not together. I sure showed all of you."

The towel's yanked off of her face, making way for the iciest glare of reprimand Jihyo's been given as a socially functioning adult. "Don't you dare get sarcastic with me. With what you've told me, I'm literally the one holding your career in a balance."

"Sorry," Jihyo says, used to dismissing those kinds of threats because she rarely ever means them, but the look in her manager's eyes this time is a little too unhinged, so she's not going to test it. "I'm just saying. Why would I plan something like this when it's going to be the hardest on me?"

"That's the only reason why I'm not biting your head off right now," her manager snaps sourly, and then heaves a lengthy sigh. "I guess congratulations are in order. And also a plan on how we can turn this into something good and wholesome and drama-free," she quirks an eyebrow at Jihyo, "You still won't consider just marrying him?"

Jihyo couldn't care less if she holds her career to drop from the peak of Namsan tower, that deserves retaliation. "I swear to god—"

"Kidding," her manager says, smirks, pulls out her phone from her pocket; opening a blank memo, Jihyo knows, because she likes planning spin using the whole shebang of flowcharts and bullet-point lists. "If I'm going to be hustling for the next six months to keep this quiet, I might as well have fun with it."

"Well, don't have too much," Jihyo grumbles, close to terminating their contract herself with behavior like that, "Just keep it hidden for as long as you can."

Her manager snorts, without so much as a look up from the bubbles she's drawn into her phone. "As if it's even up to me. You know you'll be showing in a month, right? It'll be hard to hide it after that."

"You'll figure it out," Jihyo says, but she wilts at the thought all the same. Her sponsors were going to have to send her some very loose clothing for the incoming months. "You're being paid for a reason."

"Listen to you ordering me around," her manager caws, glancing at her with a soft tch. "Madam Song Jihyo. Going to be the militant mom, are you?"

"I'll be whatever mom that my kid needs me to be," she says, probably with more passion than what's appropriate for the easy atmosphere that's been renewed, but the point stands. She's going to do what's best for her kid now. The time for selfishness has long passed and gone.

Her manager stares at her, and she looks just as how Jihyo feels: like she's seen her grow up, right before her eyes, right above what her age allows.

"I know you will," her manager says, and her smile is warm, fond. Proud, and Jihyo is too. "You just leave the rest to me."

This, at least, goes better than expected. If it's telling of how she'll fare in the future—she can only hope.

+

Speaking too soon: another development unique to pregnancy. She gets dropped off at her apartment and helped up all the way to bed, and then she's left alone with the overarching problem of having to find someone to babysit her for the next two days that she's been medically ordered to abstain from anything that's not breathing, basically, and her answers still come up short.

kwangsoo-yah, she texts eventually, when her stomach rumbles shyly into the night, in sync with the rest of her body when it comes to the shame it feels about having to resort to scouting for servitude, i'm hungry

eh noona??? Kwangsoo responds instantly, always the quick texter. ask your nurse for some food!! you better not starve yourself again when youre just about to get better

i cant, ive been discharged. doc's told me im not supposed to leave the bed for the next two days. She tugs at a split-end—her night's version of entertainment, because you can only cycle through your TV guide a number of times before you start resenting an inanimate object too—and bucks up to ask the favor, do you mind staying over for a few days to help out? 

She knows it's a no before she even receives the reply, because he doesn't actually reply unti