note: I'm trying to churn out as much chapters as I can because I feel like I'll have less time to update soon with rl responsibilities looming, so here's another, slightly shorter update!

Thank you for the new subscribers/comments once again! Hopefully this part is a little sweeter for all y'all who wanted sweetness lol, but if not, then don't worry, it'll come about eventually haha, we're still at week 12 of Jihyo's pregnancy. In regards to having a Gary pov in the future, I'll definitely think about it, but I feel like the flow would be a bit...disrupted (?) if I shift perspectives away from Jihyo. But as I said, I'll def think about it and see if it fits in with the vibe of the story in future chapters. Thanks for the suggestion!

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When she wakes up the next day, she checks her wall clock first, sees that it's a little past half of 11. Her stomach whines, a call for the breakfast she's missed and the lunch she's due for, but it's a specific type of hunger: she really—and she means ing really—wants some cheddar cheese topped tteokbokki. 

Most pregnant mothers begin to experience food cravings in the first trimester of their pregnancy, she vaguely remembers reading from one of the innumerable pamphlets Dr. Byun gave her—she could probably hold her own public info session on pregnancy with the amount she has, or possibly build a tower out of them as high as her ceiling—and thinks that this may be the start of hers.

Avoid anything spicy to prevent nausea and vomiting, Dr. Byun's voice chimes in her head, right after. To that, Jihyo thinks: off. That anti-nausea drug Dr. Byun's prescribed has actually worked wonders, and she's not going to waste an invincibility like that when it's only been a day of her house arrest—or bed rest, whatever—and she already feels like she's wasting away in inactivity and the routine of doing something she doesn't want to do.

And so she dials his number; heeds everyone's advice, her own. He wants to be involved? Fine. Then he should be ready to cater to the beck and call of the woman who's bearing his child. She'll agree with Dr. Byun there: it is the least he can do, and food craving deliveries are just part and parcel of the want-deserve equilibrium that she's finally decided to maintain between them.

But mostly: she just really, really, really, really, really wants her tteokbokki.

"Yeah?" someone answers after the sixth ring, but it's not Gary. The voice is deeper, timbred, but it's familiar, even if she can't match a name to it.

"Hi," she says, because it's proper decorum, and courtesy's been ingrained enough in her to overpower the sudden panic in . She recognizes the voice, so she can't have dialed a wrong number. It's probably one of his friends answering for him then, someone she's met once or twice, when Running Man related gatherings had overlapped with Gary's usual crowd of music pioneers and producers. "Is, uh—is Gary-oppa there?"

"Who's asking?" he replies, voice drifting farther through the line, as if he's pulled the phone away from his ear to check the caller identification on the screen. "Oh, Jihyo-ssi, sorry—I just answered the phone without checking your number. People have been hitting us up all morning about the album, so I just assumed you were one of them," he says, his tone and language shifting from rudely intimate to distantly polite, "Gary's just talking to someone in another room, but he'll be back in a little bit. Want me to leave him a message?"

"No, it's alright," she dismisses, a little too swiftly for her taste. Way to be inconspicuous, she thinks acerbically to herself, and then squeezes her eyes shut at her thoughtlessness—couldn't she just have texted first, like she'd normally do before calling? Drugs had a stupidity clause in their list of adverse reactions, surely. "You don't need to tell him I called, it wasn't important. Thank you...?"

"Ah, yeah, sorry," he says, comprehending of her pause. "It's Panda, by the way. We've met a few times before."

"I remember," she says, which she does. From the small blurbs that Gary's told her about his music and his crew over the years, Panda's as close a collaborator as he is a friend, so he sticks enough around Gary for them to see and know each other, as shallow as the acquaintance is. "I hope production's going well."

"It's coming along," he answers genially, but the air's final, both of them knowing that that's as far as their conversation goes with the little she knows about making music—meaning absolutely none—and the little they have in common besides having Gary as a mutual friend. "You sure you don't want me to tell him anything?"

"I'm sure," she says, because she wants her tteokbokki, but not enough to risk letting everyone in his inner circle know that there's something up between them. She wonders if he's told anyone, and then promptly panics some more over the horrific thought, hangs up on Panda with a rushed out, "Thanks, bye," and not much else to go by as explanation. 

She spends a few minutes sulking right after—over the exchange with Panda and her failed plan for easy acquirement of tteokbokki, both—but then her phone vibrates in her hand, and it's Gary's number calling her back.

"Hey," is the greeting she hears when she swipes Answer, undeniably and relievably in Kang Gary's voice this time around. She probably shouldn't perk up as instantly as she does, but, well—hormones. The pamphlets say that food cravings can be attributed to the first waves of them entering a pregnant woman's bloodstream, so she's definitely justified in sticking by that reasoning for this one, shut up. "Panda told me I missed your call, sorry. Everything okay?"

"It's fine," she answers calmly, even as she's pettily irked by Panda telling Gary that she'd called. No wonder why he and Gary were friends; they both had a propensity for not doing what they've been told. "We're fine. It really wasn't important, I don't want to intrude on your work."

He clicks his tongue. "If that's what you're worried about, then don't be," he says, almost like he's a bit annoyed that she'd thought otherwise. "What do you need?"

"Uhm," she begins, as embarrassed as she had been last night—she may be a lot of things to him, but she's not that inconsiderate, knows how much getting this album churned and polished for release is a priority for him. Asking him to do something as comparatively insignificant as fetch her some street food she could probably get away with buying herself as long as Dr. Byun's not informed seems a little too shameless, even for her sorry state of hunger and bedridden pregnancy cravings.

Then again: she's not inconsiderate, but she's also not that strong-willed to keep up with the resistance against a once-in-a-lifetime delicacy in her purview. Tteokbokki won't ever be as good to her as it is now, and she'll be damned if she won't even try to capitalize on it. "I want some tteokbokki?"

There's static, radio silence, for long enough that she 89% concludes that he's probably hung up on her—as he probably rightfully should—but then he laughs, loud and unhindered, and says, "You're very...pregnant, aren't you?"

Her eyebrows knot together, because no , really. Has he forgotten the co-leading role he's played in this culmination of events? "Well, yeah, I guess? What does that even mean, I'm very pregnant?"

"Nothing," he laughs again, but quieter, like he's consciously restraining it. He's most likely at a recording studio, if she's going by what Panda's said—she has no reason to doubt it, since Gary practically lives in one, anyways—and she feels a resurgence of alarm chattering in her chest again, because who the hell knows who he's around now, listening in on him very blatantly out their predicament as if whatever it is they're doing could be simplified in that easy a term.

"You didn't tell anyone about me, right?" she asks lowly, will knuckle down and issue him penalties, if she has to. "That I'm pregnant? Because seriously—"

"Relax," he drawls out, like he's vocally demonstrating the verb to her, "Of course I've been wanting to, but I know you're not ready. I'll start telling when you tell me to start."

She breathes out, appeased. "I really want to keep it lowkey for as long as we can. Until it's born, maybe."

"Isn't that a little drastic?" he asks, monotonous, a scratch of a turnstile along with the question. There's a knock of knuckle against wood, and then muffled speaking following it, and then he's back to talking to her over the line, "Unless you're planning on hermitting yourself away for half a year, I'm pretty sure people are gonna find out from the baby bump alone, eventually."

"Not that I'm having a baby," she ruffs out, rolls her eyes. "I meant it more in regards to the fact that I'm having a baby with you, specifically. You know?"

There's another beat of silence, but she knows he hasn't hung up. The quiet carries over receivers like something dense, like a n