TRIGGER WARNING!!!!
A male character in this fic swaps gender and is referred to by "she/her" pronouns. This was done to emphasize how the character is outwardly perceived not just by the other characters in the story but also by the you the reader. This character, however, still thinks of himself as male. This could cause discomfort to the reader as it touches upon gender dysphoria.

Setting: Modern-day Korea, but in an alternate universe where there is no Infinite. Magic exists though, if that’s any consolation, but it’s unknown to most. Woohyun and Sunggyu had no idea of it’s existence. In fact, recently it seems like Sunggyu isn’t aware that anything exists besides work and alcohol. Being that way is almost a job requirement, or at least that is the joke tossed around the office. However in every joke, there is truth, and the truth is that their company has a high turn-over rate. No one was there for long, but also no one knew how ‘long’ their careers at the company would be. So every worker put their nose to the grindstone, day in and day out, until they couldn’t anymore. Then they would be told that they were underperforming and should leave. But it is all worth it to have a major streaming company on your C.V. It is like earning a Bronze Star on the battlefield of business.

As a result, not only are his job and alcohol the only things that existed for Sunggyu, he only existed for them too.

Woohyun, on the other hand, is wishing for more in his life, and maybe for a higher existence to show him what he is missing. Too bad that he doesn’t believe in higher powers, but he also doesn’t believe in magic either…

Maybe this is a good time for me to say that Woohyun and Sunggyu aren’t very close. They are coworkers, but they work on different teams. Sunggyu is a project manager, who often has to travel to different headquarters for ‘training sessions’ and endless meetings. And Woohyun, well, Sunggyu doesn’t know what he does. Woohyun does something else. Maybe that is a good enough indicator, if any, to demonstrate their closeness. Honestly, if one of them were to quit the company, they would never see each other again.

They had been getting closer as of late. After a work gathering, when Sunggyu proposed a second round, Woohyun would always be in attendance. At times, they’d be the only two attending. When that happened, they would just go to Woohyun’s mother’s restaurant, which more often than not was in the process of closing whenever they barged in. His mother was still happy to see them, regardless. It was a comfortable place to be and there was also service. Drinking alone together, however, wasn’t always the most comfortable experience for either of them. After a few drinks too many, Woohyun would grow sullen and his eyes distant, a far cry from how he usual was, and not far from crying. That would put a damper on Sunggyu’s drunken spirits. Normally, drinking would help him forget his pain, but drinking with Woohyun often made him remember them.

Luckily, Woohyun wasn’t there with him that night. No one was as Sunggyu went on a second round by himself after a work gathering. He still went to Woohyun’s mother’s place. He still liked getting free food. But he wasn’t the only one at the restaurant late that night…

Present-day: There was a girl, a very pretty girl. Demure, y, cute, all of those positive attributes. The most positive one being the fact that she kept staring at Sunggyu, with those dark eyes. It wasn’t like they were the only two at the restaurant, even though it was closing soon. There were two men in another corner chatting, and a trio of girls at the table next to hers. Yet her eyes kept going back to his, and so Sunggyu found it hard to look away from the woman.

“Sunggyu-ssi, do you know where my son is?”

He jumped at the sudden question. Woohyun’s mom came up to his side.  “No, m’am. I haven’t seen him,” he answered breathlessly as he tried to gather himself.

“He wasn’t at work?”

He shook his head. “I don’t normally see him at work. I’m sorry,” he was distracted. Out of the corner of his eye, it looked as if…no, she actually was. The pretty girl was now leaning over her table to hear his conversation with the owner, who was now mumbling to herself about her missing son, but Sunggyu couldn’t be concerned with that. He had one thing on his mind. “M’am, do you know who she is?” he asked in a low voice.

“No, but she has been sitting there all night, the poor thing. She must be waiting for her husband, but I don’t think he’s coming. Must’ve gotten caught up at work, the poor dear,” she began to walk away as she was explaining who the girl was. Sunggyu only caught half it. Husband? What would make her say that? What taken woman would spend her entire meal making eyes with another man?

“Huh? Oh!”

It became very obvious what sort of girl she was. After shifting in her seat awkwardly and scooting over to the edge, the pretty girl stood up and walked straight past Sunggyu’s table to the restroom. And Sunggyu got a good, long look at her protruding belly.

She was pregnant.

Pregnant? Sunggyu began reevaluating everything he’d ever thought about the girl, from her character to her age to situation. The more he tried to make sense of it, the more he couldn’t. Why was she staring at him? Did he know her? Did she know him? It seemed to be that way, but how?

Sunggyu concluded that he could’ve met her when he was younger, or inebriated, or both. He really hoped that he hadn’t drunkenly come across her months ago. He really, really prayed to God that…

“Can I talk to you…in private?” The girl had returned from the bathroom and stopped at his table to ask him that heart-stopping question.

“Sorry, but do I know you?” Sunggyu croaked. His throat was tight and dry. The girl nodded. And his eyes dropped from her face straight to her stomach. “Is it mine?”

“Let’s talk outside, please,” the girl begged as her hands came to rest on her stomach. Sunggyu snapped his head back up. For once, she wasn’t looking back at him. No, she was looking away. She was anxious, just as much as he was. He didn’t know what to make of that, but he met her outside anyway.

The woman led him into the alleyway that bent around the establishment. She knew where she was going, where the two of them could be alone, and how to make Sunggyu’s heart speed up with every step they took. When she finally stopped and turned around, in the dimly lit alleyway, her dark eyes bored into him again, her lips tucked into , unable to find the words.

“Well, what is it? What do you want to say to me?” Sunggyu prompted her after a full minute of silence.

The girl let go of her lips and a heavy sigh. “Hyung, I..., how do I even say this? I don’t even know what to say! It’s ridiculous! I can’t even believe it! I can’t believe this ! And you…”

“Did…did you just call me ‘hyung’?” Sunggyu cut her off. He had to have misheard it.

“Yes…it’s me!” the girl exclaimed as she stepped closer to him. She put a hand over her heart. “It’s Woohyun! Nam Woohyun! I got trapped inside of this body by an evil witch, and I’m kinda freaking out. I don’t know what…”

“Ahahahaahahahahahaha!” Sunggyu’s roar of laughter interrupted her or him or whatever this woman was pretending to be. Because that’s all this really was, pretend. “I get what’s going on! I get it! I understand perfectly, Woohyunnie.” Sunggyu spoke in a cheery voice as he circled around the girl.

“You do?”

“Eung. It’s a prank,” he whispered into her ear. Sunggyu then pulled away and looked about the alleyway. “Sungyeol-ssi is in on it too, isn’t he? You two always do like this at the office.” He then shouted into the darkness, “Come out! Come out, you guys! I know it’s a prank!”

“No. NO!” the woman shouted and ran in front of him. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him up against the wall. And it knocked the smile right off of his face. “It’s really me! It’s Woohyun!” she insisted with a low hiss. She removed her hands from him and took a step back. The light from the street shone on her face, revealing that she was on the verge of tears. “I don’t know how to convince you that I am! , it’s not like there’s a secret that only we both know. We don’t even know each other that well. But…you have to believe me, and you have to help me. I don’t…I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where else to go. This is my home. And I can’t stay here, but I have nowhere else. Nowhere else! You have to believe me. I’m Woohyun,” A sob broke out and she softly whispered, “Believe me.”

Sunggyu hesitatingly patted her shoulder in a poor attempt to comfort the woman, I mean Woohyun. He shushed her too, hoping that the sobs would abate eventually. They didn’t, but at least Woohyun was crying more quietly now. “Why don’t you tell your mom? She’s looking for you,” Sunggyu suggested. Wouldn’t that be best? His mom would know what to do. Moms always do, in his opinion.

Woohyun shook his head. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell her,” she croaked out and then hid her face behind her hands and sobbed some more.

“Then why me?” Sunggyu didn’t mean to say this out loud, but given that his mind was overloaded with disbelief and frustration, it couldn’t manage to filter out his words at the moment. “Why tell me?”

Woohyun looked up and sniffed loudly before answering, “Because…you’ll believe anything.”

Well, that sounded like an insult, but it was true. It wasn’t that Sunggyu was gullible. He was just incredibly superstitious, a man of faith, meaning he liked to believe in things. Everyday Sunggyu read his horoscope because he believed in astrology. He feared outerspace not only because it was a vacuum of gravity and breath but also because of aliens. He also feared Area 51 because of aliens and his old college roommate who he suspected was an alien. And Sunggyu also believed in the most popular superstition of all: God.

Since Sunggyu was very open in the office about his beliefs, arguing with Sungyeol over what aliens look like and often praying before a big presentation, was it really far-fetched to think that Sunggyu would believe this too? No, it wasn’t. Sunggyu believed Woohyun.

“Let’s go back to my place.”

Once they came into Sunggyu’s apartment and he took Woohyun on a small tour, showing her what she could use, Woohyun passed out on his bed. Funny, Sunggyu didn’t recall offering her the bed, but he wasn’t about to make a pregnant woman sleep on the couch.

After getting ready for bed and saying his prayers, Sunggyu laid down on the couch and closed his eyes. Maybe tomorrow he’d wake up and all of this was just some strange, drunken dream.

But it wasn’t.

The following morning, Sunggyu was woken up by a flush of the toilet. He sprung up from the couch. In the morning haze, Sunggyu couldn’t remember who else would be in the apartment, and so his heart stopped when a woman came out of the bathroom, struggling to pull up her pants over her round belly.

“Let me tell you, that’s getting old really quick, peeing all the time,” the woman lamented after knowing that she had a captive and drowsy audience. She groaned with a final tug of the zipper, “Ugh, and getting up from the toilet is a struggle. And I’ve never wanted to be this intimate with the female body either.” As if to punctuate her point, she unconsciously scratched right at her bra-line. “Thank you for letting me crash here, hyung.”

Hyung? Right, the woman was Woohyun. Last night’s events came flooding back into Sunggyu’s mind. And this morning, Sunggyu had no doubt that this pregnant lady was Nam Woohyun, with the way she spoke to anyone with ears and how quickly she made herself at home. In fact, now she had gone into his kitchen to do who knows what. Sunggyu scrambled off the couch to go follow her. And he found Woohyun playing around with his one joy in life recently, his Nespresso. It was obvious that she never worked one her whole life, but that didn’t stop her from trying.

But Sunggyu couldn’t even be bothered to help her with the machine; he was too busy thinking about how he could just generally help her. How did Woohyun get into this situation? Why was he dragged into it? How were they gonna get out? He sat down at and slumped over his kitchen table as he tried to make heads or tails out of this whole mess.

“It’s working!” Woohyun cheered once the machine began filling up his mug. But the triumphant grin quickly fell from her face. “Wait, can I even drink this? How much caffeine is there in coffee?” After a few minutes of searching for answers on her phone, Woohyun took out another mug from the cabinet and poured half of the drink into it. When she turned around, Woohyun noticed that Sunggyu was staring at her with a dumbfounded expression. “What? It’s not my body. I need to take care of it.”

“You really are Nam Woohyun, huh?” Sunggyu muttered in a tired voice, watching Woohyun waddle up to the table. It was really an amazing sight.

“Hm,” Woohyun hummed in agreement and bent over to place the second mug in front of Sunggyu. And when she looked up, she realized that Sunggyu’s eyes weren’t on her face, not even close. “Hyung!” she gasped, standing up straight and covering her hands over her chest. “What are you looking at? I am a lady!”

“How can I not look when you’re doing that?” Sunggyu shouted back.

“I’m not used to them yet. Give me a break,” Woohyun mumbled while rearranging her shirt, making sure her precious bits were nice and covered. After doing so, something must’ve sprang into her mind because her eyes went wide, and she ran over to her phone. A little google search later, Woohyun was relieved. “No milk yet.”

Sunggyu’s hands immediately flew to his ears. Not like covering them now helped anything. “, I ‘m going crazy!”

“You’re telling me,” Woohyun retorted and sat down at the table.

Sunggyu lowered his hands and studied the other. “How are you so calm about all of this?” he asked.

Woohyun paused with the mug to her lips. Once again, they tucked back into . Words didn’t come easily to Woohyun again, or Woohyun didn’t want to say them. And words didn’t come out first from her lips, laughter did. “I’m calm? Me?” she spoke as if it was the funniest thing. “I’m googling things every ten seconds. I feel awful every time I have to touch this body. It feels like I’m doing something wrong, especially since I don’t know the first thing about this dang woman. I normally have anxiety, which is out of control now, and this whole thing is really making me hate my entire life right now…but I need to take care of this thing.” Her voice slowed down and dropped as she patted her belly. “So I have to act calm.” A deep sigh later, Woohyun gathered herself and got up from the table again. “I should make a list of things I can’t eat.”

It was almost as if Sunggyu just remembered that pregnant women have babies. There was something living inside of Nam Woohyun at this very moment. Boy, girl, alien, they both didn’t know what it was, but it was still alive. And most importantly, it wasn’t theirs. It was like someone had left a baby at their doorstep, except it wasn’t born yet and it was inside of Woohyun’s new womb.

At that moment, Kim Sunggyu went past crazy and somehow came back to being rational. He stood up suddenly from the table. “Can I help? What can I do to help you?”

“Well,” Woohyun began and shot him a hopeful look and a pleading smile. “You can let me stay here…indefinitely.”

“Alright,” Sunggyu gave in and sat back down. He could do that much, he guessed, even if he had to sleep on the couch indefinitely too. “You can stay here while you…sort things out.”

“Thank you.”

“Woohyun?”

“Hm?” Gosh, Sunggyu doubted that he’d ever get used this. It shocked him again to hear her respond to his annoying coworker’s name.

“How are you going to sort things out? How did this happen to you anyway?”

“I told you. It was a witch,” Woohyun explained in a distracted voice. She was still making a list of taboo foods and wrote down sushi with a heavy heart.

“What did you do to the witch, Woohyun?”

“I didn’t do anything!” That got Woohyun’s attention. She slammed down the pen and spun towards the man. “I was just minding my own business when…”

The story was this: Woohyun fell asleep on the subway. He hadn’t meant to, but a mixture of work stress, late nights drinking, and lack of sleep caused his eyelids to drop. He also hadn’t meant to sit in the seat reserved for pregnant women, but he accidentally did that as well. When he finally woke up, he was several stops passed his and was being prodded by a very angry and haggard pregnant woman. They soon began arguing because the woman wouldn’t accept Woohyun’s apology and didn’t believe that he’d accidentally sat there and fell asleep. She thought that he was purposefully ignoring her and feigning sleep. Woohyun felt like it was unfair, and he had enough of people not listening to him (all credit to his job for building up that frustration to this point). Soon, it broke out into a childish fight, with them calling each other names that you’d hear on the playground, and both refusing to sit in the seat and trying to force the other to sit down. It got to the point that Woohyun didn’t care if he rode the train all the way to North Korea. He was determined to win this argument and would not get off the train.

While many tried to intervene and settle the dispute, most backed off once the two would snap at the stranger to "buzz off.” One stayed, because neither Woohyun nor the woman had the heart to tell an elderly woman to off. Also her intervention didn’t seem like much at the time. She patted both of them on the shoulder and asked them to “walk a mile in each other’s shoes,” or something stereotypical like that. The old woman got off the train soon after, waving goodbye to the two who soon went back to insulting each other.

Unlike Woohyun, the pregnant woman refused to miss her stop, but she made sure to give Woohyun one last, heartfelt gesture before leaving. And he flicked her off right back, with both hands.

He then quickly got off the train before the doors closed because he didn’t want to stay behind with the bystanders to his fight. When he finally got home an hour later, Woohyun found a strange mark inked onto his shoulder where the old woman had touched him. Woohyun described it to Sunggyu as a charm or talisman. No matter how hard he scrubbed, it wouldn’t wash away. However, he was too tired to care and just went to bed.

And then he woke up a woman. Woohyun managed to grab the cellphone and wallet before he was seen as she. As a she, Woohyun spent the rest of the day, riding the subway, looking for the old woman. After getting stir-crazy for sitting on a train for hours, Woohyun waited outside of the company, seeing if his body would come out of its doors. Of course it didn’t. Woohyun didn’t know who this body belonged to. How was the woman supposed to know who he was?

And then Woohyun went to the restaurant, working up her courage to talk to ‘mom’ but couldn’t do it. This whole thing was embarrassing, unbelievable, and burdensome. What’s worse than a son telling his mother that he accidentally ‘knocked up’ a girl? A son coming home with a nearly grown baby in his own belly with little to no explanation for how it got there.

His mother had a hard enough time keeping the restaurant afloat. Woohyun couldn’t add this to her list of responsibilities.

Then Sunggyu came in, and Sunggyu helped. And Sunggyu was sitting with Woohyun now at the kitchen table, trying to make sense of this.

“How old do you think she is? You look young,” Sunggyu asked once the story was over. He was trying to grab onto any clue that they could.

Woohyun shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’m an adult, at least. I might be married, but I’m not sure.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because of this,” Woohyun replied with a pat on her belly. “I hope she is. It would be hard to do this alone. I know this now. I feel pain in places that I didn’t even think could hurt…and places that I didn’t have before. And the baby, it moves!” Both of their eyes dropped to her belly, watching it closely for a minute. Nothing happened. “It’s shy all the sudden. You must be scaring it, hyung.”

“Whatever,” Sunggyu dismissed and instead asked. “How far along are you anyway?” Woohyun just replied with a blank stare. “Right you wouldn’t know. We should take you to a doctor.”

She scoffed. “How? I don’t even know her name. How can we even fill out the paperwork?”

Sunggyu thought it over for a moment and then winced at who his mind came up with. “I might know someone.”

Yoon Bora was an old friend of Sunggyu’s. ‘Old’ as in Sunggyu met her when they were younger and they didn’t really talk anymore. And ‘friend’ as in, well, a friend who turned into a girlfriend who turned back into a friend who was now more of an acquaintance. What had been the proverbial ‘nail’ in the coffin of their relationship was their occupations. All of Sunggyu’s jobs had consumed his life, making him travel for weeks on end. And Bora would spend some months working nights at the hospital. While their relationship failed, they both became successful in their respective fields. Sunggyu was working at an elite company, and Bora owned an OBGYN clinic, which he was taking Woohyun to right now.

On their way over, they came up with a story. It was a ridiculous one, but it was more believable than the truth. Woohyun wouldn’t be able to fill out any paperwork because she was a North Korean fugitive named Ran Woong, who Sunggyu met while in China for business. That was all that they could agree on. They couldn’t even settle on who the father of the child should be, but Bora did that for them.

“Sunggyu, you dog!” the doctor reprimanded him. “This woman already suffered the tyranny of one dictator. Why did you have to go and trap her in a marriage with you?”

“We aren’t married!” he hissed lowly so that Woohyun (who was changing from oversized clothes that she borrowed from Sunggyu into a hospital gown) wouldn’t hear.

“What?! What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Sunggyu backtracked. “I mean not yet. It’s hard…There’s pushback from my family.”  

“Well, duh,” Bora retorted. She then snorted and put her hand to her forehead. “Your parents probably thought you’d marry well. Heck, youthought you’d marry well. But then you go and knock up this country bumpkin. I mean, sure she’s very pretty. But…a North Korean? Really, Sunggyu?”

“She needs me,” was all he could argue.

Bora seemed to have a retort on her lips but then Woohyun/Woong burst out into the hallway in the dressing gown cheerfully announcing that she was ready. And the appointment began.

While Woohyun was speaking with a perfect Seoul accent (which she claimed to have practiced religiously), her awkward behavior and wonderment at the ultrasound appeared to convince Bora that she was indeed from North Korea.

“Ran Woong-ssi, do you see this?” Bora asked as she pointed to the screen.

“That blob, yeah. What is it?” Woohyun asked excitedly.

“That’s your daughter, and she’s going to see you guys in three months.”

After deducing that Woong was in her third trimester, Bora came up with a plan for them and told them what to expect from this point until the delivery date. It was overwhelming to say the least. And they were incredibly ill-prepared for a child that far along. Then again, did they need to be prepared for one?

Sunggyu came home from the appointment and had a mental breakdown on his bed (followed by a nap). Woohyun, on the other hand, couldn’t rest so easily. She messaged her mom, lying that she had to make a last minute trip to headquarters for work and didn’t know how long she’d be kept in L.A. She then began reading through everything that Bora had given her.

Woohyun liked Bora. She was completely in the dark about Bora and Sunggyu’s past, but the doctor was nice and made fun of Sunggyu. What was there not to like?

But about her current situation, there wasn’t much to like. Woohyun’s general anxiety had morphed into something close to gender dysphoria. Inside, Woohyun was a man. There was nothing that could change that, but could it be hidden? How well was Woohyun presenting to the world as a female? If someone saw her on the streets, would they know? Would they know at a glance? And most of all, Woohyun wanted to be a man again. She missed it. She missed the way her old body felt. This new one had more weight, of course, but it was distributed oddly all over his body. Not only was the weight of her belly straining her back, but her chest as well. Are all s like this or just mine? Woohyun thought to herself. And bras . She fiddled with the straps of her bra again. She could, of course, take it off, but didn’t want to. She hadn’t since the switch. Woohyun was afraid that she’d seem less like a woman without one on.

But I’m a man! I need to get my body back! Now! I can’t do this anymore!  Woohyun’s mind went into a panic. Breathing was hard. The weight was heavier. Everything seemed to be closing in.

Then, an odd sensation. The baby rolled about in her belly. Woohyun took in a deep breath and then spoke to her in a hushed voice, “Sh, settle down, little girl.” While having quasi-gender dysphoria , this in itself was incredible. Incredible as in, yes, unbelievable but also indescribable, amazing, and kinda really creepy if she thought about it too much. There was another life growing inside of her right now, and she could feel. A smile spread across Woohyun’s face. It oddly made Woohyun feel proud. She was protecting this child the best she could, given the circumstances. And Woohyun was doing a pretty good job of it. “I’ll take good care of you…but first daddy needs to take care of himself.” She got up from the couch with a loud groan. “I need to by some more underwear. I’ve been wearing the same ones for far too long.”

While going lady underwear shopping wasn’t going to do much for her dysphoria, it was another distraction. She just needed to keep distracting herself and do her best, until she could find a solution for this mess. It could be too easy for Woohyun to have a mental breakdown right not, but she couldn’t afford it. She didn’t want the baby to deteriorate along with herself.

“Hyung, help!”

Sunggyu had woken up from his nap to find Woohyun gone. And he’d be lying if he said that his heart didn’t fall a bit when Woohyun came back half an hour later, still a woman and with a bag full of bras and . How long was she planning on staying like this? And also, she bought new underwear but not new clothes? Was she just going to wear all of Sunggyu’s lounge-wear from now on? What was he going to wear then?

The reality of having a new roommate was settling in and the frustration was building up.

But the entire situation wasn’t frustrating though. In fact, Sunggyu found it more pitiful than anything, especially right now. Woohyun was taking a shower but soon came out of the bathroom with a bathrobe on, her hands in her hair, and a deep pout on her face. “Hyung, help. It’s stuck! I can’t get the hair-tie out!”

Sunggyu had Woohyun sit on the chair as he struggled to find the hair-tie and extract it from the tangled strands. It was almost like diffusing a bomb, honestly. Woohyun had accidentally begun washing her hair when she remembered the tie. So it was a huge mess of hair and suds, and Woohyun told him specifically not to cut it or damage the hair. The last thing that this body needed was a bald spot or a chunk of hair missing.

Sunggyu also couldn’t pull too hard because every time he did, Woohyun would yelp, “Owie! That hurts!”

“Heh, owie? Are you sure that you were a man once?” Sunggyu mocked the other after Woohyun whimpered one too many times. But his chuckles were stopped when Woohyun sent an elbow into his gut. “A-ah! That hurt!” Sunggyu gasped.

“Don’t test me.” Sunggyu opened his eyes. Woohyun had thrown her head back and was looking up at him with those dark eyes. “You don’t know what this is like,” Woohyun warned. Sunggyu’s gaze dropped lower than her face. Woohyun draped a blanket over her lap. She pulled it up higher, fidgeting, when she noticed that he was looking.

Sunggyu gently moved her head back down and went back to work diffusing the hair-tie bomb. “Right, I should be more sensitive,” he admitted.

“Hm, because I’m sensitive,” Woohyun spoke cutely and nodded, causing Sunggyu to lose the hair-tie again.

“I know, you were like that before,” Sunggyu muttered underneath his breath, but Woohyun still heard it. She turned around and glared him, daring him to elaborate. “I’m sorry. Hyung is sorry. I’ll shut up now,” Sunggyu promised and guided her back into position. A sigh fell from his lips as he basically had to start from square one, which was finding the hair-tie in this mess.

As he was carding through her hair, Woohyun hummed and asked, “This feels kind of nice. Can you massage my scalp too?”

Sunggyu scoffed. “Like this?” he asked and just rubbed her head haphazardly.

“Yeah!” And Woohyun liked it. “Again!” And Sunggyu liked to mess around, and mess up hair apparently. He kept playing around with it until the hair-tie magically fell out and Woohyun’s hair was a rat’s nest. And so when Woohyun finished her shower, they worked on detangling the mess. Well, mostly Sunggyu did. Woohyun claimed that she was too tired, which might’ve been true because she dozed off a few times as Sunggyu was brushing. And he had to gently shake her awake when he was done.

“Thanks, hyung,” Woohyun mumbled while she yawned, rubbing her eyes.

“No problem,” Sunggyu replied softly and watched Woohyun struggle to sit up again. Pitiful but also really…Sunggyu cleared his throat and tried to clear those thoughts out of his head. He went to help her. “You’re gonna have to learn to take better care of yourself.”

“I’m trying, hyung,” she whined as she spoke his name. “I’m doing my best. Don’t be mean.”

“I’m not. I’m not being mean,” Sunggyu insisted and followed her to his bedroom. “I just…”

Woohyun spun around. “Just what?”

“N-nothing.” Sunggyu really needed to be careful. Not only was Woohyun sensitive, but this whole situation was. So instead he changed the subject, “You know, it’s weird to hear you call me ‘hyung.’”

“Why? It never bothered you before,” Woohyun replied in a distracted voice. She was in Sunggyu’s dressers, looking for more clothes to wear, which meant…Sunggyu turned around when Woohyun started tugging her shirt up.

“You weren’t a woman before,” Sunggyu was exasperated.

“Does it matter? I’m still a man,” she retorted.

“Well, yeah on the inside, but on the outside you don’t look like it,” he reminded her. “And it’d be weird if you called me ‘hyung’ in public. You should start calling me ‘oppa’ now.”

“Pass,” Woohyun rejected it without a moment’s thought. She then tapped on his shoulder, getting Sunggyu to turn around. “Besides, if we’re going off your argument, who’s to say that this body isn’t older than yours? We don’t know! It could be! It’s safer to assume that I’m older. You can call me ‘noona,’ Sunggyu,” Woohyun combatted, talking to him in banmal. “You don’t like that, Sunggyu?”

“No,” Sunggyu admitted defeat and gave a small shake of his head. “Let’s just stick with the names we came up with, Ran Woong-ssi.”

“Call, Kim Sunggyu-ssi.” And that was that. And that was the last Sunggyu saw of his bedroom for the night. Woohyun announced that she wanted to go to bed and pushed him out of the door. Within minutes, Sunggyu heard her loudly snoring her way into dreamland. He wished that he could go to bed that easily, but he couldn’t.

Somehow this day had left him feeling weirder than the last had. Last night, he only had to deal with the weirdness of pregnant woman claiming to be his male coworker. Today, he had to deal with the uncomfortable weirdness of a new roommate, the stressful weirdness of becoming an expecting father (even though it was a lie), and the weirdest weirdness of all: seeing Woohyun in the woman and also seeing another person entirely. The last part could be chalked up to the fact that he didn’t know Woohyun very well to begin with, but it could also be the fact that she pretended to be his baby mama for a few hours during the appointment.

Either way, this weirdness was taking a toll on his mind, body, and heart. So while he felt like he’d never be able to sleep again, with these thoughts keeping him up, Sunggyu fell asleep within the hour.

The next morning, Sunggyu was the one to wake up the other by sneaking into his own bedroom to change for work. “Why don’t you call in sick? I did yesterday,” Sunggyu suggested after they acknowledged each other’s existence appropriately (meaning Sunggyu apologized profusely for waking her up and Woohyun just grunted).

“I don’t really sound like myself right now,” Woohyun replied in a gruff but still obviously feminine voice.

Sunggyu rolled his eyes. “Send an email then.”

“Maybe,” she said so that the matter would be dropped. But truth be told, Woohyun didn’t want to tell the company that she wouldn’t be in today. No, she was curious to see how people would respond after she had missed three days. So far, no one had reached out to her. After today, would someone? How long would it be until the higher-ups start getting concerned? How valuable was Nam Woohyun to the company or was he replaceable just like everyone else?

Well, to Lee Sungyeol, he wasn’t replaceable. Sungyeol messaged him later that afternoon to say how much he missed him and how boring work was without someone to talk to. Messages from a few other coworkers began to trickle in, increasingly voicing their concern. Except Sungyeol, he kept sending Woohyun updates from the office, the most recent gossip and what was in the kitchen that day. You know, the important things.

Woohyun replied to none of these. She was busy with her new jobs: finding her body and getting ready for a potential baby. On top of that, she had side jobs: feeding herself and Sunggyu, cleaning up around the apartment (sometimes), and raiding his closet for maternity clothes. One day, she might actually go out and buy an outfit or two, but she hadn’t counted on the underwear costing that much and she still needed to afford all of the things for the potential baby. Woohyun finally realized what people have been saying all of these years: it’s truly expensive to be a woman. It wasn’t make-up or brand-name fashion burned a hole through Woohyun’s wallet; it was simply existing…and existing along with an alien parasite (Sunggyu really needed to stop jokingly calling the baby that because now Woohyun was unconsciously thinking that all of the time).

So given that Woohyun didn’t answer emails from his coworkers, bosses, and his bosses’ bosses, she was fired two weeks after the switch.

“I don’t get it. Why didn’t you say that you were sick?” Sunggyu asked. He was incredulous when he came home and Woohyun told him the ‘good’ news.

“Because…I wanted to get fired,” Woohyun finally confessed to herself and Sunggyu at the same time. She didn’t ghost on the company out of curiosity; she was purposefully sabotaging herself, just to see if what she suspected was true along: Nam Woohyun was replaceable. To the company, Nam Woohyun wasn’t a person but just a worker. It took them only two weeks to for them to move onto the next eager worker bee.

“Huh, what? Why the Hell would you purposefully get yourself fired?” Sunggyu didn’t understand. He was still a part of the ‘hive mind.’

“I hated it there, hyung. , I hated my life too,” Woohyun explained. “I wasn’t happy. I know it’s an elite company, and everyone would kill to work there. But working there was killing me.” That was entirely true. Woohyun felt dead ever since the end of last year. She had given up her life for the company. And after the switch, after being away from the ‘hive,’ Woohyun felt alive again. She was finally living again for herself, and for someone else too. While the company didn’t need Woohyun, someone else did, someone small and fragile who needed a lot of protecting. The baby needed her too. “It may be an elite company, but I can do better than it, hyung,” she concluded.

“B-but,” Sunggyu stammered. It was obvious that he was still confused. It was hard for him to see things from Woohyun’s perspective sometimes, but he’d eventually get there. Sunggyu’s mind had a tendency to get ‘set’ on things and thinking that only one way was the ‘right’ way. And so he was struggling to see how this was a good thing. “What will you do now?”

“Well, I kinda got my hands full already,” Woohyun said, gesturing down at her stomach that had grown in the last few weeks. “Things will be okay, hyung.”

“They’ll be okay, yeah,” Sunggyu repeated, but Woohyun could tell that he was still working things out in his head, which was why he asked, “Are you sure that you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” she replied with a warm smile.

“Yeah, you’ll be fine. We’ll work things out. Don’t worry,” Sunggyu said, while he wrapped his arms around her in a hug. Woohyun did the same because even though Sunggyu was doing this to ‘comfort’ her, he was truly the one was needed to be comforted. He was freaking out. Woohyun could feel his heart racing against her skin. “If you need money, I can give you some. Don’t be afraid to ask, okay? We’ll get through this together.” His grip tightened.

Woohyun’s smile broadened. “Okay, hyung. Do you want to start by buying us dinner? I didn’t make us any.”

Sunggyu let go and pulled away, while giving the other a questionable stare. But he relented nonetheless, “Fine. Get whatever you want, but nothing too spicy, okay? You’re going to set the baby on fire one day.” He then left to go change.

“Don’t blame the baby, hyung. You’re the one that can’t handle spicy food!” Woohyun shouted after him.

“Just don’t do it, okay?”

“Okay!”

The next two weeks passed happily, or at least it did for Woohyun who was learning what it was like to be happy again and not just content. She laughed more than she had in a year. She was having more meaningful conversations, even if it was just talking about the baby’s progress with Dr. Bora or discussing music with Sunggyu. She wished that she could talk with her mother again, and she occasionally would by going to the restaurant for lunch. But they would only talk about life in general detail, and there wasn’t much that Ran Woong could say about North Korea. So the conversation would be kept short, kept safe. But at least Woohyun could show her the baby. Her mother would’ve never guessed that her hand touched her son’s belly, waiting for her granddaughter to kick. Woohyun would always be on the verge of telling her, but then swallowed her words and asked for more service instead, which she always got. Some things never changed.

And of course, there was the ongoing search for Woohyun’s real body. It wasn’t a constant search. It had become a like a cold case file that Woohyun would return to when she got bored. But it really was like what all detectives say: after the first 48 hours, the body is nearly impossible to find. The case of the missing body would most likely remain unsolved.

And was Woohyun okay with that?

Tonight she was because she finally managed to talk Sunggyu into giving her swollen feet a massage. She had to wash them in front of his face, but he finally deemed her feet touchable and weirdly enough was still massaging them after 5 minutes. Woohyun titled her head as she stared at him. Sunggyu was absentmindedly rubbing her feet while he was watching television. It was confusing her. Sunggyu wasn’t normally this doting or caring or even nice. So what was going on? Was it really for Woohyun? Or was it just for the body? They were still separate things for Woohyun, but were they for Sunggyu? Woohyun shook her head and tried to watch television. It didn’t matter. Woohyun felt cared for, and that’s all he wanted right now. And that’s all that should matter.

In any case, Woohyun was suddenly very grateful for running into Sunggyu that night, which was why she said, “You’ll make a good husband one day.”

“Shut up,” the way he said that made Woohyun look back at him. Sunggyu was flattered and slightly embarrassed if the reddening of his ears were proof of anything. That was interesting. That was very interesting and almost scary, honestly. Why would Sunggyu react like that if he didn’t…“My turn!” Sunggyu announced and placed his feet in Woohyun’s own lap, effectively distracting her.

“I take back what I said,” Woohyun retorted and pushed the feet off of her lap. “Get those away from me!’ she retched. Sunggyu had said something in reply but Woohyun had missed it. The baby decided to interject itself into the conversation.

“Oh, what is it?” Sunggyu blubbered, finally noticing Woohyun’s reaction.

“The baby, she’s moving again,” she stated. She then took his hand and brought it to where the baby was wriggling around. “Feel it.”

“Woah,” Sunggyu muttered lowly in amazement. He moved closer and leaned into her, placing his other hand on the stomach too. “Do it again.”

“I can’t do it,” Woohyun spoke with a laugh and gave him a very slight shove.

“I’m not talking to you,” Sunggyu snapped back. He then rest completely against Woohyun and leaned down to talk to the little girl in a loud whisper, “Do it again, baby! Go! Jump! Kick your mom again!”

“Dad,” Woohyun reminded him.

“Sorry, habit,” Sunggyu apologized to Woohyun and then whisper-shouted to the baby again, “Kick daddy, baby! Kick him right in the nuts!” Woohyun laughed at that, with her whole heart. Sunggyu often made mistakes; everyone did. But he often overcompensated, especially when it came to misgendering Woohyun. It often brought a smile to Woohyun’s face, as it did now. Sunggyu then looked up at her to share in the smiles too.

“Do you think we should name her, hyung?” Woohyun suggested.

Sunggyu removed his hands and pulled himself up, but he was still leaning against her. His head was nearly at her shoulder but not quite there, leaving some space for the Holy Ghost (Woohyun supposed). While he was talking to her, his eyes were still on the baby, waiting for her to wriggle again, “She might already have a name, Woohyun.”

“Maybe,” Woohyun allowed that much but she countered with, “But she’s mine now. She needs a new name.” Her hands laid on the belly protectively, and Sunggyu laughed as he took her hands away. He probably thought that Woohyun was joking.

“We need to call her something,” she brought up.

Woohyun could feel the other nod against her neck. “She jumps around a lot,” Sunggyu observed. “What about…Tokki?”

“Nuh uh, I don’t like it,” Woohyun rejected and shook her head. “It’s dumb. It’s a dumb name.”

“You already have one in mind, don’t you?” Sunggyu spoke with a scoff. There were times that Sunggyu could see as easily through her as she could with him. If they weren’t careful, it’d be easy for them to develop a ‘hive mind’ too. “Stop with the pretenses. You never wanted my opinion anyway. What did you name her?”

“Bobae,” Woohyun revealed. She grinned warmly down at the baby. “She’s a little treasure, isn’t she?”

Sunggyu’s hair brushed against her neck again. “She really is,” he agreed. His hand went to her stomach again, rubbing it affectionately. And it was more than Woohyun could bear.

“Hyung?”

“Hm?” Sunggyu raised his head, bringing their faces closer together, only centimeters apart.

“Get off me. Bobae needs to pee.”

“Yah, are you going to start blaming her for everything now?” Sunggyu yelled at her as she struggled to get up and make her way to the bathroom.

“You would too,” Woohyun spat back. She then turned around at the bathroom’s threshold and argued, “Besides there’s two of us and one bladder, and she’s pressing against it…”

“I get it. I get it. Just go!”

While Woohyun was happier, and Sunggyu could easily see that, Sunggyu himself was struggling at work. He was tired, distracted, and worst of all, his heart wasn’t in it anymore. And today, the warning finally came. He was underperforming. He needed to pick up the slack. He needed to be like he was before the switch, but much like Woohyun, he was becoming a different person too. His priorities were shifting. He’d rather be at home than work. There were more things he’d rather discuss than a poorly performing series or algorithms. Heck, even talking about dilations and mucus plugs with Bora was more ‘fun’ than giving the same presentation to different groups. And all of that didn’t bode well for his future in the company.

So he did what he hadn’t done in over a month, he encouraged his colleagues to go on a second round with him and then a third. It didn’t take as much as it normally did to get him drunk, so he had the opportunity to sober up and get drunk again. He didn’t know if that made the night more enjoyable, but he went home in the wee hours of the morning with a smile on his face.

That was until he saw Woohyun waiting for him with the lights on and sitting on the couch. She couldn’t sleep for worrying. She had called Sunggyu multiple times in the night, and Sunggyu had just now realized that his phone was on silent. Woohyun was having a hard time finding any patience for this man, but given that it was two in the morning, she had patience for no one.

“Just come home after one round! You can go out, but come home at a reasonable time. There’s just a lot to do, and I can’t keep up with it all. The baby is coming in two months. Two! I’m not ready for it. Are you?” she barely gave Sunggyu any time to answer that question and continued, “And my body! I’m still trying to find it, but it could literally be anywhere in the world right now.”

“We’ll find it. It couldn’t have gone far,” Sunggyu finally managed to interject. Woohyun’s nagging sobered him up very quickly.

Woohyun scoffed. “How do you know? Have you seen it?”

“No,” Sunggyu yielded that much. “But you’re still here, and you have Bobae. She won’t abandon her baby! She’s probably looking for you too.”

Woohyun seemed to take that as a threat. She stepped and covered her stomach. “Well, I’m just saying that if she’s keeping my body, I’m keeping Bobae.”

“Fair enough,” Sunggyu was now gathering the sense of mind that it wasn’t smart to argue with an exhausted pregnant woman in her third trimester.

“No it’s not fair! Not fair at all!” she even found fault in Sunggyu’s yielding. There was no way for Sunggyu to come out on top from this. “You came home drunk!”

“I’m not…”

“She’s probably using my body to drink, and I can’t!” Woohyun cut him off. “I used to drink to get rid of stress. But I’m pregnant! I’m a pregnant man! I’m stressed! I’m really stressed! How am I supposed to get rid of my stress now? It just keeps piling up. Piling up higher and higher and higher! And I’m just left alone all day…”

“You’re not alone. You have Bobae,” that was the absolutely wrong thing to say and the burning glare from Woohyun’s dark eyes proved that.

“Hyung,” she started but she held back, gritting her teeth, “Just come home earlier. Please.”

“Okay,” Sunggyu quickly agreed, not just to end the argument but mostly out of shock. He hadn’t been expected at home ever since he was a high school student, and the thought that someone wanted him home too, it warmed his heart. He didn’t know how badly he wanted to hear those words until Woohyun said them, and now Sunggyu felt as if he’d gotten a hefty bonus in life for his efforts. He put on a gentle smile and approached her. “Let’s get rid of some of that stress, hm? What do you want to do?”

Woohyun just wanted to talk, well, complain, but that was still all she wanted. Sunggyu also talked her into playing one round of a shooting game to take out her aggression, which worked. But after ten minutes of gameplay and five minutes of talking, Woohyun fell asleep while leaning against Sunggyu. He moved, making them both more comfortable, with her head tucked into his neck and his arm around her, hand rubbing circles onto her arched back.

Sunggyu had changed, very much so in this past month. His priorities were shifting. He was wanting things that he claimed he didn’t want until he was older. He was finding that being at home was more fulfilling than being in the office. And he felt more needed in one place over the other.

Sunggyu didn’t know if Woohyun felt this way too, but at times, he hoped that Woohyun would never switch back.

Major changes were happening in the apartment too. After spending a month in this month and with two months until delivery, Woohyun deemed it was time to start buying more things for Bobae. And after she bought one thing, she began to buy them all, even clothes for a child older than a newborn. Woohyun was nesting and she was building her nest in Sunggyu’s bedroom. Well, not physically building though. The crib and diaper-changing table were still in their boxes, unassembled and leaning against the walls. In other words, Woohyun was making a huge mess of the apartment and very little progress.

And Woohyun started to notice other changes in the apartment that she hadn’t brought about. Sunggyu was coming home earlier. Most of the time, when he came home, he’d find Woohyun and talk about their days. But he didn’t do that today. He came in, said ‘hello,’ and then disappeared into the bedroom. Woohyun tried not to think much of it and continued reading her book. A half an hour passed and Sunggyu still hadn’t come out, so Woohyun yelled through the door, saying that she was going to buy take-out with his credit card. Sunggyu still didn’t come out and instead yelled his order back at her. After ordering dinner, Woohyun was unable to stand it anymore and went into the bedroom.

Sunggyu was almost down building the crib. Woohyun never asked him to do it. She never even insinuated that he should. After all, the baby seemed more like her responsibility. She’d gotten herself into this mess, and so she had to deal with it. However, from the very start, Woohyun hadn’t been dealing with it alone. Sunggyu had been helping her, and now Woohyun was realizing how far that help would go.

“Hyung, are you going to raise this baby with me?”

They had never talked about it. Woohyun had only asked Sunggyu to let him live at the apartment indefinitely. She had never talked about raising the child with Sunggyu. Yes, to Bora, they pretended that they would. Heck, on their most recent visit, they told the doctor that they’d eloped so that Bora would stop yelling at Sunggyu. But that was all pretend. That was a lie, wasn’t it?

“Of course, I will,” Sunggyu said so matter-of-factly. He was more focused on screwing in the railing than talking to Woohyun. “I wouldn’t trust you to do it alone. You’d spoil her too much. And you can barely take care of yourself now. What is post-partum Woong-ssi going to be like?”

Woong-ssi? Was he just playing his role? “You don’t have to, you know?” Woohyun tried to give him an out. “I can find a place. I…I could tell my mom and move back in with her. Then…”

“Woohyun, I want to do this,” Sunggyu cut her off. He put down the tools and stood up. He was giving her his full attention. His eyes fixed on hers, to assure her. “I want to help you. You don’t deserve to go through this alone.”

“I get that you want to help, but you really don’t have to do this. Aren’t you scared?”

“Yes,” Sunggyu admitted with a sheepish smile. “But I’m not the one about to give birth.”

Woohyun pursed her lips as she thought that over. “So you pity me then,” she countered. “You pity me because I’m about to be a single dad.”

“Well, yeah but…” Sunggyu paused to find the right words. It took a long time for them to come, mostly because he was holding the right words back. He eventually said ‘ it’ to himself and let them out: “I want this. I want to do this. I like having a life outside of work for once. I like having somewhat of a normal life. I mean, a lot of my friends already have this…”

“A man trapped inside of a woman’s body?” Woohyun asked incredulously.

“No…a family,” Sunggyu replied with a laugh. He then picked up the tools again and knelt back down to tighten the final screws. “I guess I just want to know what it feels like, for however long this lasts.”

Woohyun sighed and moved to sit down next to him. “Look, I get what you’re saying,” she started. “I felt the same way at my job. It’s nice to live for something more and for someone else…but hyung, what if this lasts forever?” Woohyun didn’t like that she sounded like she was trying to talk Sunggyu out of this, especially when she could really use the help, but she needed to know his intentions.

And Sunggyu wouldn’t even spare her a glance. “It won’t.”

“But what if it does, for the sake of arguing?”

Now he turned towards her. “I hadn’t thought about it, and there’s a lot to consider,” he began. “It’s hard to say what the future holds. I mean, down the line, even if you stay as Ran Woong, we could find other people that we want to be with more than each other. You might find someone richer who could provide better for you and make you happier. And I might find someone less stubborn. Not that I don’t like you, but if we’re honest, we met each other by accident that night. And I really still don’t know why you told me.” As he went on with his rant, Sunggyu was unable to look her in the eye, even though he’d tried to lighten it up with jokes and was talking at lightspeed. When he said this, however, he made sure to look Woohyun right in the eye: “But as long as you’re here, I’ll protect you.”

Woohyun was touched, deeply. She couldn’t hold back anymore. She pressed a kiss onto Sunggyu’s cheek and afterwards whispered against it, close to his ear, “Thank you.”

Sunggyu shuddered and let out a deep, shaky exhale, acting like Woohyun had done more than give him a simple peck on the cheek. But this moment had been a long time coming. The anticipation, the tension had built up and finally snapped, letting the two finally relax and give into the moment.

Sunggyu slowly turned his head towards her, careful not to knock into her. And they leaned in together into a kiss. Lips tenderly touching, still treating this delicately as if this attraction was newly born and fragile rather than what it was. But shortly, their touches became more confident and kisses more urgent, touching not only the other’s lips but wherever else they found lovely and deserving. They went down, down, until they were laying on the floor, Sunggyu slightly hovering above her, still being careful in their passionate embrace.

Then the doorbell rang.

Sunggyu pulled away. “That must be dinner,” he stated, looking towards the door.

“No.”

Sunggyu snorted and got up. “What do you mean ‘no’?” he teased and went for the door.

Woohyun didn’t know what she meant by ‘no’ either. A part of her must’ve been worried that they’d never get back to that point again. Why was that? After working and living with him, Woohyun knew how Sunggyu’s mind worked. He settled on things. He had a hard time seeing other options. And he had a tendency to sweep complicated things under the rug rather than to confront them.

What was more complicated than kissing your very pregnant man of a roommate? Not much.

Sunggyu was already ‘sweeping,’ brushing over every mention of the crib, covering his words with mouthfuls of food until they were indecipherable, and hiding his eyes whenever Woohyun tried to meet them. So after dinner, Woohyun swept herself away into the shower, taking her sweet time in the bathroom and thinking of what to do next. And Woohyun had come to the decision, as she often had recently, that no thinking was best. Thinking made simple feelings complicated, and right now, Woohyun wanted to simply feel cared for.

“Alright, dishes are done,” Sunggyu announced when she came out of the bathroom. Woohyun rolled her eyes and scoffed. There wasn’t much for him to do but to throw the trash away. Woohyun thanked him anyway for it. Then Sunggyu asked. “Are you going to bed?”

Woohyun nodded. “Yeah, let’s go to bed.”

“Alright, well, good night,” Sunggyu wished her and awkwardly waved at her with both hands. That wave slowed to a halt when he noticed that Woohyun wasn’t moving. It made her laugh, especially since what she implied went straight over his head.

Woohyun walked up to him and took his hand. “Hyung,” she said softly with a tug of his hand. “Let’s go.” With that, Woohyun lead him into the bedroom.

They just slept that night. There was nothing inherently romantic about it. Woohyun snored and took up a lot of space. And Sunggyu had been used to having the whole bed to himself. The only way that these two could get comfortable was if their limbs overlapped. But wasn’t that the whole point? To sleep while touching each other, to know that even in the dead darkness of the night they are not alone? And it was comforting. They had the best sleep since the switch, both of them finally feeling at ease.

Woohyun fell asleep with a smile on her face. Yes, this was what happiness felt like.

A/N: 

FIRST OF ALL, I know that the pronouns are all over the place here, but I wanted to show that, well, Woohyun is trapped in a woman's body. It also made it easier to write without all of the "he."

Second, you might be asking yourself, "Kate, how in the WORLD did you think of this story?" Well, when I thought of this story, I learned that mpreg was a thing. And MAN how people explain (or don't explain) how men can suddenly have babies just amazed me! And this was WAY before I learned about ABO, so you could imagine how much my mind melted after that (like I said before, this is an old fic idea and came before Nu ABO). So I asked myself, "Kate, if you were to write mpreg, how would you do it?" And I thought "AHA! Bodyswap one of them with a pregnant woman!" And that way I knocked out two fic tropes with one story-stone.

Third, you might be now asking, "Okay, fair enough. But why Woohyun?" Because at the time when I came up with this idea, the mpreg I saw involved Sunggyu getting pregnant, so I tried to be cool and innovative and made it Woohyun. Am I cool yet??

THIS IS NOT ABOUT WHO IS TOP OR BOTTOM! I DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT STUFF! I DON'T WRITE ! THIS IS JUST ABOUT NAM WOOHYUN BEING TRAPPED INSIDE A PREGNANT LADY'S BODY! THAT'S IT!

So yeah, I'm not cool at all.

Fourth, "Why now, Kate?" Because I think I can better express the emotions that this story has and realize the extent of them. And also I think I have the ability now to change Woohyun's gender but still make the character sound like him. Those things held me back from writing it earlier.

Fifth and lastly, they work at Netflix. I don't know why I avoided writing that word for this whole chapter! My bff currently works there, and, well, yeah you get a lot of free stuff and other perks. but everything comes at a price.

Sorry for the super long note! Thank you for reading! You're the best!!! I love you!!!