4 months into pregnancy and Yun Hee could tell that it had this strange ability to make one feel tired and hungry like nothing else. And in her case, everything was twofold, since she was carrying two human beings inside her. Currently, she was going through one of those tiring episodes as she was being awakened by her oh-so-sweet husband in a not-so-early morning. Didn’t pregnant woman usually wake up early because of their lack of comfort? Then why was it so different in her case?

Speaking of her husband, Yun Hee wondered how could a piece of human meat look that heartbreakingly gorgeous every morning as she peeked at him through her droopy eyes. He was already dressed in his office attire – his regular boring black pants, white shirt, blue tie (for that day) and a black suit. His hair was neatly brushed backwards, making his forehead visible to the daylight. His left hand displayed a Rolex that he had been using ever since Yun Hee had bought it for him about 8 months ago and their wedding ring on the ring finger. He had his socks on, meaning he would be out of the house in no time.

There was nothing about his appearance that Yun Hee didn’t get to see every day. If anything, he looked tired, his eyebags were serving quite efficiently as the proofs. Yet there she was, checking out her husband shamelessly when the guy was doing her a favour by waking her up from another episode of excessive sleep. That was the effect of Oh Sehun on any other woman out there. Sadly Yun Hee was no exception.

“Are you awake?” Sehun said, in his deep, rich voice that was lacking its usual warmth for her. He had been sitting on the very edge of the bed, trying to keep his distance from where Yun Hee was lying.

Yun Hee hummed as a reply to his question while stretching her hands to lessen her drowsiness. Her yawning stopped midway when her right fist hit Sehun's chest, making him flinch away.

“What happened to the alarm?”, she said while stifling a yawn, feigning ignorance about the fact that her touch had made him uncomfortable. She had lost her right to fuss over that matter.

“You slept through them again.” He said as he retracted his hand that was on her shoulder. The hand was done with its job of shaking her awake, so her husband didn’t see the need to keep it there any longer.

“All five of them?”, she asked letting out another yawn, ignoring the dull pain in her hurt again. She could not believe the power of her sleep. What was wrong with her? Oh yes! She was pregnant and severely tired for apparently no reason.

“What time is it?”, Yun Hee said while sitting up and looked at the clock placed on the bedside table. Wow! She had slept 40 minutes longer than she was supposed to. Great!

As she was moving, Sehun positioned her pillow against the headboard so that she could lean against it and helped her to sit properly without saying a word. In her early days of pregnancy, Yun Hee would often refuse his help, partly because she found it unnecessary and partly because she was not in talking terms with him. But now that her belly seemed to be growing in a massive speed, she had no choice but to give up against her stubborn husband. Her bump was also something weird. It had started growing this rapidly only after they had gotten to know that she was carrying twins. Maybe just like her, her belly also had no idea before that it had been accommodating two growing sprouts.

“You seem to be dressed up quite early.” Yun Hee said as she reached out and pretended to straighten his already neat collar.

She could feel Sehun’s eyes scrutinizing her face but couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye. It was a tough thing she realized, trying to keep someone close to you while avoiding his gaze. Was he meeting 'her'? AGAIN? Lately, this was all Yun Hee could think about.

“I have a meeting with the board of directors.” That same emotionless voice, weighing every word before saying only the necessary ones. But still, she sighed in relief.

“Are you getting late?” Yun Hee said playing with his tie.

“I am.” Plain and simple with a clear meaning. She was lagging him and needed to let go of him. The bitterness forming in made her grimace. She just brushed it away as another of morning sickness.

Yun Hee removed her hands from his collar and folded them on her lap. Chills ran down her spine as she looked right into his eyes. Those cold eyes, they had the power to frost anything. She felt her palms sweating.

As if sensing her turmoils, her husband decided to speak up, telling her the things she had gotten used to hearing every day. The sense of familiarity washed over her, calming her a little.

“Eat your meals and take your medicines properly. I will try to remind you about them from time to time. Don’t overwork or stress yourself out in the hospital, alright? I will come to pick you up so don’t get out of the hospital on your own.”

“Okay, young master. Your wish is my command.” Her husband just nodded his head at the remark, leaving Yun Hee alone to laugh at her own joke. So instead of making a fool out of herself by actually laughing, she just cleared to get rid of the awkwardness.

"Gummy is still not up, so you will have to feed him. Is it okay for you or should I ask a maid to do that?"

"Hun, I am not invalid", she protested.

"Okay, I am telling a maid."

Yun Hee sighed in defeat as her husband got up from the bed. He walked towards the dresser where he had kept some files and documents scattered. The silence that had fallen after the conversation seemed so overwhelming that she felt the sudden urge to talk again. His indifference towards her was not something she had ever had to face after the initial phase of their marriage. So she started a conversation, a topic that had become kind of a taboo between them just to get rid of the silence - the sudden absence of Kim Jongin in their lives.

“Sehun, has Jongin been in contact with you lately?”

She knew that she had successfully gotten the attention of her husband as he turned to look at her with a poker face. She wondered if Oh Sehun was trying to conceal his emotions or he simply didn’t care enough. She decided to settle for the former.

“No”, he said, his face looked grim for a few seconds before he focused on the files in his hands.

Yun Hee knew that the two weren’t in the best terms at that moment and she was the one of the reasons for that. But she decided to not ponder over that. She already had a bunch of thoughts swirling around her head, so there wasn’t enough space for regret. She was tired of feeling guilty all the time.

Sehun was probably done with what he had been doing as he came towards her again and knelt on the floor beside her. Yun Hee knew what was coming as she saw him placing his right palm on her stomach. A small smile graced his face as he started talking to their unborn children fondly, with Yun Hee gazing at his face longingly. When was the last time he had smiled like that for her? Yun Hee couldn’t remember, which was even sadder. Their happiness filled days seemed so long gone.

“Goodbye, my tadpoles. Don’t trouble your mommy too much, okay?" He squinted his eyes playfully before smiling again. "Dada loves you, sweethearts.” Then he placed a soft kiss where his palm had been and stood up to leave the room before Yun Hee called out to him.

“No goodbye kiss for the mommy?” She smiled innocently when Sehun turned to look at her. The situation reminded her of the old days. Her teasing him and his…

“Take care, Yun Hee.” …teasing her back… Nothing!

He left, just like that.

Yun Hee looked at the closed door for a minute before tying her hair in a bun and getting out of the bed. On her way to the bathroom, her eyes fell on their wedding photo. In the picture, both of them had bright smiles on their faces, though their eyes looked dead. The photo seemed to be taunting Yun Hee in her face, as if reminding her how their current situation wasn’t much different than that time.

Sure she didn’t expect Sehun to be all sunshines and rainbows with her after what she had done in the court. But still, his coldness hurt like hell. Shoutings and ugly fights would have been better than what was happening now. It was as if she was there in his life, yet she wasn’t. She was there in his mind, yet she wasn’t. She was just a bystander, appearing before his eyes only to fade away in a matter of seconds. The difference was that she appeared every now and then, since they were living together.

Yun Hee sighed as she filled the tub with water before settling on it comfortably with her hands wrapped around her bump. It was going to be another morning with her husband not saying more than 10 sentences to her. She was so thankful that her morning sickness had faded away with her first trimester because the last thing she wanted to worry about was keeping her last night's dinner in herself. The warmth of the water seemed to be undoing the invisible knots of her body as she leaned against the wall behind her. A small smile made its way on her face while tears slowly rolled down her closed eyes as she rubbed her baby bump soothingly.

She just felt so tired, but she had no choice but endure it silently. After all, she was the one who had brought it upon herself.

The outcome of making a scene out of your marriage in a courtroom full of people was not going to be anything easy. Yun Hee’s situation was no different either.

Coming out of that suffocating room only to find your husband gone, stung a little, but it wasn’t much. After all, Yun Hee was in no place to expect him to be waiting for her with flowers in his hands, when she herself had seen the hateful and betrayed look on his face. That face of his, still haunted her.

Then escaping from the overwhelming questions of your family and friends only to end up being dropped at home by your parents – she couldn’t help thinking when everything would be over. Of course, she had spent the whole journey pretending to be asleep until the car was standing in the driveway of her home.

HOME – now that was her biggest concern. Because entering the threshold of that very familiar mansion and finding it pitch-black was not something Yun Hee got to see every day. She ended up wondering how a house as lively as hers could look like a haunted castle in broad daylight. The servants that should have been running towards her by now, were nowhere to be found. Gummy also didn't come to her running like usual. The blinds were all drawn, the floor was messy with shoes, socks, suit, broken shards of glasses, unharmed pieces of random decorating stuff strewn all over it. Among all the mess that made her doubt whether she was in the right place or not, there was one single thing that stated the fact that it was, indeed, her home. Yun Hee held her bump, probably to seek some strength and took a deep breath.

It was her husband, sitting on the floor with his left knee propped up and his left hand resting on it. His left hand, it was twirling a glass that was half-filled with alcohol. When Yun Hee switched on a few lights and took cautious steps towards the statue-like-figure that looked so painfully broken, she noticed that the glass he had been holding was stained with blood. The blood, it was still colouring the glass he was holding and dripping on the floor. Panicked, Yun Hee was about to rush towards Sehun, when his restrained voice stopped her.

“Stop!.” It was not that loud, but to her, it seemed almost deafening. “Stay right there.”

His voice sounded so dead that Yun Hee couldn’t help searching for his face to check if it was just as dead as his voice. But it was futile, of course. His face was cast downside, glaring at the floor like he wanted to bore a hole in it.

“Hun…”

Before she could speak further, Yun Hee was cut off. “There are glass pieces everywhere. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Yun Hee halted as his words stopped all the chaos that had been happening inside her for a minute. His voice was so baritone, but it was still able to melt her insides. Why did this man never give her any rest? One minute he would break her heart and the next moment he would steal her breath away. Why did he always make things so difficult for her?

“But you are bleeding.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Sehun scoffed before taking a sip from his glass, “At least not as much the pain caused by you.”

PANG! Now instead of his words, it was the silence that followed them seemed deafening. Yun Hee stood there motionless, watching Sehun gulp down the rest of the drink. She winced when she saw him gasping as the wound on his palm came into contact with the part of the glass that was drenched with spilt alcohol. She watched him jerking his palm in pain and found herself agitated when she saw him still reaching out for the bottle lying a couple of feet ahead of him even after suffering like that.

Her patience finally broke when she saw him injuring his knee with one of those broken glass pieces on the floor while trying to crawl towards that cursed bottle of alcohol. He moaned out in pain and Yun Hee found herself not being able to take it anymore, going towards the kitchen right away.

As expected, the kitchen was totally abandoned, All the servants had probably been ordered to retire to their quarters by Mr Joon. Yun Hee took out a first-aid box from the nearest lower cabinet and went back to the living room.

While carrying the box back to the living room, Yun Hee noticed that her hands were slightly shaking. Was it due to anxiety or fear – she didn’t want to know. None of them seemed exactly favourable at that very moment. Upon reaching the living room, she took long strides towards her husband when she was stopped again.

“I told you to not walk around recklessly, don’t you get it?” Sehun raised his voice.

“I am not a kid, Sehun. I can certainly keep my guards up.”

Yun Hee was impatient. She wanted to be close to him, treat his cuts and just nestle herself in his arms. She was beyond exhausted and selfish enough to still want everything to be fine between them. Couldn’t they just skip all the confrontations for one day and sleep in each other’s arms like nothing was wrong? Was it that impossible?

Yun Hee was about to walk again when he spoke up, this time probably saying the true reason for him not wanting her to move around.

“I don’t want you near me for now. Is that too hard to understand?”

PANG! That hit Yun Hee like nothing else, even though she had been somewhat expecting that. A chill ran through her spine, making her shudder helplessly. At that moment, she found herself being thankful towards the darkness around them.

She composed herself nonetheless and spoke up, praying desperately for her voice to not crack. “I don’t care about what you want right now. Your hand and knee are bleeding and they need to be treated immediately.”

Sehun laughed out loud as if she had said something funny. He laughed when Yun Hee finally reached his side, kept laughing even when she took his hand and placed it on the cushion she had kept on her lap right after sitting down on the sofa beside him. It was only when she started treating his wound that his laugh slowly died down.

“Lee Yun Hee,” Sehun called, making Yun Hee focus on his face instead of his hand. It was not his mocking tone that had caught her attention, but him calling her maiden name. Because Oh Sehun always called her Oh Yun Hee, from the very start of their marriage. It was something that always reminded her that she was married to Oh Sehun, even when things weren’t exactly friendly between them.

Yun Hee came out of her daze when bitter words came out of his mouth again. He was looking at her with ridicule filling his face. “When had you ever cared about what I want?”

The roller bandage in Yun Hee’s hand rolled down on the floor, it’s one end still halfway wrapped around Sehun’s hand. Her face probably looked baffled as she looked at him, but she didn’t care. She knew that a storm was coming her way, a storm for which she wasn’t prepared the least even though she had been anticipating it.

“What do you mean?” She asked, even though she knew her question would only fuel the burning rage of the person in front of her.

Sehun smirked. “So we are still beating around the bushes, I see.” He calmly collected the scattered bandage from the floor and handed it over to Yun Hee, urging her to continue with her treatment.

“How about starting with one point at a time?” Sehun wriggled his eyebrows, “Are you okay with that?”

Yun Hee gulped under her husband’s penetrating gaze, then looked down at his messily bandaged hand resting on her lap. Feeling glad that she had something else to focus on instead of his eyes, she said, “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

On her way from the courthouse, Yun Hee had quite an amount of time and space to wonder about exactly which part of her action hurt Sehun the most. Since she had her eyes closed because of pretending to be asleep, there was nothing else to distract her from her thoughts.

Was it the fact that she had kept her decision a secret? After all, Sehun had made it very clear that he never wanted the divorce. If she hadn’t hidden her decision then he could have also denied the divorce. Thus the divorce could have gotten nullified. Or was it the fact that she had made him look like the person wanting this divorce while herself as the one who wanted a second chance, when the case was totally opposite?

But no matter how much she scratched her head, she couldn’t decide exactly what could have hurt Sehun the most. And now that Sehun was finally calling for a discussion, she felt her mind getting boggled again. Why couldn’t she just get inside his head and read his mind since his freaking poker face wasn’t giving away anything?

“Before I say anything, can I ask you a question, Hee?”, Sehun said when she was finally done securing the bandage on his hand and moved to sit down on the floor to tend his knee.

Suddenly he wrapped his injured hand around her waist and pulled her towards him. Their faces were so close to each other that Yun Hee could even count his eyelashes in that dim light. His face was bloated, his eyes and nose were red and puffy, his lips were bloody red from being bitten excessively. Affected by the wrecked sight in front of her, she nodded before letting out a shaky breath.

Sehun whispered, his words felt sharp to her ears and his breath hot on her face, cutting and burning her simultaneously.

“Have you ever, even for once, trusted me with your all?”

The ‘yes’ on the tip of her tongue had stopped right before it could come out, making her choke. The question kept ringing in her mind. She thought about all the time she had trusted Sehun, which he had broken from time to time. She had trusted him when he had said that he wanted to give their marriage a chance, she had trusted him when he had said that he saw a future with her, she had trusted him when he had whispered to her sleepy self that he thought he was falling for her.

Or had she really?

Because every time things went wrong between them, her mind would always say this one sentence at some point, “I told you so.” Every time, he hurt her, her mind always reminded her that she KNEW better than to trust him. But she never acknowledged the truth until that day in the court. That day, no matter how much he had begged to her, cried to her, she hadn’t trusted him. In fact, it was her inability to trust him that she had let "SOMEONE ELSE" take advantage of their situation.

Yun Hee snapped out of her reverie when she felt Sehun holding her shoulders and pushing her away from him slowly. She watched him as he struggled to get up from the floor until he finally stood up.

“I want to be alone for the time being”, he said, without looking at her.

Then he started walking away from her, not even once, looking at the floor to mind the broken glass pieces. His drunk state wasn’t obvious until then, when Yun Hee saw him wobbling on his way.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I did what I did?” She stopped him before he could go any further. And right after that she felt like slapping for blabbering without thinking. What reason could she have given anyway? That she was too much of a weakling to carry his emotional burdens anymore, but loved him too much to leave him for good? That no matter how strong she thought herself to be, she was just someone who let herself get swayed by OTHERS? That she couldn't trust him enough to stay for good? She would rather eat the broken glass pieces on the floor.

Hell! Her reason didn’t make sense even to herself, how could she possibly make him understand? Anyways, she had spoken up already and now had to prepare herself to feel the same hatred she had seen in his eyes in the courtroom.

He stopped, more like jerked to a stop like the drunk person he was at that time. Yun Hee braced herself for his lashing out, but what she was expecting never came though.

“No. I don’t wish to ask you anything else. We are done”

“Okay, then let’s continue this conversation when we are sober”, Yun Hee said, stopping herself from wondering whether his last sentence had any other meaning or not. The thought itself gave her a headache.

Then Sehun turned to face her and stretched his lips in such a melancholic smile that Yun Hee couldn’t help looking down just to avoid it. The expression on his face, it resembled the current state of their house - a total mess. And what he said next made Yun Hee realize that she would have rather had him lash out at her than say that.

“Yun Hee, from now on, let’s just carry out our responsibilities without expecting anything from each other. These unnecessary expectations…” Yun Hee felt her breath hitching as Sehun paused. “They only know how to hurt people. They are cruel…just like you.”

And then he was gone, to the very room where Yun Hee had spent their wedding night alone instead of being in their bedroom. The feeling of déjà vu was not helping at all as Yun Hee found herself standing alone in their humongous living room, finally letting out the tears she had been holding in since that morning.

“Was I late?”, Sehun asked the moment he reached Yun Hee’s side.

He held out his hands and she passed him the stuffs she had been holding while saying, “Not at all. I just came out from the chief resident’s office after a discussion.”

The whole interaction happened so swiftly and soundlessly that Yun Hee couldn’t help feeling that they were the bests when it came to being formal with each other. Being formal had its own perks too. Like Sehun had said, expectations only hurt. Yet, she couldn’t ignore the bitterness inside her.

Since that day, they had been living like roommates who were expecting children together. They slept in the same room, shared the same bathroom, had all of their meals together except lunch, went to their workplaces and came home together – so casual. Expecting children together only caused them to look out for each other instead of avoiding each other completely. And the whole thing was started by Oh Sehun.

The day after the whole divorce fiasco, Sehun had woken up like nothing was wrong. Then he had woken up Yun Hee for work, had breakfast with her, made her take vitamins and other stupid pills, had dropped her to the hospital and had picked her up at the end of the day. They had had their dinner together and that night, Sehun had slept in their bedroom. She had even changed her clothes in front of him. Everything was back to being normal except that he had spent the whole day without saying a single word to her.

This was how things had been going on between them since then. Yun Hee would occasionally try to make small jokes, talk about funny things, initiate casual conversations. But all she would get from him were monosyllabic words, grunts, huffs and all other mood-killing expressions. His message was clear, they were to maintain their distances unless it concerned their unborn children.

Yun Hee shook her head and placed her left hand on her bump as Sehun opened the door to the passenger seat for her. He touched her lower back softly and helped her to sit properly before securing the seat belt for her. Her fingers itched to touch his face, but she controlled herself. Soon he came to sit on the driving seat and they were off to their home.

“Hyung is coming to Korea with Hee-Jin noona and Aiden”, Sehun said.

“Really?” Yun Hee jumped up slightly in excitement. “When?”

“They are going to take tomorrow night’s flight, so they should be here the day after that”, Sehun said without taking his eyes off the road.

“Ah!” Yun Hee smiled with a sigh. “I missed them so much, especially Aiden.” Then she clapped her hands as she remembered something. “I should tell Yeong. Ara will be so happy to know that Aiden is coming.”

Sehun hummed in agreement, but didn’t say anything. Thus the conversation was over even before it could start properly.

Yun Hee leaned her head against the window and caressed her baby bump to soothe the discomfort she had been feeling. Her mind played the conversation she had with the chief resident a while ago. Both of them spent quite an amount of time just like that without speaking a word. Sehun was focused on his driving while Yun Hee was lost in her thoughts.

“Hun”, she began after who-knows-how-long, feeling the need to let Sehun know what the chief resident had told about. “Today, I was asked if I wanted to apply for my residency abroad.”

Nothing, not a single word came out from her husband’s mouth. Yun Hee didn’t mind though. She knew that the information had done its job of affecting Sehun, as she saw him tightening his hold on the steering wheel. So she continued.

“Obviously, I said no.” Then she cast a side glance to see the expression on Sehun’s face. “After all, moving elsewhere with our kids after the divorce will become another legal hassle that I don’t want to go through.”

Suddenly the car came to a stop, startling Yun Hee like no tomorrow.

“I told you too not scare me like that on the road. You know how much…”

“Get out”, Sehun said, interrupting her nagging.

Yun Hee widened her eyes at his tone. “How dare you talk to me like that?”. She turned to her left to face Sehun. Her face was probably showing her anger.

“We are home.” He looked around himself, making Yun Hee do the same thing. That’s when she realized that they had indeed reached their home. A maid was already waiting for them on the driveway. She bowed as soon as Yun Hee’s eyes fell on her.

Unbuckling her seatbelt, she slowly slid out of the car and shut the door. To her surprise, Sehun also came out of the car, instead of parking it and went to open the trunk of the car. Yun Hee observed him carefully while taking out her things from the back seat that Sehun had placed earlier and gave them to the maid waiting to carry their stuffs. She watched him as he took out a giant teddy bear and some cute patterned shopping bags from there. Then he gave them to the maid before signalling her to go back to the house, not giving a single glance towards the curious Yun Hee beside him.

“Did you went shopping today?”, Yun Hee asked, hoping that he really did. Because the other option running through her mind was making her uncomfortable.

“No. A friend gave them," Sehun said without looking at her, "for our babies.” He shut the trunk.

“Friend?”, Yun Hee asked, though she had an idea about who that 'friend' could be. After all, that friend had been shamelessly sending stuffs for their babies for quite a few days.

Sehun came to stand in front of her and looked directly in her eyes before saying, “Hmm. Jieun has sent them.”

Then he went back to the car and drove it away to park it properly, leaving Yun Hee there alone, standing like a statue. She stood there for a while and looked at the trail of the car before whispering to herself bitterly and making her way towards the front door.

“Thanks, Kang Jieun, for everything you are doing for us.”

Hello, fellas. This is Anikasen.

It has been really long since the last update. I know that and I feel so sorry. I so wish I could do a better job for you all.

I hope, I was able to satisfy with you with this, though it was not much. But I can assure you that the next chapter is going to be an important one and I will try my best to update it faster.

Till then, take care and please don't believe in BASELESS rumours about anyone. Some of you may know what I mean and those who don't, just take it as a piece of useful advice.

Love you all.