PAIRING: MinKey, JongYu, YoungTae, broken!OnKey, JongTae, InaDay

PROLOGUE

“Minho,” she called out to me, arm stretching towards me. I jump up from the chair I was sitting on and rush to her side. I grab her hand in mines and lean down to her.

“Sooyoung noona, I’m right here,” I softly say to her, wiping the sweat from her brow, “Did you need something? Are you in pain? Do I need to get a nurse?”

“No, I’m okay. Calm down,” she chuckles, squeezing my hand. It worries me that I barely feel the squeeze. Was she really that weak? Maybe I should go an get the doctor.

“What did you need then? Anything you want, I’ll go and get it. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“Minho, I’m fine. Please calm down, you’re making me all jittery acting like this. I just want to talk, that’s all.”

“Oh okay,” I let out a sigh of relief.

“Pull up your chair,” she motions to the chair I had been sitting on with her free hand. I nod at her and move to pull the chair over, taking a seat in it before grabbing her hand again.

“What do you want to talk about? You know you should be resting.”

“You know, with the way you talk to me, people probably think that you’re the older one. I’m fine Minho, I’ve done nothing but rest since we got here two days ago. I think I’ll be okay if I take a little break from resting. Besides, like I said, I just want to talk.”

“I’m sorry noona. I just worry about you. This pregnancy hasn’t been easy for you.”

“I know Minho, I know,” she rubs my hand and gives me a soft smile, “You’ve been a great dongsaeng for me the whole time. All those times I forced you to come to my appointments with me instead of going out with your friends and you never complained once.”

“I didn’t mind going with you to your appointments. Anything I was able to do to make your pregnancy easier, I was willing to do. Umma and appa are too busy and old to be running around with you anyways. So it was either me or you go alone.”

“I could have gone with a friend.”

“But we’re family.”

“I have the best dongsaeng ever,” she leans over and kisses my cheek, “Anyways, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Will you relax, you’ve been so tense lately. I’m the one who’s going to be giving birth not you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even know I was tense in the first place.”

“That’s bad Minho. You don’t even know when you’re tense anymore,” she shakes her head in disappointment, “The moment I’m released from here, I am treating you to a nice massage. Until then, I want you to go home tonight and take a nice hot bath, loosen up those muscles a little.”

“I’m fine noona. I don’t need to go home to shower.”

“Yes you do. You’re starting to stink. I wouldn’t be surprised if your nephew can smell you from in there,” she rubs her stomach and laughs to herself, “Right Yoogeun? You can smell your stinky Uncle Minho huh? He needs to go and shower doesn’t he?”

I can’t help but laugh with her. She did have a point. It wouldn’t hurt for me to go home and take a shower, but I was afraid to leave her alone. I know I shouldn’t be because we’re here at the hospital, but I can’t help it. This pregnancy has been really hard on her. There were several major complications from the beginning and now she’s stuck here at the hospital until my nephew decides he wants to come out.

“Fine, after our talk I’ll go home and shower. I promise not to be gone for more than half an hour.”

“Half an hour? So that’ll be like a 10 minute shower? I think you’ll need more than that to get the stench off your skin,” she scrunches her nose at me.

“I don’t smell that bad do I?” I lift my arm and give myself a whiff. Okay, I’ll admit that I do stink a little, but it’s not that bad. I just smell like I just came back from a light run, a ten minute shower would be just right to clean off my body.

“You don’t, but you can still take a little bit longer for yourself. I doubt you’ll miss his birth. He’s a stubborn one, doesn’t seem to want to come out. Although, can you really blame him? He has it made. All he does is float around all day and he doesn’t even need to work for his food. I wouldn’t want to leave either.”

“Neither would I,” I rub her stomach as well, smiling at her, “I can’t wait to meet him.”

“And I’m sure he can’t wait to meet you. Speaking of Yoogeun, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know that we never really formally talked about this, but you were there with me for all my appointments so I think you have an idea about what I’m going to bring up.”

“Is it about what the doctor’s been telling you since the very beginning?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t really think that you’re not going to make it through the delivery right?”

“Of course not, but I can’t take this lightly. The doctor said it’s a pretty much a 50/50 chance. I just want to make sure I take all the necessary precautions.”

“Noona, you’ll be fine. You’re going to deliver Yoogeun and be there until he grows old and has a family of his own.”

“I know Minho, I know. But like I said I want to make sure there’s a back up plan just in case,” I frown at her and she pats my hand, “I’m going to me a mom. God forbid something were to happen to me, I want to make sure Yoogeun is going to be taken care of. Hand me my bag will you?”

“Okay, but do we really need to be talking about this right now?” I lean over and pick her bag off the ground. I give her a serious look as I set it down beside her. She just nods at me and starts to dig through the big bag beside her. I continue to quietly sit there, watching my sister. There was no way she was going to die while she gave birth to her son, I don’t care what the doctor said. She’s strong and definitely wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of her and her child. It’s bad enough that the baby’s father passed away before he even knew that my sister was pregnant, so there’s no way he’s going to grow up without his mom. I’m not going to let that happen no matter what needs to be done to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“I want you to sign this Minho,” she places a folder on the tray beside her, sliding it over her bed towards me.

“What is it?” I open it up and start to scan the contents, eyes widening as I skim over the words, “Noona, are you serious?”

“Yes Minho, if something happens to me during childbirth or otherwise, I want you to be Yoogeun’s legal guardian.”

“Noona—I… I…” I was at a lost for words. I didn’t want to think of anything happening to her. She was in a fragile state as it was, there’s no reason for her to be thinking about stuff like this.

“Minho please. Umma and appa are getting too old to take care of another baby. And I know that if something were to happen to me, that you’d be sacrificing a lot to be his guardian. But there’s no one else that I trust my son with,” she’s looking at me, completely serious about what she’s asking me to do.

“But nothing is going to happen to you,” I argue.

“Minho, please. This is important to me. If something happens to me, I want you to raise Yoogeun like he was your son.”

I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. I could never say no to my sister. Even though she’s older than me, I sometimes saw her as my baby sister. I pull the folder a little closer to me and sigh, “Do you have a pen?”

“Thank you Minho!” she beams at me while she wraps her arms around me in a big hug, “Thank you so much!”

I flip over in my bed and stumble out, knowing just where to go so I didn’t run into or trip over anything. I lean over the railing and pick up the crying baby, bring him up to my chest. I start to bounce him up and down and pat his to try to calm him down. I’ve finally grown accustomed to not getting a full night’s rest. It seems like Yoogeun doesn’t like to let me sleep for more than a few hours before he decides that it’s time for me to wake up. I don’t even need an alarm clock at this point.

“Yoogeunnie,” I start to coo as I continue to bounce him, “What are you doing up hm? You didn’t take your afternoon nap today and you went to sleep late. How can you be up this early? Are you hungry? You don’t feel like you need a new diaper.”

He just continues to cry in my arms, not caring about my attempts to calm him down. Raising a baby definitely isn’t easy. I wish he could just tell me what he wants, but that won’t be for like another year and a half or so. Until then, I’ll just have to play the guessing game like I have been since I brought him home from the hospital. I start to make my way out of my bedroom, it was obvious that I wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon. I grab a binky off my dresser and place it in his mouth to temporarily stop his cries. Now that I was fully awake I could tell that his cry was an ‘I’m hungry, feed me’ cry. I look over at the clock on my nightstand, it was about time for him to eat again.

“Yoogeunnie,” I look at him as I make my way to the kitchen, “Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?” He looks at me and attempts a smile around his binky. I can’t help but laugh, it was adorable how he would try to show his emotions to me now. It wasn’t just crying and smiling anymore. I tickle his stomach, eliciting a soft laugh from his mouth which causes the binky to fall out. I bend over and grab it off the floor, putting it in my mouth to clean it off. I know it’s gross, but I know he’ll starting crying his head off again if I didn’t put it back in his mouth.

Once I’m in the kitchen, I immediately start preparing his bottle. It was definitely hard to do anything while I held him when he was first born, but now it was second nature to me. I honestly think I do things better when he’s in my arms. I never thought I would get so attached to him in such a short amount of time. He was pretty much my life now. Everything revolved around him. My parents were kind of worried about how much I’ve given up because of Yoogeun, but I told him I didn’t mind. I promised my sister that I would raise him like he was my own son and I wasn’t going to break that promise to her.