Part One

Siwon woke up one day realising that he had had enough of the Chinese boys and Heechul and, to some extent, Kangin, being against his religion. Most of the other Super Junior boys were Christian (either Catholic or Protestant), some extremely strongly like Kyuhyun, Eunhyuk, Kibum and Yesung, and some less strongly (Sungmin and Ryeowook). Siwon wasn’t happy that they weren’t all devout believers.

He figured that he should pray to God to make them understand His Holy goodness.

“God,” he said, kneeling beside his bed one night. “Please make all the Super Junior boys believe in You and Your Holiness. Some of them do not believe in You and there is nothing I can do. Is there anything You can do to make them believe in You? Amen.”

---

God, who can hear all simultaneous prayers and choose which ones He answers to, decided to answer Siwon’s prayer—mostly just for fun—, because Siwon was one of His favourites (even though God is not supposed to pick favourites, but He’s God; He can make up His own rules).

He pondered what He could do to make the entire boyband believe in Him. There were only a few, three, four, out of fifteen people who didn’t believe in Him at all, but there were several who weren’t completely convinced about His existence. He decided it was time to perform another Miracle.

He studied all fifteen members of the band to find a member who would be perfect for the miracle He particularly wanted to commit. He ruled out most of the members immediately, including the very youngest, and then found one member who was exactly the type of person He wanted.

He smiled, and cast it.

---

Less than a month later, Kyuhyun started throwing up every morning for a week, and, after Sungmin told him on the third day it happened, when they still presumed it was a bug Kyuhyun had picked up or something he’d eaten, Leeteuk got progressively more and more worried about their maknae. He was pulled from all activities and forced to have extensive bed rest under the guise of swine flu.

“Honey,” Leeteuk said quietly, on the fifth day, as Kyuhyun pulled back from the toilet. “Honey, you shouldn’t still be sick. It should have passed by now.”

Kyuhyun, who had tear tracks down his cheeks from coughing up everything he’d eaten that hadn’t digested already, gave a half-hearted glare that mostly came out miserable.

“I think you should see a doctor,” Leeteuk continued.

Kyuhyun nodded, sighing.

He didn’t get to see a doctor before he stopped throwing up quite as often as before, though he still tended to be sick in the mornings once or twice a week (he didn’t tell Leeteuk), and started feeling like his old snarky self again. He thought nothing of it for two more weeks, until he started getting tired in the middle of the day even though he hadn’t done much Starcraft playing or a lot of dance practice. Their trainer sent him home with a somewhat disgusted look, probably wondering why he was so pathetic. He was banned from his computer until he got better, even though he knew that wasn’t the reason he was so tired.

---

Zhou Mi and Henry arrived at the end of the next week to start recording Super Junior M’s next full album and Kyuhyun almost sleepwalked into the recording studio. Zhou Mi was by his side within minutes, looking extremely worried. He’d seen Kyuhyun tired before—hard not to when they’d lived together for several months—, but this was almost catatonic. He wondered how many Zerg battles he had played to get him this tired.

“What’s with him?” he asked Siwon, who shrugged and mumbled something about Kyuhyun being tired all week.

Zhou Mi slipped an arm around Kyuhyun’s waist and led him to a chair, the younger leaning against him quite heavily. The older boy pushed Kyuhyun down onto the chair, and the younger slumped sideways, against Zhou Mi’s hip, and nearly bowled him over. Han Geng quickly pulled a chair over for Zhou Mi, who sat on it gratefully. Kyuhyun collapsed in his lap and promptly went to sleep.

Zhou Mi blinked in surprise, and then looked up at their leader, the question in his eyes.

“I haven’t a clue why he’s like this,” Han Geng replied, a frown on his face. “We’ve been wondering all week. He’s been so tired he hasn’t even played on his computer. He’s just slept the week away.”

“He probably sleeps too much,” Ryeowook said.

“Maybe we should wake him up?” Henry asked. “If all he does is sleep, it can’t be too good for him.”

Zhou Mi nodded, and said, “Kuixian.” He rubbed at the boy’s arm and said it again, in Kyuhyun’s ear. “Kuixian, wake up!” He tried it a third time, this time rubbing Kyuhyun’s spine.

The other boy purred, and snuggled closer.

The entire room blinked at this noise coming from Kyuhyun, and Henry giggled.

“Henry,” Han Geng warned, and Henry stopped laughing immediately, the unspoken threat enough to silence him.

It was only after Donghae offered to be Kyuhyun’s Prince Charming (“Wrong Disney film, Donghae-hyung; you mean Phillip.”) and then pinched Kyuhyun, resulting in high-pitched whining, that Kyuhyun finally woke up.

Zhou Mi made a mental note to book a doctor’s appointment if it continued for much longer.

---

Kyuhyun was almost back to normal the next week, aside from the fact he was always having cravings for strange food he never usually ate. It was driving Ryeowook mad.

“No,” he said, when Kyuhyun asked him to stir-fry chocolate for him. “You’re eating what I’m cooking, and that’s final.”

Kyuhyun’s eyes started watering and Ryeowook just looked at him with a kind of baffled awe, because that was Kyuhyun, Kyuhyun who thought normal human emotions, especially those belonging to “stupid Fs”, whatever that meant, were for idiots—Kyuhyun was INTJ, he would proudly proclaim, he didn’t possess any F-ly emotions (whenever Kyuhyun said that, Sungmin usually made some comment about Kyuhyun holding Zhou Mi’s hand and looking up at him with those wide, trusting eyes. Kyuhyun would then chase Sungmin around the room until he forgot why he was running and they collapsed on the floor, giggling). Kyuhyun flailed his arms about and exclaimed, “I’m telling Teukie-hyung.”

Ryeowook followed, out of amusement more than anything else, as Kyuhyun ran, barefooted, to the flat upstairs and then whined tearfully to Leeteuk that Ryeowook was picking on him.

When Leeteuk asked Ryeowook what Kyuhyun had wanted, over the maknae’s head (he’d climbed onto Leeteuk’s lap mid-whine), he told him. Leeteuk widened his eyes in surprise and promptly reached for the telephone.

---

Kyuhyun kicked his feet backwards and forwards childishly off the edge of the bed as the doctor asked Leeteuk what was wrong with him. He didn’t think anything was wrong with him.

Leeteuk explained about it all; from the sickness to the tiredness to the pickiness and the fact he’d turned into a child. Kyuhyun pouted at this last comment, folded his arms and whinged that he wasn’t a child. Leeteuk simply raised his eyebrows as if this proved his point.

The doctor nodded, and stood up to perform some tests. He checked Kyuhyun’s eyes, throat, blood pressure and heartbeat.

“His blood pressure is a little high,” the doctor mumbled, “but nothing to worry about.”

He prescribed some vitamins for the maknae to take in the hope of settling his hormones and sent them home again, explaining that if none of those symptoms were still happening then they had probably sorted themselves out.

The vitamins seemed to do the trick. Or almost, because aside from the odd bizarre craving for melted chocolate, and goats cheese, ketchup, dragon fruit and ramyun salad, and the fact he began to get tired again quickly, and the fact his bladder suddenly became the size of a pea, causing him to wake up every other hour to run to the bathroom, and leave rehearsals mid-dance move, Kyuhyun appeared back to his old self. (So, he wasn’t back to his old self, but at least he was getting there.)

---

Two months later, when they were eating dinner, Kyuhyun having stopped throwing up in the last week or so and therefore gained his appetite back, Ryeowook peered closely at him. “Have I been feeding you more than usual, Kyunnie?” he asked.

Kyuhyun shook his head, because he didn’t think he’d been eating more than normal. “Why?” he asked, and ate another overflowing spoonful of rice.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re filling out a bit,” Ryeowook continued. “It’s good though; you’re skin and bones. And it’s not a lot. Maybe a couple of pounds.”

Kyuhyun thought that that, coming from Ryeowook (he gave Ryeowook’s pronounced cheekbones and sharp shoulders a quick pointed look), was a bit rich, but bit his tongue to avoid offending the cook—he certainly didn’t want to begin living off mushy ramyun and undercooked, crunchy rice.

Instead, he looked down at his stomach and silently agreed that he’d put on a little bit of weight, but he didn’t pay it any attention. He simply stood up and mumbled that he was going to bed.

“That’s probably it; sleeping on a full stomach,” Sungmin said behind him, and Kyuhyun thought he was probably right. He fell into bed, fully clothed.

---

A couple of weeks later, Donghae pointed out that Kyuhyun’s dancing appeared to have become worse since the last time they had commented on the quality of it. As he’d been getting better since Donghae and Eunhyuk had started teaching him personally, it was quite surprising.

“Black hole,” Kyuhyun replied, and collapsed into a chair, yawning. He rested his hand on his stomach, which drew everyone’s attention to it automatically.

Although most of the members had noticed he’d been putting on weight steadily, they hadn’t mentioned it around him, after Ryeowook’s last attempt. However, they felt that they had to say something. Kyuhyun was certainly rounder then, and he’d been eating a lot, when usually they had to convince him to finish his meals instead of heading straight back to his laptop. He had also been complaining that his abdominal scars from the accident had been stretching, which hurt a lot. They were worried about his change in behaviour. (They were also concerned because he appeared to be gaining s, and, accompanied with his wide, childbearing hips, generous-sized bottom and the fact that with a wig on he looked uncomfortably feminine, it just made him the token, albeit very tall, girl in their boyband, which was not good. Heechul kept glaring at him, even though Heechul hated cross-dressing. Except as Lady Hee-Hee.)

“Kyuhyun,” Sungmin began, and the rest of the members heaved a combined sigh of relief, as if glad they weren’t the ones to mention it. “Kyuhyun, you’re…have you been eating well?”

Kyuhyun nodded, his eyes shut. “Fine, Hyung.”

“It’s just you’re…”

Donghae interrupted tactlessly, “Kyuhyun, you’ve grown fat!”

Kyuhyun’s eyes sprang open and he glared at Donghae with as much viciousness as he could muster. “I. Have. Not.”

“It’s true,” Eunhyuk mumbled. “The Hyungdeul have commented on it. They want to put you on a better diet.”

“You’re gaining s,” Shindong said. “Soon they’ll be bigger than mine!” He pouted in jest. Sungmin shouldered him, teasingly.

“I’m not fat!” Kyuhyun shouted, and he stormed out of the room.

“Why do people suddenly eat more food than usual?” Leeteuk asked himself thoughtfully.

“Because my food is good?” Ryeowook answered.

“Kyuhyun’s been eating your food for years, Wookie,” Yesung pointed out gently, leaning slightly against the younger boy. He rubbed at Ryeowook’s shoulder in a kind, comforting manner.

“Maybe he has a tumour,” Donghae said, and frowned. “Oh, I hope not.”

“Donghae, don’t say things like that, it doesn’t help anyone,” Siwon warned him, and Shindong hit Donghae over the head helpfully.

“Maybe we should get him checked over anyway,” Leeteuk said. “He could probably do with another health check. But he probably won’t go with us, not now. Not after this.”

“Zhou Mi?” Sungmin suggested. “They’re close and Zhou Mi’s been worried about Kyuhyun for ages.”

Leeteuk nodded and dialled Zhou Mi’s number.

---

“Take off all your clothes, except your underwear, and put on this robe,” the nurse instructed, and handed Kyuhyun a blue hospital gown. Kyuhyun shuddered, remembering the last time he wore one of those. The squeal of the tires and the sudden pain all over his body was still fresh in his mind, even after all those years.

Kyuhyun gave one nervous look to Zhou Mi, who replied with an encouraging nod, and he went into the changing room indicated and put on the robe. He put his clothes in the locker outside and gave the key to Zhou Mi to hold. The older boy gave his hand a gentle squeeze and Kyuhyun felt a little better. He followed the waiting doctor into his room.

“Please sit on the table,” the doctor said. “I’m going to take a blood sample and then we’re going to do a full-body scan. It’ll take about twenty minutes.”

The blood test didn’t take very long, just a little sting, and soon he was lying in the machine. Kyuhyun hated it. He hated lying in it with it tightly around him and the feeling of suffocation it gave him. He hated the radio playing through the headphones he’d been given—apparently it was Super Junior hour, particularly Super Junior ’05, and he spent most of the time listening to Miracle and TWINS. He hated the fact that suddenly every part of his body started itching at the same time and he kept getting told off when he went to scratch. He wanted to cry when he was finished, and very nearly asked if he could leave in order to do so.

He was pulled out long before the twenty minutes were over, the doctor looking slightly panicked.

The doctor asked him to lift up the gown so he could examine his stomach. He over it with his hand, and then pressed lightly in places.

“There was something interesting on the scan, and because it’s radiography, if it is what I think it is you had to be out immediately,” the doctor explained, pressing his hand firmer against the side of Kyuhyun’s stomach. “I will tell you when I know all the details, because what the scan says is very surprising.”

“What does it say?” Kyuhyun asked.

“It says…” The doctor paused, before continuing, “It says that you’re pregnant.”

Kyuhyun fainted.

---

The doctor poked his head around the door and asked, “Did you bring him?”

Zhou Mi nodded.

“Please come in.”

Zhou Mi was horrified to see Kyuhyun on the floor. “What happened to him?!”

“He fainted,” the doctor said. “Are you with him?”

“I’m his bandmate,” Zhou Mi said, misunderstanding.

“No, are you…are you dating him?” the doctor clarified.

“Oh, no, no I’m not,” Zhou Mi said, and frowned, because it was an odd question to be asked in a homophobic country. “Why?”

The doctor nodded in response. “I see.” He didn’t offer Zhou Mi any more information, which Zhou Mi presumed was because of doctor-patient confidentiality, but that didn’t stop him being intrigued. Why bring it up in the first place?

Kyuhyun groaned and started sitting up, and Zhou Mi ran over to him. “Are you okay?” he asked gently, trying to help Kyuhyun into a sitting position. Kyuhyun burst into tears and threw his arms around the older boy, which Zhou Mi took to mean “no”.

Kyuhyun didn’t seem to show any signs of stopping his tears no matter how panicked Zhou Mi became in response, so Zhou Mi calmed himself down and took the younger out of the room when allowed and sat him in one of the changing rooms. He then got Kyuhyun’s clothes out of the locker and helped the younger to change back into them. He got his first proper glimpse of the bump without clothes on, and Zhou Mi was astonished at how large and how round it was in such a little amount of time. It didn’t look wobbly, like fat; it had shape to it.

Kyuhyun didn’t stop crying for the entire journey home, and then avoided everyone’s questions by keeping his head pressed into Zhou Mi’s shirt until Zhou Mi led them to Kyuhyun’s bedroom, where the maknae headed to his bed and pulled Zhou Mi in after him, cuddling up to him like Zhou Mi was a very large teddy bear.

---

Kyuhyun stayed in his room for the best part of the next two days, his food being brought in by a worried-looking but silent Ryeowook, until the letter came detailing the results of his scan and blood test.

The blood test confirmed what the doctor had seen in the scan: Kyuhyun was pregnant. Roughly five months pregnant, as well.

Kyuhyun folded the letter up, stuffed it under his pillow, and started crying again, wondering why these things always happened to him.

Leeteuk came in that evening to ask how he was, and Kyuhyun knew he had to tell someone, and he didn’t want the first person to know to be any of his best friends. He’d rather the eldest, their mother figure, knew first.

He pulled the letter out from under his pillow, handed it to Leeteuk, and stuffed his face in the teddy bear Zhou Mi had given him to hold whilst he was out following his schedule.

He heard Leeteuk’s gasp.

“How is this possible?” he asked quietly. “You’re a boy!”

“I don’t know,” Kyuhyun mumbled, saying his first words in days.

“Have you…you weren’t a girl once, right? You’re not Ahra-sshi in disguise?”

Kyuhyun shook his head. He was himself.

“I don’t understand how it’s possible. You don’t have a uterus. You don’t menstruate! You don’t even possess eggs!” Kyuhyun shook his head again, because scientifically it seemed impossible. “Besides that, who could the father be?” Leeteuk asked thoughtfully, and Kyuhyun started crying again, because he didn’t want to even start thinking about that. “Oh no! It’s not…it’s not one of the members, is it?” Even through his tears, Kyuhyun could see that Leeteuk’s eyes were wide and horrified.

Kyuhyun put his head in his hands, dropping the bear as he did so, took a deep breath, and admitted something he’d never told anyone before. “I’ve never…” he began, and broke off. He clenched his hands together. “I’ve never…” he repeated, “…been…”

“Hmm?”

“I’ve never done…” Kyuhyun tried again.

“Is it one of the members?” Leeteuk interrupted. “Because you can just say so, I’ll understand,” although his tone of voice begged to differ.

Kyuhyun shook his head frantically. “I’ve never had !” he wailed, finishing his sentence finally.

Leeteuk blinked at him. “You’ve never…had ?”

Kyuhyun nodded. “I’ve dated girls, but we’ve never got to that stage.”

“Not even with a boy?” Leeteuk asked.

Kyuhyun shook his head again. “No.” He was straight. Of course not.

“So basically you’re telling me that you’re a pregnant, male ?” The tone of his voice was sceptical, disbelieving.

Kyuhyun nodded, crying into his hands. All of a sudden, Leeteuk didn’t seem to believe him.

“So this is another immaculate conception?” He still sounded unconvinced.

Kyuhyun shrugged.

“This is one heck of a sick joke, Kyuhyun,” Leeteuk said with a sigh. “I thought you’d know better. We really care about you, you know. I’m disappointed in you.”

“But—” Kyuhyun began.

Leeteuk waved him off and stood up. “Until you can tell me what’s really wrong, you are not allowed to play Starcraft.” He crossed to Kyuhyun’s laptop and ejected the disk, pocketing it in his jumper. “I hope you will tell me, soon.”

Kyuhyun had never completely stopped crying, but when Leeteuk left, he sobbed heavily into his pillow, wondering, again, why these things always happened to him.

“I’m not the little boy who cried “wolf”!” he wailed to himself. “This isn’t fair.”

---

Leeteuk must have told everyone, because over the next three days he received texts and visits from all the band members teasing him. “So, tell us, who’s -really- the daddy?” was a common text that he could never answer because he didn’t know.

They started betting amongst themselves, guessing it was one of their own. The common vote was Zhou Mi, although Sungmin got several votes as well. Henry gave his vote as, “Any of you. All of you.” When asked why, he said simply, “Kyuhyun is like Minho! He’s a Hyung-. He adores all of you. He acts like the baby on purpose sometimes. Even I know this.” He then went on to laugh at Kyuhyun’s supposed ity, having lost his own to a girl in high school at sixteen. Because he liked to proclaim he was too young to kiss girls, this fact baffled quite a few of their members. Sungmin would laugh at them all and wrap an arm around Henry, because he knew far more about their youngest than the rest of them did.

Zhou Mi found out quite early on, and that was because Heechul texted him, not because Kyuhyun told him (he didn’t seem too unhappy that Kyuhyun hadn’t told him, having understood that Kyuhyun was terrified out of his mind). He also appeared to be the only one who believed Kyuhyun immediately (Donghae, Eunhyuk and Yesung also completely believed him, and Donghae spent most of his time asking if he could touch the baby, which Kyuhyun kept pointing out was impossible as the baby was inside him. Sungmin and Shindong also seemed to believe him, although it had taken them a few days to come to terms with the idea. Siwon just prayed a lot, and the others were mostly sceptical: Henry, Heechul and Kangin thought it was a hilarious prank, Ryeowook and Han Geng were worried about Kyuhyun’s mental and physical state, Kibum didn’t care and Leeteuk was still angry and disbelieving).

“Kuixian! Kuixian, are you really pregnant?” Zhou Mi asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. Kyuhyun handed him the doctor’s letter. He squealed as he read it, and promptly lifted up Kyuhyun’s shirt and pressed a cool hand against Kyuhyun’s stomach. “I think I can feel the baby!”

“Can you feel a baby when you’re five months pregnant? I haven’t felt it yet.”

Zhou Mi didn’t answer, just hugged him. “Kuixian’s having a baby! Mama Kuixian~!”

“I don’t want to be the mother,” Kyuhyun whined.

“You’re carrying the baby,” Zhou Mi pointed out. “You’re Mama by default.” He paused. “Who’s Baba?”

Kyuhyun shrugged. Zhou Mi gasped.

“Oh no! Was it a one night stand?!”

Kyuhyun shook his head, briefly wondering who had taught Zhou Mi how to say that in Korean. “There hasn’t been anyone,” he explained awkwardly.

Zhou Mi frowned. “You mean…you don’t remember it?”

Kyuhyun shook his head. No, I mean there hasn’t been anyone, ever. “I’ve never done it,” he said, slightly exasperated. “And if I have…I don’t remember, no.” He sighed.

“Oh…” Zhou Mi replied, his eyes wide, and then cocked his head as if he was trying to work out how a got pregnant, let alone a male one. “Are you keeping it?” he asked eagerly, changing the subject quickly, probably to save himself from trying to work out the logic of that.

Kyuhyun shook his head. “How can I, in here? We’re a boyband. Someone’s bound to find out.”

“But somebody’s going to find out if Zhao Kuixian takes a baby to a Children’s Home,” Zhou Mi pointed out, and Kyuhyun resisted the urge to correct his name to Cao Guixian. “The fangirls are clever. Then they’re going to wonder.”

“How are we supposed to look after a baby, MiMi-ge?” he asked, using the childish nickname for once, instead of forgoing honorifics as he was prone to doing. He was scared. Everyone knew how children confused him. No matter what he did, it wasn’t right. “How am I supposed to?” His eyes started watering again and Zhou Mi gathered him onto his lap, cuddling him close.

“Ssh,” he said, and started rubbing Kyuhyun’s back comfortingly. “We’ll overcome that hurdle when we get to it. It’ll be okay.”

---

The doctor who had done the scan must have known how clueless Kyuhyun was, as he booked the first appointment with the obstetrician.

Zhou Mi took him, Kyuhyun holding his hand the whole time. When the doctor admitted him (she appeared to have been briefed on his situation, because her eyebrows didn’t go up too much upon seeing a boy with a possible baby bump), he tugged Zhou Mi in with him.

The doctor smiled reassuringly at Kyuhyun and asked him to sit on the table.

“Are you the father?” she asked Zhou Mi, seeing how tightly Kyuhyun was holding onto his hand.

Zhou Mi shook his head. “Best friend,” he said, and Kyuhyun nodded.

The doctor nodded in a way that suggested she didn’t completely believe them but would accept it without complaint (just for that moment, at least). She lifted up Kyuhyun’s shirt and squirted jelly onto the scanner.

“This’ll tell us if you really are pregnant or not,” she said. She rubbed the cold scanner over his stomach.

Kyuhyun kept his eyes shut, not entirely sure he wanted to see, but he heard Zhou Mi’s gasp, and the other tightened his hold on his hand, almost cutting off the circulation.

“Kuixian, Kuixian!” Zhou Mi squealed, and Kyuhyun opened his eyes to look at the other boy. He was crying. Zhou Mi nodded in the direction he was facing and Kyuhyun obediently turned to face the sonogram.

There was a shaded white and grey mass on the black background and Kyuhyun was pretty sure that that was a person, a baby. He looked down at the scanner on his stomach and up at the sonogram and suddenly he felt sick. He shut his eyes tightly.

“Kuixian! It’s a baby!” Zhou Mi said, oblivious to his dismay.

“I can see that,” he replied, although his eyes were still shut.

“Kuixian, it’s your baby!”

I don’t want a baby. I’m twenty-three years old. I shouldn’t have to deal with this.

“Can we have a DVD of this?” Zhou Mi asked the doctor. “Oh! Can you tell what the baby is? We want to know, right, Kuixian?” Kyuhyun shrugged. He didn’t care either way.

He could hear the smile in the doctor’s voice when she replied, “She’s a little girl. And you’re twenty-one weeks along.” She told them when the baby was roughly due. It seemed so soon; only another nineteen, twenty weeks, and he knew they would go by quickly.

“Kuixian, that’s your daughter~!” Kyuhyun could tell why people thought Zhou Mi was the father; he was certainly proud enough for the both of them.

The doctor asked him about his medical history, but because he was so far along in the pregnancy, and the baby seemed to be the correct shape and size for her age—regardless of the radiation from the full-body scan—, she wasn’t very worried. She weighed Kyuhyun and checked how tall he was and did several blood tests to check he didn’t have any diseases he didn’t know about, and checked his blood pressure to make sure he was healthy. He was then handed a glass phial and pointed in the direction of the toilets, much to his embarrassment. Zhou Mi simply smiled encouragingly at him and Kyuhyun blushed. When he’d finished, they were allowed to leave.

The drive back to the Super Junior flats was silent, Zhou Mi driving carefully and Kyuhyun trying to look anywhere but at the DVD of the sonogram. He was far too young for it all.

---

The other members, Leeteuk further back from the rest of them, crowded around when they arrived back. Kyuhyun, holding tightly onto Zhou Mi’s hand, looked up at him, asking him to answer for him. Zhou Mi smiled in response as if to say he would.

“How is it?” Eunhyuk asked excitedly.

“She’s fine. Healthy,” Zhou Mi replied.

“She?” everyone asked. Donghae and Eunhyuk bounced and even Henry and Heechul showed some interest.

“Yeah, she’s a girl,” Zhou Mi said with a smile.

Sungmin sighed. “It would be better if she was a boy. Can we look after a girl?”

“Most of us have sisters, it should be fine,” Heechul said, although it was really only eight of them—him, Leeteuk, Kyuhyun, Henry, Kibum, Eunhyuk, Siwon and Shindong.

Kyuhyun looked up. “What makes you think we’re keeping it?” he asked quietly. “No. What makes you think I’m keeping it?”

The boys seemed surprised. “Why wouldn’t you keep her?” they asked.

“We’re a boyband!” Kyuhyun wailed. “We can’t have a baby here! What would happen when it grew up?!”

“That ‘it’ is your daughter!” Henry said. “She’s your responsibility!”

“I’m just a kid,” Kyuhyun replied, eyes wet again. “I can’t cope with this.” He pulled his hand out of Zhou Mi’s, the DVD of the ultrasound at Henry and ran towards his bedroom.

---

Kyuhyun was woken up by a gentle hand his spine, and he turned to face Leeteuk.

“Hey,” Leeteuk said gently. Kyuhyun nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. It seems very surreal.”

Tell me about it.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you when you needed me to be, Maknae. But no parent, no leader, expects their youngest to have a baby first.” He Kyuhyun’s hair lightly. Kyuhyun curled around Leeteuk’s hip in forgiveness.

“We’ve had a discussion, all of us. Are you sure you don’t want to keep her? Because we all want to help. This will be the first baby with all of us together. We don’t know how long we will be together for, though ideally, we want to be together forever. We don’t want you to be too hasty with your decision. Even our manager Hyungdeul want to help you. Zhou Mi wants to be her father so badly. Would you deny him a chance with his little girl?”

“He’s not the father,” Kyuhyun replied. “He isn’t. Why does nobody believe me?”

“Honey, it’s obvious to everyone that you love him. You have a chance. Why aren’t you going to take it?”

“Of course I love him; we’re best friends,” Kyuhyun said, completely oblivious to anything else that Leeteuk may have been inferring. “But that still doesn’t mean I want to be with him. We’re both guys. I may be carrying this thing but that doesn’t somehow make me a woman.” Even if the morning sickness and hormone changes begged to differ.

Leeteuk sighed. “Alright then. But the two of you would make a beautiful, if a little awkward-looking, couple,” he said, with a smile. “He could easily help you raise your daughter. He would be such a good father. And you know he’s already taken that role. You just need to let him.”

Kyuhyun sat up. “I know,” he admitted. “But I don’t want to ruin his life, or hers. She would know us as her parents, but she wouldn’t be able to tell anyone. And if he left…what would I tell her? Her appa gave up on us?” His eyes watered as he realised his fears.

“This is Zhou Mi,” Leeteuk said, as if that explained it all. “As you said, you’re best friends. He loves you.”

“Sometimes people, relationships, fall apart,” Kyuhyun replied. “And what if he decides he wants a family of his own? Children of his own flesh and blood? I couldn’t compete with that.”

“So you’re not even going to try?” Leeteuk asked.

Kyuhyun shrugged. “I can’t keep her. What are we going to do if someone finds out? It’ll be all over the news that someone in Super Junior had a baby, and then they’ll try to find the mother, and…it won’t end well. I’m worried enough that the press will find out about this.” He waved at his stomach. “I don’t need more stress.”

Leeteuk his hair gently. “Don’t get worried, it’ll be bad for your daughter.”

Kyuhyun took deep breaths to calm himself down, because even if he didn’t keep her, she was still going to be someone’s daughter, and it was going to be bad for her either way if she didn’t form properly because of his worrying.

Leeteuk stood up. “I need to get back to the others, but I promise you that all fourteen of us, plus the assistant Hyung- and Noonadeul and our manager Hyungdeul, will help you if you decide to keep her. No matter what decision you make, we’ll stand by you.”

Kyuhyun nodded. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he still had roughly four months to decide. He knew he had to distance himself from the baby if he didn’t want to keep her, but at the same time, he needed to discuss it with the other members; what it would mean to have a baby in their dorm. He needed time.

---

In the next few days, the baby began to move in a way that Kyuhyun could feel; kicking out with a leg by accident and wriggling around. The first time it happened, Kyuhyun was in the sitting room, watching TV with Yesung. He gasped and pressed a hand straight to his stomach in surprise, looking down at it with wide eyes.

Yesung turned to him. “What’s up, Kyu?”

Kyuhyun kept looking at his stomach as the baby kicked again.

“Is the baby coming?!” Yesung asked, and scrambled over to press his hand against the cloth against Kyuhyun’s stomach. “Oh,” he said, presumably feeling the vibrations. “Wookie!” he called over his shoulder. “Kyu’s baby’s kicking!”

Ryeowook was in the sitting room within nanoseconds. “She is?!” he asked, slightly breathless from his dash. He pressed his hand against Kyuhyun’s stomach as well, just in time to feel her last kick before she settled down. “Oh, Kyu…!” He leant over to hug Kyuhyun, and that was when Kyuhyun realised that he was crying. “It’s special, isn’t it? That shows you, one hundred percent, that she’s there.”

Kyuhyun didn’t really know why he was crying (he blamed his stupid F-ly, womanly hormones), but he supposed Ryeowook was right.

---

Sometime, when Kyuhyun wasn’t looking, he said, Ryeowook called Zhou Mi, and the older arrived within the next hour—he’d jumped in the car and driven over as fast as he could.

The baby had probably settled herself to sleep by then, Kyuhyun told him, but Zhou Mi ignored him and still lifted up Kyuhyun’s shirt, pressing cool hands against the bare, warm skin, relishing the fact that he was able to do so without Kyuhyun complaining about the somewhat inappropriate touching.

“Kuixian~!” he whined, his eyes mock-watering. “She moved? She moved and I wasn’t here? Why didn’t you call me?”

Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. “I don’t have to tell you every little thing, you know.”

Zhou Mi pouted. “But I’d like to know!”

Kyuhyun sighed. “You’d think you were her father at the rate you’re going.” Well, that was what Zhou Mi was going for, after all…

Zhou Mi bounced in his seat, beaming at Kyuhyun’s words. “Does Mama Kuixian need a Baba?”

“No! I’m not keeping it!” Kyuhyun said, having since given up on arguing against being referred to as Mama or Umma by the other boys.

Kyuhyun obviously, from his wide eyes, didn’t know how a skinny man like Zhou Mi did it (Zhou Mi wasn’t sure he really knew either, to be honest), when the older lifted him up and moved him over onto his lap, straddling his legs. Kyuhyun gave him a somewhat mean-spirited look in annoyance. Zhou Mi retaliated by rubbing his hand gently over the bare bump, soothing it gently and connecting with the baby. Kyuhyun’s baby. The baby he wanted so badly to be the father of.

Kyuhyun shut his eyes at the sensations and made a little surprised sound when Zhou Mi’s hands continued around to his back and starting rubbing his spine gently. There was little Kyuhyun could do except purr and relax into Zhou Mi’s front, his head on the other’s shoulder.

“Are you sure about that?” Zhou Mi asked once Kyuhyun was relaxed and fairly pliant. “Is Mama sure Mama doesn’t need a Baba?”

Kyuhyun shook his head sleepily and cuddled closely into the elder’s arms. “No…” he replied, muffled into the material of Zhou Mi’s shirt. “Besides, you’ll do it even if I say no to you.”

Zhou Mi beamed, knowing he’d won. “Yay! Thank you!” He nuzzled the top of Kyuhyun’s head and Kyuhyun’s back lightly. “What would you do without me? I searched how to rub bellies for you. Was it good?”

Kyuhyun nodded into the shoulder. “Mm.”

“Would you like me to do it again, regularly? You seemed like you needed it.”

Kyuhyun nodded again, humming lightly.

“Yay for Mama Kuixian and Baba MiMi~!”

“Leeteuk-hyung was trying to make me ask you. He said you’d be good at it, but I’m not keeping her,” Kyuhyun mumbled, mostly muffled.

Zhou Mi deflated a little. “But Kuixian! Imagine how pretty she’ll be! Imagine how nice it’ll be to have a little person around, to do something nice for her! Imagine how nice the atmosphere will be! Imagine what it’ll be like if she’s ours. Our little girl, Super Junior’s! The boys are so excited. What will they be like if you give her away? They’ll never stop thinking about her, you know that.”

“I’m the one carrying this baby!” Kyuhyun pointed out, pulling his head back to look at Zhou Mi. “But…I’ll think about it,” he added, somewhat huffily. He looked at him in a way that dared the older to continue the conversation, and Zhou Mi sighed and left it at that.

The fact that Kyuhyun hadn’t seemed to realise he’d allowed Zhou Mi to be fatherly to the pregnant mother made Zhou Mi cheer up a little. At least that was something.

---

“Hyung, can I talk to you?” Siwon began nervously. “It’s about this current issue.”

“Yes, Siwon?” Leeteuk replied, turning to face the boy in the doorway. “Come and sit down.”

Siwon moved into the sitting room but didn’t sit down. “I…I think I may have caused it.”

Leeteuk leapt to his feet. “You impregnated the baby?!” He looked like he was going to hit Siwon.

“No, no!” Siwon said, and held his hands up before him in a defensive motion.

“Then what do you mean?”

“I…I prayed to God to make the non-religious members understand about Him,” Siwon explained. “I asked if there was a way, some sort of Miracle. It would have been the same month Kyuhyun…” He broke off, unable to say “became pregnant”. He didn’t really even want to think about it.

“So, you think it’s another immaculate conception?” Leeteuk sounded surprised.

“What else could it be? He’s a boy. He shouldn’t normally even have a womb, but he must have one now.”

Leeteuk nodded. “God and science, and I’m sure nobody medically implanted a womb into him.”

Siwon nodded. “I thought I should tell you. It felt wrong keeping it to myself. But I didn’t want to believe it had happened because I had asked. Why Kyuhyun? He’s Christian himself. Why not Heechul-hyung, or somebody like that?”

Leeteuk shrugged. “Because Mary was a ?”

Siwon blinked. “Hyung, doesn’t that mean that nobody else is?” He shuddered.

Leeteuk shrugged again. “I don’t know. I only know about a few of the members’ lives. More than I should. I’m fairly sure that most of the atheists are not, though. I don’t know about Zhou Mi, but I have my suspicions.”

“So, what are we going to do about this…child?”

Leeteuk sighed. “I don’t know whether it benefits us more to have a baby in the house or not. I know his housemates will love having a baby. Eunhyuk might be scared, but Ryeowook and Sungmin and Yesung will be ecstatic. But do they have the room to have a baby? And where will they put Zhou Mi up? You know he’s going to want to be there.”

“Where does Zhou Mi usually sleep when he visits them?” Siwon asked, because he truly didn’t know.

“Good point,” Leeteuk replied, which wasn’t an answer but Siwon presumed that meant that Leeteuk knew. “As for the baby…she should sleep in Kyuhyun’s room, but Sungmin probably won’t want to stay in there with her if she wakes up in the night. This is all supposing Kyuhyun relents, as well. He wants to give her away, but someone’s bound to notice.” He sighed. “I don’t know how he could have her and then get rid of her. She’s part of his, part of our lives now. It’s not fair on her.”

Siwon shook his head. “I know,” he replied. “But it’s dangerous to have her with us. Who’s going to look after her when we’re out?”

Leeteuk shrugged. “One of the assistant Noonadeul, I suppose.”

That made sense, actually. They could use her as a babysitter and she could fill in for them during Parents’ Evenings…if Kyuhyun kept the baby.

He sighed. This was harder work than it should have been…

(When Heechul walked in twenty minutes later, they were discussing God’s motives.

“See,” Leeteuk said to Heechul. “God must exist. Who else would do such a thing to a boy?”

Heechul shrugged. “I only wanted someone to give me proof. We didn’t need a baby.”)

---

The kicking became more frequent over the next two weeks, and Kyuhyun began to feel his baby somersaulting as she became more active. He started trying to soothe her by rubbing his stomach either through the cloth or underneath it. At the end of the first week he could feel her turn towards his rubbing; he presumed she liked it.

Zhou Mi turned up in the middle of the second week with a bottle of pregnancy body rub, and he presented it to Kyuhyun with a smile. “It’s soothing and it stops you from gaining stretch marks!”

Kyuhyun blinked up at him. “I’m already getting stretch marks,” he replied simply. “Have you seen how big the bump is now?” He was still smaller than Shindong, of course, but he’d been skinny before. His skin was quite stretched.

“It’ll stop you getting more!” Zhou Mi continued. He started reading off the bottle. “It says you rub it onto your stomach, thighs and s, and it helps and it soothes baby and mother! So it’s perfect!”

Kyuhyun silently took the bottle from Zhou Mi and started reading off it, double-checking that it was safe.

“Do you need me to rub it in?” Zhou Mi asked, bouncing a little.

Kyuhyun shook his head. “I’m not letting you anywhere near my s,” he said calmly, and headed to his room, though he could hear Zhou Mi following.

“Come on! It’s not like you’ll do it well yourself!”

Zhou Mi had a point there; he definitely wouldn’t, especially not with the older in the room with him. He made a point of folding his arms once he reached his bed. “Are you going to watch me do it?”

“Supervising,” Zhou Mi replied with a smile.

Kyuhyun lifted his t-shirt up and away from the bump and slid his trousers, elasticised sweatpants that were three sizes too big that one of the stylist Noonadeul had bought him, under the bump. He poured a little bit onto his fingers and rubbed it into a patch of skin, but he found it hard and he wasn’t doing a good job of it.

Zhou Mi sighed and took the bottle from him. “You’re useless, my Little Idiot!” He said it teasingly, affectionately, but Kyuhyun still pouted. Zhou Mi ruffled his hair gently and then poured oil into his hands, rubbing it around the bottom of the bump.

Kyuhyun shut his eyes and leant against the headrest, because it was nice to have someone else do it. He was so relaxed that he didn’t flinch when Zhou Mi lifted his t-shirt further up, revealing the masses of fat that had formed the two small s he had. He didn’t do anything when Zhou Mi massaged oil into them, even though it was the most intimately he had ever been touched by a boy (he hadn’t had with girls, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t done anything else that was ual). He even allowed Zhou Mi to pull his trousers down and rub the skin beside his briefs.

“Is that good?” Zhou Mi asked, tracing the inside of Kyuhyun’s thighs almost teasingly.

Kyuhyun nodded, eyes tightly shut and smiling gently.

“You should let me do things like this for you. You said I could be the father. Let me do fatherly things for you.”

“You make it sound like we’re married,” Kyuhyun murmured.

The tracing stopped, and Kyuhyun felt his trousers be pulled back up again. The bed creaked as Zhou Mi moved, and when his arm went over Kyuhyun to rest on his hip, arm across the bump, Kyuhyun smiled softly to himself.

“Is that a bad thing?” Zhou Mi asked quietly. “I want to help you and we’re best friends, so who is better than me? You’re having a baby.”

It was out before he could stop it. “We’re having a baby.”

Zhou Mi’s arm jerked, and Kyuhyun opened his eyes to look at him. His eyes were wide in surprise at Kyuhyun’s statement. “Oh…Kuixian…” His eyes watered and he pulled Kyuhyun closer. Kyuhyun took hold of Zhou Mi’s t-shirt in surprise.

“We’re still not keeping her,” Kyuhyun said. “But if you’re going to be my husband,” Admitting that he would be the wife was odd but somehow made perfect sense, “I may as well acknowledge that you’re going to want some sort of ownership. Therefore, ours, for the moment.” Zhou Mi nuzzled his ear and his hair, and Kyuhyun could feel wetness on his temple. He sighed. “Why are you such a sap?”

“I’m so happy, Kuixian! Our daughter!”

“Stop crying or I’ll kick you out of bed.”

They went to sleep like that, Zhou Mi’s arm possessively around Kyuhyun and the baby, and tears running down his, and by extension Kyuhyun’s, cheeks, and Kyuhyun holding lightly onto Zhou Mi’s top as if it was the only thing anchoring him to the world. (It probably was.)

---

The second baby scan was three weeks later, nearing the end of Kyuhyun’s sixth month. By this point he had got used to her kicking and used to Zhou Mi giving him massages, particularly after baths (he had tried to fight with the other that no, he wouldn’t let Zhou Mi shower with him; there should be some privacy he was allowed, but the older boy would panic and exclaim that Kyuhyun could fall over in the shower and die, or miscarry, and so he managed to invite himself to sit in the bathroom on the other side of the curtain, just in case. Kyuhyun had since given up on trying to stop Zhou Mi from doing anything; it wasn’t worth his effort).

The obstetrician brought up several things that Kyuhyun hadn’t wanted to think about. He would have to go into the hospital to have his baby. Also, he would need a longer stay than normal in hospital due to the fact they’d have to give him a caesarean section to deliver her. Given he was a pregnant male idol singer from an incredibly popular boyband, they had to find some way of doing it so the media and the fans never learnt about it, though he was assured that that could be arranged easily enough without him having to worry. Kyuhyun shuddered when the process of a caesarean was explained to him. He didn’t want a permanent scar along his stomach; he had enough scars from the accident already, he didn’t need any more.

The obstetrician went on to explain that there were complications to doing a caesarean but that because there wasn’t exactly another way he could birth the baby—if his rectal muscles were attached to his uterus, which they might have been, who knew, they wouldn’t stretch wide enough to let a baby out—, they would have to try their hardest to make sure nothing happened to the baby on her way out of his womb.

Kyuhyun would rather the baby never be born, but as that was impossible, he was going to have to deal with this; there were no other options. At least he had three months left to get used to the idea, he supposed. Zhou Mi squeezed his hand gently, comfortingly. Kyuhyun resisted the urge to cuddle up to him and nodded his understanding to the obstetrician.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do about her?” she asked him.

Kyuhyun shook his head. “I don’t want to keep her, but everyone’s saying how dangerous it would be to not. If someone does a DNA test, the whole world will know.”

Zhou Mi looked at him in surprise. “You thought more about it?”

Truthfully, Kyuhyun hadn’t stopped thinking about the options since the last time he’d refused to keep her. He had gone through so many options. “I don’t think I’m keeping her,” he said. “I can’t cope with a baby.”

“Of course you can,” Zhou Mi told him gently. “You’ll have us, too. Together we can.”

Kyuhyun shook his head. “No,” he replied. “No. I’ll…I’ll think some more. But…so far, no.”

He could tell Zhou Mi was disappointed, but Zhou Mi was always going to be for as long as he said no. The only way to make him happy was to say yes, and he wasn’t comfortable with that idea at all.

---

Kyuhyun started getting horribly tired again in his seventh month, worse than when he was tired before. His entire body felt tired. He no longer participated in their dance routines, partially due to the tiredness and partially due to the sheer size of the bump now, and so Super Junior learnt to work around him. He sat at the side with Henry and Zhou Mi when Super Junior were dancing, and watched them go up to dance when it was M’s turn. He didn’t go out often anymore because it was hard to sneak him onto the bus, so it was a rare visit outside that wasn’t to go to the hospital.

He was asleep before the practice ended, and he slept the whole journey home. He woke up to gentle rubbing on his bare stomach.

“Up you come,” Zhou Mi’s voice said, and Kyuhyun was lifted up. “You need a shower. I wasn’t going to do it unless you were awake.” Kyuhyun let himself be taken into the bathroom and undressed, still mostly asleep. He hadn’t noticed that Zhou Mi had undressed as well until he realised they were both under the spray of the shower, Zhou Mi holding him up. The older helped him stand there, resting both hands on the baby bump. Kyuhyun thought Zhou Mi must have had a fascination with it.

“It’s just the baby,” he mumbled sleepily.

“I know, but it’s so pretty,” Zhou Mi said, rubbing his hands over it. “It gives life. And it suits you.”

“I suit being pregnant?” Kyuhyun asked. “Seriously?”

Zhou Mi nodded. “It makes you pretty!”

Kyuhyun didn’t know whether to protest that he was a man, and therefore not pretty, or whine that that meant he wasn’t pretty normally. In the end he merely pouted. Zhou Mi could take it whichever way he wanted.

Zhou Mi didn’t even seem to notice, he just rubbed shampoo into Kyuhyun’s hair before his own, and rinsed them both thoroughly after using someone’s pink shower gel, his hands in places Kyuhyun had never had a male’s but for his own. Kyuhyun was surprised Zhou Mi hadn’t brought his own toiletries, hadn’t started to move in. He was amazed the older hadn’t even made a fuss about living there. He knew that once the baby was born he wouldn’t be able to get rid of the other boy—Zhou Mi would probably camp out in the living room if he had to. Aren’t you supposed to be in China? Well, he certainly wouldn’t be leaving any time soon.

Zhou Mi helped Kyuhyun out of the shower and towelled him down before doing the same to himself. He dressed himself quickly and then wrapped a towel around Kyuhyun before picking up his clothes and leading him back to his room. Once back there, he helped Kyuhyun into some pyjamas the stylist Noona had brought and gently pushed him into bed.

Kyuhyun remembered tugging Zhou Mi into bed after him, but he was asleep before Zhou Mi settled down.

---

The first person to decide he was going to talk to the bump was Donghae, who bounced into his bedroom at some silly time in the morning several days later, turning the lights on as he did, waking not only Kyuhyun up, but also Sungmin and the baby (Zhou Mi was in his own dorm, for a change). Kyuhyun could feel her wake up at the change of lighting and was not happy about this.

“Donghae-hyung,” he whined, “couldn’t whatever it is have waited until later?”

Donghae completely ignored Kyuhyun, and simply sat on the maknae’s bed and then moved closely to the bump. “Hello! It’s your Uncle Donghae here! Are you doing well in Kyunnie’s tummy?”

Kyuhyun, who didn’t even process this until later, simply lay there and whined until Sungmin stood up and basically threw Donghae out bodily.

He only remembered when Donghae convinced Henry to talk in English to the baby so she would be multilingual. Kyuhyun hadn’t a clue what Henry was saying to her. He simply stood there with his arms folded and one eyebrow raised.

“Kyuhyunnie, why are you giving them that look?” Ryeowook asked.

“They are talking to my bump,” Kyuhyun said. “My bump.”

“She can hear you, you know,” Zhou Mi interrupted. “And she knows the sound of your voice now. It’s okay Baby, Mama loves you really.” He the bump lightly as only he was allowed to do.

“Have you thought of any names?” Henry asked Zhou Mi.

“I was thinking maybe Qiang?” Zhou Mi replied. “It’s pretty.”

“Guys! I know this may shock you, but I’m not keeping her!” Kyuhyun almost shouted into the room.

“Geez, we know already. You don’t need to tell us again. But I still think you’re an absolute idiot, Kyuhyun,” Heechul said.

“This baby was given to you for a reason,” Siwon said quietly. “You were meant to bring her up.”

Kyuhyun looked at Siwon for a moment, processing that information. For Siwon to say it meant that he thought it was a message sent from God. If it was a message sent from God…

He turned and left the room, still not knowing what he was going to do, but hoping that logical thinking may persuade him either way.

---

Zhou Mi was obviously doing a lot of research about babies in the womb, because he would pop up with some information every time Kyuhyun saw him.

“She can her thumb now!” Zhou Mi would say. “And she has eyelashes! And she can hear your heartbeat. And she knows what her family members sound like.” He would then crouch next to Kyuhyun’s stomach and whisper in Mandarin to it, the only words Kyuhyun recognised being “Mama” and “Baba”. He would kiss the skin and then pull away to Kyuhyun’s eye-rolls.

“You just kissed my bump,” Kyuhyun would whine, and Zhou Mi would cuddle him in response.

The little masses of fat that were Kyuhyun’s s began leaking fluid around that time, and Kyuhyun blinked and panicked until Zhou Mi told him it wasn’t abnormal for pregnant mothers; it was a sign that their bodies were producing milk for -feeding. Kyuhyun blinked again.

“My body…wants me to -feed?” he asked shakily.

Zhou Mi smiled. “The best milk a baby can have is from her Mama’s s, and it bonds the baby and Mama together. You’re lucky, some mothers can’t feed their babies.”

Kyuhyun didn’t feel lucky. He said so.

“Don’t be silly, Kuixian! You’re very lucky that your body is doing so much when you’re male! It’s doing its hardest to make this pregnancy work!”

“I don’t want to be pregnant, though,” Kyuhyun whined. “Ahra-noona isn’t even dating anyone, and I’m pregnant? It’s not fair.”

Zhou Mi ran his hands soothingly over the bump. “Maybe you were chosen for a reason. You have thirteen hyungdeul and one dongsaeng who love you and will help you get through this. You’re luckier than so many women. Imagine if you had nobody and were going through this on your own.”

Kyuhyun had to agree; he was lucky he had them all. Ryeowook (with the help of Han Geng and, to some extent, Shindong) was doing his best to feed him for two, Yesung kept lending him his turtles for comfort and stopped being quite as weird as usual (which, in itself, was weird), Eunhyuk and Donghae stopped doing their pranks, Sungmin did his best to never wake Kyuhyun when he was asleep and let him cuddle Hyaku or Sen if he needed something alive and warm, unlike Ddangkkoma or the other two, Siwon prayed for his and his baby’s safety every night, Leeteuk was doing his best to be a mother for him, Kangin would glare at, and threaten, anybody who was even slightly mean to him, Henry bought him a teddy bear to cuddle and sat with him when nobody else would, Kibum sent him little online presents and let him win in the games they played in the hope of cheering him up, and even Heechul tried, posting quiet and cryptic good luck messages on his Cyworld and Twitter in between his posts about Baengsin’s exploits (and how much Baengsin and Heebum were definitely not best friends, unlike Hyaku and Sen) and photos of Super Junior cross-dressing. And Zhou Mi was obviously looking after him.

Maybe this was a good thing.

---

During that same month, he began to swell up in his legs and face, which Zhou Mi said was also normal and that he needed to drink at least a litre of water a day, and his back started hurting a lot. It hurt so much that he started finding it hard to sleep. He also started getting headaches, heart burn and indigestion; normal, but really annoying (he hated pregnancy). He became very clumsy, wobbling when he walked, knocking things over and falling into the other members, so they started sitting him front of the TV and trying to help him walk to the bathroom every hour or so—he crawled there when there were no other members around to help him. He spent a lot of time sleeping, because you can’t fall over when you’re asleep. He also started getting what one of the assistant Noonadeul, one who had children, called “Braxton Hicks contractions”, which was his uterus practising how to contract in order to help the baby be born—considering he had nowhere to push the baby out of, it stressed him greatly, which made them more frequent and therefore actually hurt, so Zhou Mi would try and soothe him with gentle rubs and hugs. Kyuhyun started hating his pregnancy with a passion, and would cry to Leeteuk and Zhou Mi sometimes, arms around their necks, wondering why life hated him so much.

In one of the rare times he wasn’t trying to take a nap to keep his energy levels up, which he only managed when he wasn’t in so much pain he couldn’t, Kyuhyun decided to write a list of all the positives and negatives for keeping the baby, and the positives and negatives for getting rid of her.

If he put her up for adoption, there would be problems, unless he could do it completely closed and have nobody know about her. But surely, in that situation, she would take a DNA test? A DNA test would make the entire world know (that was how DNA tests worked, right? He wasn’t sure). He didn’t want that. A more open adoption would allow her parents to know about his identity, and whilst he could make them promise not to do anything, he doubted they would actually follow through with that. He could use somebody else to put her up for adoption, but still…it just didn’t seem like it would work.

He could also have her left on the steps of a Church and have her brought up in a convent. That wasn’t a bad idea, he thought; she could become as strong a Christian as possible that way. She could worship God the way he couldn’t promise her if he kept her. He marked this idea down as a possibility, because he couldn’t see any faults with it. A religious child brought up by people who would make sure she served God was always a good thing.

On the other hand, if he put her up for adoption or left her to be brought up in the convent, the members would never forgive him. He saw the way they looked at him, the way they whispered to each other when they thought he wasn’t looking, or was asleep. He knew they wanted this child. They wanted to look after her, to make sure her life was good. They wanted his secret to be safe. They wanted Super Junior to have something else to bring them together.

He also had to go through this entire pregnancy with only sympathy from the other members; if he went through the contractions and the pain and the mood swings and the eventual caesarean, what would he get out of it if he gave her up?

God also wanted him to have her, because God must have made him pregnant; there was no other way—boys didn’t get wombs and didn’t get pregnant for no reason at all. Therefore, God wished Kyuhyun to bring her up, and although giving her to a convent meant she’d worship Him, Kyuhyun could bring her up just as religiously if he wanted. And God’s wishes meant a lot to him.

Keeping her would mean she always had to have a babysitter, which meant one of their staff always had to look after her. He also had to register her as his, meaning that she would be Cho whatever, Mother: Cho Kyuhyun (Father: …God? Zhou Mi?), on all official registers, which would be a nightmare for school if they had to prove her identity—a stylist Noona could take her, of course, but if somebody realised…they would have to get her to and from school, when she grew old enough, and make sure nobody saw where they’d left from and returned to—some of their fans were sneaky; Yesung often shouted at the ones who visited their dorms. They would have to buy baby things for her, and if someone asked why they had a baby in their dorm, find an excuse. It would be a lot of hassle.

Kyuhyun wouldn’t be able to dance or perform with them until his back stopped hurting, which took about a year, he’d stopped producing milk, and he’d lost the baby fat. Either way, this was going to be a long time, so it didn’t matter much if he kept his baby or not.

Kim Youngmin, the CEO of the company, who their manager Hyungdeul had told, was angry, but there was little he could do. He could force Kyuhyun to give the baby up, but in doing so he could also give up the secret. He told Kyuhyun to do whatever he felt best. The amount of lawsuits he had against him meant he didn’t want another one; judges could be sympathetic to each side of the court case. A boy with a new baby suing a company for not allowing him to keep his baby would probably win. On the other hand, Lee Sooman was far less worried. In fact, he’d simply congratulated Kyuhyun when he’d last seen him without a word of complaint.

The benefits to Kyuhyun keeping her were no DNA test revealing her to the public, no upset band members thinking about her and going behind his back and searching for her (he knew some of them would try), no Heechul telling him he was an idiot for the rest of his life. They would grow up through looking after her, learn how to look after a human being. Some of them would decide they wanted children, and would go off and marry and procreate, and they would have experience in looking after babies already. They would all babysit when he wanted a night away from her. He would also have someone who loved him eternally, no matter what he did, because they were flesh and blood. That almost made the pregnancy worth it.

He smiled, slightly wistfully, at this thought. Maybe…

---

He had his next baby scan at the end of his seventh month.

The doctor checked his baby’s heart rate to make sure she was okay and then she checked his blood pressure to make sure he was. She set him on the scales she had in her room to make sure he was a sensible weight for almost eight months pregnant. She then checked the size of his bump to see how big it and the baby were, also checking that his abdominal scars hadn’t pulled too much. She then handed him the usual phial.

She told Kyuhyun, once he’d come back, sample hidden up his sleeve, that there was something he needed to do called a glucose tolerance test and was he able to do it then? It would take an hour. It involved him drinking something and them taking blood samples. He sighed and nodded, because he didn’t have anything in his schedule—being a pregnant male tended to do that—and he was sure Zhou Mi had cancelled his.

He drank the sugary solution he was given, shut his eyes when the blood was taken, and leant against Zhou Mi to await the result. When it came, he was happy to hear he’d passed the test—his body could process the sugar well. If he’d failed it, he would have had to do a three hour test, taking blood every thirty minutes, and he knew he’d probably have been asleep before they’d started.

Zhou Mi took him home with a wide smile on his face, almost bouncing because the baby was healthy and Kyuhyun was healthy and he was sure everything was going to be fine.

---

Kyuhyun thought about little but sleep, food (he ate much more food in the next month or so than he had ever done so before), and the list for the next few weeks, and after seeing how gentle and accommodating the other members were with him and his bump—they made sure he didn’t do anything too taxing, like chores (not that he usually did any because he was fairly useless), and they would sit him in front of the TV when he was awake, and they made sure he was in bed by nine o’clock—, and how much they wanted her, he made his decision.

“MiMi-ge,” he began, cutely, one day when Zhou Mi had come back from dance practice—they left Kyuhyun behind now, as he was simply too tired to leave the house except to go to his monthly ultrasound scans—and had helped Kyuhyun into the bath.

“Yes, Kuixian?”

“I…I’ve been thinking,” Kyuhyun said nervously. “About her.”

“Yes?” Zhou Mi prompted.

“I…I think I’m keeping her,” he said quietly, eyes shut tightly.

There was silence. Kyuhyun cracked one eye open to see Zhou Mi staring, wide-eyed, at him. Finally, the older man spoke. “You’re keeping her?” he asked, as if for clarification. Kyuhyun nodded, and Zhou Mi leant over to hug him, kissing his temple lightly. “Why?”

Kyuhyun explained about the lists he’d made, and how the negatives of getting rid of her outweighed the positives. He explained about how he’d noticed how happy everyone was. He finally finished with, “And I’d like to have someone who loved me because she was mine.”

Zhou Mi smiled as Kyuhyun talked, and once he’d finished he helped Kyuhyun out of the bath and into his pyjamas. “Have you told anyone?” he asked quietly, knowing that Leeteuk had been the first to know about Kyuhyun’s pregnancy, so maybe he’d told him first about this.

Kyuhyun shook his head. “Just you,” he mumbled. “I wanted to see what you thought. After all, she’s half yours.”

Zhou Mi hugged him again, and Kyuhyun was almost positive his eyes were watering. What a sap, he thought.

“I’m happy, Kuixian. Really, really happy,” Zhou Mi told him, almost crying with delight.

“That I’m keeping her or that I told you first?”

“Both,” Zhou Mi said into his hair. “Shall we tell everyone?”

Kyuhyun nodded nervously. Zhou Mi pulled him into the sitting room, where the members had congregated after their practice, all of them except for Kibum, who was acting. Even the members who lived elsewhere had come back to the lower, quieter flat. Kyuhyun sometimes wondered if they did it to check on him.

“Kyuhyun has an announcement he wants to make,” Zhou Mi said, gently moving Kyuhyun to stand before him, arms on his shoulders, holding him up.

“Oh?” some of the members breathed, turning to face him. Donghae paused the game he, Eunhyuk and Henry were playing on the Wii. Heechul stopped fixing his hair.

“I…” Kyuhyun began nervously. He turned to look up at Zhou Mi, who just smiled encouragingly. “I’m keeping her.”

It took the members a few moments to work out who this “her” was, but once they’d realised, large smiles grew on their faces. They all tried to hug him at the same time. Leeteuk won, wrapping him up gently in his arms and glaring at anyone who tried to steal him.

“I’m so proud of you,” Leeteuk said, kissing the top of his head. “What brought you to this decision?”

Kyuhyun blushed and explained it again to the room. The members seemed to swell with pride when they realised they’d contributed to his decision.

“Now you really will have to decide on a name,” Henry said with a laugh.

“Yanmei!” Zhou Mi replied. “Or Mingzhu…Kuixian, do you like the sound of Xiaoli?”

“Later,” Kyuhyun mumbled, and buried his head in Zhou Mi’s chest, arms round his torso, once Leeteuk had let him go, which, because he didn’t do it very often in the current company he was in, prompted some sort of collective coo from his band members and more than one snapped mobile phone picture. Kyuhyun knew that the ones that didn’t show he was pregnant would find their way onto Cyworlds or Twitters later that week and fangirls would start writing about how KyuMi, or MiXian as a lot called it (though he mentally protested at the mere suggestion he’d ever submit to a skinny, girly man like Zhou Mi—even if he was Zhou Mi’s wife), was obviously real.

Zhou Mi helped Kyuhyun back to bed, with the rest of the members following and commenting on how absolutely adorable pregnant Kyuhyun was, and why couldn’t he always be like that?

Kyuhyun gave them a sleepy glare that they just cooed at, and then he was asleep.

---

In the middle of his eighth month, his baby turned herself upside down. Apparently this was to make her exit easier. Kyuhyun sighed.

“I’m not a girl,” he said. “That’s not really going to make it easier for her.”

“She doesn’t know that,” Leeteuk, who was with him—the only other free member—, said.

Kyuhyun felt his baby kick. “I think she’s mad at me, she kicked me again.”

Leeteuk laughed. “She does that anyway, silly.”

Leeteuk had a point there. It was getting to the stage where he didn’t feel her quite so much, only about ten times a day. She didn’t really have much room to move now, after all.

“It’s so tiring,” Kyuhyun said, yawning. “My ankles keep swelling up, it hurts to walk, and I’m just tired all the time. The doctor keeps checking my blood pressure to make sure I’m alright. I am. I’m just tired.”

Leeteuk wrapped his arm around him. “I know,” he said. “I can see. You’re lucky you have Zhou Mi there for you, though.”

Kyuhyun snorted. “Yeah, if people stopped thinking we were dating.”

Leeteuk patted his shoulder. “Well, you do act a little like you are,” he said, possibly trying to be sympathetic and failing miserably. “The only other people who are as cuddly as you two are…” He paused. “Probably Siwon and Hankyung.”

Kyuhyun giggled quietly. “They’re Appa and Umma, respectively, of Super Junior M…” He broke off. “That didn’t help my case, did it?”

Leeteuk shook his head. “Not at all.” He laughed, but not unkindly.

Kyuhyun sighed. “This is never going to make sense, is it?”

Leeteuk shook his head again and smiled gently. “I understand that you’re a bit confused but you’ll get used to it. Just the fact you thought about it enough to decide that you wanted to keep her is a good sign.”

Kyuhyun shrugged. “Had to analyse it.”

“You always analyse everything,” Leeteuk replied. “You always have done. But it makes sense in this situation; it’s a big step. And we’re all here for you. We always will be.”

Kyuhyun hugged him with a smile, knowing, once again, how lucky he was.

---

Zhou Mi started packing for Kyuhyun’s hospital stay in the first week of his ninth month, when it became obvious that Kyuhyun wasn’t going to even start thinking about it for at least a little while longer.

He packed Kyuhyun a stack of boxer shorts and briefs, far more than Kyuhyun thought would be necessary for up to a five-day stay. When he asked, Zhou Mi mumbled something about lots of blood and then refused to say any more on the subject. He also packed Kyuhyun many sets of thick, warm pyjamas, and several dark sets of clothes, mostly long-sleeved t-shirts and jumpers, as it was getting into winter. Kyuhyun, as it was well-known, actually loved winter (although he hated summer, said that heat made him stressed and angry and always raring for a fight, but that was neither here nor there), but it wouldn’t be good for him. Zhou Mi also packed a tooth brush, shampoo, toothpaste and a towel, and warm clothes for the baby that he’d bought that week. He toyed with the idea of putting Kyuhyun’s razor in, but considering Kyuhyun’s hormones were out of whack, he hadn’t grown any facial hair in months, and so there was no point. Finally, he added a camera, so he could take pictures of the baby just after she was born.

Kyuhyun ignored him, hoping it would all go away, but on a subconscious level he was happy he was all ready to go.

---

In the second week, he began panicking about the birth. He started scaring himself by thinking about how it was going to happen and what was going to happen afterwards. Zhou Mi wittering on about names fortheir little girl, and trying to move Kyuhyun’s bedroom about to provide room for a cot, and asking the other members to buy more baby clothes and furniture, also freaked him out.

The baby became upset, sensing his stress, and Kyuhyun found himself crying to Kangin, the only member in the house at the time.

Kangin, he could tell, was not entirely sure what to do with a crying maknae, but he tried his hardest. He wrapped a beefy arm around the younger boy and let him sob into his t-shirt, and exclaim how scared he was because he’d be giving birth in roughly two weeks. He couldn’t do this.

Kangin replied with, “Of course you can, and Zhou Mi will be there to hold your hand because we can’t all be there, but we will try to see you in hospital. The midwife will be there and she’ll show you what to do, right? And the caesarean will be painless because of anaesthetic. You’ll be fine, Kyuhyun.”

This was completely logical and exactly what Kyuhyun needed to hear. He cuddled up to the band father, snuggling into his arms. “Thank you,” he mumbled.

“It’s okay,” Kangin replied. “You’ll do fine. We all believe in you.”

Kyuhyun sniffled again and was glad that Kangin was the one who’d been there, because it made him feel far better.

---

Over the next few days he discovered that he had very little bladder control, as he started embarrassing himself all over the house, leaking into his underwear. Every time it happened, he would blush brightly and run (well, toddle, to be precise) to the bathroom. The other members got to the stage where they didn’t even turn a hair when it happened. He also had a lot of the same Braxton Hicks contractions, but he knew what they were now and so it didn’t stress him so much when they happened, even though they started getting stronger and progressively more painful. He also had a lot of backache, and would cuddle up to a hot wheat sack placed in a teddy-bear case one of the members had brought him, as it made him feel slightly better (he wouldn’t admit that he thought the lavender smell was calming and he liked it, because it made him sound less manly…though how manly was it to be pregnant, really?).

When he went for his visit to the doctor, after the usual tests, she said everything seemed normal for the thirty-eighth week. He wasn’t near to giving birth, she thought, but she told him and Zhou Mi to ring immediately if they thought the baby was coming, considering Kyuhyun couldn’t birth her himself.

Zhou Mi nodded in agreement, and Kyuhyun just buried his head in his hands and wondered why he’d thought this was actually going to work.

---

Somehow, they ended up with a cot, four boxes of disposable nappies, and quite a few rompers and outfits for the little girl. Zhou Mi gave up one of his newest teddy bears, one of the soft ones, and someone bought a little pink blanket for her. Of course, this meant that as they moved her things into the room, they had to find room for Sungmin.

Kyuhyun sat on Sungmin’s bed as the older boy began packing his things up.

“I’m sorry, Kyuhyunnie,” Sungmin said. “I can’t live in here with the baby. I just can’t. I’m sorry. I’ve really enjoyed having you as a roommate, though.”

Kyuhyun, who had expected this, nodded and mumbled something about wishing he could help Sungmin move to the spare room next to Eunhyuk’s, but knowing he couldn’t.

Sungmin smiled and ruffled his hair. “You’ll have MiMi-yah, you’ll be okay.”

Kyuhyun nodded again. “Yes,” he said, with a soft smile.

“Is Zhou Mi bringing his bed up? I suppose not, he usually sleeps with you,” Sungmin said, almost sounding like he was laughing. “You should buy a double bed.”

Kyuhyun blinked at the tone of Sungmin’s voice. “Is it…strange?” he asked, slowly, unsurely. “That we sleep together?”

Sungmin shook his head. “Not for you two. But it’s not that common with most boys. They usually top-and-tail, if they share at all.”

“But Ryeowook and Yesung have before,” Kyuhyun mumbled.

Sungmin blinked at him as if he had three heads. “Please tell me you did not just say that. Please.” He buried his head in his hands, dropping the box of CDs on the bed as he did so. “Do you not know why they share a room? You must know, surely you’re not that dense?”

Kyuhyun shook his head in response, for he had no idea why the other two parts of their musical trio shared a room and had done for some time.

Sungmin sighed. “You’re worse than I thought. Did the HenWook skinship work on you, too?” He paused. “You know Hengli’s mine, don’t you?”

Kyuhyun blinked. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, you know that, right?”

“Oh, Kyuhyun,” Sungmin said with a sigh. “You know it’s statistically impossible for most of this band to be straight, right?”

Kyuhyun inched back on the bed a little, eyes wide. “I’m straight. And Kibum. And Donghae-hyung. And…and Siwon-hyung? And Shindong-hyung likes girls. And…and Kangin-hyung, and Eunhyuk-hyung, and…” He trailed off as Sungmin shook his head.

“Kangin-hyung has spent over a year trailing after Leeteuk-hyung,” he explained patiently. “I think he’s annoyed with SM promoting EunTeuk, and ShinTeuk what with TeukiGayo. Siwon only thinks he’s straight, you must have seen the way he looks at Hankyung-hyung. And Eunhyukkie…well, let’s just say he and Junsu are extremely close, if not…you know—they’ve been flirting around the subject for years. And you, you really flirt…” He broke off without finishing, no matter how many times Kyuhyun asked him to tell him to tell him who he apparently flirted with, and then sighed. “I can’t believe you didn’t know any of this. It’s common knowledge.”

“What about Donghae-hyung, and Kibum, and Shindong-hyung, and Heechul-hyung, and Hankyung-hyung, and Leeteuk-hyung, then?” Kyuhyun asked nervously, not entirely sure he wanted to know. He didn’t even notice he’d left out Zhou Mi.

“Donghae, Shindong and Kibum are, to the best of my knowledge, Super Junior’s straight members. Heechul-hyung trails after Yunho, but you’ve seen Jay-hyung’s thank yous, right? ‘My girlfriend Heechul’? We have a bet going about who he’s actually dating. Hankyung-hyung…I think he likes Siwon, too, actually. We should get them together. And Leeteuk-hyung obviously adores Kangin-hyung. I mean, he’s Leeteuk-hyung, surely you’ve seen them together?”

Kyuhyun nodded to himself, taking it all in, because some of it seemed really likely. “Is this real, and you’re not just messing with me?” he asked shakily. Sungmin hugged him.

“Would I lie to you?”

Considering they had been friends for a long time and roommates for at least two years, if not longer, Kyuhyun knew that Sungmin probably wouldn’t. He shook his head. “So…most of Super Junior is gay?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sungmin replied.

“But God…”

“God gave us the ability to love. If the person you love is the same gender, I don’t see the problem. It’s still love.”

Kyuhyun smiled softly, because he had never thought about it that way before, even though he wasn’t homophobic—it was quite hard to be, what with all the skinship they did. He stood and crossed to his side of the room, surrounded by the cot and other things for the baby, and burrowed himself into bed, trying to ignore it all.

---

The following week, when he was thirty-nine weeks along, he was going about his daily routine, hindered by those horrible contractions, when he felt a gush of liquid run through him, and he stood as quickly as he could manage, trousers soaked through.

“Oh God, oh God,” he said, over and over again.

His housemates, luckily all there, looked up to see him almost crying with panic.

“What happened, Kyuhyun-ah?” Eunhyuk asked.

Kyuhyun couldn’t help himself and started sobbing in almost horror. “I…” he began.

He’d got the room’s full attention then. “Are you all right?” Yesung asked awkwardly. “Is the baby coming?” It reminded Kyuhyun of the first time Yesung had said it, only he thought he was right this time.

Kyuhyun nodded, palms pressed to his eyes as he took several deep breaths.

“Omo! Someone, phone Zhou Mi!” Sungmin ordered, trying to find the nearest phone. “We don’t know the doctor’s phone number!”

Ryeowook handed over his mobile, and Sungmin keyed in the other’s number. “Zhou Mi-yah?” he asked quickly. “Zhou Mi-yah, I don’t care, I think Kyuhyun’s water just broke.” He pulled back and looked at the phone less than a minute later. “He’s phoning the doctor,” he said, “and he’ll pick Kyuhyun up in fifteen minutes. We have to make sure he takes his bag.”

Yesung hurried into Kyuhyun’s room and got it from behind the door, putting it next to the front door of their flat.

Sungmin took Kyuhyun to his room and changed him out of his wet clothes, and the younger didn’t even have the energy to be embarrassed that his hyung had done it for him. He simply let himself be wrapped in a towel as the liquid kept dribbling out and soaking the clean briefs he was now wearing. Sungmin led him out into the living room. Leeteuk, who had been phoned, was in there by the time they got back.

“Oh, Honey, it’s going to be alright,” Leeteuk said, hugging Kyuhyun as he cried into Leeteuk’s chest.

“I’m too young for this,” Kyuhyun replied mid-sob. He didn’t really think he would ever be old enough to have a baby, though. Not himself, at least. Maybe with a nice girl when he was in his thirties. He would never criticise a woman again after this experience—well, certainly not about pregnancy, births or babies.

The car turned up before the fifteen minutes were over, and Zhou Mi ran in. “Kuixian’s baby is coming?” he asked Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun nodded nervously back. “I would hug you tightly, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

He slid shoes onto Kyuhyun’s feet and then tugged him into a large dark robe to conceal the baby bump, before picking up the bag and tugging Kyuhyun out after him. They headed down to Zhou Mi’s car, and Kyuhyun was grateful for the absence of the usual screaming fans. Kyuhyun climbed into the back seat and lay down, shutting his eyes for a little while as they drove to the hospital.

Kyuhyun’s contractions started again in the car, painful and short ones, and he started sobbing again, clutching the back of the passenger seat. Zhou Mi pressed down on the pedal slightly harder, trying to get them to the hospital sooner.

Once they reached the hospital, Zhou Mi pulled a flu mask and a hat on to conceal his identity and pulled the hood of Kyuhyun’s robe over his head. Then he hurried them both inside, taking the bag with him, and towards the maternity ward, where they were directed into a large, clean room by Kyuhyun’s doctor.

“His labour’s started,” Zhou Mi explained, because Kyuhyun was too busy trying not to scream as the contractions became longer and even more painful.

“We need to perform an emergency caesarean,” the doctor said. “It should have been done ideally before his labour started but there is nothing we can do about that now.”

She ordered Zhou Mi to help get Kyuhyun out of his clothes and into a hospital gown, and take the contact lenses out of his eyes, and then asked if he would be coming into the operating theatre as well, considering he wasn’t the birth father. Kyuhyun nodded to the best of his ability, eyes shut tightly, so he didn’t see whether Zhou Mi was happy that he’d be present at the birth of his daughter, though he couldn’t imagine that the older wouldn’t be. The doctor handed Zhou Mi a set of cotton theatre-wear to change into. She left to find an operating room that she could book, and the staff she needed to perform the operation.

The bed Zhou Mi had laid Kyuhyun in once he was dressed appropriately was then wheeled quickly towards the operating theatre, Zhou Mi walking steadily beside it, holding Kyuhyun’s hand gently. Every so often he would squeeze the hand, trying to be comforting. Kyuhyun resisted the urge to scream at him, because he had no idea what he was going through; gentle squeezes weren’t comforting at all.

Once in the theatre, a blood sample was taken to check he wasn’t anaemic (he was, a little, but not enough to be a problem) and then a drip was attached to his arm, followed by blood-thinning injections, and an injection into his stomach of regional anaesthetic. There were a good number of people in the room, more than he’d like, and he was grateful for doctor-patient confidentiality, because there were at least eight people in that room who he would rather didn’t know about his pregnancy.

A cuff was wrapped around his upper arm and electrodes slid underneath the top of his gown. The doctor explained they were to check his blood pressure and heart rate during the operation. The doctor then began to attach things to parts of his body he didn’t even want to think about, although he was appreciative of the anaesthetic, because it meant he couldn’t feel them. He shut his eyes tightly so he couldn’t see what was going on. Zhou Mi stood next to him, still holding his hand. “It’ll be alright,” he whispered to Kyuhyun. At that moment, Kyuhyun didn’t believe it would be.

They shaved the hair on his stomach and Kyuhyun mourned the loss of his happy trail. He pouted to Zhou Mi, who just smiled at him gently.

The doctor finished setting up the operation and a screen was put up so he couldn’t see what was done. Kyuhyun was glad, because he didn’t think he’d want to see it happen. Apparently you could request the screen be dropped whilst your child was born, but he shook his head when it was offered to him. He didn’t want to see her be born. Zhou Mi whined quietly to him, because he wanted to see her birth, so Kyuhyun shrugged. “You can go around the screen, can’t you?”

The operation didn’t take very long, once the remaining amniotic fluid spilt out of the hole in his stomach and he wrinkled his nose at the sound, a little sickened by it, and he decided the only way to ignore the birth was to think. Kyuhyun spent the rest of the time with his eyes shut, mentally panicking about the prospect of having a baby, looking after her, having her in the house. Of leaving her with the assistant Noonadeul. Was he going to be a good parent? A good mother?

Once he’d given up on the panic and self-worry, he started wanting the baby out of him. He mentally yelled at her. He wanted his body back; nine months was entirely too long to house a parasite that only he really suffered for. The sooner she was out into the world, the better. He kept his eyes and his mouth shut for fear of screaming at the doctors to just hurry up with it already!

When indicated, Zhou Mi hurried around to look at the baby as she was pulled out, and Kyuhyun heaved a sigh of relief, because that meant that she was no longer in his stomach. “Oh Kuixian, she looks just like you!”

Kyuhyun buried his head in his hands, because that was not what he’d wanted to hear.

The cord connecting him to the baby was cut and then the midwife took her, cleaning her and checking she was healthy—seven pounds, two ounces, twenty-one inches long (with her mother’s genes, it was almost surprising she wasn’t even longer)—before wrapping her in a swaddling cloth. “Do you want to hold her?” she asked Kyuhyun, as the doctor cleaned the wound and stitched him back up.

“Um,” Kyuhyun said, not entirely sure if he did or not.

“You should hold her, Kuixian,” Zhou Mi said. “She’s yours.” He turned to Kyuhyun’s midwife. “When he holds her, can he feed her?”

The midwife turned to him in surprise. “Feed her?”

Zhou Mi nodded. “His body’s been making milk for ages,” he replied, and Kyuhyun covered his face, completely embarrassed that they were talking about this.

“I can show him how to if he wants to try?” the midwife continued, though Kyuhyun could tell she was unnerved by the prospect of a male, who had just given birth, feeding.

Kyuhyun turned to look at Zhou Mi, not sure if he wanted to glare or ask whether he should. He supposed it came out as a combination of both, for Zhou Mi just smiled and nodded, reaching out to hold his hand briefly.

“S-sure,” Kyuhyun stammered. “If that’s what it wants me to do…”

“Oh, just let me—” Zhou Mi said, and he pulled out his camera. “Just a photo or two before.”

The midwife showed Kyuhyun how to hold his baby, who had a nearly full head of black hair and the same dark eyes as him, and aside from looking universally baby-like, Kyuhyun supposed she did look quite like him. Zhou Mi snapped a few shots and Kyuhyun thought he probably looked terrible, but that couldn’t be helped. They would be able to take photos back in his room, after he was clean, after all.

After the photos were taken, the midwife told Kyuhyun to lift the robe fully up, so he did, still embarrassed about the entire situation. He was then shown how to position the baby’s head correctly over his , in the back of , and after a few repositions because they’d got it wrong, she started completely painlessly.

He looked down at her, thinking that she was his. He had given life to her, and he was giving life to her then by feeding her. Part of him was so confused by this prospect, and part of him was terrified, and part of him was really freaked out that that had just happened and that he was actually feeding his baby, but the remaining part of him again brought up one of his arguments for keeping her; this was his chance to do something with his life, to make something better for her. She was his, nobody else’s. It was up to him.