A Small Light, Beating

Ha. Som-i's face twisted in sheer disbelief for a moment. So even the great Kwon Hwi-young had thoughts like this? No—wait, was he actually mocking her just now?

"It's not that, it's just... your face is way too noticeable right now, sunbaenim."

She tilted her upper body toward him as if sharing a secret, and the corners of his mouth lifted in a faint smile.

"If that's the problem, then you wear it."

Without waiting for an answer, he pulled the cap down snugly over her head.

"Ah!"

The moment the cap swallowed her head, Som-i's mouth fell open.

"What?"

"The cap is..."

Som-i mumbled, wearing a look of utter bewilderment.

"...It fits me perfectly."

"Hm?"

"It might even be a little tight, actually."

Hwi-young raised an eyebrow, then quickly grasped the meaning behind her hollow expression. His shoulders shook as a ticklish laugh escaped him, and he tugged his own hood up over his head, where it had been dangling off his broad frame.

But Som-i only knitted her brows together, sizing up his head against her own. How on earth could a cap fit her this perfectly? Her head wasn't exactly small, after all.

Hwi-young glanced back at her sullen face and bit down another chuckle.

Pushing through the thick glass doors, they were hit by a low murmur utterly unlike the stillness outside. The waiting room sofa was already packed tight with expectant mothers and their guardians who had arrived earlier.

As expected, every eye in the hospital latched onto Hwi-young first. The crowd drank him in from head to toe, and then their gazes slid to Som-i, hiding behind him. Heat surged up her neck in an instant. Her shoulders kept hunching in on themselves, as if she were the one who'd committed some crime.

She shuffled nervously to the desk to confirm their appointment, then retreated from the bustling crowd to press her back against a pillar of the waiting room. Awkwardness had her fiddling aimlessly with her fingers when Hwi-young, who had been quietly surveying the room, seized her wrist.

"Som-ah."

Startled by the sudden warmth—even through his sleeve—Som-i looked up with wide eyes.

"Come here for a second."

Keeping a loose grip on her wrist, he strode off toward somewhere with purpose. The two of them soon stopped in front of a man sprawled across the sofa, legs spread wide as if he owned the place.

The man, absorbed in a game on his phone, looked up at the enormous shadow falling over him. His gaze traveled up Hwi-young's legs for a long while before finally reaching his face.

Hwi-young smiled pleasantly and spoke.

"How many months along are you?"

The man's mouth hung open awkwardly for a beat before he pointed at his wife's belly beside him.

"Twenty-four weeks. She just entered her seventh month."

"No, not your wife. You, boss."

"I'm sorry, what?"

The man replied, dumbfounded. Hwi-young tilted his thumb toward the belly spilling over the man's splayed legs.

"Your belly looks a good deal heavier than your wife's, boss. I was wondering if you might be full-term, so I thought I'd ask. Was that out of line?"

"Wh-what did you say?"

"Ah, don't get me wrong. Your wife is the pregnant one, so of course she should be sitting. But with you spread out like that too, some other mother-to-be has to stand. See the problem?"

Hwi-young paused, then let his gaze crawl slowly over the man from beneath his hood. At the sudden flash of coldness so unlike Kwon Hwi-young, Som-i's eyes darted around beneath the brim of her cap.

"If you drew your legs in a little, I'd say there'd be room for one more person. Shall I give you a hand with that?"

Despite his harmlessly curved eyes, the toe of Hwi-young's sneaker nudged—tap, tap—against the man's foot.

The man flushed scarlet, hastily pulled in his legs, and scooted his backside all the way to the edge of the sofa. At that, the other guardians beside him, as if on cue, pocketed their phones and began making room as well.

In an instant, a space opened up in the middle of the sofa—ample seating for one Som-i. Hwi-young inclined his head toward the man with effortless grace.

"Thank you. I hope the delivery goes smoothly, boss."

Hwi-young pulled Som-i out from where she'd been hiding behind him. She startled violently and waved both hands in the air.

"N-no, I'm fine standing—"

"Som-ah. Sit."

With a voice that was quiet yet somehow firm, he pressed lightly down on her shoulders and finally got her seated.

Som-i bit her lip, glancing down at Hwi-young's feet planted squarely in front of her. Her cheeks kept puffing up and her lips kept twitching, but out of some inexplicable embarrassment, she couldn't bring herself to lift her head.

"It's confirmed, then. Going by the date of your last period, you're about five weeks along."

At the doctor's blunt words, Hwi-young's and Som-i's faces stiffened at the same time.

Seemingly indifferent to their reactions, the doctor tapped at the monitor and added,

"Look here, at this spot. You see it? The flashing? That's it fighting to stay alive right now."

Silence settled over the examination room. Hwi-young and Som-i held their breath, staring at the tiny light on the screen. Its unwavering, perfectly regular flicker was sending a strange resonance through both their chests.

The doctor studied the two of them—looking somehow half-lost in a daze—over the rim of his glasses, then spoke slowly.

"By the way, is the guardian a student too? You have decided what you're going to do about the child, haven't you?"

The question, premised on the assumption that they obviously wouldn't keep it, made Som-i's brow furrow.

Truthfully, she'd already been feeling a little deflated since before they'd even entered the examination room—the nurse had been so warm and gentle with the other expectant mothers while treating her with nothing but clipped formality. She was just as pregnant as any of them, yet she'd apparently been sorted into the category of uninvited guest, unworthy of blessing. It hadn't sat well with her.

But when she stole a glance at him, Hwi-young seemed entirely oblivious to the doctor's question. He simply stared, his focus blurred and distant, boring holes into the flickering point of light on the screen.

Their steps felt impossibly heavy as they left the examination room behind.

When the nurse at the desk told them the amount due, Hwi-young—still dazed all the while—snapped to and fished out his wallet, extending his card. A moment later, the nurse handed over a mother's booklet with the three clear letters of Kwak Som-i printed on it, along with the ultrasound photo.

A single white dot nestled in a black cave. Som-i gazed at the picture blankly. Her heart lurched without warning. Of course, she had expected it to be a pregnancy, but actually seeing it confirmed like this sent a jumble of emotions scrambling through her head until everything spun.

There she was, running her finger over that dot—smaller than a bean—inside the ultrasound photo, when—

"Could we get one more copy of the photo?"

Som-i looked up at the sound of Kwon Hwi-young's voice beside her.

"One more?"

"Yes, one more, please. One for Mom, one for Dad. That's only fair, isn't it?"

At the soft words, delivered with a gentle curve of his lips, the stern nurse's cheeks twitched.

"Oh—yes, of course. One moment."

The tips of Hwi-young's fingers trembled, ever so slightly, as he took the freshly printed photo. At a glance he looked as composed as ever, but as he slid the picture into the slot of his wallet, his eyes drifted aimlessly through empty air.

Som-i didn't notice any of it. She was too busy replaying, over and over in her head, the words he'd just spoken.

Mom... and Dad.

And then her heart swelled beyond all control. At the same time, a small hope bubbled up from somewhere deep.

In the corner of her chest that had felt so bleak and boundless, a tiny drum began to thump, thump, sounding its beat.

"Eighteen minutes left."

Hwi-young glanced back and forth between the bus ticket to Seoul he'd just purchased and the watch on his wrist.

"Want to sit down and wait a bit?"

The two of them settled side by side onto a faded bench inside the terminal.

Som-i let her gaze wander idly through the dusty, stuffy air of the station. She pretended to look around at this and that, but her eyes kept drifting back to Kwon Hwi-young. She stole glances at him until her eye sockets ached, and dozens of times she whipped her gaze straight ahead, terrified of being caught. Then, in the split second she turned her head to sneak another look, her eyes collided with the dark depths of Hwi-young's.

"Hah—!"

Som-i hunched her shoulders and jolted in her seat, and Hwi-young's eyes crinkled.

"What are you so startled about?"

"Oh, nothing, it's just..."

Flustered, Som-i scrubbed at the tip of her nose. Having been rubbing the toe of her sneaker meaninglessly against the tile floor, she finally parted her heavy lips.

"Um, sunbaenim?"

"Hm?"

"What would you like to happen?"

"..."

"I mean... about the baby."

As she lifted her head tentatively, Hwi-young's rigid face swam into her view. The face that had worn a faint smile only moments ago was now utterly drained of humor, as if it had never known one.

At the shift in his atmosphere, Som-i swept her sweaty palm down the leg of her pants for no good reason.

"And what would you like to happen?"

The low voice came at last. Som-i's ears twitched sharply toward the direction of his voice. Was she imagining it? His tone seemed to have sunk a little lower than before.

Still, she had to say it. This wasn't a simple matter. This was a question bearing the full, undeniable weight of a life.

Som-i swallowed dryly, her face set with resolve. Nodding lightly at the empty air as if to steel herself, she opened her mouth.

"I want to..."

Hwi-young watched her quietly from the corner of his eye.

"I want to keep it. I want to have the baby."

Kwon Hwi-young's eyes wavered.