Fix you

Part 1

"I want one too," he giggles and plants gentle kisses on her neck. This time, he doesn't realise the restrained expression on Seri's face. "Actually two, I've always thought of twins." She doesn't respond but he continues anyway, "girls... so the world will have more Seris and what a wonderful thing that will be. But of course boys would be as wonderful, I'd have superheroes to train to look after you."

Now the silence starts to deafen as her body tightens against his hold so he withdraws slowly and then glances over her task, which she seems to be doing mindlessly now as if a source of unhelpful distraction. "Are you alright?" he asks. "Did I say something wrong?"

It's not that the topic never came up before but they had not spoken about it just quite seriously. She learnt somewhere in the middle of their relationship how fond Jeong Hyeok is of children by the way he interacts with them. So that fact somehow made her avoid confrontation of her feelings regarding it. Perhaps she even considered making an exception with him. But truth is, she has not moved in that direction, only that she has not verbalized it despite having built some scenarios in her head over some time. Maybe she had been waiting for it to come up. Well she does not quite know if there would ever be a right time but it has surely come up now and the urge to come clean overwhelms her.

"I have something to tell you. If I don't do it now, I don't know if I'll ever do it," she says, her voice straining as if she was struggling to let her words out. She finally leaves her task and dries her hands off, brushing some hair behind her ear nervously.

"What's wrong, why are you being serious all of a sudden?" he asks slightly confused as he follows Seri to the living room and they sit together on the couch. He reaches for her hands and squeezes them reassuringly indicating that she could tell him anything.

"I... I – don't... I don't want... children," she blurts out straight-forwardly. He freezes but does not react further so she repeats, "I don't want children."

"I heard you the first time," he says at first somewhat calmly. Her heart sinks immediately though when he drops her hands albeit slowly. She merely watches as he then stands up and walks back to the kitchen. Turning the water faucet on the sink, he splashes his face as if to give him some kind of sensation from the revelation. He lets out a deep sigh as he leans his weight on the counter and shakes his head in disbelief. The cold water had not given the effect he intended as he hoped to be awaken from what appears to be the start of a bad dream.

"We don't have to do this now, once we're both ready, we can –" he says through gritted teeth while harboring some hope that she had not meant exactly what she said.

She walks up to him but does not go near him so she settles on the bar stool behind the kitchen counter across him. Seri throws him a regretful look and shakes her head, indicating that it was not about timing. "Jeong Hyeok-ah," she calls out with quivering lips. He stares at her for a few moments, then he realizes that she has never expressed the desire the same way he has just done but it did not cross his mind that this was her stance.

He goes round to her side and turns her seat slightly as he places his hands on her arms. "Seri, maybe I got carried away about Tae-gu earlier but it doesn't have to be soon for us. I mean, you may feel this right now but once we have a child, you're going to love him or her more than me even," he tries to reason with her but unconvincingly. "How could you not want to bring a beautiful child who looks like you or me into this world?" his lips quiver as he runs his hands down on her hair lovingly yet desperately. He clearly could not comprehend where she was coming from.

Seri suddenly flinches. The feeling is so foreign, she was never one to reject any type of affection from Jeong Hyeok. Far from that, she was addicted to him and craved for his touch all the time. But now, she feels tightness in her chest and her body corresponds with her emotions, which is that truthfully she became suffocated by his pleading. She draws away from him, which leaves him frozen yet again, for at least more than a few seconds.