In the instant that it takes for Jeong-Hyeok's gaze to track away from that laden bathroom sink counter toward Se-Ri's face, he feels himself plunged, sucked into a chilly sea, something leaden like a weight on his ankles pulling him down, down. Overcome, he does not even attempt to swim against it, to reach for the surface, forgets to take a breath-his intellect, his processing ability overcome as though his descent has generated a wall of foam and bubbles all about him. It must be this that obscures any access he has to seeing her face, gauging where this moment has left her.
"What is this," he wants to ask, yet knows he doesn't ask.
"What is this," his brain begs of him, though in some quieter niche another side of his brain sits, knowing, comprehending, seeing all.
Se-Ri has her own opaque disconnect at work in front of her eyes. She can feel his surprise at the door as she opens it, knows he can at least mark the wand in her hand, if not the clutch of others laid on the counter.
She becomes aware of her breath, her lungs feeling as though they might stop if she were not actively reminding them to function. Eyes wide, she looks for his face, for the muscles at his temples, the corners of his mouth—tries to remind herself how to read him—forgets to compose her own expression, forgets to mitigate the showing of what she is feeling in any way.
There is no floor under him, he is certain of it, no Swiss hardwood that has endured decades—perhaps longer—of life in this forest cottage. His mind goes dark, blank and closed. There is nothing firm upon which he can stand. His hands, convinced of this, do not even flex, searching for something to grasp, to hang on to.
Se-Ri pivots back to the sink counter and grabs for the four wands, a few small sheets of paper from the crumpled boxes. She reaches for his slack hand and presses them into it.
"My period is overdue by four and a half weeks, now."
He watches on as she speaks, but her words to him sound distorted, submerged. He looks down to the handful of wands she has presented him with.
"Every one is negative," she says. She watches on as he looks from the used pregnancy tests to her.
She waits for him to respond, her mouth eventually opening, but no sound come from it. She waits again for him to respond. When he doesn't, her eyes seek out the floor, and she withdraws into the bathroom.
The food just made is forgotten, cooling fast at the table. Further plans they may have had for the day, unrecalled. And instead of falling into one another's arms, supported, bonded by the moment they are presented with, they topple, unbalanced, falling away from each other.
Left with nothing he can think to say or do, and with only a closed door to stare at, he wanders back into the kitchen, lays out each test from his hand onto the countertop, and attempts to marry each test to the small instruction papers she also pressed into his hands. It takes less than three minutes for his distracted mind, even, to discern Se-Ri was correct: each of them reads negative for pregnancy.
And yet, she shared she was missing her period.
How could he not have noticed? Was time so jumbled, now, so off-kilter and out-of-joint for him to not observe such a thing, leaving her at sea, alone—or had she also not noticed? Had the unusual life they had taken up here affected her as well?
He read further on the sheets. They outlined accuracy percentages, the possibility of false negatives. He studied longest at the Korean-language packaging insert, as though it would illuminate something for his mind the others would not. He read the words as printed, he re-looked at the taken tests on display in front of him on the kitchen countertop, but his mind would not be quieted. He may as well have been looking at the schematics for a cosmic ray gun.
The cottage's pipes gave a short squeak as he realized Se-Ri must be drawing a bath. Neither of them had eaten anything of the lunch, which still decorated the table like an untouchable offering to some forgotten household deity.
Without further printed material to focus on, to hope would untangle the knots in his stomach, and even in his tongue, he again loses what negligible footing he had gained in the taking-on of that task.
He does not make it to bed that night. Instead, he sits a vigil, frowning, seated on a straight-backed chair in the cottage's geosil, lights in the room still on.
In the morning Se-Ri stumbles in. He hears her coming, but finds himself without a plan—without an understanding of how to behave-how, even, to share the chaos of his night of thoughts and self-scoldings and terror with her.
She finds him skittish as a rabbit escaped from a snare. She has spent her own terrible, terrible night. When he rises upon her entrance and exits the room to shower, she does not stop him, has no words to further burden him with.
He spends the day seemingly seeking out spaces where she is not. His eyes, she thinks, though she is given but snatches of moments to see them, look like a wound.
After nightfall, once Se-Ri has gone to bed, he grabs an afghan for use on the too-narrow-for-his-length sofa.
What has he done? his mind scolds, again, now in the dark. He calculates numerous times, counting back from today (Se-Ri's four and a half weeks' claim), he stops and calculates some forty weeks forward from it.
Exhausted, at some point his eyes close. How could they not? He wakes, hours later, a crick in his neck, his calves and feet overhanging the sofa's arm, his own arm hanging down toward the floor. He moves to pull it back up to his chest, but feels something. For a moment, forgetting himself, he thinks it is one of the dogs—but he is not at the chalet, he is in Keller's cottage—the dogs back with Sigrid. Turning further on his side, in the dark with moonshine the only lightsource, he finds Se-Ri, lying parallel to him and the couch he occupies, on the floor below. She is asleep. His hand has brushed against her hair.
The desire to touch her, to connect his skin to hers is strong. Too strong, even, for him to ignore, to easily push aside. Would her skin feel cool, he wonders, consequent of lying on a cottage floor, no cushioning under her, no cover atop her? Or would it feel warm, inflamed in ways his own body readily recalled it to him?
Startled, he pulls his arm up quickly, his hand clenching into a fist, his greedy fingertips corralled. His mind's eye sees them—gifts him with images from their past months stranded together; erotic, intimate sensations their love for each other had led them to—doorways through which he had willingly walked, unmindful of caution or restraint.
What has he done? Himself, a man with no idea if he will still be present in Switzerland in thirty-four weeks, much less the next year-and the year after that?
What has he done to the woman he loves, the well-known CEO of Seri's Choice who cannot return to Seoul, unmarried, with a child to raise? Whose business and life cannot endure such a scandal?
The Swiss, he knows-his colleagues at the college, acquaintances in the village-would worry little enough for a child born out of wedlock, or the child's mother. Such concerns were a non-issue here. He doubted he could even make them fully understand the gravity of it for his and Se-Ri's culture. Certainly, none had batted even so much as an eyelash at knowing he and Se-Ri shared a house without being husband and wife.
But Se-Ri and he did not live in Switzerland, or the EU. They were made temporary overseas Koreans only by that virus quirk. It was imperative Se-Ri not only return to Seoul when possible, but also that her life never descend into scandal, as it would take her brand and thus her livelihood—her passion—with it. What has he allowed to happen to Se-Ri, the one he is meant, at all costs, to safeguard and protect?
What has he done to himself? A child—his child, to whom he will have no standing, no access, no…connection—a child whose grandfather is dangerously the director of NK's General Political Bureau and vice-marshal of Korean People's Army? Whose grandfather is Chairman Yoon, with no small amount of power and standing, former head of Queen's Group in Seoul? Was this not a perilous crossroads at which to leave a baby defenseless—his baby—their child-without a father to protect it, or its mother?
Unlike sheep, he counts an endless number of occasions large as graduations, as festivals, small as skinned knees and bike rides for which he will be absent. Moments beyond count in the life of a child whose father is unable to show it love, to cuddle it close.
He lies still on the sofa, fist to his chest, tense and disciplined in everything but his mind. When sleep at last comes, it proves more like fainting into the black.
As his eyes open in the morning, the floor beside him is empty, not even lint from Se-Ri's clothing to prove she has been there.
When she comes downstairs, her wet hair still turned up in the towel, he sees she has retrieved her cell phone. He averts his eyes from the slit of the robe where it opens above her knees as she takes her steps. "The doctor has an open appointment in two day's time," she tells him.
He is too breathlessly self-consumed in his dark thoughts of a coming future to notice the small pinches around her eyes that show her feelings have been hurt, to show that she is needing him.
He nods with both his head and eyes. Here, now, is a timetable, he thinks. A countdown to knowing for sure how disastrous his future is set to become, how broken-beyond-repair his heart-how much fault he must accept for it.
It is the third night, and he again self-banishes to the couch. He admits to himself he doesn't know how to return to a bedroom with her—to that once-perfect space where he failed her so completely.
The circles under his eyes are now visible even to him, who takes little enough notice of himself in any mirror. He eats and drinks all but nothing for two days' time. This too, wears him down. His body is as hyper-alert as it ever was in any army maneuver or personal battle, but the strain of such constancy is showing. His mind circles the same question: What has he done? but his consciousness abandons him sooner than the other nights.
He awakes to a chiming clock telling him it's three. He is on his back, calves, ankles and feet jutting out from the other end of the couch. He doesn't feel their ache at their unsupported position. Instead, he feels the heartbeat beside him, where he finds Se-Ri has tucked herself between him and the couch's back pillows. It is not a space with much room to offer, and so she is on her side, front to him, leg bent and draped over his, arm bent across his chest, her hand to his opposite earlobe, which she holds like a child to a special blanket or security plush. She is sleeping to a level she could not possibly feign.
It is only his exhaustion, he knows, that has let her surprise him like this—that has kept him from rousing to the jostling, the noise and touches that it would have required for her to not only arrive here, but fall asleep as well.
As her heart beats, her breath comes and goes, his senses register other signs of her life-the force and existence of her-he feels a lexicon's worth of emotions. They drain and terrify him, every one.
For three days he has tried to pick apart their problem, he has rebuked himself better than could any elder. He has studied on what could, or must, be done. This, he has pursued to the detriment of his physical self, and to Se-Ri's emotional needs. He has wrestled with the possible news, with what should be the happiest and most celebrated of news, being, instead, world-crumbling. He has tasted the anger and brimstone of that fact. And in the wake of it all, all he finds himself left with is hunger, hiding beneath his despair.
It is not a belly-hunger, though he hasn't eaten. It is not a hunger that would drive him to wake her, to feel his mouth on hers, hear her needs crooned into his ear. No, it is a hunger similar to what has brought her to him, now. This hand holding its place at his neck and ear, he sees it for what it is: a reaching-out, an assuring herself that he is here, that though he has retreated he is not gone. And it is just this he is hungry for: to allow himself to reach for her, to hold her, to assure himself of her.
Her breathing continues at his side, it is regular and untroubled by the present anguish and battle in his mind. He doesn't turn toward her, so as not to disturb her sleep, he remains on his back, but he brings his right hand across himself, lets it lightly touch her shoulder—covered in the top she is sleeping in-brings his knuckles up to her jaw and face. He never wants to have to tell her that he has no plan, no path forward for what they must do if the doctor answers her query positively-would wish to die before confessing the bleak tenor of his thoughts upon learning of this child.
He thinks (perhaps for the first moment), he imagines a child within her; beyond a textbook drawing, a crude middle school slide presentation. A child, warm and snug, its heart beating, growing like a seedling planted with love. Before he knows it his hand hovers over her abdomen—he dare not touch it, he thinks, dare not lay claim to something he must abdicate his right to. Would this child take comfort from the beat and rhythm of Se-Ri's heart? The vibration and timbre of her voice?
His hand hovers closer—he has lost the will to discipline it any longer. He brings it to rest, consciously, intentionally. There is nothing remarkable about the spot. Perhaps he expected there to be, but there is not. It is a part of her he knows as intimately as the rest—and so he can say this is so.
He wants, he desires with all his heart, to speak ten nice words aloud to embolden this growing thing, 'you're working hard' he should say to Se-Ri, but his voice is lost to him in the moment, and as he feels tears making their way down his cheeks he abandons his plans to never hold her again in the hopes of protecting her. Instead, he wraps his arm around her with a tightness of three days', of an expected lifetime's despondency—acknowledging every moment he will have to miss of this child's life, moments he has spent cataloguing since encountering her at that bathroom door, every way in which he, her lover, has failed her. She does not wake, but strengthens her own embrace of him, instinctively, reminding him that her choice of him was made long ago, and does not waver.
It is what he needs.