There is a specific kind of tragedy in a marriage where nobody ever throws a plate.

If Jaehyun had been a loud man, or an angry man, or a man who drank too much and gambled away their savings, Y/N would have known exactly what to do. Society gives you a script for a bad husband. You cry, you pack a bag in the middle of the night, you call your sister, and you leave.

But society does not give you a script for a husband who is simply a piece of polite, breathing furniture.

"I'm back," she called out. Her voice sounded flat, swallowed instantly by the large room.

A solid ten seconds passed.

"Did you get the barbecue sauce?" a voice drifted in from the sofa.

"No, Jaehyun," Y/N said, opening the fridge and staring blankly at the shelves. "I went to get painkillers and things for my cramps. I did not get the barbecue sauce."

"Oh," Jaehyun said. Then, a few seconds later, "Okay. Cool."

That was it. That was the end of the conversation.

Jaehyun was exactly where she had left him. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a gray t-shirt. He was sitting on the gray sofa. If he sat there long enough, Y/N thought, he might actually camouflage into the upholstery and disappear completely. That would certainly save her some cooking.

He was incredibly handsome. That was the trap, wasn't it? Society tricked you into marrying jawlines and broad shoulders, completely neglecting to mention that jawlines do not ask you about your day, and broad shoulders do not know how to load a dishwasher.

He pressed a button on his controller. The little digital man on the television screen shot a gun.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the television.

"No," Y/N said, sitting down on the armchair across from him. "I am bleeding. My stomach feels like it is in a blender. And I heard some really disgusting opinions from an old man named Gary."

"Gary," Jaehyun repeated. He blinked once. "That sucks."

He pressed another button. The digital man jumped over a wall.

"Yes," Y/N said softly. "It sucks."

She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. She watched him play. She watched his thumbs move with rapid, practiced precision. He had lightning-fast reflexes for this game. If only he could apply that same speed to noticing when his wife was crumbling into a million tiny pieces right in front of him. 

The digital man on the screen died. Huge red letters spelling 'GAME OVER' flashed across the television.

Jaehyun sighed, running a hand through his perfectly thick hair. He set the controller down on the coffee table and stretched, his joints popping. Finally, he turned his head and looked at her.

"The sink in the guest bathroom is dripping again," Y/N said.

Jaehyun did not look up from his phone. "Call the plumber."

"I called the plumber twice last month," she replied, keeping her voice carefully neutral. "He said the pipe is too old. It needs to be replaced. I asked you to look at the quote he sent over on email."

"I'll look at it," Jaehyun said. He scrolled with his thumb.

"You said that last week."

"I was busy last week, Y/N. I will look at it."

He still hadn't looked at her. He was speaking to his phone. He was married to a glass screen, and Y/N was just the background noise in the house he paid a mortgage on.

A year ago, this would have started an argument. Y/N would have raised her voice. She would have told him that she wasn't his secretary, that she needed him to be a partner, that she was drowning in the mental load of keeping their lives running while he just floated through the house like a ghost. And Jaehyun would have looked at her with polite, baffled exhaustion, as if she were speaking a dead language. He would apologize, completely missing the point, and promise to "do better."

But doing better required actual effort. It required putting down the phone. It required curiosity about his wife's internal life. And Jaehyun was fundamentally a lazy man when it came to human emotion.

So, Y/N had stopped arguing. The burden of constantly wanting him to improve had simply grown too heavy to carry. It was far less exhausting to just let the sink drip.

"My mother called yesterday," Y/N said softly, picking up her dry toast. She didn't bite into it. She just held it like a life raft. "She asked what we were doing for our anniversary."

At this, Jaehyun’s thumb finally stopped scrolling. He blinked, a tiny, microscopic furrow appearing between his brows. "Anniversary?"

"Our fifth anniversary, Jaehyun," Y/N said, her voice hollow. "It’s next month."

"Right. Five years," Jaehyun said. He tapped the side of his phone against the marble counter, his mind clearly racing to calculate how much this milestone was going to cost him in time and restaurant reservations. "We should book that Italian place downtown. The one with the valet. I'll have my assistant handle it."

Y/N closed her eyes. I'll have my assistant handle it. What a beautiful, romantic summary of their life together.

She set the toast down. She wasn't hungry anymore. The kitchen suddenly felt very cold. She turned to face him, leaning her hip against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest to keep her hands from shaking.

"We need to leave in twenty minutes," she said, changing the subject.

Jaehyun took a sip of his black coffee. "Leave for what? I have a department briefing at ten-thirty."

"We have an appointment," Y/N said, spelling out the words slowly, as if speaking to a child. "At the clinic. With Doctor Evans."

Jaehyun froze. The coffee cup hovered halfway to his mouth. The polite, blank mask on his face cracked, revealing a deep, weary irritation underneath. He lowered the mug, setting it on the counter with a heavy clink.

"Today?" he asked.

"Yes, Jaehyun. Today. I put it on the shared calendar three weeks ago. I reminded you on Sunday. And I reminded you last night."

Jaehyun sighed. It was not a sad sigh. It was the loud, long sigh of a man who has just been told he has to go to the DMV to renew his license. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, pinching his eyes shut.

Medically, structurally, biologically, they were completely fine. The doctors called it 'unexplained infertility.' It was a fancy medical term that essentially translated to: 'We have no idea why you cannot have a baby, but please keep paying us thousands of dollars to guess.'

"I thought we were taking a break," Jaehyun said, looking away from her, staring very hard at a blank spot on the wall.

"We took a break, Jaehyun. We took a six-month break," Y/N said, trying to keep her voice perfectly level. If she sounded too emotional, he would shut down entirely. "Dr. Evans said we need to come in this week to discuss the next steps."

Jaehyun rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. He let out a long, dramatic, suffering sigh. It was the sigh of a man being asked to carry a very heavy piece of furniture up a flight of stairs.

"What next steps?" he muttered into his hands. "We did the pills. We did the weird scheduled stuff. I don't know what else he wants from us."

"He wants to talk about IVF," Y/N said. She forced the letters out of her mouth. "Or IUI. Or using a donor. We have run out of the basic options. We have to move on to the other options."

"I know the options," he snapped, his voice suddenly sharp. It was the most emotion he had shown all day, and of course, it was annoyance. "The options are we spend our life savings to let a doctor turn our private life into a science project. Why can't we just relax? Everyone says if you just stop stressing about it, it happens naturally."

Y/N stared at him.

If there was a button hidden under the armchair that would instantly drop Jaehyun through a trapdoor into the center of the earth, she would have pressed it without hesitation.

"Stop stressing about it," she repeated, her voice dangerously quiet.

"Yeah," he said, completely missing the warning signs flashing in her eyes. He picked at a loose thread on his sweatpants. "You're always so wound up about it. You make it a chore. It's supposed to be natural. If we just let it go, and let nature take its course—"

"Nature," Y/N interrupted, standing up from the chair so fast it rocked backward on its legs. "Nature is stupid, Jaehyun. Nature gave me cramps so bad today I almost passed out in Aisle 4. Nature is not our friend. Nature is currently ignoring us."

Jaehyun leaned back into the sofa, putting his hands up defensively. "See? This is what I mean. You get hostile. It puts pressure on me."

"Pressure on you?" Y/N let out a short, humorless laugh that sounded more like a bark. "Oh, I am so sorry. I didn't realize having your blood drawn once and giving a sample in a cup was too much pressure for you. I will just go back to tracking my cycle, taking hormone shots that make my hair fall out, and bleeding every month while you play video games. Does that sound less stressful for you?"

Jaehyun’s jaw tightened. A dark, ugly flush crept up his neck. He hated this conversation. He hated feeling broken, and because he didn't know how to process that feeling, he turned it into anger directed at her.

"I am not the problem," he said, his voice hard. "My tests were perfect."

Y/N felt a cold, sharp pain in her chest. It was a low blow. It was the kind of petty, defensive comment that husbands only use when they are cornered.

"My tests were perfect too," she whispered, her voice cracking just a fraction. She hated herself for showing weakness. "That is why it is called 'unexplained,' Jaehyun. We are both failing."

"I know, I know," Jaehyun muttered, waving a hand in the air dismissively. He picked up his phone again, already typing out a message to his assistant to cancel his morning meetings. "It’s just... it’s a lot, Y/N. It’s always something with these doctors. We go in, they tell us nothing is wrong, they charge us a fortune, and we come back home. It's exhausting."

It's exhausting.

Y/N looked at him. She looked at the man who had never once researched a fertility treatment, who had never once tracked an ovulation cycle, who had never once cried in a bathroom holding a negative test. He found it exhausting.

A sudden, vile ick crawled up Y/N’s throat. It was a physical sensation, a sudden revulsion so strong she had to grip the edge of the marble counter to steady herself.

She didn't want to have a baby with this man.

The thought hit her with the force of a speeding train. It was terrifying in its absolute clarity. She didn't want to sit in a sterile clinic, pump her body full of synthetic hormones, and endure months of physical agony just to hand a child over to a man who couldn't even be bothered to look up from his phone.

But what was the alternative? Admitting defeat? Admitting that the last five years of her life had been a massive, tragic mistake? Admitting that she had built her entire adult identity around a ghost town?

"Do we really have to do this today?" he asked, his tone whining, whimsical, and thoroughly annoyed. "It’s the middle of the week, Y/N. I have back-to-back meetings. Can't you just go and call me if there is an update?"

Y/N stared at him. She stared at this handsome, hollow man in his perfect navy suit, and she felt a sudden, desperate urge to laugh.

It was the great, cruel joke of her life. They were going to the clinic to figure out why they couldn't create a child together, and he was asking if she could just handle it by herself, like she was taking the car in for an oil change.

Four years. They had been trying for a baby for four years. At first, it was exciting. It was the one thing that had actually required them to interact. But as the months turned into years, and the pregnancy tests kept coming back with a single, glaring negative line, the excitement had curdled into panic, and the panic had settled into a heavy, suffocating silence.

"Get your car keys," Y/N said. Her voice was completely dead. The cornered badger had stopped fighting; it was just sitting in the trap, waiting.

Jaehyun let out one final, put-upon sigh. He pocketed his phone, downed the rest of his coffee, and adjusted his cuffs. "Fine. Let's get this over with."

He walked past her without a second glance, grabbing his keys from the bowl by the front door.

Y/N stood in the bright, beautiful kitchen for a moment longer. She looked at the dripping sink. She looked at her cold piece of toast. She picked up her purse from the stool and followed him out the door.

—

Dr. Evans’s office was a room designed to make bad news sound like a luxury vacation. Behind the large mahogany desk sat Dr. Evans himself. He was a man who looked like he had been born wearing a stethoscope and a very expensive wristwatch. He had kind, serious eyes and a voice perfectly tuned to deliver medical facts without triggering tears.

Y/N sat in one of the beige chairs, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Next to her sat Jaehyun. There were exactly six inches of empty space between their armrests, but it might as well have been a canyon. 

"Unexplained infertility," Doctor Evans said gently, folding her hands over the file. "I know it is not the answer you want to hear. Human biology is a miracle, but it is also a mystery. Your blood work is flawless. Your hormone levels are perfectly balanced. Jaehyun’s tests are excellent. Mechanically speaking, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be pregnant."

Y/N let out a slow, shaky breath. It was the same verdict they had been given a year ago. It was the medical equivalent of a shrug.

"So," Doctor Evans continued, adjusting her glasses. "We have exhausted the conservative methods. The timed cycles, the temperature charts. It is time to look at the next chapter. The most logical, effective path forward for unexplained infertility is In Vitro Fertilization. IVF."

Y/N felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach. She knew the word. Everyone knew the word. But hearing it prescribed to her felt like crossing an invisible, terrifying line.

"I want to walk you through exactly what this entails," Doctor Evans said, her tone shifting into a professional, educational rhythm. "It is a journey. It requires patience, and it requires a significant physical commitment from you, Y/N. The process happens in distinct phases."

The doctor pulled out a sleek, laminated chart and placed it on the desk.

"Phase one is ovarian stimulation," the doctor explained, pointing to a diagram of a female reproductive system. "Normally, your body produces one egg a month. We need more than that. For about ten to twelve days, you will need to give yourself daily subcutaneous injections of fertility drugs—hormones called gonadotropins. This will stimulate your ovaries to produce multiple mature eggs at once."

Y/N swallowed hard. Daily injections. She hated needles.

"During this time, you will come into the clinic every two to three days," Doctor Evans continued. "We will do transvaginal ultrasounds and blood tests to monitor the growth of your follicles. Your hormones will be in overdrive. You will feel bloated, tired, and highly emotional. It is essentially a super-charged menstrual cycle."

Jaehyun sat perfectly still, staring at the laminated chart with the blank, focused expression of a man watching a PowerPoint presentation on quarterly sales figures.

"Once the follicles are the right size," Doctor Evans said, "we trigger ovulation with a final injection. Exactly thirty-six hours later, we do the egg retrieval. It is a minor surgical procedure. We put you under light sedation, pass a needle through the vaginal wall, and aspirate the eggs directly from your ovaries. You will need a day or two of bed rest afterward."

The cold knot in Y/N’s stomach turned into a block of ice. Surgery. Needles. Sedation. She was listening to a manual on how to dismantle and harvest her own body.

"On the same day," the doctor said, glancing at Jaehyun, "we will collect a sperm sample. Our embryologists will take your eggs and Jaehyun’s sperm, and they will combine them in a laboratory. For cases like yours, we often use ICSI—Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection—where we inject a single, healthy sperm directly into the center of each egg to guarantee fertilization."

"And then?" Y/N asked. Her voice sounded thin and distant, like it was coming from the other side of the room.

"And then we wait," Doctor Evans smiled gently. "We let the embryos grow in an incubator for three to five days. If they develop into healthy blastocysts, we select the best one. You come back in, and we transfer that embryo directly into your uterus using a thin catheter. Two weeks later, we take a blood test to see if you are pregnant."

The room fell silent. The air conditioner hummed a low, steady tune.

Y/N stared at the chart. It was a staggering amount of medical intervention. It was a total surrender of her physical autonomy. It meant giving her body over to science, becoming a human science experiment, pumped full of synthetic chemicals, probed, monitored, and operated on.

She needed time. She needed to process this. She needed to go home, sit on her couch, cry a little, and have a long, painful conversation with her husband about whether they were truly ready to cross this bridge.

"It is a lot to take in," Y/N said softly to the doctor, finding her voice. "We have been talking about taking a break. We need some time to process this. To figure out the finances, the schedule..."

Dr. Evans blinked. A small, polite frown appeared on his face. He looked at Y/N, then looked at Jaehyun, and then looked down at his computer screen.

"Oh," Dr. Evans said, tapping his mouse. "I am sorry, Y/N, perhaps there was a miscommunication. The financial aspect is already cleared. Jaehyun took care of the administrative side and the initial deposit yesterday afternoon."

The fake mountain stream kept trickling.

Y/N stopped breathing. Her heart gave one violent, painful thud against her ribs.

"He... what?" Y/N whispered.

"Yes," Dr. Evans said, looking slightly uncomfortable now, sensing the sudden, sharp drop in the room’s temperature. "The cycle fee is paid. The consent forms on his end are signed. In fact, since you are currently on day three of your cycle, I assumed that was why you scheduled the appointment for this morning. We were planning to do your baseline ultrasound today and send you home with your first round of injectable medications."

Y/N’s head spun. She looked at Jaehyun.

Jaehyun was looking at the doctor, offering a brisk, efficient nod. "That is correct. We have the time today. We can start the baseline check now."

He said it so casually. He said it the way a man orders an appetizer at a restaurant. We can start now.

Y/N stared at the side of her husband’s face. He was perfectly calm. He had come to this clinic, without her, chosen a medical package that required his wife to be injected, sedated, and operated on, and bought it like he was buying a luxury vacation. 

"Dr. Evans," Y/N said. Her voice was remarkably steady, though it sounded like it was coming from someone else entirely. "Could you give us a few minutes? My husband and I need to step outside."

Dr. Evans looked vastly relieved. "Of course. Take all the time you need. Just let the front desk know when you are ready to proceed."

Jaehyun let out a quiet sigh—the sigh of a man whose very simple, logical plan was being ruined by unnecessary feminine emotion. He stood up, buttoned his suit jacket, and followed her out the door.

Y/N did not stop in the waiting room. She walked past the reception desk, past the elevators, and pushed open the heavy metal fire door that led to the hospital's terrace.

The terrace was a wide, bleak square of concrete. It housed the hospital’s massive HVAC units, which roared with a steady, mechanical wind. The sky above was a dull, iron gray. It was not a place for romance. It was a place for hard, ugly truths.

"When?" Y/N asked. The word shot out of her mouth like a bullet.

Jaehyun stood a few feet away. He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, looking around the bleak terrace with a faint expression of distaste. "When what?"

"Do not play stupid with me, Jaehyun!" Y/N screamed. The roar of the air conditioning units swallowed her volume, making her feel like she was screaming in a vacuum. "When did you plan an entire IVF procedure? When did you schedule it? You sat in our kitchen this morning and claimed you hadn't even researched the plumber, let alone this! You act like you don't even know what the word fertility means!"

"I never claimed I hadn't researched it," Jaehyun said calmly. His voice was infuriatingly level. It was the voice of a CEO managing a disgruntled employee. "I read the brochures they gave us last year. I looked at the statistics. It was the most logical next step. So, I took care of it."

"You took care of it?" Y/N repeated, stepping forward, her chest heaving. "You bought a medical procedure for my body. You signed consent forms for my uterus without telling me. You act like you are completely unconcerned, like you are a ghost in our house—"

"Just because I speak less," Jaehyun interrupted, his tone hardening slightly, "does not mean I am not concerned about our future. I saw a problem. I found the solution. I handled the logistics so you wouldn't have to stress about the paperwork."

Y/N let out a harsh, broken laugh. It scraped against her throat.

"Speak less?" she echoed, staring at him as if he had just grown a second head. "Is that what we are calling it now? Speak less? Jaehyun, you do not speak at all! You are a brick wall! You are a black hole! I live with a man who does not ask me how my day was, who does not hold my hand when I cry over a negative test, who cannot even be bothered to look up from his phone when I am speaking to him!"

"I am a busy man, Y/N," he said, his jaw tightening. "I provide a very good life for us."

"I don't want a good life! I want a husband!" she cried, the tears finally breaking loose, hot and angry on her cold cheeks. "And what is the big deal to you? You just throw money at a clinic and think your job is done?"

"Yes, what is the big deal?" Jaehyun snapped, his polite mask finally dropping. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and threw them up in the air in a rare display of actual physical frustration. "It is just IVF! You want a baby. We have unexplained infertility. This is the most common, simple option to fix it. I paid for the best doctors, the best package. I made it easy. So what, exactly, is your problem?"

It is just IVF.

The words hung in the cold air.

Just IVF. Just daily injections. Just surgery. Just emotional devastation. Just her body, acting as an incubator, while he sat in a waiting room checking his emails.

"My problem," Y/N said, her voice dropping into a low, dangerous register, "is that I am a human being. Not an incubator you can rent. Why was I not aware of what my own husband was planning? You give off these insane, weird signals, Jaehyun! Six months ago, I was crying on the bathroom floor, and you told me we needed a break. You said you were tired of trying. You said you wanted six months of peace."

"And we took a break," Jaehyun argued.

"And now I walk into a doctor's office," Y/N pressed on, stepping closer to him, pointing a shaking finger at his chest, "and I find out that while you were ignoring me in our house, you were secretly buying a premium baby-making package behind my back! What is this to you? A business merger? What if I didn't want to go through IVF? What if I had decided I couldn't take the physical toll?"

Jaehyun stared at her, his eyes cold and hard. "You want a child."

"What if I changed my mind?" she yelled. "What would you do with the money you already paid, Jaehyun? Ask for a refund on my womb?" 

"Stop being dramatic," he ordered sharply.

"I am not being dramatic! I am being treated like a transaction!" she screamed back. "You don't want a baby with me. You just want a baby, and I happen to be the vessel you are married to!"

Jaehyun rolled his eyes, looking up at the gray sky. "Oh, here we go with the drama."

"It is my body!" Y/N screamed, the sound tearing out of her throat. "Do you have any idea what IVF actually is? Did you listen to a single word Dr. Evans just said? It is not a pill I swallow! I have to inject myself with hormones every single day. My body is going to swell, my emotions are going to crash, they are going to put me under anesthesia and surgically harvest pieces of my biology! And you bought it like you were buying a television!"

"What do you want from me?" he demanded, his voice thick with anger. "One minute you are crying because your friends are having babies and you aren't. You tell me you want a child. You beg for a family. And the next minute, when I step up—when you are provided with exactly what you asked for, paid for and arranged—you don't want it! You throw a tantrum because I didn't hold your hand and talk about feelings while I paid the bill!"

He shook his head, looking at her with absolute disgust.

"You are impossible to please," he spat. "I fix the problem, and you hate me for how I fixed it."

Y/N stood frozen.

The wind blew her hair across her face, but she didn't brush it away. She just stared at the man she had married five years ago.

He truly believed he was the victim. He truly believed he had done a good, noble thing. He thought he had bought her a gift, and she was being an ungrateful child. He didn't understand the violation. He didn't understand that by taking away her choice, he had reduced her to a piece of medical machinery.

He didn't understand her. He never had. He never would.

All the fire, all the righteous anger that had propelled her out onto this terrace, suddenly vanished. It evaporated into the cold gray sky.

In its place came a devastating, quiet emptiness. It was the tragic realization that you cannot explain the color red to a man born blind. You cannot teach a brick wall how to feel.

Jaehyun was looking at her, waiting for her to scream again. He was braced for a fight.

But Y/N just looked at him. She looked at his angry eyes, his expensive suit, his complete lack of a soul. The silence stretched between them, long and heavy and final.

She let out a small, broken breath. The fight left her shoulders. They slumped slightly.

"Fine," Y/N said softly. Her voice was completely dead. 

Jaehyun blinked, caught off guard by the sudden surrender. "Fine what?"

"If that is the case," she said, her tone hollow and perfectly flat. "Let's go down. Let's be done with it."

They reached the floor of the fertility clinic and pushed through the doors. Instantly, they were back in the world of soft beige paint, quiet whispers, and the smell of industrial lemon cleaner.

Dr. Evans was waiting for them near the front desk. He looked deeply relieved to see them walking back in together. To him, they were just another couple. Just another file in his cabinet. Just another set of bodies to be scheduled, medicated, and monitored.

"Everything alright?" Dr. Evans asked, his voice a perfect pitch of professional concern.

"Everything is fine," Jaehyun said, stepping forward. He didn't look at Y/N. He looked at the doctor. He sounded entirely normal. He sounded like a man confirming a dinner reservation. "We are ready to proceed with phase one."

"Excellent," Dr. Evans smiled. "We like to move efficiently. The nurses are ready for you in Treatment Room 4, Y/N. They will do the baseline ultrasound, walk you through your medication schedule, and administer the very first injection of the fertility drugs so you know exactly how it feels."

Y/N stood there, staring at the doctor’s expensive wristwatch. It ticked away the seconds. Tick. Tick. Tick.

"Right this way," a nurse said, appearing from down the hall.

"Excellent," Jaehyun said. He checked his watch. It was a silver, terribly expensive watch that cost more than a small car. "How long will this take?"

The nurse blinked, slightly thrown by his business-like tone. "Oh, just about twenty minutes. We need to do a baseline ultrasound, and then we will administer the first dose of the gonadotropin injection."

"Good," Jaehyun nodded. He turned to Y/N. He did not look into her eyes. He looked somewhere near her left shoulder. "I have an important meeting in ten minutes. I am going to run down to office and see to it. I will leave the car for you. Take a cab home if you feel tired after the shot."

He was dropping her off.

Like a shirt at the dry cleaners. Like a car at the mechanic.

I paid the bill. Go get fixed. I will see you at home.

"Okay," Y/N whispered.

"I will see you tonight," Jaehyun said. He turned around, walked toward the elevator, and disappeared behind the sliding metal doors.

Y/N watched the numbers above the elevator light up as he went down. She felt nothing. The anger was gone. The sadness was gone. She felt entirely hollowed out, like a perfectly preserved ghost haunting her own life.

"Honey? Are you ready?" the nurse asked gently.

Y/N turned her head. She followed the bright blue scrubs down the beige hallway, past doors with frosted glass, until they reached Treatment Room 4.

The room was small, freezing cold, and terrifyingly bright. In the center of the room was a narrow examination bed covered in crisp, crinkly white paper. There were cabinets filled with clear plastic boxes of needles, vials, and tubes. On the wall hung a large, glossy poster of a glowing, pregnant woman holding her stomach and smiling blissfully into the distance.

The woman in the poster looked like she was full of magic. Y/N felt like she was full of dust.

"Hop up on the bed," the nurse smiled, patting the crinkly paper. "I am just going to run down to the pharmacy to grab your specific dosage. I will be right back. Make yourself comfortable."

The nurse stepped out and closed the door.

Y/N was alone.

She walked over to the bed and sat down. The paper crinkled loudly under her weight. It was the only sound in the room, aside from the low, buzzing hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.

She looked at the tray resting on the counter next to the bed. There was a small, sealed packet containing an alcohol swab. There was a pair of medical gloves. And there was a space waiting for a needle.

This was it.

This was the starting line. Once that needle pierced her skin, there was no going back. Her body would no longer be hers. It would belong to the clinic. It would belong to the schedule. It would be pumped full of artificial hormones designed to trick her biology into doing what it was apparently too stubborn to do on its own. She would swell. She would bruise. She would ride a roller coaster of chemical emotions. She would be put to sleep, cut open, and harvested.

Just IVF, Jaehyun had yelled on the terrace. What is your problem? I fix the problem, and you hate me for how I fixed it.

His voice echoed in the tiny room, bouncing off the green walls.

I am a busy man. I provide a very good life for us.

Y/N looked at the tray of medical instruments. She looked at the bright, terrifying lights overhead.

Why was she doing this?

For four years, she had wanted a baby. She had dreamed of a baby. She had imagined a tiny, warm weight resting against her chest. She had imagined little shoes by the front door. She had imagined the deep, profound joy of creating a family.

But a family required two people.

She closed her eyes, and a single, hot tear slipped down her cheek.

If she went through with this... if she let them pump her full of hormones, harvest her eggs, and plant a scientifically engineered embryo into her womb... what would happen next?

She knew exactly what would happen. Jaehyun would hire a night nurse. Jaehyun would buy the most expensive crib on the market. Jaehyun would pay for the best preschool. And Jaehyun would continue to sit in the kitchen, drinking his black coffee, staring at his phone, while Y/N raised a child entirely alone inside a crowded house.

He didn't want to be a father. He just wanted to check a box.

Marriage, house, child. It was a checklist. And Jaehyun was a man who hated leaving boxes unchecked.

You want a child. You beg for a family. And the next minute... you don't want it!

His angry, resentful face flashed in her mind. He was furious that she wasn't playing her part. He had bought the baby package; why wasn't she happily hopping onto the examination table to collect her prize?

And then, suddenly, unbidden and sharp, another voice sliced through the heavy air of the clinic room.

‘Gary is angry at the world and stuck in 2026 with the opinions of 1952. If I stand there and try to debate feminist theory with Gary, what happens? Gary gets loud. Gary argues with me. Gary tells me about the good old days. Gary scans my chips very, very slowly. But if I agree with Gary? If I tell Gary exactly what his shriveled little heart wants to hear—that I am just a sly scoundrel playing a game? Gary feels like a genius. Gary thinks we are brothers in arms. Gary scans my chips in ten seconds, I pay, and I get to go home and eat my chips in peace.’

‘You... you lied to him just to check out faster?’

It is not performative feminism, love. It is aggressive time management. If you wrestle with a pig, you both get covered in mud, but the pig enjoys it. I prefer to stay clean.’

The harm, Y/N realized with a sudden, sharp clarity, was that the person being lied to ended up sitting alone on a crinkly paper bed in a freezing room, waiting to be injected with chemicals, while the liar went back to work.

The harm was that she was about to tie herself permanently, for the rest of her natural life, to a brick wall.

A baby would not fix Jaehyun. A baby would not make him look at her with love and empathy. A baby would just give him another reason to retreat into his silence. He would view the child as a completed project. The invoice was paid, the product was delivered, and his job was done.

And what was Y/N doing?

Wasn't she playing the exact same game? Wasn't she being compliant?

She had marched down the stairs. She had let him leave. She had sat on this bed. She was playing the role of the good, quiet, desperate wife who would do whatever it took to keep the peace. She was letting him use his money to silence her soul.

The truth wasn't that they couldn't have a baby.

The truth was that they shouldn't.

The doorknob turned.

Y/N’s head snapped up.

The nurse walked back into the room. She was holding a small silver tray. On the tray rested a tiny glass vial filled with clear liquid, and a very long, very sharp needle.

"Alright, honey," the nurse smiled, setting the tray down on the counter. "I have your starting dose right here. It is totally normal to feel a little nervous, but I promise the needle is super thin. You barely feel it going in. We are going to do this first one in your lower abdomen.”

The nurse took a step closer. She reached out, the wet cotton pad hovering just inches from Y/N’s skin.

It was the cheat code. It was the silencer. It was the end of her life and the beginning of her imprisonment.

Suddenly, the storm broke.

"Stop."

The word left Y/N’s mouth before she even realized she had spoken.

The nurse froze, her hand hovering mid-air. She blinked, looking up at Y/N’s face in surprise. "Are you okay? Do you need a minute to breathe? We can wait a minute if you are feeling dizzy."

Y/N looked at the nurse. She looked at the blue scrubs with the cartoon suns. She looked at the silver needle resting on the tray.

"No," Y/N said. Her voice was no longer tired. It wasn't shaking, and it wasn't a whisper. It rang out through the small, sterile room, loud, clear, and absolutely solid.

She reached out and gently pushed the nurse’s hand away.

"I don't need a minute," Y/N said, sliding off the examination bed. Her feet hit the linoleum floor with a firm, grounded thud. She pulled her shirt down and smoothed out the fabric.

The nurse looked utterly bewildered. "I'm sorry, I don't understand. Are we not doing the baseline injection today?"

Y/N picked up her purse from the plastic chair in the corner. She slung the strap over her shoulder.

"No," Y/N said, walking toward the door. She wrapped her hand around the cold metal handle. "We are not doing the injection today. We are not doing it tomorrow, either."

"But... Dr. Evans said your husband already paid for the cycle," the nurse stammered, holding the alcohol swab like it was a piece of evidence.

Y/N pulled the door open. The bright, ugly fluorescent light of the hallway spilled into the room.

"He did," Y/N said easily, looking back at the nurse with a perfectly calm, wry expression. "But you see, my husband likes to buy things without reading the instruction manual. And I am afraid this specific appliance has just been permanently recalled."

Before the nurse could say another word, Y/N stepped out of the room, let the door click shut behind her, and walked down the hallway.

However, hospitals are not designed by architects who wish to facilitate human freedom. Hospitals are designed by sadists who believe that every hallway should look exactly the same, painted in the exact same shade of depressing beige, lined with doors that possess no identifying features whatsoever.

Y/N reached the end of the corridor. It branched into a T-junction. To the left, there was a potted plant that looked severely dehydrated. To the right, there was a small alcove containing two heavy, identical wooden doors.

She turned into the alcove. She did not want to take the elevator. Elevators required standing still, and she possessed far too much kinetic, angry energy to stand in a metal box. She needed stairs. She needed to stomp down some concrete steps.

She inspected the two identical doors. The hospital administration, in their infinite wisdom, had decided against using simple, readable English words like "EXIT" or "STAIRS." Instead, they had embraced modern minimalism, relying entirely on small, abstract plastic plaques screwed into the wood.

The door on the right featured a plaque with a stick figure standing next to a small cup. Y/N stared at it. It looked like a man ordering a very small espresso.

The door on the left featured a stick figure of a man standing next to a jagged, descending zigzag line.

A descending zigzag line, Y/N’s brain calculated. Steps. A staircase.

It was a perfectly logical conclusion. Any reasonable, educated member of modern society would look at a zigzag line and conclude that it represented a flight of stairs.

She reached out, grasped the cold metal handle of the left door, pressed the latch, and pushed it open. She stepped inside, fully expecting to be met with the hollow echo of a concrete stairwell and the smell of industrial floor cleaner.

Instead, she stepped onto a plush, heavily carpeted floor.

The room was a cramped, dim little hellhole that reeked of leather cleaner, stale lube, and pure, concentrated male desperation. No stairs. No concrete. Just one massive, oversized leather recliner planted dead-center like a throne for the damned.

And slumped in that recliner was the man from the grocery store.

The universe isn’t just cruel. It’s a vicious little comedian with a hard-on for humiliation.

There he sat. The fox. The smooth-talking pragmatist with the silver tongue and the cynical rant about the pink tax. Only now the charming black jacket was nowhere in sight. His trousers were shoved down around his ankles in a messy puddle of dark fabric, cock fully out and hard as fucking steel. A pair of huge noise-canceling headphones swallowed the top half of his ears. His eyes were locked on the small flat-screen mounted on the wall, which was currently blasting some filthy, anatomically impossible gymnastics porn—two naked bodies slamming together, wet skin slapping, loud filthy moans pouring out of the speakers he couldn’t even hear.

But the real catastrophe was his right hand.

That hand was wrapped tight around the thick, flushed length of his own cock, fist pumping up and down in a brutal, relentless rhythm like he was trying to choke the life out of a stubborn lawnmower. Veins stood out along the shaft. The head was dark and slick, shiny with pre-cum. He stroked hard and fast, thumb swiping over the leaking tip on every upstroke, hips giving tiny, involuntary jerks into his own grip. Completely lost in it. Blissfully, mindlessly jerking off for the sake of “medical science,” balls tight and drawn up, cock throbbing in his fist like it was about to explode.

The heavy wooden door clicked shut behind Y/N.

The soft snap of the latch was completely drowned by the headphones, but the sudden shift in the air—or maybe the raw, radioactive blast of her pure horror—must have stabbed straight into some primal part of his brain.

His dark eyes ripped away from the screen. Flicked right.

Landed on her.

Time didn’t just stop. It got bent over and fucked.

One second. Two. Three.

Y/N stood frozen just inside the doorway, purse dangling off one shoulder, hand still hovering stupidly near the doorknob. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. Her brain had blue-screened so hard it shut the whole nervous system down to keep her from spontaneously combusting.

Jeon froze too.

No scream. No frantic scramble to yank his pants up. His brain just flatlined. That right hand—still flying up and down that thick, spit-slick cock at a punishing pace—slammed to a dead stop so hard it was a miracle he didn’t snap his own wrist. Fist clamped tight around the base, mid-stroke, shaft still pulsing hot and angry in his grip.

They stared.

It was biblical-level catastrophe. The kind of moment that rewires a person’s DNA and leaves permanent psychic scar tissue.

Four seconds. Five.

His eyes—usually sharp, lazy, full of that smug cunning—were wide, blank, and completely empty of higher thought. He looked like a deer that hadn’t just been caught in the headlights; he’d been dragged into the car, handed the wheel, and told to drive while still balls-deep in his own fist.

Y/N’s eyes were dinner-plate wide. She was trying to look only at his face, but peripheral vision is a sadistic bitch. She saw everything.

The thick, veined cock still clenched in his fist, shiny and leaking, the head flushed almost purple. The absolute, gutting vulnerability of a man who’d just been ambushed mid-wank with his pants around his ankles and his dick out like an offering.

Ten seconds. Twelve.

The silence was louder than a jet engine. Through the thick headphones the tinny, filthy soundtrack of the porn still groaned on—wet slaps, desperate moans—the only soundtrack to their shared waking nightmare.

Fifteen seconds.

His mouth hung open, slack and stupid. He wasn’t breathing. Just staring at her like she’d materialized out of pure spite to watch him ruin himself. Every filthy thought he’d ever jerked off to was suddenly standing in the room, watching him choke his own leaking cock.

Neither of them blinked. It was a staring contest the devil would’ve jerked off to—two people locked eyes while the same hard, dripping dick throbbed between them like the grand fucking prize.

But biology doesn’t give a single shit about dignity. Biology doesn’t care about eye contact or awkward silence or the fact that the hottest, most devastating woman alive is currently watching you fist your own cock. Biology is a freight train with the brakes cut, and once that load is primed, it’s coming whether the universe is watching or not.

At exactly twenty seconds the spell snapped.

His hand hadn’t moved a millimeter. But his body sold him out in the most spectacular, humiliating way possible. A violent full-body shudder ripped through his shoulders. His jaw locked so hard the muscle jumped under the skin. Eyes squeezed shut in pure, pathetic defeat.

And then—with the tragic certainty of a ship going under—a thick, hot rope of cum blasted out of him.

It didn’t land in the sterile plastic collection tube.

It missed completely. Shot over the side table in a heavy, white arc and slapped against the tissue box with a wet, filthy splat. Another pulse followed, thick and ropey, painting the cardboard in long, pearly streaks that dripped slow and nasty.

His cock jerked hard in his frozen fist, still spurting, still twitching, still dumping load after load while he sat there pants-down and destroyed—eyes shut, jaw locked, completely wrecked by the sheer mortifying force of it.

And it left her mouth hanging open to the ground, her eyes noticing the two moles on his balls, the wedding ring glistening under the low lights as she stares at the stranger's cock twitching and dripping (giving her a standing ovation, don't forget that) like she had just caught the hotshot big dick Mr. Sex-on-legs jerking himself in a hospital room.