Present...

Why do I keep thinking about that night all over again?

You can only wonder, as you keep being reminded of that eventful night.

Weeks, nearly a month have gone by ever since, yet the memories seem to have been engraved deeply in your thoughts. And today, even though you haven't really been thinking about it since, you suddenly find yourself having no trouble recounting everything that happened then.

Well, almost everything.

Some parts may seem blurry now. All due to the passing of time and the fact that you were partly inebriated at the time. But you can still recall some parts of the night that had clearly left a strong impression on you—the first encounter and the conversation you shared before alcohol took over, the instant attraction that you felt, but most of all, his entire presence.

And they all have been coming into your thoughts while you are sitting here in the corner of your bathroom. Alone. With your arms wrapped around your folded knees and your eyes closed. As if you are waiting for a miracle to happen.

You scoff at the thought.

Right. Miracles.

Years have long passed since you stopped believing that miracles do exist. Life always has its way of blindsiding you with its twists and turns that miracles no longer seem to matter anymore.

Not for you, at least.

Your past experiences have only caused you to look at it with sceptical eyes, sometimes even with bitterness, knowing that life has never been on your side.

But here you are now, wishing, praying, holding onto hope that there would be a miracle to stop you from getting into a messy situation. One that you know you wouldn't be able to handle on your own.

After all, the perfect season of miracles is right around the corner. So it wouldn't be so wrong for you to have some faith in them again now, would it?

Your phone starts blaring with the sound of the alarm, snapping you out of it. Slowly, you rise on your wobbly feet. It feels as if your entire body has grown numb even before you get to face reality as it comes glaring back at you.

Clutching onto the edges of your bathroom counter, you try to hold yourself together, and immediately failing, as you look at the two thin white strips lying on the cold counter and feel your entire world tilting off of its axis.

All because of the two red lines that are clearly visible on each strip.

"Oh, fuck," you softly groan. Deep down, you had already predicted this. Yet you kept denying it, hoping that you would be wrong.

"No, no, no—" you continue murmuring to yourself while wishing that you could somehow turn back time and change everything before things started going the wrong way.

Back to this morning, when your roommate caught you—once again—throwing up last night's dinner before handing you the unopened pregnancy test packs that she has been keeping safe in her room with the premise, "Just in case."

Or maybe you could return to last night when she pointed out your odd cravings—like dipping apples into peanut butter and eating leftover mac and cheese straight from the fridge without warming it in the microwave first—and joked about how you have been acting like a pregnant woman with your mood swings.

Better yet, you wish you could go back to that night, back to that many weeks ago, when you allowed yourself to fall for a stranger's charm which led you to spend the night with him.

You close your eyes, once again murmuring to yourself, "This has got to be a dream."

But the moment you open your eyes again, nothing has changed. You are still standing there with your hands holding tightly onto the edges of the bathroom counter. And the two pregnancy test kits that you used are still lying on top of the counter for your eyes to see.

A rapid sound of knocking on the bathroom door sends you jumping back.

"Hey, ______? Is everything okay?" you hear your roommate, Skye, calling out for you. Her voice seems calm, yet when you recall hearing the sound of her footsteps moving back and forth outside of the door while you were taking the test, you know that she has been waiting just as anxiously as you were. "So—? What does it say?"

Still in shock, and quite stuck in denial, you open your mouth only to have no words coming out of you. Your brain feels a bit hazy as you walk up to the door and open it for her.

Skye takes one look at your face and her gaze softens. "What did it—" She shakes her head. "Oh, never mind, I'm dying to know. Let me see it," she says as she brushes past you before you can say anything.

Hoping that there is a chance that reality can change within the next few seconds, you refuse to turn around and once again close your eyes while she suddenly grows quiet.

Maybe you were just imagining things. Maybe you weren't even looking at the test properly. Maybe—

"So, uhm—" you can hear Skye's voice trembling a little as she hesitantly asks you, "Two lines mean it's positive, is that right?"

And just like that, every bit of hope you have in you flies out the window. "I wish I could say that it's the other way around," you softly murmur, feeling defeated.

And the feeling grows stronger when you hear her cursing under her breath,

"Well, fuck."

"What are you doing?" you ask Skye as you gingerly take a seat on the sofa.

Once you both stepped away from the bathroom, she guided you to the living room while she sauntered away to the kitchen without a word. You can hear the noises she makes as she is busy rummaging through the counters. Yet you are too far away to see what she is up to.

"Hang on a minute. Stay there," she calls out without even looking.

"Okay."

It's not like you have any energy to go anywhere, after all. Your head is still spinning and you can barely feel your legs. It feels as if you are stuck in a bad dream and you just can't get out of it.

It doesn't take long before Skye returns to your side, carrying with her two clean tall glasses in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. It was the same bottle that you opened when you celebrated your promotion a couple of weeks ago after coming back from the trip.

Holy shit, you inwardly cry out. Your heartbeat rises as your hands find their way to your stomach.

"Okay, let's try to calm down," Skye says to you as she places both glasses on the table before you, although it seems to you more as if she is talking to herself instead of reassuring you while you are panicking inside.

A couple of weeks ago? Wouldn't I have been already pregnant then?

These thoughts keep running through your head as you watch your roommate pouring wine into both glasses, just like the night she did the same when you first opened that same bottle.

Dear God, how much did I drink that night? You ask yourself with a grimace as you try to remember.

Wait, no. I didn't drink anything, you remind yourself. Relief washes over you look back at the celebration night where you barely took a sip before Skye took the glass away from your hands.

Because you were already feeling sick that day.

You had been feeling nauseous for days, throwing up once in a while and mostly on the days when you were lacking sleep because of the workload you had to handle for the upcoming promotion. All you ever did was wet your lips with the wine after the celebratory toast. That was the only contact you made with the drink before Skye replaced it with a tall glass of alcohol-free smoothie that she made especially for your 'upset stomach'.

Of course, how did I not see the signs? You wonder again as you remember the sickly feeling you had after vomiting each morning and feeling powerless for the rest of the day. It even got so bad that you had to skip work for a couple of days at the beginning of your 'sickness'.

If only you knew then.

Your eyes are still on the wine glasses as Skye places them side by side and puts away the bottle.

"Uh—I believe we both just saw the two lines appearing on the test packs."

She lets out a light scoff and waves her hand at you. "They're both for me. I'm going to need them while I process this," she says, shaking her head as she sits down to join you on the sofa. "You get to keep that smoothie."

You follow her gaze and look down at the glass of smoothie that you left on the table during the whole fiasco with the pregnancy test. While you pick up your drink, Skye takes a hefty drink from one of the glasses of wine and sits back.

"So—you're pregnant," she murmurs to herself. Her gaze flickers to your face for a brief moment and nods to herself before taking another drink.

Why does it seem like she is the one panicking?

She releases a sigh. Neither of you says anything for a moment. But you can tell when she grows more anxious by the minute. You don't understand why, until she carefully asks you, "Are you going to tell Han?"

Confused, you look at her with your brows furrowed and ask, "Why would I tell Han that I'm pregnant?"

Skye looks genuinely confused, almost as much as you are, and you only realise the reason why when she asks you, "Isn't Hansol the father? You guys have been dating for a long time and I can't remember ever seeing you with anyone else while you're on a break."

You wince, realising too late that you have yet to tell her the truth.

"Actually—we're not on a break," you slowly admit with a low voice. Months have gone by, and even though it no longer hurts whenever you start thinking about your failed relationship or to mention your ex's name, you cannot help but still feel bitter about how it ended and you hate talking about it.

That is the reason why you haven't said anything about it to anyone. Maybe you were just too embarrassed. After all, it isn't so easy to admit that you may have been the reason why the four-year relationship fell into pieces.

"I lied," you say with a burst of deep sigh, "It was over, done, finished—"

"So you already broke up?" she cuts you off with a calm voice.

You bite your bottom lip as you slowly nod your head. "Yeah," you whisper, suddenly feeling like your throat is tightening up. Not because you feel the sudden urge to cry. But only because this is all becoming too much to take at once.

"And the baby?" she carefully asks you. "It wasn't Han—"

"The baby isn't his," you quickly answer before she even gets to question about it.

It's hard enough to hear his name being mentioned after a while. It feels harder to think that you might be carrying his baby.

But the moment those words come out of your lips, reality finally sinks in. Grabbing the glass of your drink, you take a hefty drink out of it. You wish there was some alcohol in this thing. Maybe it would have helped you think more clearly.

That's right. It couldn't have been his.

Sighing to yourself, you begin to do the math. "We've been broken up for months, so if the baby is his, I'm sure I would be showing already by this time around," you say this while gently rubbing your palm over your stomach.

Now that your suspicions have been confirmed, the gesture feels almost natural to you that your hand simply moves before you realise it, though it helps confirm that nothing much has changed with your body.

It feels odd to think that there is a life existing inside you, yet you cannot really see it with just one look. This convinces you further that the baby couldn't have been conceived while you were still dating your ex. Looking back to it now, once you remember when exactly the sickness and craving started, it would only make sense that the baby was conceived on that specific night.

"So—if Hansol isn't the Dad, then who was it?"

Biting your lip, you turn to look at Skye. Of course, if there is anyone in this world that you can talk to about this, it would only be her. Just like how she would come to you first whenever she is in a bind, whether it's about her relationships, about work, or even the smallest things like having a bad day where you end up sharing a tub of ice cream to feel better.

After all, she isn't just a roommate, but also someone you have known the longest compared to the other friends you've made since moving into this city. You have known each other since college, since back in freshman year when both of you were nothing more but young kids from small towns being thrust into the big city.

Being put together in the same dorm room led you to become fast friends. After years of enduring the same hardship in college, the two of you remained so close that you even moved to this city together and continued to live in the same place to keep each other company.

You have gone through everything with her, and you have always been honest with each other. It should have been easy to tell her everything. If only you could find the right words to begin sharing your story.

"I have no idea where to start."

"Well," Skye patiently says while twirling the glass of wine she's holding. You squint your eyes at her when you find it almost empty. So unfair. "Why don't you start from the beginning?"