Chapter Text
Chapter One
Kitty stood outside Min Ho's dorm room door, her heart hammering against her ribs. She had spent the last three days preparing for this conversation, rehearsing the words in her mind until they felt like a foreign language on her tongue. Her hand trembled as she raised it to knock, but before she could make contact, the door swung open.
Min Ho stood there, his expression immediately hardening when he saw her. "What do you want, Kitty?" he asked, his voice cold. "If you're here to apologize again, save your breath. I'm not interested in your half-assed attempts at making things right."
Kitty's chin lifted, her eyes meeting his with a steely resolve that surprised even herself. "I am not here to beg to be taken back or for some half-assed apology," she said firmly, cutting off whatever hurtful remark he might have been about to make. "Because I came to tell you something and it's your turn to listen to me."
Min Ho raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms. "Oh really? And what could you possibly have to say that I would want to hear?"
"Because despite everything," Kitty continued, her voice trembling slightly but remaining steady, "I am not cruel or hateful as someone like to paint me as even though we both screwed the fuck up, me jumping to conclusions and you lying to me at every turn and about why you canceled our date."
Min Ho flinched at that, his defensive posture faltering for a moment. "I didn't lie—"
"Yes, you did," Kitty interrupted, her voice gaining strength. "Right before we were about to leave for a bingsu date, you received an urgent text from Eunice, though you told me it was from Marius. You lied to me, claiming you needed to go meet Marius, but instead secretly met up with Eunice to handle a private matter. You further concealed the truth about why you were meeting with Eunice." Min Ho opened his mouth to protest but closed it when Kitty held up her hand. "And the necklace," she said, her voice softer now but still firm. "You lied about the necklace when you claimed that your friend Eunice helped you shop for it as a gift. I later discovered this was a fabrication when Eunice didn't recognize the necklace. So you see, I am not the only one at fault for our relationship falling apart, Min Ho Moon."
He looked away, unable to meet her gaze. "That was different."
"Was it?" Kitty challenged. "Which leads me to this, I had a breakdown a couple of days because I got some news and I had to call my father and my stepmother. They told me I needed to tell you and despite everything that I feel as if my heart had been ripped from my chest, I for some reason still consider you my friend because I know you are not a... a bad person."
Min Ho finally looked back at her, his expression confused. "What news? What are you talking about?"
Kitty took a deep breath, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. "We screwed up two months ago, that night we both came back to my dorm drunk? We never used protection and the IUD failed."
Min Ho's face went pale, his eyes widening as the implications of her words slowly sank in. "No... you can't mean..."
"I'm pregnant," Kitty said, her voice barely above a whisper now. "I just want to give you the chance to be in their life if you want to be but I am not asking for you to get back with me. I am going home after I graduate. I am not staying for my surprise birthday but I will stay for Yuri's fashion show for Seoul Fashion Week." She paused, wiping a tear away from her cheek with the back of her hand. "I am having this child in the same hospital as my mother had me, Margot and Lara Jean."
Min Ho stood frozen, his mouth slightly agape, his eyes fixed on Kitty as if trying to process the words she had just spoken. The anger and bitterness that had been his armor for the past month had shattered, leaving him exposed and vulnerable. "I..." he started, but couldn't finish.
Kitty gave him a sad smile. "I know this is a lot to take in. You don't have to decide anything right now. Just... think about it."
She turned to leave, but before she could, Min Ho reached out and grabbed her arm gently. "Kitty, wait—"
She shook her head, pulling her arm free. "No, Min Ho. I've said what I needed to say. The rest is up to you." With that, she walked out of his room, shutting the door behind her and leaving Min Ho alone in his dorm, wrecked and stunned and put in his place.
The click of the latch echoed in the sudden, suffocating silence of his dorm room. Min Ho didn't move. He couldn't. He just stood there, rooted to the spot where she had left him, his entire world tilting on its axis and threatening to shatter into a million irreparable pieces.
“Pregnant.” The word ricocheted around his skull, a foreign, terrifying concept. “She's pregnant. We're... I'm…”
His mind, a frantic, panicked mess, replayed her final words.
"I am not the only one at fault for our relationship falling apart, Min Ho Moon."
God, she was right. She was so fucking right.
A wave of nausea, hot and sharp, washed over him. He stumbled back, his legs hitting the edge of his bed, and he collapsed onto it, his head falling into his hands. The memory he had tried so hard to suppress, the one he had buried under layers of self-righteous anger, came flooding back with brutal clarity. Eunice's frantic, tear-streaked face in the coffee shop. Her whispered confession about a missed period and a positive test that turned out to be false. She was his friend. She was scared. And he, Min Ho Moon, had to be the noble one, the protector. He had sworn her to secrecy, told her he would handle it, that no one else needed to know until they were sure.
He saw it now, not through his own well-intentioned but tunnel-visioned eyes, but through Kitty's. The urgent text. The flimsy lie about Marius. The way he had been distant and preoccupied in the days that followed. He had been so focused on helping Eunice, on being the good friend, that he hadn't once stopped to consider how it would look to the person who was supposed to matter most. He hadn't considered how his secrecy, his lies of omission, would feel like a betrayal to Kitty. He had been so consumed with Eunice's problem that he had left his own girlfriend twisting in the wind, her imagination running wild with worst-case scenarios.
And the necklace. Christ, the necklace. He remembered the impulse buy, seeing it in a window and thinking of her instantly. He remembered Eunice's teasing about it days later, him awkwardly claiming she'd been there to help him pick it out, a stupid, pointless lie to make the gift seem more thoughtful, less like a spontaneous purchase. He hadn't even realized Kitty had asked Eunice about it. He hadn't realized the small, casual lie had been another crack in the foundation, another piece of proof for her that he was hiding things. He had been an asshole. A complete, selfish, blind asshole. He had let her walk away, her face etched with pain, and instead of chasing her, instead of trying to understand, he had built a fortress of indignation around himself. He had blamed her for her insecurities, for jumping to conclusions, without ever acknowledging that he had handed her the ammunition, loaded the gun, and pointed it right at their relationship.
And now... now this.
He lifted his head, his gaze falling on the closed door. She was gone. She was carrying his child. His child. A tiny, helpless life that was half him, half her. A life created on a drunken, reckless night he barely remembered, a night that had apparently been the beginning and end of everything. A raw, guttural sound escaped his throat, something between a sob and a gasp. His chest ached, a physical, crushing pain. He had pushed away the one person who had ever truly seen past his armor, the one person whose opinion had ever really mattered. He had let her walk away thinking he didn't care, that he was just another person who would lie to her.
"I am not asking for you to get back with me."
Her words were a death knell. She wasn't giving him an out. She was giving him a choice about his child, but she had already made her decision about them. There was no 'them' anymore. There was just her, going home to have their baby, and him, left here in this sterile dorm room with the crushing weight of his own mistakes. He had always imagined a future, a vague, hazy picture that somehow always had Kitty in it. But this... this was concrete. This was real. This was a child. A son or daughter who would have his eyes, or her smile. A child he might only see in pictures, a child he would have to explain his absence to someday.
He stood up, his body moving on pure instinct, and paced the small space of his room. His phone was on his desk, and he snatched it up, his thumb hovering over her name. What could he possibly say? Sorry I was a colossal jackass? Sorry I let my pride ruin us? Sorry I'm going to be a father from three thousand miles away?
He sank back onto the edge of his bed, the phone feeling like a lead weight in his hand. She had given him the truth, the one thing he had withheld from her. And in doing so, she had shown him more kindness than he deserved. She hadn't come to punish him. She had come to inform him. And in return, he had stood there like a statue, speechless and useless, while she walked out of his life for what might be the very last time.
The tears he had been fighting finally broke free, hot and silent as they tracked down his cheeks. He wasn't crying for their lost relationship. He was crying for the future he had just thrown away, for the family he might have had, for the little girl or boy who would never know their father as anything more than a painful memory and a name on a birth certificate.