A Thousand Purple Stars (JinJi)

Epilogue

TEN YEARS LATER

Jisoo rolled her wrists around, trying to get the tightness out of them.

She stared at the giant pages of digital text on her computer screen and read what she had just typed. Then she grimaced and deleted the sentence, rewriting it in reverse grammatical order. Still not right. She hit backspace and tried replacing one of the words with another.

She was spending too much time on this one sentence. She highlighted the words, changed the font color, and then opted to keep going with plans to come back to that section later.

The rest of the chapter came out of her brain without much hesitation. Her heart started pounding the way it always did when she achieved her flow state. She didn't even notice when Jinyoung walked in and set a plate down beside her keyboard. He leaned against her desk and crossed his arms. Jisoo typed in a final period before looking up at her husband. Jinyoung had a stern look on his face.

"If you don't eat this sandwich, I want a divorce," he said.

Jisoo sat back in her chair and cocked a brow at him.

"You say that every time I sit down to write," she joked.

"I mean it this time," Jinyoung said, moving her keyboard out of the way and pushing the plate closer to her. "Step away from the word processor, come eat."

"I can't, I'm in the zone," Jisoo said. "If I stop now, I'll lose momentum and I won't get it back and my next check-in is in a week."

"You still have to eat this sandwich," Jinyoung said. Jisoo looked down at the plate and saw that there was half of a sub sandwich on it. She looked between the food and the words she had typed up on the page. She had a rhythm going. If she stopped to eat, it would interrupt her flow state.

"You don't know anything about how writing works, do you?" Jisoo said, squinting at him. Jinyoung narrowed his right back at her.

"Maybe not," he said. "But I do know how pregnancy works, and I'm not gonna let you starve our baby."

Jisoo's smug grin disappeared. Right. She was four months pregnant. She always seemed to forget about that when she sat down to write. Her hand instinctively went to her belly, which wasn't completely swollen yet, but a baby bump was definitely there. Jinyoung tilted his head and Jisoo sighed, admitting defeat. She reached for the sandwich and took a bite from it. There was extra relish tucked between the two slices of bread. She'd developed a strange taste for pickles when she got pregnant with their first child, so Jinyoung figured it would be a safe choice.

Jisoo chewed begrudgingly.

"You did this to me," she grumbled through a mouthful of bread and lettuce.

"You started it," Jinyoung smirked.

Jisoo blushed, taking another bite out of the sandwich and remembering that she had been the one to initiate that time. Jinyoung was about to say something else, but his words were cut off by the sound of rapid little footsteps running at them.

"Mama!" shouted a very excited toddler that was running full speed at Jisoo. Jinyoung crouched down and caught his son before he could crash into his mother.

"Yah, Jisung," he said sternly, turning the boy to face him and giving his arm a firm shake. Their son had developed a bad habit of sprinting at his mother and jumping at her, sometimes hitting her stomach with his head. Now that she was pregnant again, they were trying to put a stop to it.

"What did I tell you?" he said. "You can't run at Mama's tummy like that. You might hurt your baby brother."

"Or sister," Jisoo snapped. Jinyoung gave her a challenging smirk and then turned back to his son.