WANTED: Baby | vseul

20

On the third day, she started thinking that she’s getting better than she anticipated. Only to be proved wrong at midday.

All started smoothly. She woke up, get dressed, ate the usual breakfast with her best friend, and drove to get herself to work. She continued organizing the laborer’s contracts, hoping to finish it and pass it to Human Resources Department before noon – she still didn’t know why she’s doing that by the way – and to distribute the copies to the workers when they arrive at the landsite.

The day was fully planned in her mind. The concentration was still there after she passed the contracts and there’s still plenty of time before the short hand of the clock points north. She printed copies of monitoring sheets covering two weeks. But just when she was on the way back to her cubicle, the pain started to creep in.

Her eyes automatically looked at his office. His partition wasn’t shut, but he was focusing on his own job with his eyes intently on his desktop screen while talking to someone via telephone call.

Thinking that it was just a random abdominal pain, knowing her state, she took her medicine kit inside her bag and tried to walk as normal as she could towards the comfort room. She was already there when she realized she forgot to get her tumbler of water. Desperate enough, she used the tap water to down the ibuprofen in her throat.

For a few minutes she stayed there, sweating and in pain. She was seeing herself perfectly normal, perhaps because of the make-up she had on her face. But looking down on her pale palms, she knew there was something wrong. She almost panicked, immediately turning around to see if there were crimson spots behind her as what she expected to see. For some reasons, there was none. But she wanted to make sure later. Right at that moment, she needed to compose herself first before going back with her bag, return to the same comfort room and check it herself.

Approximately ten minutes passed when she felt the pain slowly subsiding. Just then she returned to the office where she found barely ten colleagues working. She glanced at her wristwatch, it was already a quarter past noon.

“Where’ve you been?”

Seulgi swore she never saw him coming on her way. Taehyung was there with his beautiful pair of curious eyes. A gulped was heard, but the fading pain was dominating over her anxiety.

“Comfort room,” she answered short and truly, then tried to escape by walking past him.

He shouldn’t’ve done it, but he held her arm slyly before she took another step. He felt how slim her arm was on his grasp. Then how pale her hands were when he laid his eyes upon it.

“Gwaenchanha?”

Seulgi found it ironic how hard it was for her to answer such a simple question. She gritted her teeth, both because of the pain and the situation she was in.

“I’m fine, sir,” she tried to show a smile while pulling away her hand.

Taehyung seemed to wake on the way she addressed but reluctantly let go of her forearm. “Okay,” he put his hands inside his pockets. “You better grab your lunch. We’ll be going at 1.”

She was thankful that he didn’t forget about the privacy of their relationship. But his eyes seemed to say how sick he was upon trying to conceal everything.

“Yes, sir,” she told him like the usual worker she was, bowing her head and turned around, not waiting for another response from him.

Not two minutes later, she received a message from him. It could be considered as a threat, but she couldn’t blame him. Thinking that if a similar situation happened and she was on his shoes, she’d likely do the same.