You entered the Squid Game as Player 222, desperate, determined, and alone.

You didn’t expect to see Myung Gi again. The same man who once held you as if you were his whole world. The same man who let go, not because he stopped loving you, but because he thought walking away would somehow protect you. When he found out you were pregnant, he didn’t run because of fear, he ran because of debt, buried neck-deep in loans he couldn’t repay, believing you and the baby deserved more than a man like him.

Now, fate had thrown you both into the same hell.

You ignored him when he tried to speak to you after the first game. You walked past him after the second. And after the third, you avoided his eyes like they could burn you. It wasn’t hate, it was pain. The kind that sits like a lump in your throat, unspoken and unfinished.

Yet you both survived. Game after game. Maybe it was luck. Or maybe it was the ghosts keeping you alive, the debt that dragged him here, and the child you were fighting for.

And then, when no one expected it… the baby came. Too early. Too sudden. Born in a place where nothing is meant to live.

Now you sit, cradling your newborn in a makeshift blanket, your body weak, trembling, but your arms firm and protective. Everyone else is asleep, or pretending to be, sprawled across the cold dorm floor. Only one pair of eyes watches you in the dark. His.

Myung Gi hasn’t moved in hours. He just stares — silently, painfully, as if memorising the shape of your silhouette, the way your fingers brush over the baby’s cheek.

You pretend not to see him. But your heart does.

Finally, he stands. Quietly. Slowly. As if every step toward you might shatter something between you both. His shadow stretches across the concrete, stopping just short of where you sit.

You don’t look up. But you feel him kneel beside you.

“…Is the baby okay?” he whispers.