you woke up to a strange, heavy feeling settling over your body, the kind of unease that whispered that something wasn’t quite right. the room was still bathed in darkness, the faintest sliver of light from the streetlamp outside barely illuminating the edges of the curtains. seungmin was fast asleep beside you, his arm draped protectively over your waist, his breathing steady and peaceful. you stayed still for a moment, willing the discomfort in your stomach to subside, but it only grew stronger, joined by a sharp wave of nausea that made you wince.

your hand instinctively pressed against your abdomen, trying to soothe the ache that had been creeping in all morning. nausea turned into dizziness, and a dull headache began to thrum in time with your heartbeat. fatigue weighed down your limbs, making you feel as though you had already spent the day running a marathon. it was unsettling, this combination of symptoms all at once, and you couldn’t help but wonder if it was the flu—or something else entirely.

you tried to push the thought aside, focusing instead on the safety of seungmin’s warmth beside you, but the eerie feeling of being watched prickled at the back of your neck. your eyes darted to the dark corners of the room, where shadows seemed to stretch and shift with a life of their own. the sound of the clock ticking on the wall felt deafening in the quiet, amplifying your unease. you wanted to wake seungmin, to tell him about the strange fear crawling up your spine, but a part of you hesitated, unsure of how to explain something so intangible.

as the first rays of dawn crept through the curtains, you felt your body relax ever so slightly, though the symptoms lingered like an unspoken question. in that fragile moment of stillness, something inside you stirred—a soft, inexplicable certainty. though you didn’t understand it fully yet, you knew the answer lay in the life quietly growing within you, a secret even you hadn’t yet discovered.