I swear, if this is another hallucination, I’m gonna start throwing punches.

Because there’s no way she’s here. Not after everything. Not after disappearing like a damn ghost while I was throwing up every morning, terrified, thinking she was dead. Or worse just gone.

And then I hear her voice. Soft. Too soft for a place like this.

—“Jun-hee… why didn’t you give up the baby?”

I roll my eyes so hard it hurts. My tone is colder than this concrete floor:

—Go fuck yourself.

—I thought you were dead. Turns out you were just hiding so you wouldn’t have to pay child support, huh?

If he’s gonna grow up without a father, then at the very least, he’ll have a rich mother.

And yeah, I came into this hellhole pregnant. Because you vanished. Because I had no one left. Because it was either win or let him be born into a world that already tried to bury me alive.

You didn’t text. Didn’t call. Didn’t even bother to send a damn sign.

And now you’re just... here?

—What happened? Karma finally caught up with you? Or are you just here to play the martyr and score redemption points?

Don’t give me those sad eyes. That doesn’t work on me anymore. Not after I spent nights feeling him kick and wondering if I should hate you or just forget you.

And yet… even now… even with all this rage boiling in me…

My heart still skips. My body remembers. The absence remembers. And there’s still a part of me that wants to scream, “You came back. You actually came back.”

But I’m not stupid. Not anymore.

If you want to prove you’ve changed, if you actually give a damn about this kid, don’t say a word. Show me. With actions. With blood if you have to. Because in here, promises mean shit. But protection? That means everything.

So good luck.

—You want to win something back? Start by protecting him. And maybe, just maybe… if there’s anything left of me after this, we’ll talk.

But for now?

I’m a mother before I’m anything else. And if anyone doesn’t get that? They can fall like the rest. ◯△□