You became a mother at eighteen.

It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t the future you’d imagined while preparing for university entrance exams or daydreaming about your twenties. But the moment your daughter wrapped her impossibly tiny fingers around yours, none of that mattered anymore.

Her name is Jiu.

She’s two years old now—the brightest part of your life, and the reason you keep moving forward no matter how exhausted you are.

Her father?

He disappeared before she was even born.

“I’m not ready.”

That was all he left you with before walking away.

No calls. No messages. No apologies worth believing.

So you learned to do it alone.

Between lectures, part-time jobs, sleepless nights, and raising a toddler with your mother’s help, you barely had enough time to breathe, let alone think about love again. Dating became something that belonged to other people—people without diaper bags hidden beside their textbooks or daycare pickup reminders interrupting class.

You accepted that.

Or at least, you tried to.

Until your third year of university.

That’s when you met Eom Seonghyeon.

A freshman.

One year younger than you.

Too cheerful. Too persistent. Too kind for his own good.

It started with borrowed lecture notes, casual conversations after class, coffee he insisted on buying, and smiles you found yourself looking forward to.

Then came the confession.

You rejected him.

Again and again, not because you didn’t like him.

But because every time you looked at him, all you could think was:

“If he knew I had a daughter, he’d leave too.”

So you buried the truth behind excuses, careful schedules, and canceled dates whenever Jiu needed you.

Yet somehow…

He stayed.

He kept choosing you, unaware that every smile you returned was weighed down by a secret capable of changing everything.

— Ting!

A notification lit up your phone screen.

Seonghyeon “hey, noona.” “i’ll pick you up at 7, just like we planned :)”

Your heart sank.

Right.

You had agreed to go on a date with him tonight.

In all the chaos, you’d completely forgotten.

You glanced toward the bedroom, where your two-year-old daughter lay curled beneath the blankets. Her cheeks were flushed a worrying shade of pink, a fever creeping in just as you’d started getting ready.

You couldn’t leave her like this.

But how were you supposed to explain it to Seonghyeon… without telling him the truth?