"I’m pregnant."
It was Thursday evening and a thin film of beer-foam still clung to the rim of my glass when Dahye, pink straw between her lips, spoke those words. My eyes snapped open. A relationship ended a month ago, a single condom that hadn’t failed—this wasn’t a joke, it was a verdict.
Yet the corners of Dahye’s mouth lifted, then crumpled, and finally burst.
“April Fool’s, idiot.”
I was supposed to laugh. I tried. But the wineglass in my hand trembled; a drop of red fell and blossomed on the white tablecloth like a bloodstain.
The moment I wished it were true
On the surface I panicked—what if it’s real?—but deeper down I murmured, maybe that would be fine.
Why do we rage at a fake pregnancy? Or is it disappointment? Was I afraid I’d secretly poked a hole in the condom myself? For an instant I imagined the script: an accidental pregnancy forces us back together, forces us into each other’s arms. A tiny, stupid hope flickered: So… what now? We marry? I still only want you?
Dahye turned that hope into a punchline.
Three women, three April truths
Case 1: Eunchae, 29, marketer
Last April 1st, Eunchae texted her ex: Went to the clinic today—six weeks. He called within three minutes. She didn’t pick up. Her fingers shook too hard to type just kidding. Around noon he appeared at her office lobby, breathless, clutching a pharmacy bag of pills and an envelope of cash. “Don’t take them—live with me.”
At that moment Eunchae understood: what she had wanted wasn’t “it’s a joke” but “it’s still all right.” That night she confessed the truth—there was no pregnancy. When he hugged her, smiling, she cried, because the tears meant he had been fooled.
Case 2: Jimin, 34, software engineer
Jimin was pregnant—eleven weeks. The father was her ex-husband, silent for two years. On April Fool’s morning she sent a playful text: Woke up with awful chest pains, went to hospital… turns out there’s a baby. The reply was cold and brief: If this is a joke, it’s in poor taste. Read, then ignored.
Jimin almost sent him the clinic receipt, then stopped. The moment he labeled it “a joke,” she became someone else’s wife in his eyes. She miscarried at thirteen weeks. That day was also April 1st.
Why the phantom pregnancy seduces us
Psychologists call it the fictional-pregnancy lure.
Truth: I wanted it more. A baby is the ultimate primer for laundering a dying relationship.
“But if we had a child…”
“Otherwise…”
These words rest on the blunt faith that “the ex-couple” can be reborn as “a family.” A fake pregnancy shatters that faith and leaves only the question: Would we have loved each other if it had been real? The answer, we know, is probably not.
Final question
That night I asked Dahye, “If it had been true?”
She sipped her beer and turned it back: “How would you have felt?”
I couldn’t answer.
Because I knew that between you and me, there was already nothing.
Still, every April Fool’s morning, some woman walks to the bathroom clutching a pristine white test like an exam sheet.
And everyone knows it is the last “joke” she will never deliver.
Who do you wish you could tell, right now, that the pregnancy is real?