“One bite, and you think our baby will be deformed?”
1:42 a.m. A studio flat in Bongcheon-dong, Gwanak-gu, Seoul. Through the window, neon signs splash garish green across the wall. Dahyun wakes to the scent of hot oil, then to her husband Minwoo tossing like a netted fish. For an hour he has been muttering the same refrain.
That stuff really has artificial everything… If it turns out like the disinfectant-egg scandal, what then? Our baby’s heart is… trembling.
Dahyun rests a fingertip on the back of his hand. I wish, just once, he worried about me.
It’s fine, it’s fine, but still not fine
Minwoo is not afraid of a mere french fry. He is buckling under the unfamiliar weight of the word Dad. Week twelve: the fetus still lacks recognizable fingers, yet he has already entrusted it with the whole of the future. Every bite, every sip feels capable of rewriting destiny. The conviction is so heavy that he wants to medicate his own anxiety, not Dahyun’s body.
If what she ate is a crime, then my permission makes me an accomplice.
He checks the time: 2:14. Is the baby’s heart racing now? Is the rancid oil from that lone fry slipping through the placenta into the brain? He types “McDonald’s 12 weeks pregnant deformity” into YouTube. No videos appear. Only a single comment: What Mom eats, Baby eats.
“My wife’s body is on loan from me”
Hwagok-dong, Gangseo-gu. On the second floor of a PC café behind Exit 1 of Balsan Station, Yejin has lived three years with her husband, Mr. Park. At eleven and a half weeks pregnant, she finished a game and ordered chicken. Her husband yanked his hands off the keyboard.
Cholesterol goes straight to the baby’s ears. Whatever you eat, my son eats.
For a moment Yejin’s vision blurred. I’m eating for my baby—why call it your son?
The next day she unburdened herself in the office lounge.
He acts like he is the fetus—won’t even let me have cup-ramen. I keep saying the tests are fine, but he keeps saying “just in case.” I can’t breathe.
Her colleague nodded. “Mine too. The instant I lift a fork, he convulses like it’s inside his own stomach.”
They laughed, then pressed their lips together.
Both of them had been living with “my baby,” never “our baby.”
Why they google snack shops for expectant mothers at 3 a.m.
Their insomnia is not about food. The baby’s blood-brain barrier is still porous, but the dread labeled Dad has already matured into an organ. Terror that his wife’s body might harm his child. The need to claim that terror as exclusively his. So Minwoo checks expiration dates every time he opens the fridge, and Yejin’s husband has memorized all twenty-seven pages of the fetal-insurance policy. They are no longer obsessed with the baby’s body but with their own need for control.
Hidden inside “Please stop eating” is the whisper, “Please start trusting me.”
I’m afraid of you becoming a father
At 3:04 a.m., Dahyun sits up and speaks.
I’m not giving birth to the baby; I’m giving birth to you—when you become a dad. That’s what scares me.
Minwoo falls silent. He sits on the edge of the bed and stares at her belly—still only the size of a palm. Inside it are the baby, Dahyun, and Minwoo himself. And beyond them, the word we trembles.