The apartment was too quiet.
Silence had a weight to it, like a damp cloth pressed over my mouth and nose. Every breath I took sounded foreign, echoing against the bare walls Kang had chosen for me. He'd said it was "a clean start."
It didn't feel clean.
It felt like exile.
The first day I stayed on the floor, back pressed against the cold wall, knees pulled to my chest. I didn't even realize the sun had moved across the sky until the light slanted differently through the blinds. My stomach growled, sharp and hollow, but I ignored it. What was the point of eating when the only reason I had to live had been ripped away from me?
By the second day, I noticed how the air smelled stale, how the blanket he left me barely warmed my body. I wrapped it tighter anyway, rocking myself slowly, like the baby I couldn't hold.
Sometimes I whispered to the emptiness. "You're still with me, aren't you? Somewhere out there?" My voice cracked, too soft, too broken. "Papa loves you… even if he doesn't know how."
My throat burned when I said the word papa. It felt like a lie, like I was wearing a mask that didn't fit anymore. Kang didn't want me. Kang didn't even want to look at me. So what right did I have to call myself anyone's father?
I would close my eyes and pretend I could hear my baby's cry. Once, through the thin walls, I did hear a neighbor's child wail. It pierced through me like a knife. My hands flew to my stomach instinctively, only to touch the empty flatness where life had once kicked and fluttered.
I pressed my face into my knees and shook. "That should be mine. That should be—" My words dissolved into sobs.
The phone Kang left on the table blinked once, a cold reminder. His number was still saved there. For hours I stared at it, trembling fingers hovering above the screen.
Finally, I dialed.
The line rang. Once. Twice. Then voicemail.
My voice cracked as the beep sounded. "Kang… it's me. I—I need to see them. Please. Just once. Please don't keep them from me. I'll do anything. I'll stay out of your way. I'll be quiet. Just—please."
When I hung up, the silence was worse than before.
The third day, I found stale bread in the paper bag Kang had tossed on the counter. I forced myself to chew, but it turned to dust in my mouth. I washed it down with tap water.
The nights were the hardest. The bed was too wide, too cold. I clutched the blanket around me, whispering to the ceiling, "Good night, little one. Sleep well. Papa's here…" My voice always broke on the last word.
Sleep didn't come easy. My body ached from the stitches still healing, from sitting curled up too long, from not eating enough. But worse than the physical pain was the emptiness.
It was the kind of emptiness that clawed at me from the inside, whispering that I didn't exist anymore.
I caught myself staring at the door for hours, waiting for footsteps that never came. Sometimes I thought I heard the key turn, imagined Kang walking in with the baby in his arms, saying he'd been wrong. That he wanted us after all.
But the door never opened.
By the end of the week, I realized I hadn't spoken to a single living soul except Kang's voicemail. Not one person had looked me in the eyes. Not one person had cared if I was alive or dead.
And maybe that was the cruelest part of all.
The phone became both my lifeline and my torment.
Every morning, I woke with a pounding ache in my chest, reaching for it with shaking fingers. I dialed Kang's number again and again, even though I knew the outcome.
Ring. Ring. Voicemail.
Each time, I left messages that grew more frantic, more desperate.
"Kang… it's me again. Please, just answer once. I just want to know if the baby's okay."
Another day: "Please. I'll never ask you for anything again. Just… let me see them, even for a minute. I'm begging you."
And another: "Don't punish me. Don't punish the child because of me. Please… please…"
My voice always broke into sobs, and I hated myself for it. But I couldn't stop.
At night, when I lay awake in the dark, I replayed his last words to me in the hospital: You don't have a place here right now. The sentence looped in my mind like a curse.
Sometimes I pressed the phone to my ear long after the call had ended, imagining his voice on the other side. Sometimes I whispered into the silence, "Kang… I'll be good. I'll do better. Just don't erase me."
The walls of the apartment seemed to shrink tighter each day. The air grew heavy, suffocating. I tried to keep myself busy—sweeping the already-clean floor, folding and refolding the one blanket, washing the same cup until my hands were raw. But the silence always crept back in.
I started talking to myself, just to fill the emptiness.
"They'll grow up strong, won't they? Maybe with your eyes. Maybe with my smile." I laughed bitterly, staring at my reflection in the dark window. "If I even have a smile anymore."
Once, while crying too loudly, I heard a knock at the door.
I scrambled to wipe my face, my body trembling as I opened it. A neighbor stood there, a middle-aged woman with sharp eyes. She frowned.
"Keep it down," she snapped. "People can hear you."
I froze, words choking in my throat.
She looked at me like I was dirt on her shoe. "Some of us work. Stop making a scene."
Before I could respond, she turned and left.
The door clicked shut again, leaving me colder than before.
No one cared. Not one person cared.
That night, I collapsed in the corner of the room, pulling the blanket around me. I couldn't stop shaking. "Why am I here? Why am I alive?" The words tumbled out, ugly and raw. "Would anyone notice if I wasn't?"
The thought scared me—but it also tempted me.
I pressed my hands over my face and sobbed until my throat burned.
But then—faintly, through the walls—I heard a baby crying again.
The sound pierced through me, sharp and merciless. My body reacted before my mind could stop it. I crawled toward the wall, pressing my ear against it, straining to listen.
The wail rose and fell, fragile and real. I clutched my chest, my nails digging into my skin. "Mine should sound like that," I whispered hoarsely. "That should be my child."
For a few minutes, I stayed there, whispering lullabies to a baby that wasn't mine, pretending my voice could reach through the walls.
When the crying faded, the silence returned—louder, heavier, more suffocating than before.
I curled up against the wall and whispered into the dark, "Don't forget me. Please, little one… don't forget me."
I wondered if I was already disappearing—not just from Kang's world, but from my child's memory too.
Days bled into nights, and nights bled into each other. My body ached constantly, my stomach hollow from days of barely eating, my mind trapped in the same endless loop of grief and longing. But somewhere, buried beneath the exhaustion and the cold, something stirred—a small, stubborn spark that refused to die.
The thought of Kang's black card lying on the table felt different now. Before, it had been a reminder of my defeat—a gilded leash. But now… it was a lifeline. A tool I could use. I could live, I could survive, I could fight. I didn't want to rely on it forever. I didn't want to be his discarded shadow.
I had to do something.
The next morning, I forced myself out of bed. Every movement hurt, every step reminded me of my weakness, but I pushed through. I washed my face, my hands raw from scrubbing, and looked at my reflection in the cracked window.
The person staring back at me looked hollow, hair limp and tangled, eyes swollen with grief. But there was a flicker—small, almost invisible—of something else. Determination. Necessity. Survival.
I whispered to the reflection, "I'll do this. For them. For my child. I'll survive… even if I have to claw my way from nothing."
Finding work wasn't easy.
I had never gone to school. I had no experience outside of being… his. Every application form, every interview, every glance at a résumé reminded me that I was unprepared, unqualified, invisible.
I tried diners, small stores, cleaning jobs. Each time, rejection cut me down. Some employers didn't even look at me twice. Some laughed softly behind their hands.
"You don't have experience?" one manager had asked, tapping his pen against the table. "Sorry, we need someone trained."
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat, forcing a smile that felt like paper on my face. "I… understand."
I walked out into the gray streets, stomach growling, back aching, lungs burning with the cold. I passed fathers walking with children, mothers laughing with babies in their arms. Each pair of eyes, each smile, was a hammer to my chest. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw myself at them, beg them to understand what I had lost.
But I didn't.
Instead, I clenched my fists, pressed my thumb into the lines of my palm, and forced myself forward.
At night, I would sit by the thin curtain, staring at the dim lights of the city and imagining a future. One where I had a small apartment with a bed that wasn't sagging, with food in the fridge, with my child safe in my arms.
It felt impossible. Unrealistic. But the spark refused to die.
The week ended, and though my body was exhausted and my spirit battered, I had done something. I had applied to three jobs, walked ten miles in search of work, and survived another day in the suffocating apartment Kang had left me in.
For the first time in days, I didn't collapse into sobs immediately before sleep.
I whispered to the empty room, to the silence, to the child I couldn't hold:
"I'll be strong. I'll survive. I'll fight… and one day, I'll come for you."
The words tasted like fire in my mouth, bitter and sharp, but they were mine.
And for the first time, I felt something I hadn't in weeks: a flicker of hope.