‘Hello, I’m Dr. Kim Jinwoo, the clinic director. You can talk to me.’

　　The doctor’s calm voice eased Inwoo a little. He had come here after making up his mind, convinced he could trust this man to help him.

　　The clinic sat on a sleek street lined with neat, modern buildings. From the sign to the interior, it felt more like a café than a hospital. As Inwoo opened the door, glanced around, and headed toward the reception desk, a man in a white coat approached from the side and spoke directly to him.

　　“You’re Lee Inwoo, scheduled for ten o’clock, right?”

　　The quiet, gentle voice belonged to the director he’d spoken with on the phone. Inwoo was surprised by how young he was.

　　“Yes, that’s right.”

　　When Inwoo answered, stiff as a board, the man smiled warmly and pointed toward the back.

　　“Come on in. Was it easy getting here? The location is a bit awkward to find.”

　　“Yes, it was fine.”

　　He answered as they walked into the consultation room. The door closed silently behind them, and Inwoo sank into a plush armchair opposite the doctor. He felt a bit bewildered. He’d pictured something like a nerve-wracking job interview.

　　It felt pathetic to worry about how he was perceived when he was paying out of pocket, but he couldn’t help it—he was doing something terrible. Being an adult meant that acting thoughtlessly could be bad enough, even without ill intent. And right now, his intentions were undeniably bad.

　　As Inwoo’s face fell, the doctor cut short the small talk and got to the point.

　　“You fasted today, right?”

　　“Yes.”

　　“It must have been so hard on you.”

　　Inwoo didn’t respond.

　　“I’ll be performing the procedure under sleep anesthesia. It’ll just be me and one male nurse in the room. Even at the longest, it won’t take more than twenty minutes, and you can rest in the recovery room until you’re ready to leave.”

　　He nodded.

　　“First, I need to do a quick ultrasound. Would you mind lying down on the exam table?”

　　Inwoo did as he was told. As he laid his rigid body on the soft leather bed, the doctor gently pulled up his shirt. Cold, slippery gel touched his skin, and Inwoo held his breath. In his belly—starved since last night and rumbling with hunger…

　　Because I was pathetic and stupid. Because I was so thoughtless.

　　“Mr. Lee, you can close your eyes if you’d like. Just try to relax…”

　　Along with the doctor’s gentle voice, something took shape beyond his blurry vision. When he’d been rushed to the hospital before, he had been too stunned to look properly, unable to accept reality. So he’d convinced himself it wasn’t real—that it was just something like cotton candy, floating soundlessly and scentlessly in a dream…

　　He stared quietly at the dark screen.

　　When he turned his head, there it was on the dark screen: a white, fluffy shape floating in a fan-shaped sea of clouds. His heart dropped instantly, the ground plunging beneath him.

　　“…Mr. Lee?”

　　Everything was crumbling, falling apart around him… All at once, he missed his dad so much it choked him up.

　　He shouldn’t be thinking about Dad right now. Dad had sacrificed so much to raise him alone, treasuring him so dearly… pouring so much love into him…

　　“Um…”

　　The doctor handed him a tissue. Inwoo swallowed back his sobs and barely squeezed out the words.

　　“…D-Doctor…”

　　“Yes, tell me,” the doctor replied gently.

　　“T-This… This…”

　　“Yes.”

　　“…I-It feels…”

　　It feels like such a terrible thing to do…

　　This was why he shouldn’t have thought about Dad. He was struggling just to get by himself. Dad had told him to study hard, go to college, and marry a nice girl.

　　As he watched Inwoo cry, unable to finish his sentence, the doctor spoke softly.

　　“Ah, I don’t have any reservations until lunch. If you’d like, why don’t you rest here for a bit?”

　　Inwoo didn’t respond.

　　“It’s an important decision, so take your time. To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve had a male patient, so I’ve been worried about you. Also…”

　　Also… The doctor left the rest unsaid, but Inwoo had no trouble filling in the blank.

　　You came alone.

　　He had no choice but to come alone. He had been his own sole guardian for a long time now.

　　After gently wiping off the gel and pulling down Inwoo’s shirt, the doctor set a cup of water from the dispenser beside him and quietly left the room. Inwoo felt like an unwelcome intruder who had kicked out the room’s owner and taken over, but he couldn’t move an inch—it felt as though the floor beneath him had collapsed entirely.

　　‘My only wish is for you to go to a decent college, study hard, and earn a good living.’

　　Aside from feeding, clothing, and housing him, his father rarely nagged, but he repeated those words often. In an era where succeeding by any means or talent was all that mattered, his old-fashioned dad harbored a deep regret over never getting a proper education. Above all, he must have wanted Inwoo to live without suffering, since there was no telling when or how his fragile O trait might cause trouble. Keeping an uncommon trait safely hidden required not just skill, but money.

　　After his dad passed away, nothing went smoothly. A distant older cousin—the only relative Dad had kept in touch with—swept in, cleared out their home in an instant, and took Inwoo with him. Inwoo was too young back then to make decisions for himself, but later he regretted letting himself be swept along so helplessly.

　　The relatives ran a small factory. They eased him into it by saying that keeping busy was the best way to shake off grief, and before long, sending Inwoo straight to the factory after school became routine. He occasionally remembered his dad telling him to study hard and go to college, but living on someone else’s charity, he didn’t feel entitled to complain. Besides, he was too numb to care about anything.

　　The moment he realized something was wrong was after he completely bombed the college entrance exam and graduated from high school, yet no one ever brought up getting a job or going to university. The household consisted of his relative and wife, a college-aged daughter, and a middle-school son, and Inwoo was always kept at arm’s length.

He stayed in the annex across the courtyard, ate alone, and was never invited when they dined out. Yet he wasn’t entirely an outsider either—because he was never paid a wage. Two years after losing his dad, Inwoo had become an unquestioned fixture of that house, quietly eating, sleeping, and working at the factory like a shadow.

　　When he finally gathered the courage to say he wanted to move out, the response he got was blunt:

　　‘We fed and housed you for two years, so you need to work enough to pay us back.’

　　So he kept working at the factory through twenty and twenty-one, right up until that winter. Looking back, he felt so foolish, naive, and pathetic… But at the time, he hadn’t known what else to do. Living alone in a house without his dad would have driven him into deep depression. There was no telling what he might have done, consumed by confusion over his identity and a deficiency that carved into his chest like a scythe.

　　At any rate, after putting in two full years as an unpaid laborer, he finally moved out the winter he turned twenty-two. It was around then, on his way back from the center—a visit that had become a seasonal routine—that he spotted a flyer for a BBQ restaurant offering a studio apartment.

　　When he said a lukewarm goodbye to the relatives he’d stayed with for four years, Inwoo left with only two large boxes. One contained items from his childhood home, including his dad’s keepsakes, and the other held his clothes.

　　Working busy shifts alongside coworkers and living simply in a tiny studio wasn’t all that different from his life at his relatives’ house. But slowly, something shifted. He realized he needed to truly let go of his dad and forge a life of his own. He swore to live earnestly and well—just as any dearly loved child should.

　　Only then did it hit him: if Dad was watching from beyond the clouds and saw him drifting endlessly in grief and confusion—at the factory, at his relatives’ house, and at his new school—it would have broken his heart. Dad wouldn’t even have had the heart to scold him for straying; his chest would have simply ached for his son.

　　At twenty-two, all Inwoo had to his name was a phone with barely a dozen contacts, two boxes of possessions, and two thousand dollars given by his relative as a “gift for standing on your own”—neither proper pay nor compensation. His highest education level was a high school diploma. He couldn’t recall when he stopped studying, and he had no friends he conversed with regularly.

　　Living alone felt both familiar and alien, and though the grueling work kept him busy, loneliness crept in from time to time… But even so, it was fine. The love his father had given him was immense, and he had made up his mind to try his absolute best. Once he saved enough money to cover two years of expenses, he planned to prepare properly for the college entrance exam.

　　He targeted schools that offered full scholarships, squeezing in time to study high school freshman textbooks, Korean history, and English vocabulary whenever he could. Once this autumn and winter passed and spring arrived, he would hit the two-year mark at the restaurant. After completing that personal milestone, he would move into a cheap gosiwon room and focus entirely on studying.

　　He’d give the entrance exam one real try, and if that failed, he’d prepare for the civil service exam. He wanted to become someone who wore a suit to work, uncomfortable as it might be. And once he had more breathing room and felt truly confident, he would secretly get a boyfriend without Dad knowing.

　　That was the future Inwoo had envisioned. He had planned to endure this year and throw himself into studying starting next year. Even though he was late to the game and had a long way to go, unsure if he could even succeed… And yet…

　　That pale and plump thing right there.

　　Just moments ago, it had been floating gently on that dark screen.

　　Why did his heart feel so soft and fragile?

　　Why did his chest ache so terribly, why was he so sad, and why did he hate himself so much…?

　　“…Dad.”

　　Yes, it was because Inwoo himself was a child who had been loved so deeply.

　　Living alone with his dad, he had never felt lonely. His life had been cozy, happy, and complete. Even if theirs wasn’t a typical family, even if money was tight and things fell short sometimes, even if people looked at them strangely when they visited the center each season… he had shared a happy home with a father who had never, for a single second, regretted bringing him into the world.

　　‘I gave birth to you. You know that, right…?’

　　With IVs stuck in his arms and tubes running from strange machines into his body, so frail that his bones pressed against his hospital gown, his father had said those words with a gentle, playful smile. As Inwoo wept silently, sensing the end, his father had painfully reached up to stroke his hair and whispered:

　　‘You know how much I loved you, right…?’

　　Inwoo wept in silence.

　　‘I’ve never regretted it. Loving him… having you… Inwoo, with you…’

　　I wanted to live so much longer.

　　Now, Inwoo was crying just as he had in that hospital room that winter. He missed his dad so intensely it hurt. He felt terrified, yet overwhelmingly tender, knowing that the thing inside his belly would grow and blossom into a life of its own, just like him. Was Dad like this, too? Was Dad this helpless and terrified… feeling as if this tiny, fluffy presence was his only companion in the world…?

　　“Ah…”

　　Inwoo sat up from his curled position, crying uncontrollably. This time, he didn’t stop his trembling hand as it reached toward his belly. It was still flat and still. Aside from rumbling when he was hungry, it felt completely ordinary. But somewhere inside, it was floating gently.

　　Though he had only seen it as a floating blur on a dark monitor, he could no longer deny its reality. No—not “no longer.”

　　Ever since he had called this goodbye.

　　Ever since he couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist, whispering that he was sorry.

　　And…

　　“Um… hey…”

　　Ever since that moment when the sweet, gentle Baby Gureum, meaning a ‘Cloud’ in Korean, stopped floating—as if thanking him for acknowledging its existence, promising to be good and stay quiet from now on, pleading with him not to let it go…

　　Around the time Inwoo entered middle school, his dad used to ask him with an anxious expression:

　　‘Has puberty hit you yet?’

　　‘Are you getting eighth-grader syndrome?’

　　‘Does Dad bother you when I ask questions? Are you gonna start telling me, “Dad doesn’t need to know”?’

　　Back then, Inwoo didn’t even understand what puberty meant, and he felt his dad ought to know everything about his school life and friends.

　　‘Why? Are you annoyed with me, Dad?’

　　When Inwoo asked with a pout, Dad had offered a relieved, timid smile.

　　‘…You’re my best friend.’

　　Those shining moments made Inwoo into who he was today. Safe, healthy, and yearning for happiness as an adult.

　　Stroking his flat belly, Inwoo whispered, dazed.

　　“Should I… have you…?”

　　Instead of saying goodbye, should we meet?

　　His heart pounded wildly in his chest.