I had barely crossed the threshold of the house, my heart already soaring, already impatient. A single thought consumed me, irrepressible, vital: to hold my three princes tight against me, to feel their warm little bodies, their sweet scent of baby and adventure. I pushed open the heavy door with a nervous gesture, tore off my jacket and threw it almost without looking at the maid. My footsteps echoed in the entrance hall that was too vast, too silent. Where were they?
My gaze swept across the empty living room, desperately searching for the sparkle of their laughter, the trace of their scattered toys. Nothing. A shiver of worry ran through me.
"If you're looking for the boys, your mother isn't back with them yet," my father's voice boomed from his armchair, without even looking up from his newspaper. A harsh voice, accustomed to orders, to interrogations.
I felt a wave of irritation rise within me. "Okay, I'll call her to find out where they're hanging out," I replied, reaching into my pocket to pull out my phone, that umbilical cord to my children.
"Couldn't you think about something other than your kids for once? Tell me about your day, about the company."
His remark pierced me like a blade. Always the same refrain. Work, figures, succession. Never what truly mattered. I closed my eyes for a second, refusing to engage on this sterile ground. I was no longer listening to him. Our dialogue was a monologue, a script played on repeat for years.
It was then that the most wonderful sound in the world shattered this tension. The front door burst open with a joyful crash, and a torrent of crystalline laughter flooded the house.
"MOMMY!!!"
Their little voices in unison melted away all my fatigue, all my anxiety in an instant. They rushed towards me, but it was towards her they ran, towards their sun. My mother enveloped them in her arms, her face radiant.
"My babies! So, what did you do with Mami today?"
They all talked at once, a joyful gibberish punctuated by grand gestures. "We saw Daddy! And then… and then he took us to play at the park! He pushed us super high on the swings!"
The ground seemed to give way beneath my feet. Daddy. The word, innocent in their mouths, echoed in my head like a clap of thunder. My gaze locked onto my mother. "What's this story, Mom?" I asked, and my own voice sounded strangled to me, vibrating with barely contained tension.
She straightened up, an enigmatic smile on her lips. "Why did you never tell me anything about your boyfriend who just came back?"
My boyfriend? The shock left me speechless. A mental vertigo. What was she making up? "Mom, stop immediately letting my children stay with strangers!" I exploded, fear mingling with anger.
"But he's not a stranger, Jung-Su-ah," she retorted, soft but firm. "And after all the time you've talked to me about him… I finally meet him. He's so charming, and the children already adore him."
I felt myself pale. A trap was closing in on me, woven by my own past lies. What had I gotten myself into? "It's… it's a strange misunderstanding, Mom," I stammered, desperately searching for an exit. "He didn't warn me he was back… I… I'll talk to him. Come on, my darlings, let's go take a bath."
I practically tore them from her arms, holding them close as if afraid someone might take them from me. Once in the sanctuary of our bedroom, I began the soothing ritual: undressing their chubby little bodies, removing my own too-heavy adult clothes. The shared bath, our bubble of sacred intimacy, took on a particular resonance that evening. The warm water, their joyful splashes, their laughter… all of it contrasted violently with the chaos raging in my head.
.................................
"Last night, my mother told me something… terrifying." My voice was a hoarse thread, laden with all the accumulated anguish. I had come to take refuge with Yoongi and Il-Nam, my hyungs, my anchors in the storm. Their apartment smelled of coffee and old books, a scent of comfort.
"What could she possibly have said to get you in such a state?" Hae-won asked, setting down his cup, his piercing gaze already on alert.
I took a deep breath, as if to draw the courage for words from it. "She told me… that she had seen, and even spoken with… the father of my boys."
The silence that followed was heavy, palpable. Nam nearly choked on his coffee. "Wait, what did you say? No, but that's impossible, Jung-Su. Your kids don't have a father. It's biological."
"That's what I thought at the moment too. And yet…"
"You think it's a stalker? Someone who saw your photos on social media, wants to extort money from you?" Hae-won continued, his practical mind already in problem-solving mode.
"I don't know… She's the one who found the striking resemblance between this stranger and the boys. She was certain of it."
Il-Nam sat up straight, his eyes suddenly lit up by a thought. "Wait a second… What if it was… the owner of the sperm you bought from the bank?"
The suggestion hit my mind like a projectile. "No! That can't be it. Donations are anonymous, protected! It's… it's impossible."
"Jung-Su… Jung-Su-ah, your lies are starting to catch up with you, and now they have a face," Hae-wonmurmured, and in his voice, there was less reproach than a sad lucidity.
He was right. The overwhelming truth crushed me a little further into the couch. I had lied so much. After college, faced with my father's suffocating pressure – "I will only hand over the reins of the company once you have offspring, an heir" – I had panicked. I had invented a life: a secret love, an absent father abroad. And to give substance to the lie, I had resorted to insemination with sperm from an unknown donor. A pragmatic choice that was now turning into a potential nightmare.
"Normally, you were supposed to be content with just one child. So why did you go back for a second insemination?" Hae-won questioned, seeking the point of weakness.
The answer escaped me, shameful and truthful. "The first one… Minjun… he was so perfect, so beautiful. I wanted him to have a brother, a sister. And then… the donor, his profile… he was so…" I left my sentence hanging, blushing despite myself.
"And here you are with three kids. You're really something, Su," Il-Nam sighed, somewhere between admiration and despair.
"Il-Nam!"
"What I say is, this guy must be a real bombshell for his genes to have swept yours aside like that," Hae-won stated, pragmatic to the end. "If your mother recognized him right away, it means your boys are his mini-clones. The resemblance must be striking."
"Hae-won hyung, this is not the time!"
"What I say is, you need to meet him," il-Nam concluded, looking suddenly determined.
A nervous laugh escaped me. "You're funny, hyung. And how am I supposed to find him? There's no instruction manual for tracking down your sperm donor!"
"Let us think about it," they said in unison, exchanging a look that boded no good.
I watched them, my heart tight. It was always the same with their lousy ideas, their far-fetched plans. It was partly because of their influence – benevolent but chaotic – that I was reduced to this house of cards of lies threatening to collapse on me and my children. An immense fatigue, heavier than all the fatigues in the world, fell upon my shoulders. This situation… it was beginning to exhaust my very soul.