Chapter 2 : Ordinary 13
1383 Words
Inside the childbirth room, chaos had taken over.Her blood pressure was dropping fast.
“She’s crashing—BP seventy over forty!”
The woman’s body trembled on the table, her breaths short and fading. Her lips were pale, eyes barely able to stay open. Sweat covered her skin like morning frost. The monitor beside her let out a sharp alarm, cold and continuous.
“She’s bleeding out,” a nurse called.
“Get a transfusion ready. Now!”
The doctor leaned over her. “Can you hear me? Stay with us. Just hang on.”
Her fingers twitched. “I… can’t…” she whispered, her voice thin and dry like paper. “Please… my baby…”
Then her head fell back against the pillow.
Outside the room, the husband stood with his hands clasped tight, shaking. He could barely breathe. The hallway felt like it was closing in around him .Sterile white walls, buzzing lights, the steady throb of unknown footsteps behind swinging doors.
He kept his eyes fixed on the childbirth room. Waiting for someone to come out. Waiting for anything.
Inside, the baby’s heartbeat began to fade. “He’s not descending. We’re losing both!”The doctor’s voice grew sharper.
“We’re going in. Prepare for emergency cesarean. I want this room cleared except for surgical staff.”
The nurses moved with precise, desperate speed. Surgical lights flicked on, glowing white-hot. The mother was barely conscious now, drifting in and out, her body limp as they prepared her for the incision.
“Scalpel.” The moment the blade touched skin, the air shifted.
Outside, above the hospital, the ash spiraled faster.
A wind stirred.Not natural wind.Not of this world.And somewhere between pain and steel, breath and silence .Something began to awaken.
The air inside the room was tight. Thick with blood, sweat, and dread.
“He’s out,” the doctor said.
But no cry followed.The newborn lay still in the doctor’s hands. A baby boy, fragile and pale, his tiny chest unmoving. His limbs hung limp. There was no color to his skin, no sound in the room but the flat rhythm of monitors and the hum of panic.
“He’s not breathing,” a nurse whispered.
“Get the suction. Check the airway.”
The staff moved quickly, following every protocol.Clearing the nose, rubbing the back, massaging the feet .But the child did not stir. His body was growing colder with every second. The doctor’s hands trembled slightly as he tried again.
Still nothing.And at the same time, the mother’s body began to fail.
“BP dropping again…fifty over thirty. She’s hemorrhaging!”
The surgical team was split. Half working on the mother, half trying to bring life into the child’s lungs. Sweat beaded on brows. Machines beeped with urgency. The nurse nearest to the baby looked at the clock.
They were running out of time.A doctor stepped back, eyes heavy with grief. “We have to—”
But before the words could finish, a sudden gust of wind burst against the window.
Above the hospital, the sky twisted.The ashes, once drifting in a slow spiral, began to turn sharply. A cyclone of pale light formed above the roof, spinning faster, tighter, until the spiral broke and shot downward.
A whisper, like ancient breath, touched the back of the newborn’s neck.
And then…
His eyes opened.Not wide. Not frightened. But glowing.A soft, piercing blue light flickered inside them for a single breath before vanishing into darkness.
And then he screamed.
Not a weak cry, but a sharp, powerful sound that filled the entire room like thunder. The nurse gasped and fumbled the infant into her arms.
“He’s breathing! His heart’s stabilizing!”
She wrapped him quickly, eyes wide with disbelief.
And the mother.The bleeding stopped. The monitor blinked once, then began to rise. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy. Her color returned. Her pulse steadied. Her chest rose on its own.
“She’s coming back,” someone said.
No one spoke for a moment. No one moved.They all just stood in the light of that one newborn cry, shaken by what they had just witnessed.
No one could explain it.But something had changed.He had arrived.The doors to the operating room opened with a slow, creaking push.
The husband stood immediately, his hands trembling. His eyes searched the doctor’s face for something…anything.
The doctor stepped forward, his voice calm, tired, and filled with quiet awe.
“Your son is alive. He’s breathing well now. And your wife… she’s going to be okay. We stopped the bleeding.”
The words didn’t hit all at once. They landed in pieces gentle, staggering, overwhelming.
The man dropped to his knees on the hospital floor, covering his face with both hands as tears rushed forward.
“Thank you,” he whispered through sobs. “Thank you, thank you… thank you.”
The doctor placed a hand on his shoulder. “You almost lost them both. But sometimes… miracles do happen.”
No one had the words for what had happened.And outside, the sky finally wept.
The rain came softly at first, tapping against the windows, then growing heavier. Thunder rolled in the distance not violent, just deep. Like the world had released a breath it had been holding all night.
In the quiet of the hospital room, the newborn boy lay swaddled in a soft white blanket, tucked gently into a clear-sided crib. His tiny chest rose and fell with steady rhythm, peaceful at last.
The mother turned her head slightly toward the crib and smiled through tired eyes.
“We didn’t even decide on a name.”
The father leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand, gaze fixed on the tiny face beyond the blanket.
“I know… I was too nervous to pick. We kept disagreeing.”
She gave a faint laugh, soft and broken. “You wanted Haru, remember? And I said it sounded like a weather forecast.”
He chuckled. “And you wanted Sion. I still don’t know if that’s a name or a flower.”
“I liked it!” she pouted gently, then wiped at her tears. “But this one…” Her eyes softened as she looked at the baby again. “He cried like a lion when he finally let it out.”
“Lion,” the man repeated thoughtfully. “Should we name him that?”
She laughed. “We’re not going to name our child Lion.”
“What about Leon?” he offered, shrugging. “Kind of heroic.”
“That’s too overseas-sounding,” she teased. “This isn’t a drama.”
He smiled, then grew quiet.
For a moment, only the rain spoke — tapping gently against the glass, whispering through the quiet room.
Then he said it. “Rheon.”
She turned to him slowly. “Rheon?”
He nodded. “I don’t know why… but it feels like that name found him, not the other way around.”
She repeated it softly to herself. “Rheon…”
And then, through the dim hospital light and the hush of the night, she smiled. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
Her hand reached toward the crib, fingers trembling as if the name alone carried weight. “Seo Rheon.”
The storm outside had quieted, but the wind still lingered at the windows as if the world was listening.
And beneath its watchful silence, the boy slept on.Unaware that the name he had been given once belonged to something more than human.
Thirteen years passed.
Rheon grew up like any other child, tucked away in a quiet neighborhood where the days moved gently and the world asked for little more than patience.
He was the only son of Seo Jaemin and Kang Haeun, a couple who lived modestly but with quiet joy. Jaemin worked as an office clerk at a local logistics company. Haeun helped manage a small bookstore a few streets from home. Their lives were not lavish, but warm… filled with bookshelves, secondhand furniture, and the familiar scent of soy broth on weekend mornings.
They didn’t own much, but they never needed to. Their home was always clean, the fridge was never empty, and Rheon had his own little room with a desk by the window. That was all he wanted.
- Writer
