Nesting

1994 | Gunsan

Jisoo woke with a jolt, as if an internal alarm had sounded—not the gentle transition from sleep to consciousness, but the sharp, adrenalized awakening of someone who has just remembered they’ve left the stove on. Except the stove was fine. The entire apartment above Moonlight Stationery was quiet, bathed in the pale blue-grey light of a Gunsan dawn. Suho slept beside her, one arm flung over his eyes, breathing deep and even.

The problem wasn’t fire. It was everything else.

A primal, buzzing urgency filled her veins, a biological imperative that bypassed all higher reasoning. Prepare. Now. It wasn’t a thought; it was a command etched into her bone marrow. The room, which had felt cozy and sufficient yesterday, now seemed catastrophically inadequate. The closet door, slightly ajar, revealed a glimpse of haphazardly hung clothing that made her jaw tighten. The spare room next door was still a storage dump for unsold shop inventory. The baby supplies—the crib in its flat box, the small stack of cloth diapers, the handful of tiny outfits—were scattered between the living room, their bedroom, and a cupboard in the hall. This was not organization. This was chaos wearing the mask of readiness.

She slid out of bed without waking Suho. She did not shower. She did not brush her teeth. She did not put on the kettle. She went directly to the closet, opened it wide, and began pulling everything out.

Methodically, ruthlessly, she created piles on the floor. Suho’s flannel shirts and trousers. Her own—Sooya’s—dresses and skirts, most of them now too small for her expanding middle. Blankets. Towels. A box tucked in the back that, when opened, revealed Suho’s childhood treasures: dog-eared adventure novels, a collection of smooth sea glass, a faded baseball mitt, a stack of notebooks filled with his adolescent handwriting—notes about birds he’d seen, sketches of shop layouts, lists of favorite words. She handled these last items with a reverence that momentarily stilled her frantic hands. These were the artifacts of the boy who became the man sleeping in her bed. She set them aside carefully, a library of a life she’d inherited.

Then she moved to the dresser. Socks, underwear, scarves. Everything was examined, sorted, categorized. Keep. Repair. Donate. The “donate” pile grew quickly. Jisoo worked with the focused efficiency of a CEO streamlining a failing department, which, in a way, she was. The department of Their Life Needed to Be Ready for a Baby.

She found a receipt on the floor—from a week ago, for a ream of paper and two ink cartridges. She flipped it over. On the blank back, she began to write with a pen pulled from her nightstand.

THINGS WE HAVE:

• Crib (boxed, unassembled. Instructions presumably hieroglyphic.)

• Baby blankets (2 total. 1: handmade, green, from Mrs. Kim down the street. And, 2: store-bought, white with pink ducks, from Sooya’s mother?)

• Baby clothes (newborn to 3 months. Approximately 12 pieces. Mix of gifts and Sooya’s pre-swap purchases. The yellow duck onesie haunts me.)

• Cloth diapers (a stack of 20. White. They look like small tea towels. The concept is terrifying.)

• Ceramic washing basin (small, blue. Appears to be repurposed from kitchen.)

• Baby nail scissors (singular, ancient, looks like it could trim bonsai.)

THINGS WE NEED:

• More cloth diapers (minimum 40 more. Math: baby voids approximately 10-12 times daily. Laundry exists. I am not ready for this math.)

• Diaper pins (the current ones are rusty. Rust + newborn skin = historical tragedy.)

• Changing mat (waterproof. Surface. Anything.)

• Burp cloths (more small towels. My life is becoming a tapestry of small towels.)

• Infant thermometer (how did humans before thermometers know if a baby had a fever? Guessing? Prayer?)

• Baby soap (gentle. Must not contain mercury or lead, which were probably optional in 1994.)

• Rocking chair (impossible. No space, no budget. But my soul needs one. Added.)

She stared at the list. Then, her 2026 brain, unbidden and unhelpful, appended another section.

THINGS WE NEED THAT DON’T EXIST YET IN 1994:

• Baby monitor (invention of the century. Here, surveillance will be conducted via ear. Like a peasant.)

• Digital forehead thermometer (see above: prayer.)

• Diaper Genie (the name is stupid. The concept is divine.)

• White noise machine (alternative: Suho’s off-key humming.)

• BPA-free bottles (the concept of BPA doesn’t exist. Plastic is just… plastic.)

• Sleep-schedule tracking app (alternative: my own deteriorating mental health charted in a paper journal.)

• Wi-Fi enabled breathing wearables (alternative: me, staring at the crib in the dark, counting seconds between rises of a tiny chest.)

A wave of sheer, anachronistic panic washed over her. She was going to raise a human in the technological dark ages. She placed a hand on the firm, vast curve of her belly, where her daughter practiced what felt like aquatic ballet.

“Listen,” she whispered, her voice low and serious in the quiet room. “You need to understand the context into which you’re arriving. In the year 2026—which is, for the record, your mother’s other legal residence—there exists a device that clips to your diaper and sends a notification to your parent’s smartphone if you might be thinking about being uncomfortable. Here, in 1994, the alert system is my own primal anxiety, which will likely manifest as me waking you up every fifteen minutes to check if you’re still breathing. I apologize in advance. It’s not you, it’s the era.”

The baby kicked—a solid, rolling thrust against her palm. Jisoo chose to interpret this as “I understand, and I have low expectations.”

A groan came from the bed. Suho rolled over, squinting at her through sleep-tousled hair. His gaze traveled from her face, down to the mountains of fabric surrounding her, to the receipt in her hand. He blinked slowly, processing the scene like a man trying to decipher abstract art.

“Sooya-yah,” he rasped, his voice thick with sleep. “Did… did the closet explode?”

“I’m nesting.”

“You look like you’re conducting an audit.”

“It’s the same instinct, just with more existential dread.” She gestured to the piles. “This is all wrong. The system is broken. The spare room is a glorified cardboard grave. We have a crib in a box, Suho. A box! The baby could arrive early. Do you know what ‘early’ means? It means potentially in six weeks. In six weeks, we need a functional nursery, a stocked supply station, a feeding plan, a sleeping plan, and at minimum a basic understanding of how to fasten a cloth diaper without stabbing anyone!”

Her voice had risen, sharpening with an edge of genuine fear she hadn’t meant to reveal. The room fell silent. Suho pushed himself up on his elbows, the last vestiges of sleep clearing from his eyes. He looked at her—not at the mess, not at the list—but at the tight line of her shoulders, the frantic energy vibrating in her hands.

He swung his legs out of bed and padded over. He took the receipt from her fingers. His eyes scanned her neat handwriting, pausing at the last section. His brow furrowed.

“What’s… BPA?” he asked, pronouncing the letters carefully.

“A chemical,” she said, too quickly. “In plastic. It’s bad. I read about it in… one of the medical books from the shop.” The lie was smooth, born of practice.

“And a ‘baby monitor’?”

“A… a new kind of intercom. For nurseries. Very advanced.” She waved a hand, trying to shoo the anachronisms away. “The point is, we’re not ready.”

Suho set the receipt down on the dresser. He took both of her hands in his. His palms were warm, his grip firm and steady. “Sooya. Look at me.” She did. His brown eyes were calm, like deep, still water. “Babies have been born in this town, in this house probably, for longer than either of us has been alive. They were born without… BPA-free anything. They were born with cloth diapers and ceramic basins and mothers who listened with their ears. And they thrived. We have a roof. We have a crib, even if it’s in a box. We have blankets. We have each other. We have Halmeoni next door, who has forgotten more about babies than we’ll ever know. We are not alone in this.”

The logic was infuriating because it was reasonable. It was 1994 reasonable. It did nothing to quiet the 2026 alarm shrieking in her mind.

“Okay,” she said, the word tight. “But the crib is still in a box. The spare room is still full of 1988 calendar stock. That’s not reasonable. That’s just poor logistics.”

A smile touched his lips. “So we’ll fix the logistics. After breakfast.”

“Breakfast is a distraction.”

“Breakfast is fuel for manual labor. My manual labor. Which you will need.” He kissed her forehead, a quick, warm press. “Deal?”

She sighed, the fight draining out of her, replaced by the heavy, familiar weight of her body. “Deal.”

He made breakfast—rice, soup, a small plate of kimchi. He moved around their tiny kitchen with an easy, unconscious grace, and she watched him, cataloguing this moment too: the way his t-shirt stretched across his shoulders as he reached for a bowl, the concentration on his face as he tasted the soup, the quiet hum that started in his chest, a tune she didn’t recognize. This was the man who would build the shelf. This was the father who would one day carry their daughter on his shoulders. The panic receded, replaced by a deep, aching fondness.

After eating, they attacked the spare room. It was a tomb of obsolete shop inventory: boxes of unsold, out-of-date calendars featuring scenic landscapes of places nobody wanted to visit; bundles of faded posters; a crate of novelty pens that had leaked ink in a psychedelic explosion; a stack of dongmul magazines from five years prior. They formed a chain: Suho in the room, handing boxes to Jisoo in the hallway, who carried them (slowly, carefully) to the top of the stairs, where Suho would then take them down to the main storage area in the shop. It was inefficient and physical, and within twenty minutes, a fine layer of dust coated everything, and Jisoo was sweating.

“This,” she grunted, hefting a box of 1989 world atlas pages, “is the opposite of a nesting instinct. This is an un-nesting instinct.”

“We’re making space,” Suho said, his voice muffled from inside the room. “Space is the first ingredient.”

After an hour, the room was empty. Bare floorboards, dusty walls, a single, high window that let in a shaft of morning sun, illuminating the motes of dust they’d stirred into a frenzied dance. It was tiny—barely eight feet by ten—but it was a room. A potential.

“Shelf,” Jisoo declared, hands on her hips.

Suho nodded, already scanning the leftover wood piled in a corner of the shop downstairs. He returned with an armful of planks—some from old shipping crates, a few pieces of sanded pine left over from a long-ago project. He had a hammer, nails, a handsaw, and a tape measure tucked into the pocket of his trousers.

He didn’t ask for a design. He just started measuring the wall, marking it with a pencil behind his ear. Jisoo sat on the floor, her back against the wall, and watched him work. This was a Suho she loved in a different way: Suho the Maker. His brow furrowed in concentration, his lips pressed into a thin line. He measured twice, cut once with the handsaw, the sound a steady shush-shush that was oddly soothing. He didn’t rush. Each movement was deliberate, competent.

He built a simple, sturdy shelf, three tiers high, anchored directly into the wall studs. As he worked, she found herself staring at his forearms—the tendons shifting under his skin, the dusting of dark hair, the strength that was not for show but for use. She added forearms while building furniture to her mental list of Things That Made Her Heart Do a Silky Little Flip.

When the shelf was secured, he stood back, wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Okay. Now the crib.”

The crib came in a long, flat box with illustrations on the side that promised “Easy Assembly!” in cheerful, deceptive Korean script. They laid out all the pieces on the floor of the nursery. There were slats, rails, screws, bolts, and an instruction sheet that appeared to have been translated through several languages, each more confused than the last.

Jisoo took charge of the instructions. “Okay, it says part A attaches to part B using fastener… gamma?”

Suho peered at the diagram. “That’s not gamma. That’s a picture of a screw.”

“It’s a symbolic screw. It represents gamma. Here, it says to ensure the ‘footing stabilizers’ are inversely parallel before inserting the ‘central spindle.’”