First time?

That’s a fat happy baby.

Eunbi had the thought before she could stop it, which was a little embarrassing. Still, the baby in question was currently beaming up at her from the hallway with the full-body joy only toddlers could manage — cheeks round as persimmons, a little fist shoved halfway into her mouth. Eunbi crouched down instinctively.

“Well, hello there, little miss.”

The baby — Mira, though Eunbi didn’t know that yet — responded by babbling something that might have been a greeting or might have been a declaration of war. Hard to tell with toddlers. Either way, she was very committed to it.

Eunbi was in the middle of babbling back when she heard movement behind the stroller and straightened up.

She was not prepared.

The man was big. That was the first thing. Not just tall — she was used to people being taller than her, that was most of the population — but large in a way that filled the hallway, broad-shouldered and solid, the kind of frame that made the standard apartment corridor feel like it had been built slightly too small. He’d clearly been juggling groceries and a diaper bag and whatever else, and he turned around with the distracted energy of someone who had not expected company.

Neither had she, for that matter.

Eunbi looked up at him. He looked down at her. Mira continued her political speech.

Oh, Eunbi thought, with a clarity that surprised her. Just oh. Something in her chest did something she didn’t have a word for.

“Hi,” she said, because she was a grown adult and capable of speech. “I’m Eunbi.”

The man blinked. Then, from somewhere in his arms, a small voice piped up.

“Mommy?”

Mira was staring at Eunbi with an expression of profound hope. Eunbi’s heart did something catastrophic.

I could be a mommy, said a voice in the back of her brain, completely unprompted and deeply unhinged.

Excuse me? said the rest of her brain.

She had no time to investigate this further because the man was already turning to the baby with the practiced patience of someone who had explained this before. “No, baby. Not mommy.”

Mira considered this information, deemed it unsatisfactory, and looked at Eunbi again as if waiting for a second opinion.

The man turned back with a tired but genuine smile, the kind that deepened the corners of his eyes. “Sorry about that. She meets a woman, and she decides it’s her mommy. Every time.”

Eunbi had her mouth carefully closed over everything her subconscious was apparently willing to volunteer. “It’s fine,” she said. “Really. No big deal.”

He looked grateful in a way that felt like more than politeness. Like maybe he’d been braced for something worse.

“I’m Ozymandias,” he said. “But you can call me Ozzy.”

“Ozzy,” she repeated, like she was filing it away. “You just moved in?”

“Three weeks ago.” He shifted the grocery bag to his other arm. “Wanted to be closer to Mira’s grandma.”

Mira, having apparently decided that the conversation had gone on long enough without her participation, leaned out of his arms toward Eunbi with both hands extended. It was less of a request and more of a demand.