It was  a nice warm July afternoon. I sighed and stared impatiently out the window of our car while Jonghyun drove us through downtown Seoul. Why did there have to be so much traffic?! It’s 10 am on a Friday morning for crying out loud! Normally the car ride wouldn’t bother me this much but, today was one of the biggest days of our lives. Just last month we had received a phone call from the adoption agency we had been working with, our counselor had finally found a mother who had put her child up for adoption and wanted us to meet with her. I had been ecstatic running around our house with tears of joy running down my cheeks. I chuckled to myself remembering how Jonghyun had come home and been startled when he saw me. Once I told him about the phone call, he had picked me up and spun me around in circles crying with me.

Thinking about that day gave me flashbacks of when he first met the mother. Jonghyun and I had just arrived at the small coffee shop in downtown Seoul, and we instantly recognized our adoption counselor.  With butterflies in our stomach when approached the table, we greeted our counselor and then turned to the mother. I can still perfectly recall the emotions that ran through me at that moment; a mix of surprise, awe, and pure happiness. I had no idea what to expect and had spent the days leading up to the meeting envisioning what the mother and our soon to be child would look like.

“Hi,” the woman said with a smile on her face “my name is Alice. You  must be the adoptive parents.”

I was the first to recover from my surprise “Hello, I’m Kim Kibum and this is Kim Jonghyun.” I said motioning to Jonghyun who bowed and muttered a “Hello.”, still trying to recover from his surprise.

“I guess I’m not what you were expecting, am I?” Alice replied still smiling.

“Um…” I tried to find the right words.

She was both right and wrong. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but over the countless times I spent daydreaming, I never imagined someone like her being the mother of their future child. It wasn’t that she was ugly, in fact it was the complete opposite.

She was absolutely beautiful, by Korean and American standards. She was a few inches shorter than Jonghyun, putting her at about 5’6” I had estimated. She had a long waist and long legs. Her arms were long, but not awkwardly so, and she had long fingers and teeny tiny wrists. Since it was summer, she had a slight tan and I could tell that she had beautiful white skin with a slight olive undertone which I noted, would allow her to appear as though she was slightly tan even during the winter. She had a small, slightly oval shaped face that, like the rest of her body, was perfectly proportioned. She had a forehead that was not too big but not too small at the same time, and heart shaped lips. She had a sharp, symmetrical nose that would make many people envious and perfectly straight teeth.

But it was her eyes that really caught my attention. They were almond shaped, the corners slightly turned down like his own but not quite as much, while the edges swooped up perfectly to meet each other. Looking at her eyes reminded me of the way the Native American’s eyes looked when they studied them in my college American History class. The color of her eyes was captivating, they were almost turquoise in color, the green and blue mixing together in perfect harmony to create the most beautiful eye color he had ever seen. I desperately hoped his future son or daughter had inherited their mother’s stunning eyes.

“It’s not that,” Jonghyun’s voice brought me back to reality “I don’t think we were quite sure what to expect in general.” I managed to nod in agreement thankful that Jonghyun had answered her while I was busy creepily (as I imagine) admiring her. Despite the fact that I was gay I knew that she was a catch, probably a 10 in beauty on a 10 point scale.

“That’s okay,” she replied sitting down, Jonghyun and I following her lead “I’m sorry, I would’ve stood longer but I don’t have much energy these days.”

That’s when I noticed the one thing about her that wasn’t quite right. Though she was absolutely beautiful, she was much too skinny. Her cheekbones were too prominent due to her sunken in cheeks, there were bags under her eyes that she had attempted to cover up with make up. She was definitely not healthy, something that made my heart sink.

“The reason I’m doing this is because I’m too sick,” she continued “You see, just after I gave birth, I found out I have brain cancer. Though I’ve been undergoing treatment, I know that my cancer is terminal. I have three large brain tumors and there just isn’t any feasible way for all of them to disappear no matter how much treatment I undergo. I have no relatives that I trust to care or my child and my husband was an orphan who never got adopted.

Right before I was due to give birth, my husband was supposed to return home from the war, but he…” she took a moment to gather herself again, while I was hoping she wasn’t about to tell us what I was almost positive she was going to say. “He died a few days before he was supposed to come back. His convoy hit a mine and no one survived.”

I sat across the table trying to keep myself from crying. My heart broke for this woman sitting across from me, not only had her husband died, she found out she had cancer, but now she was left alone to care for a child.

“I can tell that I don’t have much longer and I wanted to find a perfect family for my daughter before I left.” She continued “I don’t want her to be left alone in an orphanage like my poor husband was. I want her to have a happy, loving home. I know I can’t rest in peace unless I’m positive she has that.”

I barely heard what she said, all I could think about was the word daughter. I was going to have a baby girl. I knew Jonghyun was thrilled, he had always liked little girls better than he did boys. I know he would’ve loved our son just as much but he had always longed for a little girl.

“I am so sorry for your loss, I couldn’t imagine losing Key like that.” Jonghyun stated gently, his voice almost a broken whisper.

“Thank you,” Alice said putting a smile back on her face “I’m just glad I was able to be matched with a couple so quickly! I was expecting for the matching process to take much longer, but I’m glad it didn’t.”

“Well,” our adoption counselor interjected “These two have been on our list for quite some time and when I heard about your daughter I immediately knew they would be the perfect couple for you.”

“Thank you.” Both Jonghyun and I said at the same time.

“So, I’m guessing you’d like to know her name.” Alice said after a moment of somewhat awkward silence.

“Of course!” I tried not to sound too enthusiastic but judging by the amused look on her face I  had failed.

“My husband and I discussed her name a lot, we wanted her to have a pretty name that would be translatable in both Korean and English, seeing as those are her roots. Obviously my husband and I are American, we moved here when I got a job as an English teacher at a local university. We love it here; we love the people, the culture, the music, and the food. I never want to leave Korea and in fact, my husband and I discussed being buried here when we died. However because he was killed in combat, I chose to honor him by burying him in the Tahoma National Cemetery in Washington where he was born and raised. As a result, that is also where I will be buried.

“Anyways, we had a lot of trouble at first, but then one day one of my students asked me what the name was going to be, and I told her we had no idea. ‘Can I make a suggestion?’ she asked me and so I told her that I would love to hear what her suggestion was. She told me about the name Hana. She explained that it means ‘one’ and ‘flower’ in Korean, and it is also an English name. I fell in love with the name and when I told my husband, he too agreed that that was the perfect name for our daughter.”

I smiled when I heard my future daughter’s name. It was indeed a beautiful name, and though I had yet to meet her, I couldn’t think of a more perfect name.

“Her full name,” Alice continued on “is Hana Emilie Wolfe. Emilie was the name of one of the girls that my husband knew when he lived at the orphanage. He said she was like a little sister to him, but sadly when he turned 17 and she was 16, she was killed in an accident by a drunk driver. So, we decided to honor her by having our daughter’s middle name be Emilie.”

“That makes sense,” I said “Would you like for us to keep her last name the same?”

“Oh, no! You’re going to be her parents now, she should have your last name!” Alice said quickly.

“And you’re okay with this, right?” Jonghyun motioned to himself and I, indicating our relationship. our being gay had resulted in a loss of other potential children over the past two years we had been trying to adopt. Some people were still not accepting of gay couples and held a fear that we would “convert them”, whatever that meant. “I mean, a lot of people aren’t so I just wanted to be certain. They’re afraid we may turn their children gay.” He continued on, speaking my thoughts.

“I have no problem with Hana being raised by two men. As long as you will treat her the way she deserves to be treated. But by talking to you both I can see that you both really love each other and will definitely take good care of her. I think it’s ridiculous that people would think you’re going to convert their child. That’s like saying because you’re friends with someone who’s tall, you’ll also become tall as a result, or that because you wear glasses suddenly so will my daughter. ” Alice stated with a smile on her face.

“Thank you, that means a lot to us.” Jonghyun replied returning her smile with one of his own.

This made me very happy, and I could tell that we had finally found the perfect child for us.

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A/N:

AGGHHH first chapter! So nervous to see what you guys think but excited at the same time. I'm warning you now, my big grammar issues are commas and colons/semicolons. I have no idea why, probably because I was just taught as kid that if you were to read the sentence outloud add a colon where you'd take a breath. Not much help right?  Originally this was going to be written in 3 POV but I took a break and accidently started to write the rest of the chapter as Key's POV so I just went back and tried to change the 3rd person to his perspective. So if you see any "they"'s or "their" or "Key" that's why. Hope you like it! 

Picture spam (just for fun :) )

This has nothing to do with the story (yet, I promise that Onew and 2min show up later in the story!), it just made me laugh.