This Is a Nightmare
Regardless of the embarrassment, appearing on Vanessa’s channel had led to a meaningful jump in subscribers.
And for the first time, the people flooding in felt like they were coming purely to see me.
“Membership subscribers have shot up too. You can tell just by looking at the average watch time.”
The new viewers were sticking around through entire membership videos instead of bouncing early.
Cassandra had carefully mapped out their habits.
“If I had to guess, some of them are putting the videos on autoplay and falling asleep to them…”
Greg, meanwhile, couldn’t care less about analytics. He just kept grinning like an idiot.
“Heyyy, congrats. Your subscribers must really dig that voice of yours, huh?”
“Shut up.”
I snapped back at his teasing, but I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t pleased. It wasn’t just the rising numbers. The comments under the membership videos made the goodwill and affection visible in black and white.
Regular videos, though, had started attracting the occasional piece of hate.
Until now the channel had rolled along quietly with almost no real negativity. The sudden influx of new eyes brought out the thorns—sharp little remarks popping up here and there.
The most noticeable one, already collecting a pile of likes, was a classic: What kind of messy, identity-free channel is this?
“Should we… take something like that into consideration?” I asked, fretting.
Cassandra waved it off.
“That’s not feedback—that’s just someone with a stomachache. Probably another YouTuber.”
“Yeah. The channel’s called Jun’s Life. So what if you do a lot of different things? Normal people just pick the videos they’re interested in. They don’t sit around nitpicking the whole channel’s ‘direction.’”
Maybe they were right. On this kind of thing it was better to trust people who knew more than I did. I decided to follow their judgment.
What I couldn’t ignore as easily were the personal attacks.
Once word got out that I was Korean-American, some people warmed to me even more. Others, though, kept leaving snide comments under videos that featured the kids: why was an Asian guy raising white children? No amount of blurring could fully hide their blond hair and fair skin.
I knew racist garbage like that wasn’t worth a second of attention. Still, a sigh slipped out before I could stop it. Greg deleted the comment right in front of me and spoke firmly.
“Don’t waste your energy on trash like that. Just look at the membership comments. We’ll handle the rest.”
“……Okay.”
I closed the comment tab. Letting my mood get yanked around was exactly what the people who wrote that garbage wanted. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction—especially not when I had two little ghosts who could sense my mood with supernatural accuracy.
I brushed the dark cloud out of my chest and stepped into the playroom. The two boys glanced up from their block tower, then immediately went right back to stacking.
“…….”
Why did it feel like my sons were losing interest in their dad more every day?
I sat down beside them and gave a block a little poke. Luca firmly shoved my hand away. Even Reni, who normally would have scolded him, said nothing. Apparently Dad was supposed to go sit somewhere else.
So that was how it was. They only wanted me when they needed something.
I felt a mix of pride and petty loneliness watching them enjoy their own time. Needing to move, I climbed onto the ladder barrel—the thing I was now getting on several times a day.
I hooked my feet on the rungs and let my back sink into the arched frame. The stretch undid all the hunching from computer work and guitar sessions; it felt wonderful.
At first it had just hurt and felt awkward. But with the Manito App’s blessing helping me lock in proper form and stick with it, I was finally reaping the real benefits of Pilates. My posture had improved, I felt a little taller, and even without much change on the scale my body felt lighter. The deep core muscles were definitely starting to settle in.
Cassandra had noticed results after just one week. Sleeves that used to cut into her arms now fit properly, and her improved posture made dresses hang better. The zipper still refused to go all the way up—she’d tried once and stopped the second the fabric started to protest—but another week of the same routine would almost certainly get her there.
One more week. Just one more week of suffering and she should be able to wear the wedding dress without alterations, dance at the reception, and enjoy the party.
In our second session Vanessa had said the low-sodium, low-fat diet was probably what produced the fastest changes. Pilates and stretching were long-term investments; diet hit harder and sooner.
Which meant two more weeks of salad and chicken breast.
Honestly, it was starting to grind on me. I’d always thought I didn’t care much about what I ate. Lately the stress was climbing. Vanessa kept telling us to enjoy the natural flavors of fruit, vegetables, and meat. But nothing beat the sweetness of sugar, the saltiness of salt, and the rich savor of oil.
After work I could cook whatever I wanted and no one would stop me—except that the next day’s salad would become completely inedible. So I held the line. Greg, I was certain, was inhaling pizza and beer every single night after clocking out.
Just thinking about pizza made me suffer a little more…
But Cassandra—who used to sneak the kids’ snacks—was suffering too. If I stayed steady beside her, she would stay steady as well.
For all the complaining, I did feel less tired than usual, and my skin seemed clearer. Buying the equipment out of pure stubbornness had turned into surprisingly good employee welfare. Cassandra came into the playroom every couple of hours to stretch her back. Even Greg, who had zero interest in Pilates, was doing a couple of sit-ups and back stretches a day.
“…….”
The soft clatter of blocks and the distant clicking of mice outside lulled me. Before I knew it I had fallen asleep right there on the barrel.
When I woke, the first thing I said was:
“……Ow, my back.”
I could still hear blocks rattling and mice clicking. I’d only been out five or ten minutes, but my upper body had stiffened into the exact curve of the barrel. Calling for help felt too embarrassing, so I grimaced and carefully slid my feet down the ladder until I was sitting on the floor.
That was when I locked eyes with Luca floating in mid-air.
“……!”
I was too shocked to make a sound. Both hands shot out over the ladder and locked around the little body hovering above me.
“Kyaaah!”
The bright, twisting laughter finally snapped me back to reality. Luca had not, thank God, turned into some kind of super baby who could levitate. What he had done was almost as terrifying.
“Luca… did you climb the ladder?”
Whether I looked stunned or not, Luca just kept giggling, squirming as if my hands tickled. I stretched my arms and set him safely on the ground, then tried to calm my hammering heart. Through all of this Reni had simply stood up and continued stacking his block tower higher, completely unbothered.
“…….”
Snack time. Everyone sat around the table.
“I really thought I was going to pass out.”
I set out the usual snacks for the kids and tea with diet snacks for the adults, then babbled through the whole episode. Reactions split cleanly down the middle. Greg’s face turned deadly serious as he started fretting about his unborn baby a year from now. Cassandra got a faraway look that mixed nostalgia with pure horror as she remembered Charlie’s toddler days.
“Kids this age love climbing everything. You don’t have stairs at home so you wouldn’t know, but they go up and down those like it’s nothing.”
“Stairs… So you really can’t take your eyes off them for a second.”
“Pretty much. They are careful in their own way, but still…”
Earlier, the moment I looked away, Luca had immediately started climbing the ladder barrel again. Watching those tiny hands grip the rungs showed how strong he already was—yet it did nothing to ease the anxiety. When he finally planted his foot on the highest reachable rung, his face had lit up like he’d just conquered Everest.
I shook my head.
“If no one’s watching and he climbs that ladder, it’s dangerous. I should just remove the bottom rung.”
“Then he’ll drag over a toy to stand on. Once kids get obsessed with climbing something, parents can’t stop them.”
Good grief. The older they got, the more independent and willful their thinking became. Who knew it would be this much trouble?
“That height’s still fine, Jun. Kids grow so fast. Give it another month and he’ll be following Reni onto the slide.”
“I’d honestly prefer he got interested in the slide sooner.”
In the end we simply turned the ladder side of the barrel toward the latex cushion sofa under the window. Removing the whole thing from the playroom risked him wandering out into the office to climb it instead.
Somehow we finished the day and headed home.
That evening I fed the boys dinner, bathed them, and threw every trick I knew at bedtime. Neither of them showed the slightest sign of going down easily. Maybe it was because summer had meant swimming and more outdoor time; lately we hadn’t been getting as much of that.
“Uuuuwaaah! Pappa!”
“Aigoo, Luca.”
I laid him down and patted his back, only for the baby to grab a fistful of my hair and yank with everything he had. I wanted to cry.
“Lucaaa, if you keep doing that Daddy’s going to go bald.”
“Ungh!”
Reni, who had been rolling around hugging a stuffed animal, lifted his head and tossed out the word. Luca answered with a sulky little noise.
Bald…
It was never going to happen, but I still carefully pried those tiny fingers off one by one, protecting every last strand.
“Luca, if you keep this up Daddy’s going to say, ‘You little rascal!’”
Of course I could never actually do that to my adorable son. But when Luca looked up at me with pure “what’s that mean?” eyes, I put on a slightly sulky face of my own. He found it hilarious and burst into giggles.
So the night continued—peaceful yet fierce—with bedtime stories, lullabies, and a father pleading with his babies until they finally drifted off with soft little snores.
“…….”
Asleep, they both looked so much like angels that the last few hours of struggle simply evaporated. I stroked each warm, soft cheek once.
No wonder Daddy always loses…
I still needed to get up and wash, but my eyelids were growing heavy. I decided to rest my eyes for just a moment.
“…….”
When I opened them again, the children were gone.
At first I thought I was still dreaming.
But they really weren’t there. Both of them—the older one and the little one—were gone.