Pregnant With His Child, Branded as Trash

The day I discovered I was pregnant, the entire city was buried under a blizzard.

With numb, trembling feet, I made my way to the private dining room where Kurt was having dinner, wanting to surprise him.

I also wanted to tell him that the Crown Prince he had offended had finally grown tired of me before the one-year "atonement period" was up.

We no longer had to pay off that million dollar debt!

"Kurt, isn't your proposal to Daniella coming up next week? Is the surprise ready?"

Hearing the voices leaking through the cracked door, I brushed the snow from my coat.

My cheeks were frozen red, yet I couldn't stop smiling.

Kurt was even planning a surprise...

"Daniella probably doesn't know you were the one who volunteered to send her to the Crown Prince as his personal secretary, right?"

"With a twisted personality like his, she must've been tortured miserably."

My hand froze mid-knock. My fingertips went numb.

Volunteer?

"What else could he do? She bullied Olivia so badly she developed depression and couldn't even go to college! Olivia is Kurt's first love. To punish Daniella, Kurt had it rough too—sleeping with a secondhand woman must've been disgusting."

Cruel words sliced into my ears like knives. But I never did any of those things...

Panic surged through me. I looked toward the hazy reflection of Kurt inside the room.

He didn't deny it. He only let out a lazy, mocking laugh.

His friend continued.

"You guys don't know, right? The Crown Prince really went all out with Daniella. A few days ago he forced her to drink strong liquor until her stomach almost ruptured. Before that, he left her hanging on the balcony for a whole day and night! Oh, and the roller-coaster incident—she was tied to the seat for seventeen rounds. She almost ended up in the ICU!"

Laughter exploded inside the room.

"And Kurt just asks, 'You okay, baby?' Then she says, 'I'm fine.' If she knew that every time she was tortured, Kurt got a project worth tens of thousands from the Prince, hah—she'd probably break down on the spot for you all to see!"

"She has no idea that the happiness she feels now will turn into despair in seven days."

A gust of wind hit my back, but I could no longer tell if the cold was from outside... or from the ice forming in my chest.

The laughter kept pouring out of the room.

I tried to speak, but it felt like someone had sealed my throat shut.

How... how could this be?

I remembered every time I was hurt, and Kurt's eyes would redden as he dabbed medicine on my wounds with trembling fingers. I remembered him apologizing, "It's my fault. I made you suffer."

I remembered him waiting for me every night, no matter how late, smiling softly as he said, "You're home."

Those gentle moments—those tender words—were the only reason I survived this past year.

But now... all of it was a lie?

Then someone inside teased, "What's wrong, Kurt? Already feeling sorry for her? Olivia will come back tomorrow. If you regret it and want to return to your miserable life with Daniella, there's still time!"

Kurt seemed to snap back to himself. He laughed and mocked, "Sorry for her? How could I?"

"She's nothing but used trash. She disgusts me."

The room erupted into another round of laughter.

"One week from now, at the proposal ceremony, I'll expose everything in public—let her fall from the clouds straight into the mud. Then she can get out of my life, and I'll confess to Olivia."

——

I couldn't remember how I walked out of that restaurant.

My limbs were cold, as if blood had stopped bothering to flow to them.

The pregnancy test report slipped from my pocket, landing in the snowy road.

A truck rolled over it, crushing the damp paper until it disappeared—

as if it had never existed.

I stared blankly at the street, every sentence I heard moments ago echoing in my skull.

Each replay carved another fresh wound into my chest. Especially that one sentence from Kurt, "She's just used trash."

That tone—disgust, contempt.

He had never spoken to me like that.

I couldn’t understand.

I truly couldn’t understand how things had become like this.

My breath hitched, and I held my head, trying to stop the chaos in my chest.

Kurt and I grew up in a broken family.

My father was an alcoholic; his mother struggled with mental illness.

For as long as I could remember, life had been nothing but torment—my stepmother stabbing me with needles, my father smashing bottles over me.

Only Kurt was kind to me.

I was two years younger. Every time I was about to collapse, he stood in front of me and said, "Don't be scared. I'm here."

When the belt came down, he shielded my head with his own body so I wouldn't be beaten to death.

We survived those hellish days together.

Then, as if heaven took pity on us, our stepmother got drunk one night and fell into the river.

After that, only our father remained.

I spiraled into severe self-harm back then.

Kurt took blades from my hands over and over, showing me his own scars.

“Look, it hurts. Don’t do it again.”

Afraid of hurting him, I forced myself to stop.

Later, when he reached his third year of high school, our father refused to pay his tuition. So I worked part-time jobs to support the two of us.

But on Kurt's birthday that year, he got into a fight with our father over money and accidentally pushed him down the stairs.

I froze in terror.

All I could think was my brother was about to take the college entrance exam. He couldn't go to prison. His life couldn't be ruined.

While I was secretly paying someone to remove the building's newly installed surveillance cameras, his deskmate—Olivia—ran to the police to confess.

"It was me. I pushed him. He... he tried to touch me, and I panicked."

The reason didn't matter. Her parents couldn't accept that their daughter had been assaulted, so they pressured the police directly.

With no footage, no witnesses, and records of my father's drunken behavior, the case was ruled an accident. But from that day on, Olivia forced herself into the space between me and Kurt.

They became inseparable, like a couple.

I even thought... they would end up together.

But on the night exam scores came out, Kurt suddenly hugged me and confessed.

His voice was so soft, "Daniella... let's spend our whole lives together, okay? You're my family. You're the one I want to protect... more than anyone."

I agreed. Because in my entire life, I could never accept another man except him.

From then on, I never saw Olivia again.

We built years of memories, of warmth and survival. We leaned on each other through the darkest days.

So now, standing in the snow, I wanted desperately to believe I misunderstood him.

Maybe he was forced?

Maybe he was just playing along with his friends?

But the moment I remembered Olivia, ice began forming in my veins.

I remembered what his friends said in that private room.

"Who told she bullied Olivia until she got depression..."

So in their story, Olivia failed her exam because I bullied her?

And Kurt... believed that?

The man I loved for more than ten years—the man who once protected me—had thrown my trust and devotion away because of someone else’s lies.

He was even planning for my downfall.

I couldn't understand.

It felt like someone had punched a hole through my skull; pain poured out endlessly.

Tears kept falling no matter how hard I tried to stop them.

Ten years of love—worth less to him than another woman's fabricated kindness.

Am I doomed to be like this forever?

Destined to be “bad,” “dirty,” “inferior” in everyone’s eyes? Unworthy of sincerity?

I worked so hard to survive.

To resist cruelty.

To protect myself.

Where did I go wrong?

Why did people say I inherited my parents' "vicious genes"?

“Why…?” My voice was hoarse, barely audible.

Then, a sharp cramp tore through my lower abdomen.

Terror surged through me. My entire body went cold. "Baby... no... please... don't—don't let anything happen..."

My hands trembled as I curled over, clutching my stomach.

This child... might be the only family I would ever have. The only blood relative who would never betray me.

I fumbled for my phone. My first instinct was still Kurt.

My fingers shook violently as I dialed again and again.

Beep—beep—beep—

No answer.

"Pick up... please... please just pick up..." I sobbed into the screen.

Still, he didn't.

Even as the ambulance rushed toward me,

I was still calling him, again and again.

Years of dependence couldn’t disappear in one night.

But he refused to answer.

At the hospital, the emergency team rushed me in. The nurse asked for my emergency contact.

Hoarsely, I gave her his number. The same number I had called twenty-seven times.

This time, someone picked up.

And the first words I heard were, "She's pregnant? Don't keep the baby. Just get rid of it."

"It can't be mine anyway. She disgusts me."

The call ended instantly without hesitation.

I collapsed... and everything went dark.

When I woke up again, it was early morning.

I was alone.

I forced myself upright, pain radiating from my abdomen, emptiness spreading through my chest like dead soil.

Like self-torture, I opened Instagram and searched Olivia’s name.

The latest posts popped up immediately.

The first photo was Kurt at the airport, waiting for her, smiling gently.

The caption read, [My knight came to pick me up.]

The second photo was Olivia leaning on his shoulder in the car, fingers intertwined, holding flowers.

They looked so sweet, so perfect together—like a match made in heaven.

I stared for a long time. Then a broken laugh escaped me.

When I was discharged, I did two things immediately.

First, I quit all my part-time jobs, withdrew every cent I'd saved over the years, and stored it in a new bank card with a new password.

Second, I submitted an application on the university website: to volunteer as a teacher in Africa.

An hour later, a notification popped up.

A flight to Africa is scheduled for one week from now. Please be prepared.

One week later, Kurt will "reveal the truth" at the proposal, preparing what he calls a "surprise" for me.

Since he's going to give me a surprise, I'll give him one in return...

A surprise he'll nver forget for the rest of his life.