A child breathed faintly on the other end of the line. Each breath ended with a wet sound, as if the child’s nose were congested.
“Who’s with the child right now?”
The man didn’t answer right away. After the rustle of blankets, he gave a small cough.
“Me. The child’s next to me.”
“Is another caregiver home?”
“My wife is in the bedroom.”
I was about to ask for the child’s name and age, when they’d last eaten, and whether they had a fever all at once. The longer the question became, the rougher the man’s breathing grew.
“Just tell me the child’s name and age.”
“Uju. Fourteen months old.”
Just then, the bedroom door opened. The hurried slap of bare feet against the floor drew closer.
“Who are you on the phone with?”
It was a woman’s voice. Not the voice of someone who’d only just woken up, but of someone who hadn’t slept in a long time.
“I called because of your voice.”
“Why would you tell someone else about my voice?”
Uju whimpered briefly. The man hushed the child, but the crying quickly grew louder. The two voices overlapped. The woman told him not to talk about her to other people as though she were a patient, while the man insisted they needed to check before it got any later.
I wanted to ask when they had stopped recognizing her voice, whether it lined up exactly with the day they started using the service, and how the two of them remembered the same scene differently. If I’d been making a broadcast, that discrepancy would have been the first thing I focused on.
“Just a moment. Which of you usually takes better care of Uju—”
I stopped myself. This wasn’t the time to choose who was better at taking care of the child.
“One of you hold Uju. Only the other person should stay on the phone with me.”
As the man adjusted the way he held the child, bare feet drew closer on the other end. Uju’s crying grew more distant.
“I’ll take the call.”
The woman spoke as the phone passed from one hand to the other, scraping against the fabric of her clothes. The baby’s crying continued from the man’s side.
“You’re both in the same house, right?”
“Yes. My husband’s holding Uju.”
“How should I address you? Both of you.”
“I’m Minjeong, and my husband is Doyoon.”
Only after hearing her answer did I lean back against my chair. My breasts had gone past their pumping time and were pulling tight beneath my clothes. Moon Haejin was standing against the wall across from me. He hadn’t interrupted, but his eyes never left the phone.
“What is the lost voice?”
Minjeong didn’t answer for a while.
“It’s not my voice. He keeps saying it is.”
Doyoon said something in the distance, and Minjeong raised her voice.
“You keep playing some strange woman’s song every night. Telling me to remember it. The baby barely gets to sleep.”
Uju started crying again. Through the crying, Doyoon spoke.
“You used to sing it every day.”
“I don’t know that song.”
“How can you say you don’t know it?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know it either.”
Her last words cracked. Minjeong soon steadied her breathing.
“You keep trying to turn this into an argument for stopping it. If things go back to how they were, who’s going to stay up all night with Uju? You, while you go to work in the morning?”
“I don’t sleep at night either.”
“Not sleeping and waking up are different.”
Doyoon went quiet after that. It didn’t sound like silence because he was wrong, but because he had no strength left to argue.
“You don’t have to decide whether you want to continue using the service right now,” I said.
“You don’t have to decide whether to stop, either. First, just figure out whether the two of you can take turns sleeping tonight.”
Doyoon said there was something he wanted to play for us first. Minjeong said she didn’t want to hear it, but he asked her to listen with him just once. Unable to choose an answer between them, I asked Minjeong,
“Can you listen right now?”
After a long pause, Minjeong said shortly,
“Just once.”
An old voice message began to play. At first, there was only the sound of a blanket being pulled. A dish clinked somewhere in the distance, followed by a woman’s low humming. The melody kept drooping downward. It was a worn-edged sound, repeating the same rhythm over and over, as if it had been sung too many times. In the middle, a dull rhythm joined in, like someone patting a baby’s back.
Uju stopped crying.
The room didn’t become completely silent. The baby sniffled through the nose and fussed a couple of times. Then the man’s clothes rustled, as if Uju had turned toward the source of the sound. Doyoon started to call the child’s name, then closed his mouth.
No one spoke until the humming ended.
“Whose voice is that?”
Minjeong asked.
Doyoon’s answer came late.
“Your mother’s.”
He swallowed once.
“She sent it before she passed away.”
Minjeong neither denied it nor agreed. When the voice message ended, only Uju’s wet breathing remained. I thought of the moments when Bomi had turned her head toward the sound. I couldn’t tell whether it was because the sound was familiar or simply because she had followed the quiet melody.
“We didn’t choose this when we signed the contract,” Doyoon said.
Minjeong immediately snapped back.
“Did you really have to bring that up now?”
Uju started fussing again. The rhythm of Doyoon’s pats against the baby’s back quickened.
“Mr. Doyoon is holding Uju right now,” I said, my voice firmer.
“Can you lie down for a little while, Ms. Minjeong?”
Minjeong said that if she slept, she’d just be leaving everything to him again. Doyoon said he would hold the baby. Neither of them said they were sorry. It seemed like if either one brought those words up, they would be the first to fall apart.
“One of Uju’s socks came off,” Minjeong said.
I heard Doyoon adjust the way he was holding the baby. Minjeong asked him to put some water beside the bed, then said she would lie down for just an hour.
“I’ll take over after that.”
Minjeong spoke. Doyoon gave a short answer that he understood.
I told them to think about additional use or stopping again in the morning. I also told them to continue talking about the voice when Uju wasn’t crying. Just as Doyoon began bringing up the contract again, the baby arched their neck and cried.
“Please take care of Uju first right now.”
When the call ended, the pain in my breasts grew more distinct. Moon Haejin didn’t ask whose voice it had been. He only set a cup of warm water on my desk.
When I got home, the living room lights were off. Jiho was sitting at the end of the couch, holding Bomi as she slept. His T-shirt smelled of sour formula and sweat. Damp strands of hair clung to Bomi’s cheeks.
I sat on the floor and took off my socks first, careful not to wake her. Jiho spoke quietly.
“She threw up twice. No fever. She just fell asleep.”
I touched Bomi’s forehead, then the back of her neck. She wasn’t hot.
When I attached the breast pump in the bathroom, my hardened breasts throbbed as they loosened. Less milk came out than I’d expected. I washed the parts, stood them in an empty space on the drying rack, and lay down, but I couldn’t fall asleep before Bomi woke up. Just as I finally closed my eyes, Jiho’s alarm went off for work. After he held the baby one more time and left, the morning broke into long, disconnected stretches.
Bomi ate three spoonfuls of baby food, then clamped her mouth shut. The banana and rice porridge cooled into one lump in her bib pocket. Her nap lasted ten minutes in my arms and ended the moment I laid her in the crib. I held her upright and walked around the living room. I kept remembering the rustle of Uju’s clothes as the baby turned toward the humming.
When Jiho came home that evening, he took Bomi before he even set down his bag. She grabbed his employee ID lanyard and brought it to her mouth. Jiho pulled it free and said,
“If this is going to happen again, let’s decide together beforehand.”
“Okay.”
“Not just whether you want to go out, but what we’ll do that night and the next day, too.”
I poured water into the bowl of dried, stuck-on baby food.
“Last night’s call went longer than I expected. If this is something we’re going to keep doing, we need to work out a new plan together.”
I couldn’t tell him the name Night Sleep Exchange, or about the memory that had been taken from me. Jiho didn’t press. He wiped Bomi’s wet chin and looked at me.
“Are they calling again tonight?”
“Just one short call. From the house last night.”
Jiho sighed. Instead of saying he gave me permission, he adjusted his hold on Bomi.
“Then I’ll keep her with me. Come out when you’re done.”
I closed the bedroom door halfway and answered the call. Doyoon’s voice was lower than the night before. In the background, Uju was banging a toy against the floor.
He didn’t ask how the child had been put to sleep.
“We didn’t use that voice in the contract. Find out why a voice my wife never used was taken first.”
I didn’t answer. Bomi laughed beyond the door, and I heard Jiho pick up the toy she had dropped. Doyoon’s breathing lingered among those sounds of everyday life. Holding the phone, I listened to the end.