Daeshim Kwon–Trey relationship

The Daeshim Kwon–Trey relationship is the story’s most consequential transformation of absence into fatherhood. For eight years, Daeshim Kwon does not know that Trey exists, while Nyia Crosland raises the child alone and preserves his connection to the father he has never met. When Daeshim finally encounters Trey at Chantel Fifty, the relationship moves almost instantly from concealed biological connection to emotional recognition, responsibility, and a deliberate family future.

Origins in Absence

Before Trey can know Daeshim as his father, he is shaped by Daeshim’s disappearance. Daeshim ends his relationship with Nyia Crosland without telling her the real reason and transfers schools, changing all his telephone numbers and vanishing from social media. Because the separation lasts eight years, he misses the pregnancy, Trey’s birth, and every ordinary stage of the boy’s early life. The absence is not caused by indifference toward Trey, since Daeshim does not yet know that he has a son; it is the consequence of a decision made under pressure from his parents.

Daeshim’s parents oppose his relationship with Nyia because she is Black and because of their traditionalist expectations. They threaten to stop paying his tuition unless he cuts all ties with her, while Daeshim remains dependent on them for his education. He later recognizes that his obedience cost him more than a romance. By leaving Nyia, he also forfeited eight years of fatherhood. His recurring regret therefore belongs to two relationships at once: he has failed Nyia as a partner and, unknowingly, failed Trey before he ever had the chance to meet him.

Nyia responds to that absence by making Daeshim present in Trey’s life through memory and culture. She teaches Trey everything she knows about his father and about his Korean heritage rather than allowing the missing man to become an empty space in the boy’s identity. With additional money earned from extra shifts at Chantel Fifty, she hires a tutor to teach both herself and Trey Korean. Trey consequently grows up knowing the language and carrying a meaningful connection to the part of himself inherited from Daeshim, even though Daeshim is physically absent.

Recognition at Chantel Fifty

The relationship changes at the entrance to Chantel Fifty. Daeshim immediately recognizes Nyia, but the child attached to his legs produces the greater shock. Trey has brown eyes, black curls, and the approximate age of eight or nine; the resemblance is strong enough to make the concealed family history visible before anyone explains it. More startling still, Trey screams for his father even though Daeshim has never met him. The cry turns an ordinary return to the diner into the disclosure of a life Daeshim did not know he had.

The scene is marked by physical disruption. Nyia nearly faints on her skates, plates crash to the floor, and the jukebox plays The Supremes’ “Baby Love” as the three figures confront one another. Daeshim struggles to free himself from Trey’s embrace, then approaches Nyia with movements that feel slow and mechanical to him. He has returned hoping to find Nyia and apologize, but he discovers that the woman he lost has brought an entire son into the room. His first response is not distance or suspicion; after the shock, he takes Nyia into his arms while she cries, beginning the emotional movement toward the child as well.

Daeshim confirms the relationship only after he explains why he left. He tells Nyia that he had been a foolish young man unable to say no to his parents, and that they forbade him from seeing her after learning that she was Black and that he wanted to marry her. When Nyia asks whether Trey is his, the answer is followed by her confirmation that Trey is eight years old. The revelation forces Daeshim to understand the concrete scale of what he has lost: he has a son, and he has missed the pregnancy and the important events of the boy’s childhood.

First Meeting and Immediate Bond

Daeshim’s reaction to the discovery is grief as much as joy. He curses the cost of his parents’ control and his own cowardice, striking his chest and crying because he has missed the stages of Trey’s life that cannot be recovered. Nyia tells him that Trey has been happy, that she has taught him about Daeshim and Korean culture, and that he speaks the language. Her explanation does not erase the lost years, but it prevents Daeshim from believing that Trey’s childhood was defined only by abandonment or deprivation.

Their first direct meeting is carefully mediated by Nyia. Daeshim greets Trey cautiously in Korean, and Trey replies in Korean. Daeshim then opens his arms and tells Trey that it is nice to finally meet him. Trey first turns to Nyia for permission, making her the emotional bridge between father and son; once she nods, he falls into Daeshim’s embrace. Both parents are crying, and Daeshim recognizes that the embrace is not a symbolic gesture but the beginning of a bond he intends to protect. He draws Nyia into the embrace as well, joining the father-son relationship to the larger restoration of the family.

Daeshim’s language shifts as the meeting develops. He calls himself a father and insists that he will never let Trey or Nyia go, promising to do everything in his power to ensure that they never want for anything. The force of the declaration comes from its contrast with the previous eight years: the man who once surrendered contact under parental pressure now defines himself through presence and provision. Fatherhood is not presented as an inherited title alone; it becomes a commitment he chooses to enact.

Everyday Affection and Family Formation

The relationship gains substance through small domestic acts rather than through the revelation alone. Trey creates a paper gnome for Daeshim and runs to show it to him, calling him Dad. The front reads “Appa. Dad.” Daeshim drops to one knee, gathers Trey into his arms, and tells him that he loves him. Trey returns the declaration. The handmade object gives their new relationship a physical form: Trey has made something specifically for the father who has just entered his life, while Daeshim treats it as precious evidence of belonging.

The moment also shows how quickly Daeshim’s priorities reorganize. Only hours earlier he did not know Trey existed; now he cannot imagine life without Trey or Nyia. When Trey’s stomach begins to rumble, the emotional intensity gives way to the practical demands of care. The newly formed father must remember that affection includes feeding a child, following him downstairs, and participating in ordinary family routines. Later, Daeshim takes photographs and videos of the occasion, preserving the beginning of his fatherhood as a record rather than allowing it to remain a private emotional episode.

Daeshim also begins to assert the relationship against the family authority that once prevented it. He announces that he will send the photographs and video to his parents so they can see what their earlier decisions caused him to miss. The act is a direct reversal of his younger self’s submission. His anger remains, but it is joined by determination: Trey’s existence gives Daeshim a reason to establish a new boundary around his own household and to refuse the control that separated him from Nyia and deprived him of his son.

Reconciliation and Lasting Significance

The relationship does not end with the reunion scene. Daeshim transfers to the police station in Durham and moves back permanently, a process that takes another month while he closes cases, completes paperwork, and relocates his belongings. His return places him close enough to share the practical work of raising Trey. Julius Crosland continues helping with child care, while Chantel Daniels remains willing to let Nyia bring Trey to work when necessary; once Daeshim is present, however, he can take on more of the babysitting himself. The father-son relationship therefore becomes part of a wider support network rather than an isolated romantic reconciliation.

Daeshim introduces Nyia to Ricky Graham and Tish, who welcome her and look forward to meeting Trey. His parents eventually travel to meet their grandson after receiving his message. Even then, the old conflict briefly resurfaces when Daeshim’s father asks whether Trey is truly Daeshim’s son. Daeshim answers with certainty that Trey is his. The response matters because it publicly claims the child against the doubt and interference associated with his parents’ earlier opposition.

Trey’s relationship with Daeshim thus exposes the cost of family control while also showing the possibility of rebuilding through chosen responsibility. Daeshim cannot recover the eight years he lost, and Trey cannot receive a rewritten childhood. What they can create is a present in which language, affection, photographs, handmade gifts, food, child care, and open acknowledgment replace secrecy and absence. Trey becomes not merely proof of Daeshim’s past with Nyia, but the person through whom Daeshim finally confronts that past, defies the authority that shaped it, and commits himself to a family he once failed to protect.