I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 202: Beautiful sight.

Then, from the corner, very softly— "I’m sorry."

Si Hon looked up from where he was reorganizing the food by type out of habit. "For what."

"It just—" She stopped. Started again, quieter. "It feels traumatizing. I know that’s—" Another stop. "Before we regressed. I felt it. I felt my bones." Her voice didn’t waver, exactly, but something in it was thin. "I know we reset. I know it doesn’t matter now. But I felt it, and I can’t just— I don’t know how to explain it. I hate this. It hurts."

Si Hon set down what he was holding.

Walked over and crouched beside her, one hand finding her back, and patted it once, steady and unhurried. "Yeah," he said. "I know. But you’re not alone right now, okay? Imagine doing all of this by yourself." A pause. "So. Cheer up. I’m here."

She let out a breath at that— soft, slow, the kind that released something that had been held too long. Then she was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again her voice had changed slightly, gone somewhere more inward.

"You won’t always be here though," she said. "You said it yourself. You’re from another world. At some point—" She clutched the blanket edge. "At some point you go back. Or something happens. And then I’m alone again."

Si Hon didn’t answer immediately. He stayed crouched beside her and looked at the floor.

"You know," she continued, still soft, still looking at her own hands, "I’ve been alone for so long. Resets after resets."

She inhaled. "I’ve watched the same people make the same mistakes. I’ve watched the same things happen and said nothing because nobody would believe me and nobody would remember anyway."

A pause.

"Then one regression, things started going wrong. The person who was supposed to die didn’t. The regressor who was supposed to be alone— wasn’t." She finally looked up at him, just briefly.

"You came here. And you read my whole life before you even met me. And you remember. Everything I tell you, you just— you keep it. You don’t forget." Something in her voice pulled taut. "I can give you everything. All of it. Every burden I’ve been carrying by myself for four thousand Resets that I don’t even know the objective. I can just— hand it to you. And you’ll hold it."

She stood up slowly. Then she stepped forward and hugged him, both arms around him, her face turned into his shoulder, the grey blanket crinkling between them.

She held it for a few seconds. Then stepped back, sat back down, and curled up in her blanket again like the moment had concluded and she was hiding it away somewhere.

"Sorry," she said, quieter now, already half-muffled. "Got emotional."

"It’s fine," Si Hon said.

He meant it.

He stood there for another moment after she’d gone still, watching her rise and fall of the blanket as her breathing evened out, and when he was sure she was asleep he reached down and patted her back once more. Then her hair, just once, careful not to wake her.

Then he straightened up and looked around the dark convenience store— the scattered packaging, the dust, the leaves tracked in from outside— and quietly started cleaning.

He didn’t think about much while he did it.

Just cleaned.

***

(Hours later — night)

By the time I finished, the store didn’t look like the same place.

It had taken hours. Real, actual haha hours of quietly picking through every corner, every shelf gap, every dark patch of floor— sweeping leaves out with a piece of broken cardboard, stacking garbage into one contained area near the back, wiping down surfaces with what I found under the counter that was still usable.

Anyways... about the, yea the zombie behind the register I’d already dealt with before Jisoo came in, but the mess it had left behind took the longest. I didn’t think about it while I cleaned it. Just worked through it section by section until it was done.

Dragging the bloody wolf with somehow all my strength, and wiping the blood off with all my might.

The result was a convenience store that was, genuinely, clean.

Dark, yes— the overhead lights were long dead and the barricade I’d built across the front blocked most of what came in from outside.

But clean.

The shelves were straightened. The floor was clear. The counter had our supplies arranged on it in a line and Jisoo was curled up in the corner with her grey blanket and the even breathing of someone deeply, completely unconscious.

I stood in the middle of it and looked around.

Then I thought— Jisoo doesn’t have night vision.

Not the skill, anyway. I had a faint version of it, low-tier, enough to work by in dim conditions without running into things.

Haha, I miss Mimi. It was her passive.

Well, jisoo. She had nothing. Which meant when she woke up she’d be opening her eyes into near-total darkness in an unfamiliar space in the middle of an apocalypse trial, which seemed like an unkind thing to let happen.

I needed some light source that wasn’t a lighter burning through our fuel.

Then something caught my eye. A faint glow, thin and pale, slipping in through the one gap I’d left in the barricade— that small space between two shelf units near the corner where I’d left just enough room to see the street.

I walked toward it, curiosity pulling me forward, and pushed two of the units aside just enough to slip through.

The night outside stopped me completely.

I stood on the pavement in front of the CU store and looked up and just— stopped.

The sky was enormous.

That was the first thing, the sheer scale of it without light pollution eating the edges— no street lamps, no building signs, no traffic, no city glow softening the dark from below. Just the full dark of a sky that had been left alone long enough to show everything it actually contained.

Stars, staggering numbers of them, pressed edge to edge across the space in a way that made the sky look full rather than empty, like the darkness between them was the exception rather than the ah... I’m bad with words. — Kim Si Hon narration.

Though I would say, the Milky Way was a visible smear across the center of it, actual depth to it, clouds of light rather than just scattered points.

Constellations I usually had to squint to trace were just— there, obvious, connected without effort.

A shooting star crossed the upper left. Then another, a few seconds behind it, slower, burning out somewhere near the horizon.

"Huh," I said, out loud, to nobody.

(Maybe it’s shining brighter because everything here has been swallowed by nature. No light pollution left. Nothing burning below to compete with what’s burning above.)

I stood there for another minute just looking at it.

Then howling started again somewhere behind the buildings— that familiar layered sound from earlier in the trial, rolling between structures and bouncing back without a clear direction.

Then something shrieked, far off to the left, sharp and cut short.

(Right...) I exhaled. (It was getting good for a second there.)