I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 203: Jisoo... •́⁠ ⁠ ⁠‿⁠ ⁠,⁠•̀

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

I went back inside, but left the gap slightly wider than before— just enough that the starlight came through at a low angle across the floor, dim but good, enough that a person waking up wouldn’t open their eyes to pure black.

Then I picked up a bag of chips and two packs of chocolate bread from the counter and walked over to Jisoo’s corner and crouched down.

I patted her shoulder.

Nothing.

Patted it again, slightly less gently.

Nothing. Her breathing didn’t even hitch.

I sat back on my heels and looked at her.

The grey blanket was pulled up almost completely over her head, just the dark ends of her hair visible above the edge of it. Completely under.

I tried again— calling her name this time, quiet, then slightly less quiet, then a sustained pat on what I was fairly sure was her shoulder and not just a fold of blanket.

Several minutes passed.

I sat back and looked at her. Just fully under. Gone. The grey blanket pulled up to her nose, completely checked out from reality, sleeping like the trial wasn’t happening and the world wasn’t ended and we hadn’t died earlier today specifically.

I tried flicking the blanket edge. Nothing. I tried patting her shoulder again. Nothing. At one point I just said her name directly next to her ear and got zero response, which was honestly impressive.

I looked at the lighter sitting on the counter.

(Not on her,) I thought. (Just— the click sound. Near her ear. That’s not unreasonable.)

I decided against it.

Barely.

I went back to punc— patting.

Then the blanket moved.

Slowly. The grey edge pulled back, and Jisoo surfaced from underneath it— first her forehead, then her eyes, blinking at the ceiling with the unfocused confusion of someone whose brain was still several floors below consciousness.

She looked at the ceiling. Looked at the shelf beside her. Looked at the gap in the barricade where the nightlight came through.

Then she looked at me.

Her face did something complicated.

The soft expression shifted, and then settled, and then she opened her mouth and what came out wasn’t the voice I’d been hearing all day— not that quick, high, cute pitch voice...

What came out instead was low and rough and at least an octave deeper than it had any right to be, the voice of someone whose... just pissed off at everything.

"Fuck," she said.

I stared at her. "What?"

"Forget about that," Jisoo said.

I stared at her. "What are you talking about?"

She leaned forward and grabbed my collar with both hands, pulling slightly, and her expression was doing something I hadn’t seen on her before— somewhere between embarrassed and genuinely annoyed about being embarrassed, haha, which was a combination that looked weird on the face that had been calculating survival odds twelve hours ago. "What I said. Earlier. Forget it. All of it."

A pause.

"Fucker."

"Woah, me? Oh," I said. "But..."

And then I remembered.

***

(Hours ago.)

She was sitting against the wall with her knees pulled up, the grey blanket pooled around her, not looking at me. I’d set down whatever I was holding and walked over because something in the way she said "I’m sorry" to the floor made me think.

"For what?" I said.

I shouldn’t have done that.

And then she started talking.

I crouched beside her and listened, tapping my chin, catching maybe sixty percent of it and understanding slightly less than that.

Something about the resets. Something about it hurting. Something about bone, which I caught clearly and chose not to examine too closely because I’d felt the same thing before we came back and pushing it away seemed like the healthier option.

I said yeah, I know at what felt like the right moment, which was a slight lie because I didn’t fully know, but the point landed well enough that she exhaled slowly and her shoulders came down a little. No actually... I don’t know.

Then she said I wouldn’t always be here.

I looked at the floor.

And then she kept going— something about loops, about watching the same things happen, about saying nothing because nobody would remember, about alone, about resets, about— she used the word burden at some point, and hand it to... me... me, and I was keeping up but also kind of not, because the honest truth was I didn’t know what to do with someone handing me their four tousand loop emotional history while sitting on a convenience store floor in the middle of an apocalypse trial.

(What,) I thought, very sincerely, (am I supposed to say to any of this.)

Then she said: "The regressor who was supposed to be alone wasn’t. Because of you."

And then she stood up and hugged me, which I also didn’t know what to do with, but I didn’t move either. She stepped back after a few seconds and curled back down on the floor, and that was that.

(Ah,) I thought.

***

(Now.)

I put my hand over my mouth slowly. "Yes," I said, voice slightly muffled behind my palm. "I will forget about it." A single tear tracked down the side of my face, which I was not going to acknowledge. (All of that just for you to tell me forget it...)

It had been really, genuinely, profoundly awkward. I had stood there like a statue for most of it.

Jisoo’s eyes dropped to my face. Her frown arrived immediately. "What is wrong with you." She stood up fully, reached over, and punched me in the stomach— light, more of a tap really. "Why are you crying about it."

"I’m not crying." (Bitc— jisoo, it was so awkward and you’re telling me to forget about it.)

"There’s a tear on your face."

"That’s just— it’s nothing. Forget it." I wiped it. "Wait, hold on." I looked at her properly.

Something was different. The voice was back to normal pitch. The frown was sharp. The punch had been delivered with complete confidence. "What’s wrong with you."

Jisoo tilted her head slightly. Then she laughed— short, quiet, the real one. "I got my memories back," she said simply.

I stood there.

My hand dropped to my side.

(So,) I thought, looking at her standing there in the starlight coming through the gap, fully herself again, sharp and unbothered and completely un-koala.

(The cute Jisoo is just... gone.)

I mourned this privately.