I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 204: It’s still beautiful.

(I... I’ll mourned that privately.)

Jisoo then slap slapped my cheek twice, light and unhurried, the kind of pat that tells... "hey bitch, get it together" more than anything else. "Ay. What is genuinely wrong with you."

I wiped the one rogue tear off my face with the back of my hand, shook my head once with what I felt was appropriate drama, and held out the chips and chocolate bread. "Nah, don’t worry about it. Let’s eat?"

She looked at me for another second.

Then she took the bread.

We sat on the floor behind the counter and ate, and talked, and it was— honestly fine. Normal, even, which was a weird thing to be in the middle of a trial but there it was.

Jisoo was happy to have her memories back, visibly, the sharpness fully returned to how she spoke, the way she tracked things, the way she was already thinking three steps ahead of whatever she was saying out loud. She talked about it a little.

I listened. Of course... like an obedient good boy.

And every single time I brought up the carrying, or the crying, or any of the several very memorable things that had happened in the last few hours— she would look at me with eyes that said, plainly and without any room for interpretation, that she was considering her options. Doesn’t get what I’m saying? Yea, she means she’ll kill me.

So I stopped bringing it up.

Eventually we slept.

***

(Hours of sleeping later)

It was warm.

That was the first thing I felt— warm, and something soft against my arms, soft enough that I pulled it closer without fully deciding to, one leg finding its way around it too because apparently that’s just what I do when something comfortable is nearby.

I was maybe thirty percent conscious. The blanket was very soft. I held it tighter.

It moved.

I ignored that.

It moved again. A shift, deliberate, with weight behind it.

I opened my eyes.

Jisoo was looking directly at me. Wide awake. Completely still except for the staring, which she was doing with the kind of intensity that reached into whatever remaining sleep was in my system and removed it entirely.

Her face was about thirty centimeters from mine. I was holding her. My leg was around her. The grey blanket was somewhere else.

Several things happened in my brain simultaneously and none of them were useful.

I let go and scrambled backward across the floor, both hands out, back hitting the shelf behind me. "Wah— wait— I didn’t know it was you—" I was whispering which made it worse somehow, this frantic whispered scrambling in the dark. "I thought it was the blanket—"

Jisoo stood up slowly.

Then she walked toward me.

***

I don’t remember everything that followed with perfect clarity. What I can confirm is that it lasted approximately an hour and it hit all of my body.

Afterward, she sat up on the counter.

I sat on the floor in front of her, both hands on my knees, looking at the ground with the energy of someone completing a very long thought about their own life choices.

The store was quiet.

The starlight still came through the gap in the barricade at its low angle.

"If I ever," Jisoo said, from above me, "feel you anywhere near me when we’re sleeping. I will actually kill you."

"It was an accident." I looked up. "•́ ‿ ,•̀"

She looked back down at me with an expression that did not care about accidents.

(Aigo,) I thought, dropping my gaze back to the floor. (I miss the cute Jisoo.)

We talked for a while after that— or she talked and I listened, which at this point was a skill I’d developed out of necessity.

Eventually it circled around to going outside, which was either a good idea or a terrible one depending on what was currently between us and the street.

"What time is it," I said. Then remembered. "...jisoo-nim³."

Jisoo’s eye twitched slightly. "4:01 in the morning." A pause. "And don’t."

Right. Body Clock— one of her skills, time-related, because apparently every single ability she had was connected to time in some way.

She always knew exactly what time it was, which I was starting to think was both useful and slightly exhausting to live with.

I stood up, walked to the barricade, and started pushing the shelf units aside. They scraped against the floor and the gap opened and the night came through all at once— cool air, the smell of the overgrown city, and the dark sky above everything still doing what it had been doing when I stepped out earlier.

I looked back at Jisoo. Held my hand out. "•́ ‿ ,•̀ Let’s go? Jisoo-nim³?"

She giggled— short and real, and took my hand. "Don’t call me that, It’s weird."

"Yes," I cleared my throat. "Jisoo-ssi² Please don’t hit me again."

"Stop. (•᷄⌓•᷅)"

"Yes."

We stepped outside together and I looked up out of habit, just to check if it was still there.

It was.

The same impossible sky, untouched, the stars doing exactly what they’d been doing for the last several hours with complete indifference to the trials and zombies.

Shooting stars still crossed occasionally. The Milky Way sat across the center of it like it had always been obvious and the city lights had just been covering it up this whole time.

I looked over at Jisoo.

She had stopped walking. Both feet planted, head tilted back, and she was just— staring.

Her grip on my hand had gone tighter without her noticing. Her expression had gone somewhere very far away, the sharp edges of it softened into something open and unguarded in the way faces only went when a person forgot they were being looked at.

Then she laughed, small and delighted, and turned to me. "Si Hon, Si Hon, Si Hon— do you see this?"

"Yeah."

"This is the first time," she said, looking back up. "I’ve never— every loop I’ve been running, resetting, and I never once—" She stopped. Shook her head slightly. "It’s beautiful."

I looked at the sky. Then at her face.

(Reasonable,) I thought. (Four thousand loops of dying and regressing and running numbers and she never had a spare moment to look up.)

"Yeah," I said. "Beautiful."

I looked around and found a chunk of broken concrete nearby that had settled into something vaguely seat shaped, wide enough for two people if they weren’t precious about space.

I pulled her over to it and sat down. She sat beside me without any argument, which was notable, and looked back up at the sky immediately.

(Agh,) I thought, watching her watch the stars with that expression on her face.

(Is cute Jisoo-ssi² back??)