I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 205: that’s .. how you do it? cool.

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

(Is cute Jisoo-ssi² back??)

"Ay, you know, stop looking at me with that expression and, let’s just—"

She fell asleep mid-sentence.

Not gradually— one moment she was sitting beside me looking at the sky, and the next her weight had shifted and her head came down against my shoulder with the quiet finality of someone whose body said Alright night.

Out completely. Again.

I looked at her. Then atthe sky. Then back at her.

"...ಠ_ಠ, You’re the one who said we should come out here. Aigo." I said, to nobody. Or to her? But it’s nobody since she’s asleep.

I shifted slightly, slow enough not to wake her, and brought one arm around behind her so she wasn’t going to tip forward off the rock.

Then I just— stayed there. The stars kept doing their thing and I did mine. Somewhere in the city something howled, distant and muffled, rolling between buildings before fading out.

The rock was uncomfortable.

But I didn’t move.

We stayed like that for a while.

***

The sky had started shifting by the time I noticed— not light yet, not exactly, but the deep black had thinned out slightly at the edges, the stars near the horizon losing a little of their brightness as the blue color underneath started coming through.

Early morning.

The kind of quiet that existed right before the world remembered it was supposed to start making noise again.

"I wonder what time it is," I said, mostly to myself, watching the colour shift. "Getting brighter. Maybe 5? Or 6...?"

"5:41," said a voice against my shoulder.

I yanked my arm back immediately. "Oh— Jisoo-ssi², sorry—"

Jisoo lifted her head slowly, blinking, and scratched the side of her hair with the unhurried energy of someone who had woken up at a reasonable pace and had no complaints about it.

She looked at me.

Then at the arm I’d pulled back like it had done something wrong. "Why are you like that," she said. "And I told you to stop calling me that."

I stared at her. (She’s not going to hit me...? she’s not angry? She woke up and she’s just— not angry?) "Oh," I said carefully. "I will. Don’t worry. Jisoo-ssi²."

"Stop."

"Yes, Jiso—"

"ಠ▃ಠ"

"Yes..."

She exhaled through her nose, stood up, and stretched— both arms over her head, a full dramatic lean backward that came with a sound of crack and genuine satisfaction.

"HAYAAAA. Okay." She rolled her shoulders. "Now let’s actually explore. For real this time." And she started walking.

I stood up and followed her, which was how the next stretch of walking went— Jisoo slightly ahead, me behind, the two of us moving through the early morning version of the overgrown city while the sky continued its slow shift from dark blue to something lighter.

We talked about the objective, which neither of us had a great answer for. I mentioned the core and Jisoo turned around mid walk to look at me. "Dumbass. There’s no core. Remember? It was removed." She turned back around. "Keep up."

She was right...

I kept up.

At some point during a quieter stretch, when Jisoo had gone silent and was just walking and thinking, I remembered— almost by accident... not because I was bored I swear. That... I have a streaming system.

The viewer chat type. I’d hidden it above my head times ago because it kept annoying me at any moment and I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with it on top of everything else.

I glanced up.

「King Si Hon!!! Put us down!!! We wanna talk!!! We’re SO lonely up here!!」

「Hmmp. It’s not like we WANT to be beside you or anything. Hmmp. ...okay I lied. Pls bring us down. (•᷄⌓•᷅)」

「ONE answer. Just ONE. PLSSS PUT US DOWN (ᗒᗩᗕ)」

「Acardthatwasmaxxedoutwithcash: Do whatever you want. I’m just watching. It’s been pretty entertaining honestly.」

「TRAITOR (•᷄⌓•᷅)」

「Rraktor!」

「YOU BITCH!」

「CHUD!」

「You can get your account terminated.」

「C:Charming H:Handsome U:Understanding D:Determined (๑˃ᴗ˂)ﻭ」

I looked at the floating chaos above my head for a long moment.

Then I looked back at the road ahead.

(Yeah,) I thought. (Still not the time.)

I kept walking.

Eventually the street opened up into the familiar stretch from the last loop— the cracked road, the gap where the earth had dropped away, the far side tilted and vine covered and sitting right where we saw it.

The building with the massive hole in its wall was visible from here, a jagged gap punched through the concrete several floors up like something enormous had simply left through it without using the door.

"Somehow we didn’t run into a single zombie on the way here," Jisoo said, looking around.

"Yeah." I looked at the gap, then at the building. "And— so, the triceratops thing. It’s gone?"

Jisoo pointed at the hole in the wall. "Probably went through there. Something that size doesn’t exactly hide." She tilted her head, running whatever calculation she was running. "It’s moved on. Shouldn’t be on the other side right now."

I looked at the gap. Looked at the far road. Looked back at Jisoo.

"Alright," I said.

I took three steps back, got my footing and ran at the edge with full confidence and completely lost my footing on the last step.

One second I was mid-stride, the next the ground just— wasn’t where my foot expected it to be, the edge slicker than it looked from a distance, and I went over head-first with the grace of someone who had just remembered gravity existed.

The void opened up below me, or above me, I genuinely couldn’t tell anymore... the sky and the drop swapping positions while I tried to figure out which way was useful.

Then something grabbed my ankle.

Both hands.

A grip that locked on hard and didn’t let go, and I twisted enough to see Jisoo flat on her stomach at the road’s edge, arms over the side, holding my foot with everything she had, her face doing several things at once.

"FUCK!!!!" Her voice echoed down into the gap. "YOU ARE SO DUMB!! HOW DID YOU SLIP?? HOW DO YOU TRIP ON A FLAT EDGE—"

"I don’t know—"

"DUMBASS!!!"

"I know... ༎ຶ⁠‿⁠༎ຶ"

She pulled.

It didn’t work immediately— I could feel the strain in her grip, her arms shaking slightly with the effort, her sneakers scrabbling against the road surface trying to find something to push against.

She pulled again, harder, making a sound that was mostly effort and partially just pure frustration with me specifically.

Slowly, incrementally, I came back up.

We ended up flat on our backs on the road, side by side, staring at the brightening sky. Jisoo was gasping, actual deep gasps, her chest heaving while she lay there completely spent.

I was fine, physically, which felt like the least I deserved.

"Okay," she said, between breaths. "If I ever— hah— level up again— I’m putting points in Strength." Another breath. "Not all in Mana. Actual Strength."

"That’s fair," I said.

"Fuck you."

"Sorry ༎ຶ⁠‿⁠༎ຶ"

We lay there for another minute. The grass at the road’s edge swayed next to my head. Somewhere above us a bird crossed the pale sky, completely unbothered.

I stared at it.

Then I stood up, walked over to Jisoo, and held out a hand.

She looked at it.

Then took it, and I pulled her up, and she spent a moment straightening herself out with the dignity of someone pretending the last two minutes hadn’t happened.

I walked back to the edge and looked down into the gap. The void at the bottom was still there, of course... unhelpful as ever.

The far road waited on the other side, close enough to reach if a person didn’t lose their footing like an absolute idiot.

I sighed. "Yeah," I said. "I almost died."

Jisoo looked at me. Then she slapped the back of my head, not hard, just enough, and tapped my chest twice with two fingers. "Okay. Look. This is how you actually do it."

She took a step back from the edge, rolled her shoulders, shook out her hands.

The expression on her face was the specific one she wore when she was about to be correct about something. "You commit to the last step. Don’t hesitate. The edge isn’t the problem, hesitating at the edge is the problem. Watch."

She stepped back further.

Rolled her shoulders one more time.

Ran.

Hit the edge.

Slipped.

I watched her go over.

There was a pause.

"JISOO—"

"I’M ON THE EDGE, I’M ON THE EDGE, I HAVE THE ROOT—"

I was already flat on my stomach, arms over the side, and she was hanging off the root, both hands white-knuckled around it, feet scrabbling against the cliff face.

She looked up at me.

I looked down at her.

Neither of us said anything for a second.

"So," I said.

"Don’t."

"That’s how you do it?"

"Pull me up RIGHT NOW—"