I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 208: Jump! Jump! JUMP!!!!

"Jisoo." My voice came out flat. "ಠ⁠_⁠｣⁠ಠ What the fuck are you pulling this time."

I looked around.

There was nothing back here to brace the door with but me only. "Jisoo!" I shouted over my shoulder, still holding it shut with my whole weight. "What’s wrong with you?!"

She looked back at me, blinking, genuinely lost. "Si Hon? Where are we? Why are you holding that door?"

The door cracked behind my back, the impact jolting through my spine, and Jisoo flinched hard at the sound, slapping both hands over her ears. "Ah— ah, I don’t— I’m confused," she said with a small shaking voice.

"Jisoo, can you stand up? Right now, I need you to try."

She shook her head fast. "I can’t. My whole body feels— it feels like I just ran for hours. I don’t understand why."

I didn’t have time to understand it either.

A tear slipped down my face without my permission, dramatic and useless given the situation. (Shit. Is this the split personality thing? Of all times—)

Then the door gave out.

Another thud, harder, and the whole frame buckled and threw me forward off my feet as a wave of them poured through the opening behind me.

Instinct took over before thought did.

I was already moving, already crossing the floor toward Jisoo as one of them lunged straight at her— I got there first, slid a hand behind her head, pulled her in and adjusted her against me in the same motion, and she latched on immediately, arms locking around my neck, legs around my waist, full koala, once again...

I stood up and ran.

That was the only thing that mattered now— the rhythm of my feet hitting the cracked concrete floor, dust kicking up behind every step, Jisoo’s weight locked against my front exactly the way it had been a dozen times already.

Her face was buried in my shoulder. I could feel her breathing, fast and shallow, not screaming yet but close.

Behind me the floor was filled with them, pouring through the broken doorway in a group that didn’t thin out no matter how far I got.

I cut left around a support pillar, then right around another, weaving through the open floor plan because there was nothing else here to hide behind— no walls, no rooms, just pillars and windows and open grey light from the heavy sky outside.

I dodged one that came in at an angle from my left.

Ducked under a swipe from one that got too close on the right.

Kept moving, kept recalculating, looking for literally anything that wasn’t a straight line into more of them.

There wasn’t one.

Every angle I tried funneled back toward the same direction, the mass behind me wide enough now that it had stopped being something I could route around.

So I stopped trying to dodge and just ran straight, full speed, because straight was the only option left.

"Shit—" I scanned ahead, recalculating one more time even though there was nothing left to calculate. "Fuck—"

The floor ended fifteen meters ahead.

The outer wall was gone there too, blown wide open same the building ahead, open air past the edge, and across that gap— three, maybe four meters of nothing— sat the face of the next building, waiting.

I looked at the gap.

Looked back at the horde behind me, closing fast, footsteps breaking apart from the group as the faster ones pulled ahead.

I looked at Jisoo.

She lifted her head off my shoulder just enough to follow my line of sight, read it instantly, and her grip tightened hard around my neck. "No," she said.

"We have to jump."

"That’s— how far even is that—"

"Close enough." I adjusted my hold, both arms locking under her, pulling her higher against my chest. The sound behind us kept building. "Hold on."

"I’m already—"

"Tighter."

"I’m scared, Si Hon—"

She made a sound that wasn’t quite words and locked her arms around me hard enough that I felt it in my ribs, and I hit the edge of the floor at full sprint and...

I jumped, and for a second the world narrowed down to just the gap and the building face rushing toward me and the weight of Jisoo locked against my chest.

(Make it. Make it. MAKE IT—)

Behind me, the horde didn’t stop at the edge. They followed, the front line of them launching off the blank space without hesitation, momentum carrying them out into open air right behind us like the gap meant nothing to them.

And fuck, I didn’t make it.

I felt it the second my trajectory came up short. Tje angle wrong, the distance just slightly more than my legs had bought me, and the building face that should have met my feet stayed just out of reach.

In short, WE were falling.

Not into the ground below, though— I didn’t expect that the 6th floor of the building across from us had its outer wall blown open too, the same way the 7th floor was, and it was right there, close enough.

I twisted hard, got my hand behind Jisoo’s head before anything else, and threw what was left of my momentum sideways into the opening instead of straight at the wall.

We went through it together and hit the concrete floor on the other side at full force, my shoulder and back taking the entire impact while Jisoo’s grip locked even tighter around me, her whole body curled into me as we skidded and rolled and finally stopped.

Pain arrived a half second late, the way it always did. I felt it everywhere at once. My shoulder, my spine, the back of my head where it had clipped something on the way down.

I didn’t move.

Behind us, through the opening we’d just come through, I could hear it— the sound of the ones who hadn’t made the same lucky catch, hitting the gap between buildings and dropping straight down into the ground, one after another, the impact sounds fading the lower they fell.

We— no, actually I... made it.

I lay there on the concrete, staring up at the cracked ceiling of the sixth floor, breathing hard, every part of me feeling the damage slowly.

I turned my head slightly toward the opening we’d come through and watched the last few stragglers miss the jump entirely and disappear past the edge.

I smiled. Just a little. Then I closed my eyes.

And even with my eyes shut, I could feel it. Jisoo’s panic kicking in immediately, her weight shifting off me fast, hands already patting down my chest and my face, her voice climbing in pitch as she said my name over and over, checking, panicking, completely unguarded about it.

(Ah,) I thought, somewhere underneath the pain, letting myself drift for just a second.

(I love cute Jisoo.)