I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 215: chill Chapter

I looked away from her and turned toward the glass wall, running my sleeve over the dust coating it so I could actually see through it properly.

The city outside had gone properly dark by now, and with the dust cleared off, stars were starting to punch through the deepening blue, more of them by the minute.

Wait, squinting up at the sky. Now that I think about it, how did we not notice the two moons yesterday? Shouldn’t that have been obvious from the start?

I was about to dig into that thought further when a voice cut through behind me.

"Hey, fucker."

I turned around.

Jisoo was sitting in the chair I’d left her in, except something about the posture was completely different— one leg crossed neatly over the other at the knee, back relaxed against the chair frame, one arm draped along the armrest, the other resting easy on her thigh.

No light in the room to speak of, just the last grey traces coming through the windows, and somehow that made the whole picture feel more unsettling than it should have.

"It’s Jisoo," she said.

"Haha. Yeah, I know. ಠ_ಠ"

"Dumbass. I mean the real Jisoo." She stood up in one smooth motion and punched me square in the stomach, sending me stumbling back a full step. "Keowk!"

"Dude, what the hell— what did I even do—"

"A lot," she said, teeth gritted.

And then the memories caught up— clinging, hand holding on the rooftop, the head pat, the definitely not flirting thing, all of it flooding back at once with the unfortunate clarity of someone who’d apparently been watching her own body do all of that without any say in the matter.

I understood, somewhat, why I ended up sitting in the corner of the room for the next several minutes later while she worked through her feelings about it physically. Which means... Yes, she’s beating me up again. Holding my head so she won’t accidentally give me a bump.

Once that was over, I sat against the wall and she settled back into the chair, same posture as before, completely composed again like none of that had happened.

"Boundaries," she said. "Understand? I’ve got it mapped now. Once it hits 8PM, I come back. Once it turns 7AM, the weird one takes over again."

I nodded along, though internally I was hiding a respectful objection. Weird Jisoo. No. She’s the cute, bearable, perfectly reasonable version of Jisoo.

Though, I kept nodding anyway, careful not to let any of that show on my face.

She stood. "Now. North, right. We rest a bit, then we keep moving."

I nodded again, and honestly, I got it. Two full days in this trial by now, and my body was starting to feel the weight of all of it even with stats that didn’t quit easily.

I got up, grabbed a couple of chairs with decent foam cushioning, found a thick sheet of plastic sheeting in one of the supply closets, stuffed the foam into it, and built something that was generously a massive pillow... that looks more like a small mattress.

Then I slept.

***

I woke up to someone tugging at my arm. Jisoo, looking like she’d just rolled out of whatever she’d been doing too... and I noticed, it was my mattress!!! ಠ⁠益⁠ಠ

"Hey. Wake up. It’s 2am, we should get going."

I closed my eyes again.

That earned me a slap to the head that woke me up properly.

I stretched, joints popping in a few places, and had to admit— that was probably one of the most comfortable sleeps I’d gotten in longer than I wanted to think about, considering the... I probably felt like someone hugged me when I was sleeping.

I grabbed the bag and walked over to where Jisoo was sitting in front of the glass wall, completely still, watching the sky outside: Falling stars streaked across it in steady intervals, and somewhere above all of it, color bled faint and slow across the dark— aurora, green and pale violet, drifting like it had nowhere better to be.

She noticed me and stood up. "Oh, right. We gotta go."

"Where to first."

"Rooftop."

"Why."

"Secret."

I gave her a look. She didn’t elaborate, just turned and headed for the stairwell, and I followed because asking again clearly wasn’t going to get me anywhere different.

We climbed the last flight up to the roof, and the door gave easier this time, no lock to pu— deal with.

The same sky from downstairs opened up fully overhead, bigger and closer without the glass in the way, the aurora curling slow ribbons of color across the dark while stars kept falling at a pace that made the whole thing feel less like a sky and more like something performing for an audience of two.

Jisoo walked straight to the concrete barrier and stepped up onto it, balanced easy, looking out at the next building over and the one past that, a clear line of rooftops stretching out toward the north.

"We’re jumping," she said. "Building to building. Faster than the street right?" She said With a FUCKING SMIRK... ah, I miss my cute careful actually does everything safely cute Jisoo... Well, I don’t hate this one though.

She launched off the edge and made the jump to the next rooftop, but landed short— fingers catching the edge of the concrete at the last second, body swinging hard against the wall before she hauled herself up and over.

She made it, just barely, breathing fast once she was upright again.

I went next and cleared it without much trouble, the str stat doing exactly what it was supposed to do, landing clean and steady on the other side concrete barrier.

Jisoo looked at me, slightly out of breath. "Hey. This is actually hard."

"Yeah. Soo... Street instead?"

"No." She walked straight toward me, both hands grabbing my collar, pulling herself in close enough that her face ended up only a few inches from mine. "Carry me."

I blinked... Fuck.