novelraw Chapter 171 171: So... are you?
Chapter 171 171: So... are you?
And Si Hon sat very still with that question sitting in the center of his chest like something that had always been there and had only just introduced itself properly.
After a while.
The teacher had run out of patience approximately two name calls ago.
She crossed the room in quick sharp steps and slammed her hand flat against the top of Si Hon's desk with a crack loud enough to make three nearby students flinch sideways in their seats.
"Eun Wo!!" Her voice came out tight and frustrated, the specific tone of someone who had been professionally calm for too long and had finally hit the wall. "Why aren't you answering?! Are you even listening right now?!"
Si Hon turned his head slowly and looked at her.
That was all he did.
He didn't say anything. Didn't blink particularly fast. Didn't shift his expression in any intentional direction.
He just looked at her with eyes that were still carrying everything— the dragon, the pain sitting dull and constant in his shoulder, Mimi's voice breaking on a single word, the question that had been sitting in his chest since he woke up— all of it still present behind his face whether he wanted it there or not.
And somewhere in his passive skill list, without him asking for it—
[Intimidating Glare activated — very weak]
Except.
His Strength sat at 29 (+17). His Endurance at 48. His whole body had just survived a multiple crazy scenario technically breaking him apart at the molecular level before the reset yanked him backward, and whatever that had done to the baseline quality of his eyes looking at something— it had apparently done something.
Because the teacher stopped talking mid breath. Her expression shifted in a way she clearly didn't intend, something behind her composure going briefly, genuinely wrong.
She took one step back.
Then another.
Her heel caught the leg of the nearest desk and she stumbled, catching herself against it with one hand while her other came up slightly in front of her like a reflex she couldn't explain.
"Wh—" Her voice came out smaller than before. She blinked hard. "What... what was..."
She couldn't finish the sentence.
Because she didn't have words for what had just happened to her nervous system in the span of two seconds of eye contact with a student who was technically just sitting there doing nothing.
The classroom had gone completely silent.
Nobody laughed. Nobody whispered. The usual background noise of thirty teenagers existing simultaneously in a small room had just— stopped. Like the air pressure had changed slightly and everyone's body had registered it before their brains caught up.
And at the very back of the classroom—
A head lifted.
Jisoo Park woke up the way she always did— fast, clean, no groggy blinking or slow return to consciousness. One second asleep, next second upright, dark eyes already scanning the room with the particular alertness of someone whose survival instincts had been sharpened past the point of normal human function.
Her gaze moved across the silent classroom, across the teacher standing frozen against a desk with her hand still raised slightly, across thirty students all staring in the same direction—
And landed on Si Hon.
She watched him for a moment without moving.
Si Hon, meanwhile, had already looked away from the teacher.
He was staring at his desk again. His hands sat flat against the surface. His breathing was still wrong in that quiet internal way that didn't show from the outside, chest moving slightly too fast, the phantom ache in his ribs flaring faintly with each inhale.
The classroom had returned to a specific type of silence that felt less like quiet and more like thirty people collectively deciding not to make a sound, and he was sitting in the center of it completely still.
Then his hand moved.
Slowly. Without urgency. Like his body had made a decision independently of whatever was left of his rational mind. His fingers came up toward his own throat and pressed inward, not grabbing, just— pressing. Then tighter.
His knuckles went white gradually while the pressure built and his breathing, already wrong, became worse in a different way.
The student beside him noticed first.
Then the one behind.
Then the whole row, and then the rows beyond that, a slow ripple of horrified attention spreading outward from Si Hon's desk as one by one people registered what they were looking at and absolutely nobody knew what to do about it.
Somewhere in Si Hon's passive skill list—
[Calm Mind activated]
[Calm Mind activated]
[Calm Mind activated]
[Calm Mind activated]
[Calm Mind activated]
It didn't work.
Not even slightly. Not even a flicker. Like throwing paper cups at a structural fire and expecting results.
The panic wasn't loud enough to respond to paper cups— it had gone somewhere underneath rational reach, somewhere that Calm Mind at its current level simply could not access, and so the notifications kept stacking uselessly in his peripheral vision while his hand kept pressing and the room kept getting darker at the edges and somewhere behind all of it.
The only thought running clearly was Mimi's voice saying the same two words on a loop that he could not make stop.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
His vision blurred.
The classroom ceiling tilted sideways slightly.
And then— a hand came down on his shoulder.
Not soft. Not gentle. Just firm and immediate and grounding in the specific way that something real and physical could cut through something happening entirely inside your head. Si Hon's eyes refocused slowly.
He turned.
Jisoo Park stood beside his desk.
Up close she looked exactly like she always did— dark hair, sharp eyes, expression sitting somewhere between unreadable and mildly concerned in a way she clearly hadn't decided to show yet.
She was looking at him with the particular focus of someone running calculations behind their face while their expression stayed carefully neutral on the surface.
Si Hon's hand dropped from his throat slowly.
The classroom remained completely silent around them.
"Stand up," Jisoo said.
Si Hon stood up.
He wasn't entirely sure why. His legs just did it, responding to her voice with the same automatic quality that his body had been running on since he woke up shaking in his seat.
He straightened to full height beside his desk and just— stood there, breathing slightly more normally now that something external had interrupted whatever had been happening thirty seconds ago.
Jisoo looked at him for a moment.
Something moved briefly across her expression. Not quite recognition. Not quite confusion. Something in between that she didn't let sit on her face long enough to name.
"A… are you..." She paused. Chose her words carefully. "Eun Woo?"
Si Hon looked at her.
The question landed strangely. His real name was Si Hon.
Eun Wo was the character whose life he had apparently landed inside, whose desk he was sitting at, whose teacher had been trying to get his attention for the past several minutes.
He knew that. He also knew that Jisoo was a regressor who had lived through versions of today that he couldn't access, and that she was currently looking at him with eyes that were doing significantly more processing than the question suggested.
He thought about it for exactly one second.
"Yes," he said.
Something in Jisoo's expression shifted almost imperceptibly. She looked at him for another moment— at his eyes specifically, at whatever was sitting behind them that apparently didn't match what she remembered about Eun Wo— and then she exhaled quietly through her nose.
"Okay." A pause. "Then all of that must have just been a dream."
She said it simply. Flatly. Like a conclusion she was choosing to file away rather than one she actually believed.
Si Hon opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Then—
CRACK.
The sound came from the wall beside the classroom. Not a small crack. The structural kind, the kind that traveled— a deep splitting noise that moved fast across the surface from one end to the other while dust rained down from the ceiling in thin pale lines and the entire building shuddered once beneath their feet.
Everyone in the classroom turned toward the wall.
For one horrible second— nothing.
Then the wall came apart.
CHOMP.
***
Si Hon opened his eyes.
Sound came back first.
Chalk against a board.
A phone screen lighting up under a desk somewhere nearby.
The specific creak of a chair being leaned back too far.
He was sitting at his desk.
Completely still.
Hands flat against the surface.
Breathing wrong again already.