I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 172 172: Drag, drag.

Hands flat against the surface.

Breathing wrong again already.

This time, Si Hon didn't do anything.

He just sat there.

The classroom existed around him exactly the way it always did at the start of the loop— chalk, phone screens, chairs creaking, thirty plus people who had no idea what was coming— and Si Hon sat in the middle of all of it with his hands flat on the desk and his eyes pointed vaguely forward and absolutely zero intention of participating in any of it.

The exhaustion had settled into something different now.

Not the physical kind from running across rooftops or surviving dragon claws. Something quieter. The kind that came from doing the same thing enough times that your body simply stopped seeing the point of reacting.

The teacher noticed him eventually. Like last time she did.

She called his name twice from the front of the classroom, that particular tone that started professionally patient and curdled fast into something with an edge behind it.

When he didn't respond she crossed the room, and when standing beside his desk didn't produce a reaction either she reached down and pinched his ear with the practiced grip of someone who had been teaching long enough to have developed specialized techniques for difficult students.

Si Hon didn't move.

Not even slightly. His head didn't turn. His expression didn't shift. He just sat there with his ear being pinched by his homeroom teacher in front of thirtyplus classmates and offered absolutely nothing in return, like a rock that had decided today it was going to be a rock and no amount of external input was going to renegotiate that position.

The teacher's patience evaporated completely.

"You are the class president," she said sharply, voice dropping into that specific register that was somehow worse than yelling. "That doesn't mean you get to sit there like you've left your body somewhere else. What is wrong with you today?!"

Si Hon looked at the wall beside him.

And then— right on schedule— the wall looked back.

CRACK.

The sound traveled fast across the surface, that deep structural splitting noise he had heard enough times now to recognize before the dust even started falling from the ceiling.

The teacher heard it too.

Her grip on his ear released immediately as her head snapped toward the far wall, and for exactly one second the entire classroom held completely still while the crack spread and the building shuddered and dust rained softly down from above.

Then the wall came apart.

Concrete exploded inward with a deafening BOOM that shook the entire classroom hard enough to rattle every desk sideways across the floor. Dust and broken chunks of cement blasted through the air while fluorescent lights above flickered violently, and for one split second nobody inside the room fully understood what they were seeing.

A gigantic jaw forced itself through the shattered wall.

Black scales.

Steam.

Rows of monstrous teeth slick with saliva and blood.

And a single golden eye staring directly into the classroom.

Someone screamed immediately.

Another student dropped their chair trying to stand too fast.

Phones hit the floor. Desks overturned. Panic detonated across the room instantly like someone had thrown fire into gasoline.

But before the dragon could fully lunge inward—

The teacher moved first.

Pure instinct.

"EUN WO!"

Her hand grabbed the back of Si Hon's collar so violently the fabric nearly tore apart as she yanked him sideways with everything she had. The dragon's jaws slammed shut exactly where he had been sitting less than half a second earlier.

CHOMP.

Wood and concrete exploded.

The desk vanished between its teeth instantly.

Splinters and broken metal legs scattered across the classroom while the dragon's momentum carried part of its massive head through the wall, chunks of concrete still falling from its scales.

The teacher stumbled backward hard while dragging Si Hon with her, both of them crashing onto the brown tiled floor as students screamed and shoved toward the exit all at once.

"MOVE!! EVERYONE MOVE!!"

Her voice cracked from panic now.

Meanwhile Si Hon just… laid there.

Flat on his back.

Breathing slowly.

Dust drifted through the air above him while alarms somewhere in the building finally began screaming overhead.

The dragon's head then pushed through the gap it had made with the particular unhurried confidence of something that knew nothing in the room was capable of stopping it, black scales grinding against broken concrete while its golden eye swung slowly across the classroom full of frozen and panicking students.

The smell of heat and something burnt and deeply wrong rolled in through the hole with it.

Then everyone who's frozen started screaming too.

The teacher grabbed Si Hon's arm on pure instinct— not a gentle grip, a full panicked yank— and pulled.

Si Hon let himself be pulled.

His feet dragged across the floor, and he made no contribution whatsoever to the process of being hauled away from the dragon's head currently occupying the wall of his classroom.

"ᵉ-ᵉᵘⁿ ʷᵒ… ᵐᵒᵛᵉ… ᵖ-ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ… ʷʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ʷʳᵒⁿᵍ ʷⁱᵗʰ ʸᵒᵘ!…?"

The teacher was shouting something at him. He could hear it. The words were just moving past him without landing, like she was speaking at a volume and frequency he had temporarily lost the ability to process.

He let his eyes move instead.

Just his eyes.

"ᵉᵘⁿ ʷᵒ ʷʰᵃᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ!? ʷʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ʷʳᵒⁿᵍ ʷⁱᵗʰ ʸᵒᵘ!? ʸᵒᵘ ᵏⁱᵈ!!"

The rest of him stayed limp and draggable while the teacher hauled him toward the door and the classroom collapsed into full chaos around them— desks scraping, students running, the dragon's head swinging slowly sideways through the hole it had made like it was browsing options.

His gaze moved across the room in pieces. Overturned chair. Someone's bag abandoned in the aisle. A phone screen still lit up on a desk nobody was sitting at anymore.

"ᵉᵘⁿʷᵒ!!! ᵃᵍʰʰʰ ⁱ'ᵐ ᵍᵒⁿⁿᵃ ᵏⁱˡˡ ʸᵒᵘ ᵐʸˢᵉˡᶠ ⁱᶠ ʸᵒᵘ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ᵐᵒᵛᵉ, ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ᵐᵃᵏᵉ ᵗʰⁱˢ ᵗᵉᵃᶜʰᵉʳ ᵒᶠ ʸᵒᵘʳˢ ˢᵗʳᵉˢˢᵉᵈ ʲᵘˢᵗ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ⁱ ᵍᵒᵗ ᵐᵃᵈ ᵃᵗ ʸᵒᵘ!!!"

Then— Seong.

She was near the window, already half-turned toward the door, but her eyes were on him. Just for a second.

He could see the hesitation in it, the calculation happening behind her expression— the same red hair, the same sharp focus, but pointed at him like she was trying to figure out what category he belonged to.

Whether he was something she needed to account for or someone she could leave behind without consequence.

Si Hon looked at her for exactly that one second.

Then looked away.