I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 173 173: drag, drag, drag... muttering, muttering.

Then looked away.

(She doesn't know,) he thought, with a flatness that surprised even him. (She doesn't remember any of it. As far as she's concerned I'm just some student having a breakdown in the middle of a dragon attack.)

A pause.

(She'll go find Suha and Han. That's what she does. That's fine.)

Dragged. Dragged. Dragged.

The hallway floor appeared beneath him. Brown tiles. He recognized them. He'd seen them enough times well… of course since he read the comic, that even the pattern felt familiar, the specific way the grout lines ran between each square, the scuff marks near the door from years of chairs being pushed back too hard.

"ᵉᵘⁿ ʷᵒ!!! ʷʰᵃᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ʰᵉˡˡ ⁱˢ ʷʳᵒⁿᵍ ʷⁱᵗʰ ʸᵒᵘ!?!"

The teacher was still talking at him— voice tight and high with adrenaline, something about what is wrong with you and why won't you move and please just walk…

"ᵉᵘⁿʷᵒ!!! ᴰᴼᴺ'ᵀ ᴶᵁˢᵀ ˢᴵᵀ ᵀᴴᴱᴿᴱ!!!"

"ᵃᵍʰʰʰʰʰ!!! ⁱ'ᵐ ᵍᵒⁿⁿᵃ ᵏⁱˡˡ ʸᵒᵘ ᵐʸˢᵉˡᶠ ⁱᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᵈʳᵃᵍᵒⁿ ᵈᵒᵉˢⁿ'ᵗ ᶠⁱʳˢᵗ!!!"

And Si Hon lay where he'd ended up and watched the classroom ceiling tiles through the open doorway while the screaming continued.

"ᵐᵒᵛᵉ!!! ᴵ ˢʷᵉᵃʳ ᵗᵒ ᵍᵒᵈ ⁱ'ᵐ ᵍᵒⁿⁿᵃ ˡᵒˢᵉ ᵐʸ ᵐⁱⁿᵈ!!!"

He closed his eyes.

(I'll just wait until it gets me.)

The thought arrived without drama. No panic behind it. Just a tired, honest assessment of the situation from someone who had run out of the energy required to treat dying like something worth avoiding on a loop that was just going to reset anyway.

Then—

"Ma'am." A voice cut cleanly through the noise. Calm. Familiar in a way that made Si Hon's eyes stay closed for one more second before he could help it. "I'll take care of him."

A pause.

Then the teacher said something he didn't catch, and footsteps moved away down the hallway, and then—

Thud.

The back of his head met the floor as whoever had been holding him(the teacher) up let go with zero ceremony. Si Hon absorbed this without a comment.

Then a weight settled directly onto his stomach, easy and completely unbothered, and he opened his eyes slightly.

Jisoo Park sat on him.

Specifically on his stomach, cross legged, with the posture of someone who had decided this was a perfectly reasonable place to have a conversation and saw no need to justify it further.

Around them, the hallway had devolved into full chaos— students running in every direction, someone crying near the stairwell, distant sounds of the dragon doing more structural damage somewhere behind the classroom wall—

And Jisoo sat in the middle of all of it on top of Si Hon like she was waiting for a bus.

She looked down at him.

Poke.

Poke.

Two fingers against his cheek, unhurried.

Si Hon opened his eyes fully.

"Hey." Jisoo's expression was its usual unreadable neutral, but something behind it was paying close attention. "I know you're not Eun Wo." She said it simply, like stating a weather fact.

"Answering yes when I asked you earlier was a nice try though."

A pause.

"So. What's actually happening with you? Shocked because you died?"

Si Hon looked at the ceiling.

Then— without fully planning to— a short sound escaped him. Not quite a laugh. Almost one. The kind that happened when something was too absurd to respond to seriously.

Because somewhere down the hallway a student was screaming, and somewhere behind the classroom wall the dragon was doing something that made the whole building shudder, and Jisoo Park was sitting on his stomach in the middle of a active catastrophe poking his face with two fingers and asking if he was upset about dying.

"Look," Jisoo continued, apparently taking his non answer as an invitation to keep going.

Her voice shifted slightly— still dry, still flat, but with something almost like amusement sitting underneath it.

She glanced sideways down the hallway at the absolute pandemonium happening around them, then back at him.

"Everyone out there is completely losing their minds right now."

A beat.

"And I'm just. Sitting here. On your stomach." Another beat. "In the middle of the hallway." She almost smiled. Almost. "Honestly I think we're fine."

Si Hon stared at her for a second.

"You're unhinged," he said. His voice came out rougher than he expected. Like it had forgotten how to work properly from not being used.

"Probably," Jisoo agreed, unbothered.

The building shuddered again. Something crashed loudly inside the classroom behind them. Neither of them looked.

Si Hon exhaled slowly, and this time it actually came out even, which was the first breath that had felt right since he woke up.

He lifted his hand slowly— the one with the ring on it— and held it up above his face, looking at it while the chaos continued at a respectful distance around them.

The black goo surface sat quietly. Still. Not shaking anymore. Not pulsing. Not doing anything. Not even changing color that it used to do.

Just there.

"It's not because I died," he said quietly. "That part… I don't really care about it anymore honestly." His thumb moved slightly across the ring surface without pressing.

"It's because of this." A pause. "I'm scared." The word came out smaller than he intended. He didn't take it back. "What happens if..... yea, nevermind, you probably don't know what I'm talking about."

Jisoo looked at the ring.

Then at him.

She didn't say anything immediately, which was somehow better than if she had.

The hallway screaming continued. The dragon rumbled somewhere behind the wall. And Si Hon lay on the brown tiled floor with his hand raised toward the ceiling and Jisoo Park sitting on his stomach and the ring sitting quietly on his finger where Mimi wasn't anymore…? Probably...

Jisoo looked at him for another second.

Then she stood up, brushed her uniform off casually, and reached down to pat the back of Si Hon's pants twice with the completely unbothered energy of someone removing dust from furniture.

Which was essentially what she was doing.

Si Hon did not acknowledge this. She straightened up afterward, exhaled once through her nose, and extended one hand downward toward him with the particular expression of someone who had already decided what was happening next and was just waiting for the other person to catch up.

"Let's go," she said simply. "I'll help you figure it out."

A pause.

She glanced briefly at the ring on his finger, then back at his face. "And don't worry about her. She's probably just resting."