I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 179 179: I miss you

"Haha, I love being alive."

Then an immediate shout.

The shout came from the back of the classroom.

Not a scream. Not panic. Just— loud, sudden, cutting clean through the usual classroom noise like something that had been building pressure and finally found an exit.

Si Hon's head snapped toward it before he'd consciously decided to move, and so did everyone else's— thirty plus heads turning in unison toward the far end of the room where Jisoo Park was standing up from her desk with one hand pressed against the side of her head and her eyes pointed at the ceiling like she was trying to locate something that wasn't there anymore.

She laughed.

Short. Slightly unhinged. The specific laugh of someone whose brain had just received information it had absolutely no filing system for.

"What the..." Her hand stayed pressed against her temple. "What was that." "What the FUCK WAS THAT.

The teacher's voice came from the front of the room immediately, sharp and offended. "Park Jisoo! Sit down this instant— we are in the middle of a lesson and you will not—"

"We literally just—" Jisoo started.

"SIT. DOWN."

Jisoo looked at the ceiling again. Said nothing. Her jaw worked slightly like she was running through several possible responses and discarding all of them on arrival.

Si Hon was already smiling.

Soft. Small. The kind that happened without permission and didn't have anything performative about it.

He looked at Jisoo standing there confused and alive and arguing with the teacher about classroom conduct approximately five minutes before a dragon was going to bite through the wall, and something in his chest loosened in a way it hadn't since he first woke up with his hands flat on the desk and his breathing going wrong.

He stood up.

(Okay,) he thought. (Let's do this properly this time.)

He pushed his chair back and moved— not toward the door, but toward the back of the classroom, which meant walking the full length of the room with thirty sets of confused eyes tracking him the entire way.

He didn't particularly acknowledge any of them. He just walked, steady and purposeful, while behind him the teacher's voice went from sharp to genuinely bewildered trying to figure out which student to yell at first.

He stopped beside Jisoo's desk.

Reached out.

Took her hand.

Jisoo looked at his hand. Then at his face. Then at his hand again, with the expression of someone who had died approximately hours ago and was therefore willing to extend slightly more patience to unusual situations than she normally would.

But before he pulled her toward the door— something caught his eye.

Seong.

She was still at her desk near the door, which was where she always was at the start of the loop, but she wasn't looking at the board or her phone or anything in the room.

She was looking at her own arm. Specifically at the skin of her forearm, which she was rubbing slowly with her opposite hand— not scratching, not anxious fidgeting, just rubbing.

Like trying to smooth out a sensation that was sitting wrong underneath the surface. Her brow was pulled together slightly. Confused. Uncomfortable in a way she clearly didn't have context for.

Then she looked up.

Found Si Hon's face across the classroom.

"Si Hon?" she said. Quiet enough that it didn't carry past the nearest desks. Like she wasn't sure if she was saying it to him or just saying it to see if it felt right.

He nodded once.

She stared at him. Then at her own arm again. Then back at him— and in that look was the particular expression of someone whose body was reporting information their mind had no file for, phantom heat sitting in her skin from a fire she technically hadn't survived, and the disorientation of waking up in a classroom when the last thing she remembered was—

Si Hon let go of Jisoo's hand.

Crossed the remaining distance to Seong's desk in a few steps and pulled her up by the arm and into a hug before she had time to decide how to respond to any of it.

Seong went completely rigid.

Every muscle in her body locked simultaneously, her arms stiff at her sides, her face somewhere above his shoulder carrying an expression that cycled rapidly through shocked, confused, flustered, deeply uncertain, and finally landed on a kind of resigned bewilderment that said she had decided to simply wait this out and ask questions afterward.

A faint color climbed up the back of her neck that she would have strongly denied if anyone mentioned it.

"I miss you," Si Hon said into her shoulder. Straightforward. No preamble.

Seong stood completely still for another two seconds. "W-wh-"

Then she exhaled through her nose— slow, slightly exasperated, the sound of someone choosing their battles, and lifted one hand to pat the top of his head twice. Twice. Very deliberately.

The way you'd pat something small and confusing that had attached itself to you and that you didn't entirely know what to do with but weren't going to push away either.

Si Hon stepped back.

"Rooftop," he said. "Go there now and wait. Three minutes, maybe less, and there's going to be a dragon." He held up a hand before she could open her mouth. "I'll explain everything later. I promise. Just go."

Seong looked at him for a long moment. Her expression had settled into something that was trying very hard to be neutral and was mostly succeeding except around the eyes, where something that wasn't quite emotion but was adjacent to it was still sitting from the hug.

She looked at her arm once more. Then back at Si Hon.

She picked up her bag.

And left without another word, which was the most Seong response possible and Si Hon appreciated it more than he could have explained.

He turned back to Jisoo, took her hand again, and pulled.

"Okay—" Jisoo went with him through the door and into the hallway, where he broke into a proper run toward the stairs.

She kept pace without complaining, which confirmed she was still processing things too fast for normal objections to form.

"Earlier," she said, slightly breathless, "when you killed me— instead of regressing immediately I ended up somewhere else. Like a white space."

A pause while they hit the stairwell and started going down.