I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER Chapter 190: your story, jisoo (I)

"We’re so Fucked."

Si Hon hugged himself.

"FUCK." The word ca out before he could stop it, loud enough that it echoed slightly off the school gate structure beside them. "That’s— that’s so scary, what the hell—"

Jisoo crossed the distance between them and slapped the back of his head.

"SEE?!" Her voice cracked with the specific energy of soone who had been right about sothing and was not going to let that go quietly. "You DUMBASS. We should’ve just regressed from the start instead of all of— that!"

"We tried though," Si Hon said flatly, still hugging himself.

Jisoo opened her mouth. Closed it. "That’s not the point!"

"It kinda is."

"It’s not!"

"It literally is!"

Jisoo stared at him for several seconds before aggressively pointing at his face.

"You have terrible survival instincts."

"We’re still alive though."

"I hate you."

"Sa."

"So what now?."

"I don’t know"

Jisoo looked monts away from strangling him.

The rain continued falling around them.

Beyond the school gate, the city stretched beneath dark clouds and drifting smoke. Sirens echoed sowhere in the distance. A damaged skyscraper stood crooked against the horizon. Sothing huge moved between two distant buildings before disappearing again behind concrete and fog.

Neither of them comnted on it.

Compared to what they had just seen, sohow the ruined city felt normal.

Then Si Hon’s expression changed.

"Wait."

Jisoo imdiately groaned.

"No."

"Wait, fuck..."

"No."

"Aren’t they coming again?!"

"No, you dumbass."

She rubbed her forehead. "The checkpoint was probably when that stupid congratulations ssage appeared. If we’re back here then we’re before the monster attack."

"Aha... okay." Si Hon said, already moving toward the small guard booth beside the school gate. The overhang extended just far enough to block the rain if he sat right against the wall, which he did, dropping down onto the ground with his back against the concrete and his knees pulled up.

The rain continued past the overhang edge in a steady curtain just inches from his feet. "Fuck... I’m tired."

Jisoo followed him under the overhang and sat down beside him without asking, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, both of them facing the open gate and the city beyond it. She held her chin in one hand, thinking.

Si Hon stared at the rain.

"Ah, shit yea... I’m so stupid," he muttered after a mont. "I completely forgot— every ti I tell you sothing I know about this world, about what’s coming, about you— penalty triggers. It resets when we regress, but still."

He rubbed his face slowly with both hands. "I should’ve thought of that from the start."

Jisoo looked at him sideways. "Dumbass," she said, but it ca out significantly less sharp than usual. More like a reflex than a genuine criticism.

"Yep."

Rain ca down steadily across the city ahead of them. Sowhere in the distance sothing was still burning— a thin column of smoke rising against the dark sky two or three blocks away— and the occasional distant sound drifted back through the rain.

Jisoo was quiet for a mont.

Then— "How many Chapters."

Si Hon’s eye twitched. "....qhat?"

"The comic." She kept her eyes on the city ahead. Her tone was the sa flat casual it always was, but sothing underneath it had gone careful. "How many Chapters does it have."

Si Hon looked at her face.

Then looked away.

"Three hundred sixty seven," he said. "It covered everything. Every regression from loop seven hundred ninety eight onward. Every death, every decision, all of it laid out panel by panel." A pause. "The comic started at your seven hundred ninety eighth regression. And it ended at eight hundred."

Jisoo didn’t move.

"Eight hundred," she said quietly.

"Yeah."

The rain filled the space between the words.

Si Hon kept going because stopping felt worse. "The ending— in the comic, when you hit eight hundred, it looked like that was supposed to be it. Like the regression would stop. Like December twenty ninth was the finish line the whole story was building toward."

He glanced at her. "But you’re here. So clearly that wasn’t actually the end."

Jisoo exhaled slowly through her nose. "December twenty ninth," she repeated. Just the date. Not a question.

"Yeah, I always regressed in that day."

She had that energetic humor sitting sowhere in her posture still— the sa way she always held herself, upright, unbothered on the surface— but sothing behind her eyes had gone sowhere quieter. Not dramatic about it.

Just— present. Sitting with sothing heavy in the specific way of soone who had been carrying it so long they’d forgotten other people couldn’t see it.

Si Hon looked at the rain.

"So," he said, because the silence was becoming a specific kind of discomfort that he didn’t have the right to think for. "Damn ts is awkward. Anything you wanna ask."

Jisoo turned and looked at him slowly.

"ಠ益ಠ," she said. "It’s getting dramatic. What the fuck."

"I know."

"Why are you making it awkward."

"I’m not...?"

"You went all soft voiced—"

"That was my normal voice—"

Both of them exhaled at the sa ti.

Then Jisoo laughed. Short. Genuine. The kind that happened when the alternative was sothing worse and laughing was simply the better option available. She stood up, brushed her uniform off, and turned back toward him with one hand extended downward.

"Penalty resets when we regress," she said. "Right?"

"Right."

"Then tell everything." Her eyes were steady. "All of it. Whatever you know. And I think you know exactly what I an."

Si Hon looked at her hand for a second.

Then scoffed and took it.

"You’re fucking insane," he said.

"Probably," she agreed, and pulled him up.

What followed was sothing... they talked about Jisoo life... many tis... that’s it.

Seventy tis.

Every ti the penalty arrived— a notification flickering into existence above the clouds, cold and unhurried— they reset.

Jisoo would find sothing sharp from the broken concrete near the gate and would slit her throat while Si Hon would walk out into the city where the monsters were gonna be and would let himself get torn apart, and then the loop would close and they’d open their eyes again in the rain outside the school gate, and pick up wherever the sentence had been interrupted.

「The first eight resets were hard.」