"Oh!"
"Yes... sigh, when are you gonna think..."
"Wait, how did you get dragon slayer before a j*b?"
"How do you have twenty one titles?"
"I’ve lived this d—"
Si Hon cut her out. "Life is weird."
Jisoo snorted.
Rain continued falling beyond the guard post while the city stretched out before them, broken skyscrapers fading into mist and smoke. The world looked like it was ending. Monsters were sowhere out there. People were probably dying.
anwhile two idiots sat beneath a tiny roof arguing about title nas.
For the first ti since the checkpoint appeared, things felt strangely normal.
Eventually Si Hon opened his status again.
"Okay."
"Ti to spend points."
Jisoo’s expression imdiately beca serious.
"Now we’re talking."
Si Hon looked over his stats carefully. His build was pretty obvious. He already had ridiculous endurance and stamina from everything he’d survived, decent strength and agility, and more luck than he honestly deserved.
Mana was useful.
But not useful enough to justify dumping everything into it. And like... he doesn’t have any mana related skills.
After several minutes of arguing with himself, he finally made his decision.
────────────────────────
Si Hon
Strength: 50
Agility: 48
Stamina: 70
Endurance: 70
Luck: 60
Intelligence: 35
Mana: 28
────────────────────────
Jisoo stared.
"You put almost nothing into mana."
"I run."
"You teleport."
"I teleport, run and then hit things. And that’s basically running."
"That’s not a build."
"It’s working though..."
She hated that he had a point.
Then Jisoo started allocating her own.
Unlike Si Hon, she couldn’t rely on surviving ridiculous situations through stubbornness. Most of her strength ca from knowledge, timing, and keeping herself alive long enough to use it.
So her points spread out differently.
────────────────────────
Jisoo Park
Strength: 28
Agility: 38
Stamina: 30
Endurance: 40
Luck: 20
Intelligence: 52
Mana: 50
────────────────────────
Si Hon imdiately pointed.
"FIFTY mana?"
"I like casting things."
"(¬‿¬) You don’t even cast things, the temporal lock is stamina based."
"(￣ー￣)Yet."
"That’s actually concerning."
"Good."
She smiled.
Si Hon sighed.
Jisoo smiled wider.
Outside the guard post the rain continued falling over the ruined city, over the monsters hidden sowhere beyond the skyline, over the broken streets and shattered buildings waiting for them.
For a little while longer, though, neither of them moved.
The apocalypse could wait five minutes.
They had stat points to admire.
***
(Team 4)
Seong sat on the front steps of the school with Suha on one side and Han on the other, both of them quiet for once, the usual energy knocked out of them by everything the last few hours had thrown at the world.
The rain was still coming down, softer now, more of a mist than anything, and the ruined courtyard ahead of them was grey and still and slled like a wet stone and smoke.
Then she spotted them. Jisoo and Si Hon coming through the gate together, walking at the sa pace, Jisoo saying sothing low that Seong couldn’t hear from this distance. Normal enough, on the surface. She almost looked away.
Then she didn’t.
Because sothing was off. She couldn’t na it imdiately— it was more like a texture than a detail, the way a room feels different when sothing’s been moved even if you can’t tell what.
Si Hon walked with both hands in his pockets, which wasn’t unusual. He was talking, which wasn’t unusual either. But his face— the face that was usually blank in that easy, unbothered nonchalant way that still sohow carried energy behind it— wasn’t carrying anything right now.
Dark circles sat under his eyes that hadn’t been there before. His shoulders were set differently. The vibe coming off him was just. Low. Very low. Like sothing had been running for a long ti and had quietly turned itself off.
A tap on her shoulder. Seong looked back.
Aeloria stood behind her, blue hair damp at the ends from the mist, gaze pointed in the sa direction Seong’s had just been. She didn’t say anything for a second. Just looked. Then, "Hey. Doesn’t he seem different to you?"
"Yeah," Seong said. "He does." She paused. "We’re probably just tired."
Aeloria humd. Neither of them sounded fully convinced.
She turned back toward the school entrance after another mont, already moving toward where the others were still hauling supplies out from the corridors, and muttered on her way past— mostly to herself, just loud enough to hear. "I’m a princess. I shouldn’t be looting. People should be doing this for ." Her fist clenched once, dramatically.
Then she disappeared through the doors.
Seong almost smiled.
Then Si Hon stopped in front of her.
He wasn’t doing anything. Just standing there at the base of the steps while she sat, hands still in his pockets, and looking at her the way soone looked at a thing they were trying to figure out.
Completely neutral. Completely calm.
And Seong felt it imdiately— that shiver that started sowhere at the back of her neck and moved downward, the kind her body produced on its own before her brain had caught up to explain why.
Sothing in her pulled tight. She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just sat there while Suha and Han stayed tucked against her sides and the mist ca down around all of them.
Then Si Hon looked away.
Just— looked away. Like whatever he’d been checking for, he’d either found or decided didn’t matter.
He exhaled once through his nose, quiet enough that she almost didn’t catch it, and turned toward the side of the building.
Seong stared at his back.
"What the fuck was that," she said, very quietly, to no one. Her hands had pulled Suha and Han slightly closer without her noticing. She said it again. "What the fuck was that."
She watched him walk toward the back of the school, Jisoo falling into step beside him and reaching over once to pat his back— easy, familiar— before they rounded the corner and disappeared from view.
Like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t just stood there and made every instinct she had go completely silent for ten seconds.
Seong sat with that for a mont. Then she looked down at Suha, who was looking up at her with big curious eyes, and Han, who was still watching the corner where Si Hon had disappeared with a slight frown.
She didn’t say anything else.
But she didn’t stop thinking about it either.
***
(Back to Si Hon)
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