I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 177 177: Han... will you?

Then slowly— very slowly— looked up at Han.

Si Hon and Han stared at each other.

Neither of them moved for a moment.

The fire on the far wall had spread to the ceiling now, crawling outward across the tiles in uneven orange lines while smoke thickened steadily around them, and somewhere underneath all of that noise Si Hon kept glancing downward at Jisoo's body beneath him— at the stillness of her, at the specific quality of not moving that was different from sleeping, different from unconscious, just completely and finally still.

He pressed two fingers against her wrist anyway. Then her neck. Nothing. He already knew there would be nothing.

He checked anyway.

The regression hadn't come.

He didn't know what to do with that.

The anger arrived first, the way it always did when his brain hit something it couldn't process— hot and directionless, with nowhere to go and nothing useful to do with itself.

Then the fear underneath it, which was worse because it was quieter. He was kneeling in a burning classroom on the first floor of a school being destroyed by a dragon with a dead regressor beneath him and a child crying three feet away and every exit he could see from here was already consumed by fire, and his hands were shaking, and he didn't know what came next.

Han's crying had changed shape.

It wasn't the loud broken kind from earlier anymore. It had gone quieter and more fragmented, the words coming out between hitching breaths in pieces that barely held together.

Suha's name. Seong's name.

Over and over, threading through the crying like he couldn't stop the loop of it in his own head. And then— softer, more broken than anything else— "It should've been me. It should've been me, I was the one who moved first, if I hadn't moved then Suha wouldn't have had to—"

"Han." Si Hon's voice came out rougher than he intended.

Han kept going. "I should be the one in there, not her, not them, why did she— I should've just DI—"

"Han."

Han's voice dissolved into crying again.

Si Hon looked down at his own hands. They were still shaking. The fire reflected against his skin in unsteady orange light while smoke drifted between him and Han in thin slow ribbons.

And the thought arrived quietly, without dramatics, the way the worst thoughts always did.

(Do I need to die too.)

He looked at it for a moment. Turned it over. The regression had come both times before when Jisoo died— that was the mechanic, or what he'd assumed was the mechanic.

But this time she was dead and nothing had happened, which meant either the mechanic had changed or he was missing something, or the answer was exactly what the thought suggested.

He stood up.

Crossed the room to where Han was sitting and lowered himself down beside him, wrapping both arms around Han's shoulders and pulling him in close.

Han folded into it immediately, instinctively, the way a child did when their body recognized safety before their brain caught up— both arms locking around Si Hon's side, face pressing against his chest, crying continuing but slightly less fractured now.

Si Hon moved them both toward the far corner, away from the worst of the heat, and sat down against the wall with Han held against him.

He leaned his head back against the concrete.

Looked at the room around them.

Every exit. Every doorway. The gap they'd come through— fire. The windows— fire, or blocked by debris, or both.

The far wall where the ceiling had come down— solid.

There was no direction that was anything other than orange and heat and smoke getting thicker by the minute.

Si Hon exhaled slowly.

"Han," he said, quietly enough that it didn't sound like an announcement. Just talking. "You probably won't believe this. But I've regressed twice already today."

Han went still against his chest.

Then pulled back just enough to look up at him, eyes swollen and red, concrete dust still tracked through the tear marks on his face.

He was quiet for a moment, processing it, and then something moved behind his expression— not shock exactly, more like a piece clicking into place that had been sitting wrong.

"So..." Han's voice came out small. "Does that mean you need to die too? For it to work?"

"Seems like it," Si Hon said.

Han looked at him for another second. Then— "Will you use the thing I did? The fire thing? On yourself?"

Si Hon almost smiled. "I was going to ask you the same thing, actually."

Han's face crumpled immediately. He shook his head hard, pressing back against Si Hon's side. "I can't," he said, muffled against Si Hon's shirt. "I can't do it to you, I can't—"

"Hey." Si Hon's arms tightened around him. His hand moved to the back of Han's head, the same way it had on the rooftop, steady and deliberate. "It's okay. We'll just wait then."

Han nodded without lifting his face.

And so they waited.

The fire didn't.

It moved the way fire always moved— without hurry, without negotiation, just steady expansion from every available surface outward.

The ceiling was mostly gone on the left side of the room now, orange light flooding through the gap while embers drifted downward in lazy spirals. The smoke had gotten thick enough that each breath required slightly more effort than the last.

Si Hon kept one arm around Han and used the other hand to pull his collar up over Han's nose without making it obvious that's what he was doing.

He felt it when the fire reached his legs.

Not gradually. Just— there, suddenly, heat crossing from the floor unto his shoes and then his ankles and then moving upward with the particular intensity that had nothing gradual about it.

His jaw locked. But his hand on Han's back stayed steady, pressure unchanged, rhythm unchanged, because Han was already shaking badly enough on his own and Si Hon was not going to add to it.

(It hurts.)