I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

(Shiori — VI)

I waited.

That was the [plan.] Wait until Hon and Jisoo were sure I was sleeping, then wait a little longer, because I was smart and smart people knew that sure and actually sure were different things.

I kept my breathing slow and my eyes closed and my face in the expression of someone who had been asleep for a long time and wasn’t planning on changing that.

Minutes passed. Then more of them.

Then I felt it— being lifted, carefully, and set down on the couch cushions. A hand patted my head once. Soft. The Hon kind, which felt like something settling rather than just landing.

I did not move.

I did not cry, either, even though the [crying] was right there, waiting at the back of my throat. I was strong and emotionless. Yep, yep. URRR!!!!

The door opened.

The door closed.

I was up before the sound finished.

Bag first— I yanked it open and did the inventory fast. Water, bread, tuna cans, scissors, extra slippers.

I nodded.

Then I looked at my jacket, thought about how it would catch on things in the dark— a burden... and threw it on the bed.

Then I picked it back up because it was cold. Then I put it back down because I needed to be fast. I nodded to this decision.

I opened the front door, went down the stairs, and saw them immediately— Hon and Jisoo, two shapes moving across the courtyard toward the north wall.

Why the north wall.

I tapped my chin about this while running in the opposite direction of every lamp.

Hiding spots on the way: one garbage can, two concrete barriers, the side of a truck that smelled like something I didn’t want to think about.... Probably rotting foods. Eih... did I just think about it?

I dismissed that.

I made it to the wall just in time to watch Hon crouch slightly, Jisoo climb onto his back, and then—

They went over.

Just like that. Over the fence and [gone,] swallowed by the dark treeline on the other side before I could do anything except [stand there] holding the chain-link with both hands and stare at where they’d been.

I stood there for a moment.

Wait..... How am I supposed to get over there. How am I supposed to— if I were a good girl would they have [stayed?] Would they have taken me? If I were better at being good would I not be standing here watching them disappear into a forest full of things that eat people?

Then I shook my head, which I did to myself, and looked along the fence line.

The hole was near the corner. Small— small enough that I had to take the bag off and push it through first, then flatten myself and pull with both hands, the chain-link catching my hoodie sleeve before letting go. I scraped my knee on something. But I didn’t stop.

I was through.

The forest was in front of me. Dark between the trees, but I luckily can still see faintly— things moving in the leaves overhead, something calling far away, the specific smell of soil and growing things that had been left alone long enough to become something else entirely.

I could see Hon and Jisoo maybe forty meters ahead, moving between the trunks, and I ran after them with my bag against my chest and wiped my face with my sleeve and told myself very firmly that I was not crying, I was just sweating from my eyes, which happened sometimes.

I was bad at following people quietly. I knew this. I had known this since the garbage can incident, which I preferred not to think about.

So I went slower instead, which helped, and I stepped on a stick anyway, which did not help, and I froze with one foot in the air and held my breath for 10 full seconds while Hon and Jisoo looked back.

Then they continued.

I exhaled.

We moved like that for a while— them walking, me behind, stop-start-freeze-continue, one stick or step... at a time. At some point I found the insect repellent in my bag and rubbed it on my arms and legs because I kept getting bit and it was honestly more annoying than the monsters.

I nodded.

The jungle got denser as we went deeper. The trees stopped being trees from the camp and started being something else— taller, the trunks wider than my arm span... no actually it’s bigger than me! roots pushing up through the ground in long curved ridges I had to climb over.

Vines thick as ropes hung between branches and dragged against my hair. The canopy above blocked the moon almost completely, leaving only small patches of sky visible between the leaves.

Things moved up there that I made a decision not to look at directly.

Then the trees thinned.

And I stopped.

Ahead of me, Hon and Jisoo stood at the edge of something that didn’t make sense.

The forest ended in a clean line— too clean, like it had decided not to cross, and past that line the city resumed, except not any city I recognized.

The buildings were still there, streets were still there, but the color had gone out of all of it. Not dark the way nighttime was dark. Black, the specific heavy kind that felt like it was sitting on the surfaces rather than just covering them.

The building walls had gone the color of old charcoal. The pavement, the broken glass, the tipped cars— all of it leached to the same flat nothing.

And the trees that had pushed into this section were rotting, visibly, the bark peeling back from wood that was black underneath, and yet the branches kept growing, kept reaching, the rot and the growth happening at the same time in the same tree.

Some buildings were crumbling, chunks of wall dissolving into dark dust at the base, and then regenerating, new dark concrete appearing to replace what had fallen, over and over, the whole section rebuilding and collapsing in a slow continuous cycle.

I crouched at the treeline and watched Hon and Jisoo stand at the border of it.

Hon stepped first.

Then a light appeared.

Small, white, sparkling— like someone had struck a flint right at the side of Hon’s neck, a tiny cold flash. It lasted less than a second. Hon’s hand was already moving, knife out, and he threw himself sideways as something hit the space he’d just been in.

I pressed closer to the ground.

Then something came out of the dark section like she’d always been there and had just decided to be visible. Pale— the specific white of something that had never seen sun, almost luminescent against the black city behind her.

Black dress, or something that looked like a dress, the edges of it moving like it wasn’t entirely solid. No face I could make out clearly from here, just the impression of features, the suggestion of eyes, but she looks beautiful for no reason.

She moved fast— not running, more like the space between here and there kept collapsing in her favor, appearing in one spot and then another without the in-between.

And every time she was about to move, every time she was about to hit— the white light appeared first. Just for a second. Just long enough.

Hon was using it.

I could see him tracking the flashes, adjusting before they completed, the knife deflecting something I couldn’t fully see, his body finding angles that shouldn’t have been available.

He teleported— there, then there, then behind her, and she always disappeared and reappeared 12 feet to the left before he could hit her, and he was already gone again, Hon was teleporting like crazy, I know powers are real because of them, but Hon is super strong, he’s teleporting somewhere randomly but then it isn’t because the Woman would appear where he teleports too.

He ran at a wall.

Not toward a wall— at it, and then up it, both feet hitting the surface and pushing off with everything he had, launching himself at an angle that sent him over her head, knife tracking down, and she dissolved sideways at the last second and he hit the ground rolling and came up already moving.

I had my fists pressed against my mouth and was breathing through my nose very carefully.

Jisoo stood back from all of it. She wasn’t running, wasn’t dodging. Both hands raised, slightly out from her sides, head tilted like she was listening for something.

That was all.

She just stood there with her hands up while Hon did everything else... she’s kind of useless...

Well, I didn’t know what that meant. I ignored it as Jisoo Being Weird And Probably Important About It, which was something I thought just for her.

The pale woman appeared directly in front of Hon and the white flash came fast— too fast— and Hon got the knife up but the impact sent him backward, skidding across the dark pavement, and he hit the wall on the other side hard enough that I heard it from here.

He was up before I’d finished processing it, already moving, but something was different in the way he was holding his shoulder.

I gripped the strap of my bag.

He ran back up the wall— same motion, cleaner this time, using the momentum to push himself higher, and the knife came down in a long arc and grazed her.

Her neck.

Something dark came out of it that wasn’t quite blood. She made a sound that went through the trees and through my chest and through every part of me that remembered sounds like that from the night the camp got hit.

She screamed.

Then she disappeared.

Then she reappeared directly above, both arms raised, and in her palms— black. Solid, dense, gathering like liquid that couldn’t figure out what shape it wanted to be, and then it decided, and the shape it decided on was THORNS.

That was when I heard the thing behind me.

Wet. Close. The specific sound of something that breathed wrong.

I turned without deciding to, my whole body just turning, and there was a face 3 feet from mine that had once been a person’s face and was now mostly mushrooms, pale growths sprouting from the temple and jaw, mouth open, moving toward me with the patient steady energy of something that didn’t need to hurry.

The jumpscare came from somewhere in my chest and went everywhere else.

I screamed. Or not a scream— something smaller, a cut-off noise, but my legs pushed back without asking me first and I went backward and my foot crossed the line.

The dark section.

The ground under my foot was cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature...

The pale woman stopped mid-air.

Jisoo’s hands came down.

The white flash came— violent, immediate— and Hon was already moving, already there, crossing the distance in the blink with his teleport, and the knife caught the side of her neck in the same place it had grazed before.

Deeper this time. She screamed again, and this time the sound had something desperate underneath it.

Then she raised her arms.

Then Infront "WHAT THE FUCK IS SHE DOING HERE—" Jisoo’s voice.

Hon had already turned. Already moving toward me. He crossed out of the dark section and his hands found my arms and pulled me back toward the treeline, and I grabbed his jacket because it was there and because everything was happening too fast for anything else.

"Why are you here, what are you— Shiori—"

"I followed you," I said. My voice came out smaller than I meant. "I told you I would."

"You did NOT tell u—"

The thorns came anyway.

They went through Hon’s chest and came out the other side.

I felt the sound of it before I understood what had happened— the impact, the way he went still suddenly, and then his weight shifted and I was holding him without knowing when I’d started.

He came down slowly, and I went down with him because letting go wasn’t something I was able to do, and then we were on the ground at the treeline with his head in my lap and his breathing doing something wrong and the moon coming through the canopy in small patches that moved across his face.

Jisoo—

I looked.

She was there, head gone, standing then she went limp and fell toward me.

I looked up, the pale woman was gone. The dark section sat there, rebuilding and crumbling in its slow cycle, indifferent to everything.

Hon’s eyes were open. He looked up at the canopy for a moment. Then at me.

"Ah," he said, very quietly. "Next try, I guess."

I pressed my hands down. I didn’t know where. Just pressed. "Hon—"

"Hey." His voice was getting quieter but his expression wasn’t scared. Just tired in the way I’d seen him tired before, the kind that knew something I didn’t. "It’s okay. This isn’t— sigh, yea, atleast you’re alive, ರ⁠_⁠ರ."

Everything [disappeared.]

***

I squinted as I sat at the dining table.

I sigh. Mom and Dad were arguing... again...

Same argument, same voices, the words overlapping the way they always did when neither of them was actually listening to the other one.... Can’t they just talk normally? Well, I cant say that to them or else I’ll get slap, shout, or worse... they’ll make me sleep outside... hah...

The food was in front of me, still warm. The chair was the right chair. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be.

I sat there and thought: DEJA VU...? ಠ⁠ᴥ⁠ಠ

Then, without deciding to, I was crying.

The one that came from somewhere lower than the throat, and Mom stopped mid-sentence and Dad stopped too and they both looked at me, dad sigh, mom frowned and they continued arguing even louder.

Then two words came out of my Mouth.

"Jisoo," I said. "Hon."

I pressed both hands over my face.

[I knew them.]

[I was sure of it.]

[I just didn’t know how.]