Chapter 225: observation!!!
(Kim Si-Hon — days ago part2)
I looked down at the camp from the rooftop and took stock of it properly for the first time.
Not large— actually, decent was the right word. A cluster of apartment buildings with welded metal sheets bolted across the lower windows, watchtowers at the corners built from whatever materials had been close enough to drag up, cooking fires sending thin smoke into the morning air in three separate spots.
The kind of setup that had started desperate and gotten organized over time, each addition built on top of the last one like visible proof that the people here had kept making decisions instead of stopping.
People. Actual living ones, moving around with purpose.
"...Alive," I said.
Jisoo nodded beside me. "They’ve been here a while."
I activated Focus Eye and let the passive do its work, pulling all the detail in close.
People carrying water from a cracked stretch of road where a river now rans... Kids chasing each other between buildings. An old man crouched by a barricade section with a hammer, fixing something that didn’t look broken yet but probably would be soon... A woman washing clothes in a bucket, setting them on a line strung between two windows.
Then— a kid. Dragging a basket nearly as wide as she was tall, following two adults across the courtyard with the focused energy of someone who had decided she was going to carry her share and was not going to admit it was heavy.
Short black hair, messy, with one cowlick that refused to cooperate. Oversized hoodie, sleeves past her hands. Every few steps she paused, mid-stride, she nodded to herself.
At nothing.
For no reason.
Then continued walking.
"...What is she nodding at," I said.
"Who?" Jisoo leaned forward.
I pointed. "That one."
Jisoo watched her do it again— stop, nod, walk. "...No idea."
The kid made it halfway across the courtyard before she stopped entirely. Looked around. Then looked directly up at our rooftop, which shouldn’t have been possible from that angle, and squinted.
Then her mouth opened.
Then she waved.
Casual. Like she’d spotted a neighbor.
I raised my hand slowly.
She smiled, nodded once— to herself, presumably... and kept walking like none of it had happened.
"What was that?" Jisoo asked.
"Nothing."
I put Jisoo down and sat on the concrete barrier, watching. "Let’s just observe for now. Could be cannibals."
"...Ah. Okay."
"I’m joking."
"...I know."
"You don’t. Just sit beside me."
She sat.
The day moved at its own pace below us, and I watched it in pieces.
kids playing tag between the cooking fires.
• A group of hunters coming in through the east entrance, carrying something heavy between them.
Guard rotation at the watchtower, two people swapping out with the tired expression of people who’d done it enough times that it didn’t need words anymore.
Someone at a makeshift stove.
Two people patching a section of the outer wall with scrap metal and what looked like concrete mix.
Jisoo already saw all of that. "Population around eighty. Two entrances— bad for defense if anything hits both at once. Walls are weak at the northwest corner."
She pointed at the large building with the garage door open, revealing stacked boxes behind it. "Food supply is actually decent though. More than I expected."
"Leadership looks unstable," I said.
"How do you know?"
"I don’t. I’m larping."
"...Hon..."
Then I spotted the kid again, near the far end of the courtyard, and— she was getting bullied... actually, her supplies is bullying her.
Supplies scattered around her, a bowl tipped over, something that had been soup now spreading across the cracked pavement.
She sat in the middle of it and frowned at the mess with the expression of someone doing serious emotional processing, then looked up and raised both arms above her head and wiggled them side to side in the specific way of a child who wanted help and was summoning it through arm movement alone.
Or maybe... she’s just flailing around... tweaking.
People kept walking.
Nobody stopped.
"ಠ_ಠ"
Then I jumped.
Jisoo’s voice came up from behind me— "Hon? W-wait, where are you—" and then I closed my eyes and the skill pulled me down, soft thud, ground level, the camp suddenly full-size around me instead of a map below.
A few nearby grandmothers looked at me. A kid stared. And I gave them an awkward half-jog toward the girl still sitting in the spilled soup, crouched beside her, and looked at the mess. "Hey. You good?"
She stopped flailing around. Looked up at me slowly, squinting at my face like she was running a scan. "No. My food disappeared. It spilled."
I helped her up, reached into my jacket pocket, and pulled out a soda and two bread rolls I’d been carrying since the last 8 buildings ago. Held them out. "Here."
She took them carefully, both hands. "Ah... woah, thank you, strange Ahjussi." Then, quieter, mostly to herself but not quiet enough: "We keep getting new people. But this new Ahjussi is kind and handsome."
She nodded to herself, once, firmly. "Yep, yep..."
I patted her head and walked back into the nearest building entrance, used the skill, and reappeared behind Jisoo on the rooftop.
She was startled hard. "That’s a cheat skill."
"I know."
"What a kind young man," she added, in a tone that was definitely not teasing. "Hehe."
"I know."
"ಠ_ಠ..."
"I k—"
"Stop Hon."
I sat back down instead. Below, the kid had settled onto a bench and was eating one of the bread rolls, but she’d set the second one aside carefully and hadn’t touched it.
Saving it for something, or someone probably. She spotted the rooftop again, looked up, and waved.
"Hon," Jisoo said.
"Hm."
"She waved at you again."
"Yeah."
"I think she likes you."
"..."
"I think she’s cute."
"..."
"I think you’re cute."
"..."
"ಠ_ಠ..."
The observation continued. And somewhere in the middle of it I noticed— she was following us. Not close, not obvious, but consistent.
Every rooftop we shifted to, she appeared somewhere below.
I’d catch her in the Focus Eye before Jisoo said anything— crouched behind a garbage can in an alley, peering between two stacked crates. And when we’re at stairs— she’s tucked at the bottom of a stairwell with her knees up and her head barely visible above the step.
I changed routes deliberately. Left, then right, then back, then through a longer path that made no sense logistically.
But she followed every single one.
"That kid," Jisoo said finally.
"Yeah."
"She’s following us."
"Yeah."
Eventually I stopped fighting it.
And found ourselves back to the original rooftop and she took up position below, facing the wrong direction because she’d lost track of which side we’d come from.
I took that chance. I stepped at the concrete barrier and let myself fall down, closed my eyes, and let the skill pull me down— seven floors in a blink, soft landing, ground level, behind her...
And I walked to her quietly.
My shadow loomed over her.
And she noticed, then a tiny, barely-audible sound: "...Oops."
She turned around in slow motion. Looked up at me from approximately knee height. Her expression moved through several stages— recognition, calculation, grief, confused, acceptance.
"...Ah," she said. "I’ve been discovered by the Ahjussi."
I looked down at her.
She looked up at me.
"You’ve been following us for 4 hours..." I said.
She nodded to herself. "...I was not."
"You were behind a garbage can."
"...I was checking the garbage."
"There was nothing in it."
"...I was checking," she said firmly, "if there was nothing in it."
"You were at the crates."
"Finding my bunny... heh."
"What about the Stairs?"
"Hm...it was because, I found a coin there! Yep yep."
I stared at her.
She stared back, completely committed to this version of events.