Chapter 226: C.R.E.E.D — I
"Stop following me," I said, looking down at her. "Alright?"
She nodded. Very seriously. Eye contact and everything.
So I turned around and walked.
Five steps later I looked back.
She was there. Five steps behind me, exactly, hands at her sides, not sneaking— just walking. Openly. Like this was a completely normal thing to be doing.
"...You’re still following me."
"I am walking."
"Behind me."
"Yes."
"I told you to stop."
"I stopped following you," she said. "Now I am walking. Behind you. These are different things."
I stared at her. She stared back, cowlick pointing sideways, completely committed. I ran through several possible responses and found none of them useful.
I sighed. Deeply. From somewhere low. "Fine. Follow me if you can."
I closed my eyes and let the skill pull me— 7 floors up in a blink, rooftop, the camp spreading below me and reappeared behind Jisoo, who was still watching the grounds below with her arms crossed.
"She’s so cute," Jisoo said, without turning around.
"Yeah."
We watched the camp for another few minutes. Then I noticed— I couldn’t find the kid anywhere below.
No cowlick in sight, no oversized hoodie, no small figure nodding at thing, no hyper kid tripping at anything. I scanned the courtyard, the alleys, the benches.
Then the door behind us opened.
Click.
She came through, then slip and drop face-first flat unto the rooftop concrete, cheek against the ground, and said in a completely destroyed voice: "Heh. I just... I wanted air. I’m not following you." Completely exhausted.
She did not move from the ground.
Jisoo made a sound I’d never heard from her before and lunged— full speed, dropping beside the kid and pulling her up and pressing kisses against her cheeks before anyone had agreed to this happening.
The kid went stiff for exactly one second. Then she relaxed, let it happen, and smiled with the patient grace of someone accepting a toll.
Ten minutes later Jisoo had decided this was her child now.
I watched this happen without comment.
The kid— whose name turned out to be Mio because she actually doesn’t even have name— looked between us after the pampering had finished and said, with a slight squint: "Why are you watching from up here anyway? It’s hard. You should just come down and look around."
I looked at Jisoo. Jisoo looked at me.
"She has a point," Jisoo said.
"She thinks she has a point," I said.
Jisoo hissed at me, the cute jisoo... rebelling to me now!?
Mio had already started toward the door. I sigh and just nodded.
We followed. Not because she was useful. Because she believed she was useful, which turned out to be a surprisingly effective motivator.
The camp was different at ground level, though, I already knew it... but it was louder, more specific, the details that had been too #SMALLl to catch from the rooftop IS NOW suddenly everywhere.... I’m lying... we’re observing at the rooftop because we have a skill called [focus eyes] that’s the reason we’re there... but...
"Sigh..."
Mio walked slightly ahead of us with the authority of someone who had lived here long enough to have opinions about everything, which she did, and which she shared continuously.
She stopped in front of a man repairing a section of outer wall and pointed. "This uncle is nice."
The man looked up, noticed her, and waved.
"...After 5PM he’s mean."
The man dramatically slowly lowered his hand.... "ಠ_ಠ..."
"What happens at five?" I asked.
"He becomes hungry."
I nodded slowly.
But, it was weird... one time we noticed 5 well built men walking past us and Shiori just crouched down and held a hand to her head.
"You okay?" Jisoo asked.
Then, when the men disappeared she stood up proudly and took a deep breath and nodded. "Yep, just checking the ground... okay! Continue!"
That was weird and suspicious...
She then steered us around a corridor between two buildings, one hand raised like a tour guide redirecting traffic. "Don’t go there."
"Why?"
"The toilet smells."
"...Okay... yea... wow ಠ,_｣ಠ."
"Very dangerous," she added, with complete seriousness.
But I was watching the rest of it while she talked. Not the things she pointed at— the things she didn’t.
The guard at the watchtower rotating out with a jaw that sat too tight for end-of-shift tiredness.
2 people near the food building talking in the specific low way of an argument that didn’t want to be overheard, hands moving fast, eyes checking around them.
A section of the outer wall with fresh BIG clawmarks raked through the metal sheeting— three parallel gouges, deep, recent enough that the edges hadn’t started to rust yet.
The supply building garage door was open at a different angle than this earlier morning. Less stock visible inside. Not dramatically less— just enough that it felt slightly off from what Jisoo had estimated from the roof.
I squinted at it and... looked away, I’ll check that later and I kept walking. Kept watching Mio explain that a certain grandma gave extra rice if you helped carry things but you couldn’t ask for it directly, you had to just start carrying things and wait... or else she’ll become suspicious of you — Mio
"Smart system," Jisoo said, genuinely.
"I know," Mio agreed. "I made it."
We know....
Then I looked at Jisoo beside me with a sparkling look... nevermind, I think "I" know.
Mio then walked us past the children’s area, where a group of kids were running a game that had unclear rules and high emotional stakes, past the medic station where someone sat getting their forearm wrapped while looking deeply unbothered by the process, past a corner where 2 older men were playing cards with the focused silence of people who had decided the apocalypse could wait 20 minutes.
I checked the barricade sections as we passed each one.
Fresh repair work on the northwest corner— new metal over old, bolted fast, recently done. Though, it feels like the repair is so aggressive that it feels like they’re... running out of time. Because that wall on that side was thicker than the rest by two additional layers.
Something had hit this camp. Not long ago. And they’d fixed it and kept going and nobody was talking about it in a way I could easily hear.
Mio stopped in front of a bench near the center courtyard and sat down, gesturing at the space around us with the sweep of someone concluding a presentation.
"And this is where I eat my bread," she said. "The end."
I sat beside her. She immediately leaned against my arm.
"Good tour," Jisoo said, sitting on her other side.
Mio nodded to herself, once, satisfied.
I looked at the fresh claw marks on the wall across the courtyard, just visible from here if you knew to look for them.
Looked at the guard rotation pattern, off by about 15 minutes from what I’d tracked on the roof.
Looked at the way people moved around the northwest corner without looking at it directly, the specific habit of people who had agreed without speaking to not look at a thing that scared them.
"Hey, Mio," I said.
"Hm?"
"Has anything happened to the camp recently?"
She was quiet for exactly one second longer than a kid her age would be if the answer was no.
Then she looked up at me and nodded, once, and didn’t say anything else.
I nodded back.
We sat there in the middle of the camp while the cooking fires sent their thin smoke up into the afternoon air, and Jisoo pressed her cheek against Mio’s hair, and I watched the northwest wall and thought about claw marks and supply counts and the specific tired look of people who were still going because stopping wasn’t available.
Then I looked back to Mio again.
"Why don’t you have a name by the way?"
She tilts her head.
"...I don’t know."
"My mom calls me ’Hey.’"
"My dad calls me ’Brat.’"
"I think my name is probably ’Oi. That’s why... why not just name myself Mio... take some random letter which is M, then add Oi = Moi, but that sounds so bad so it turned into Mio!"
"..."
She the smiled. "Okay I lied, I actually just made that up earlier at the rooftop, I don’t wanna get called, hey, you, little kid, bean, mouse or something."
And... I just let that sink in.