I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Going West

"Wait," I said, mid-stride. "Where’s West."

Jisoo looked at me. Then softly punched my shoulder. "It’s that way." She pointed right. "...Why?"

I looked where she pointed. Then at where we’d been walking. Then back at the direction she’d pointed again, and I realized slowly. "So we’re currently going... South."

She nodded.

"We’ve been going south this whole time."

She nodded again, patient about it.

"Okay." I turned a full ninety degrees on the spot. "CHANGE OF DIRECTION. WE’RE GOING WEST."

"Kay!! Hon Hon!!" She fell into step beside me without any further comment, which I appreciated, because I didn’t have a great explanation for how long we’d been walking the wrong way.

The city moved around us the way it always did— the overgrown version of itself, vines and roots reclaiming anything that had stopped moving long enough to be reclaimed.

The strange thing was the quiet. After the north, after everything the north had thrown at us, I kept expecting something to show up.

Something to require handling.

Every corner we turned I found myself scanning for movement, for a sound of things approaching, and finding nothing.

Kust empty streets, broken pavement, buildings slowly being swallowed by growth. It felt wrong in the way that peace felt wrong after too long spent in the other thing.... Ah, I can’t even understand what I’m saying. ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ I guess being stress takes tolls on me.

Jisoo walked beside me and cried occasionally.

Not dramatically— just periodically, here and there crying once in a while.

Every hour or so she’d say Shiori under her breath, quiet and cracked on the second syllable, and I’d reach over and pat her back without stopping walking, and she’d take a breath and keep going. We didn’t talk about it. It was enough to just keep walking and let the patting mean what it meant.

This went on until night arrived.

***

The snap was audible even before she spoke.

"Ay, fucker." Flat. Sharp. And familiar.... "Who’s the best Jisoo again?"

I had known this was coming and had still not prepared for it adequately.

What followed, I will not describe in detail. I will say that the city was empty enough that nobody witnessed it, which was a mercy, and that Night Jisoo expressed her feelings on the matter with a thoroughness that I respected even while objecting to it.... Slow? It means I got beat up again... again... please someone save me from this abusive companion of mine.

We kept the pace after that.

Two full days of it— walking through mornings, taking to rooftops when night fell and the visibility dropped and the things moving in the dark got more specific about their interest.

The city shifted as we went west, subtle changes building slowly on each other: vines thicker at the building bases, standing water deeper in the low points of the streets, a general dampness to the air that hadn’t been there before.

Something about the west was damn, here and there it was water everywhere... even before we reached whatever the water was coming from.

The white creatures found us on the second night.

Four of them, the long-limbed one, the ones that moved between visible and not-visible in ways that made tracking them genuinely exhausting + they eat zombies for fun.

They were fast. Genuinely, specifically, uncomfortably fast. I had Jisoo on my back within the first 10 seconds and ran for approximately 5 hours, which is not something I recommend as a recreational activity or any other kind.

Pulse Step... somehow I can use it, maybe because it’s a passive, long strides, rooftop to rooftop when the streets got complicated, ground level when the rooftops ran out, no particular plan beyond keep moving and don’t let them get close enough to do the thing they were trying to do.

Eventually they stopped following, or lost interest, or found something else worth their time. I set Jisoo down on a rooftop, sat next to her, and we both looked at the sky for a while without speaking.

"5 hours," I said.

"Mm," she said.

"Going to sleep now."

"Mm," she said.

We slept....

***

Sunlight hit us the next morning warm and clear, and we were standing in the middle of a road, and a few steps ahead of us— rain.

Not a drizzle. A proper curtain of it, coming down steady and dense, the sound of it loud from where we stood on the dry side.

The smell hit first— wet pavement, wet earth, the cold-clean scent of active rain. And the border between the dry and the wet was exact. Not gradual. Not misty at the edges. Just a hard line where the rain started and the dry stopped, like the weather had been installed rather than arrived.

Jisoo stared at it. Then at the dry ground under her feet. Then at the rain again. "...Why is it raining there and not here... hon hon?"

I didn’t have an answer. So I did what I always did when I needed to test something without committing my whole body to it first. I walked to the border and held my hand out past the line.

Rain landed on my palm immediately. Cold and real, coming down at full weight, water running fast down my wrist and dripping off my elbow onto the perfectly dry pavement below.

I held it there for a moment— one hand in rain, the rest of me dry— then pulled it back.

Dry side. Dry again, instantly.

Jisoo looked at my hand. Then at the border. "...It’s just a hard line."

"Yep."

"Between rain and not-rain."

"Yep."

"Wait why do you keep saying Yep ( •̀⤙•́ )?"

"Yep...?"

She pouted and glared at me.

Then she looked at the rain part for another second. Then I took her hand and stepped through.

She squeaked. The sound came out involuntarily, the way sounds did when cold water arrived faster than the body had prepared for, and then she turned and looked at me with an expression that was working very hard on betrayal. "Hon!! Meany!! Now we’re both soaked!!"

"Sorry." I was not very sorry. "We had to go forward."

She wrung the front of her jacket once, looked at the rain coming down on both of us and sighed. "Fine. Forward."

I turned and looked back at the border from the inside.

Even cleaner from this angle— the rain stopped in a perfect vertical line, the dry pavement on the far side untouched, not a single drop crossing over.

I looked up.

Dark clouds, heavy, rotating slowly above the region in a pattern that was clearly not natural weather behavior. The kind of formation that was generating rain on purpose rather than by accident, cycling continuously over the same space, infinite supply, no sign of clearing.

"Huh," I said. "When we were on the crane before, this section just looked dark from a distance. Must be on a time-stamp... yea, rain will cleared once in a while probably..."

Jisoo tilted her head at me. "...What crane?"

I looked at her.

She looked back with the politely curious face of someone who had not been present for the crane arc because she had not been the Jisoo who existed during the crane arc.

"ಠ_ಠ, Right. Forgot it wasn’t you."

"(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و That’s fine!!" She said cheerfully, already looking at the rain-soaked street ahead, already scanning, already being Morning Jisoo about all of it with complete commitment. "So! Where do we go?"

I held my hand out into the rain one more time.... Well, I don’t know why... I’m currently soaked head to toe and I’m helding my hands out... maybe for Aura... I sigh hard. Just Watched the water hit my palm and run down between my fingers.

"Forward," I said. Already cringing at what I’m thinking of.