The street fell quiet again.
Dust drifted slowly through the air where the pavement had been cracked, bits of glass still shifting faintly across the ground. A car door hung half-torn from its hinges, metal bent inward like paper.
The girl lay where she had fallen.
She was still breathing, but it was barely noticeable unless you were looking for it.
Jin stood a few steps away from her, shoulders rising and falling as he tried to steady his breathing. The pipe in his hand was cracked along the middle now, the metal slightly warped from the last hit. His arms felt heavy, like they didn't quite belong to him anymore, and every breath pulled against his ribs in a dull, lingering ache.
Behind him, Min pushed himself up slowly from the ground.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, clearing the last trace of blood, and exhaled through his nose. His breathing wasn't as wild as before.
"…I hate that feeling," he muttered quietly.
Seul-ki sat back against the side of a car, one leg stretched out, the other bent slightly as she tried to shake some feeling back into it. Her hands still trembled faintly from the strain, but she wasn't panicking anymore. Just tired.
Joon-seok leaned against the hood of another car, head tilted back slightly, his hands resting at his sides. Small flickers of violet energy sparked once or twice at his fingertips before fading completely.
For a moment, none of them spoke.
They just stood there.
Letting it settle because all of them knew that the fight could've gone differently.
Jin looked down at the girl again then away.
Min followed his gaze. He didn't look quite as tense as before.
If anything, his expression had softened slightly.
"…The more I look at her," Min said quietly, "the more I keep thinking about what made her like that."
Seul-ki let out a slow breath.
"The system really does draw the worst out of some people," she said, her voice low but steady.
Min shook his head.
"No… the system didn't cause this."
Min shifted slightly, leaning back against the car behind him, his gaze still resting on the unconscious girl.
"I remember her," he said. "I followed her trial."
Joon-seok frowned slightly.
"Oh yeah, you mentioned you recognized her earlier, you watched her trial?"
Min nodded.
"Yeah, it was everywhere for a while." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "She killed her family, one by one, and didn't even try to run. She just… stayed there when they found her."
Seul-ki's fingers tightened slightly against the ground.
"…I remember something like that."
Min continued, his voice calm, almost too calm.
"They dug into her life after that, and everything came out." He glanced down briefly. "There wasn't anything normal about it. It was just… bad."
"They found out she had suffered abuse for most of her life. There was no food most days, and their mother was always drugged up, and her father drank a lot and took it out on her specifically." He exhaled slowly. "It didn't break her all at once, but it certainly wore her down slowly."
Jin listened quietly.
"That's the worst part," he added. "It wasn't sudden. It was slow enough that she had time to… adjust to it."
Seul-ki frowned.
"…Adjust?"
Min nodded once.
"She stopped seeing it as pain and started seeing it as love..." His eyes flicked toward the girl again. "and started seeing it as love..."
Joon-seok crossed his arms slightly.
"Love?"
"Yeah," Min said simply.
"Killing them wasn't out of anger," he continued. "To her, it was showing them love. She thought she was ending their suffering, and since life made her suffer, she thought ending theirs was the only way to stop theirs too."
Seul-ki looked away.
"…That's messed up."
Min didn't argue.
"It is," he said. "But it made sense to her."
"She was sentenced to a mental facility after that with high security."
Jin's eyes narrowed slightly.
"And she got out..."
Min gave a small nod.
" It seems the system gave her the powers she needed to escape." His voice lowered just a bit. "And if she was able to escape from a high security facility..."
"…Then I don't even want to imagine who else is."
Joon-seok let out a quiet breath through his nose.
"…Great. This is exactly what the world needed."
Seul-ki didn't respond this time.
Jin looked at the girl again.
"…So what do we do with her?"
The question came from Joon-seok, but he didn't need to ask because they were all asking themselves the same thing.
Jin didn't answer right away.
But when he did, it was simple.
"I'm not killing her."
Joon-seok looked at him first.
"…You're serious?"
Jin nodded once.
Seul-ki shifted slightly, her expression tightening.
"She tried to kill us," she said.
"I know."
"She's killed people already."
"I know."
"And she'll do it again," Joon-seok added.
Jin didn't deny it because he couldn't.
Seul-ki looked down briefly, then back up.
"If anyone deserves it…" she said slowly, "it's her."
No one disagreed with that, not even Jin.
Then Joon-seok added the part that made it worse.
"If we leave her," he said, "and she kills someone else… that's on us."
Jin's grip tightened slightly around the pipe.
Because that was true.
He didn't respond immediately.
He actually thought about it again.
The logic of the situation they were in.
This wasn't normal anymore.
The system was pushing them towards making choices like this.
And for a moment, he almost gave in.
He exhaled slowly.
"I get that."
They all looked at him.
Jin's voice didn't change.
"I do..."
"I just don't want to be the one who does it."
Jin looked at them again.
"If it makes sense," he said, "then one of you do it."
No one stepped forward, no one even looked at the girl.
Seconds passed, and nothing.
Jin nodded slightly.
"…Yeah."
He looked away.
"So it's not just me that feels that way."
That made Seul-ki shift again.
Joon-seok looked off to the side.
Min didn't say anything.
Jin continued.
"You guys don't want to cross that line either."
Jin looked back at the girl.
"She's broken and dangerous," he said.
"…But she's still a kid."
"And I don't plan on starting off this new life by killing kids," he finished.
Seul-ki let out a quiet breath.
"…So what, we just leave her?"
Jin didn't answer right away.
He looked at her again, how fragile she suddenly seemed after everything.
"…She's out cold," he said finally. "She's hurt, and after their attacks, she'll be disoriented."
Joon-seok frowned slightly.
"That doesn't mean she won't get back up."
"No," Jin said. "It doesn't."
He shifted his grip on the cracked pipe.
"But she's not walking out of this like she was before."
Seul-ki glanced at the girl.
"…And what if she does?"
Jin was about to respond when, in the corner of his eye, he saw the girl before him shift slightly.
It was small and easy to miss, but he was sure she had moved.
Jin's eyes snapped back to the girl instantly.
Her fingers moved again.
Just slightly, scraping weakly against the pavement.
Then her chest rose sharper than before, a sudden, uneven inhale that broke the stillness.
Seul-ki stiffened. "...Jin."
He was already watching.
The girl's body trembled faintly, her head turning just a fraction against the ground. Her breathing grew louder, uneven, as if she were fighting her way back up.
Her arm shook as she forced herself upright; her movements were stiff, like her body didn't fully belong to her yet. Blood clung to her face, dried in places, fresh in others. Her hair stuck to her cheeks.
She sat there for a second, head lowered and breathing unevenly.
Then a sound slipped out.
"…Why…"
Her shoulders trembled.
"…does this always happen…"
Her voice cracked, thin and fragile, like something breaking under pressure.
No one moved.
Joon-seok took a small step back without realizing it.
Min's expression tightened, his eyes fixed on her, alert now.
The girl's head lifted slowly.
Her eyes were wet with tears.
"Why am I…" she whispered, her voice rising unevenly, "… always the one who gets hurt…"
Her gaze snapped toward them.
"I'm helping people!"
The words came out louder this time, strained, almost desperate.
"I'm helping them!" she repeated, her voice shaking harder now. "I'm making it all better!"
Her breathing picked up.
Her hands clenched against the ground.
"You saw it," she said, her voice cracking as she looked between them. "You saw it. He wasn't hurting anymore."
Seul-ki took a step back, her face pale.
"…Jin-"
"I did everything right," the girl continued, her voice rising, slipping further, breaking apart. "I always do everything right, so why-"
Her hand slammed weakly against the pavement.
"Why does it always end like this?!"
That unstable edge came back, the same one from before the fight.
Jin stepped forward fast, closing the distance before she could even fully push herself up.
The girl's head snapped toward him, her expression twisting, her body trying to react but she was far too slow.
Jin's grip tightened on the pipe, and he swung with full force like he did last time.
The impact landed with a heavy, sickening crack that echoed across the empty street.
For a split second, it felt like the world paused around the sound.
Then the pipe gave.
A sharp metallic snap ran through it, the already weakened metal fracturing under the force of the blow.
The girl's body lifted off the ground from the impact, thrown backward like she weighed nothing.
She hit the pavement hard and stopped moving.
The broken half of the pipe hung loosely in Jin's hand as he stood there, chest rising and falling slowly.
Silence followed.
Seul-ki let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.
Joon-seok looked away, rubbing the back of his neck, his expression tight.
Min stayed quiet, watching her for a few seconds longer before finally looking back at Jin.
Jin lowered the broken pipe slightly.
The crack ran clean through the middle, which meant it was useless to him.
He let out a slow breath and dropped his arm to his side.
Then he looked back at her.
Then past her, down the empty street.
"…We need to find some weapons, you guys don't know how to use your skills fully yet, and I need something to replace this," he said.
His voice was steady.
Joon-seok frowned slightly. "…Yeah. No argument there."
Seul-ki shifted, still watching the girl for a moment before pulling her gaze away. "…Where are we even supposed to get weapons?"
Jin answered without thinking too long.
"Police station."
That made all of them look at him.
Joon-seok raised a brow slightly. "Do you think they would leave anything there for civilians to access easily?"
"I don't know," Jin said. "But we have to try"
He adjusted his grip on the broken pipe, then let it hang at his side.
"They'd have weapons, and even maybe defensive equipment, and who knows, maybe some officers are there."
Min nodded slowly.
"If any place tried to hold things together…"
"It'd be them," Jin finished.
Seul-ki pushed herself up a little straighter, wincing slightly but managing.
"…And if it's not?"
Jin glanced at her.
"Then we take what we can and keep moving."
Joon-seok let out a breath through his nose. "…Better than standing here."
No one disagreed.
Jin looked down one last time at the girl, then he turned away.
"Let's go."
They didn't linger or say anything else about her.
The light around them had already begun to shift, the sky dimming slightly as time passed. The long shadows stretching across the street made everything feel narrower, tighter.
Jin walked ahead, even with the broken weapon in his hand.
Behind him, the others followed.