Then slowly— very slowly— looked up at Han.
Si Hon and Han stared at each other.
Neither of them moved for a moment.
The fire on the far wall had spread to the ceiling now, crawling outward across the tiles in uneven orange lines while smoke thickened steadily around them, and somewhere underneath all of that noise Si Hon kept glancing downward at Jisoo's body beneath him— at the stillness of her, at the specific quality of not moving that was different from sleeping, different from unconscious, just completely and finally still.
He pressed two fingers against her wrist anyway. Then her neck. Nothing. He already knew there would be nothing.
He checked anyway.
The regression hadn't come.
He didn't know what to do with that.
The anger arrived first, the way it always did when his brain hit something it couldn't process— hot and directionless, with nowhere to go and nothing useful to do with itself.
