9:42 AM. Day 10.
Ji-yoo was restless.
Two and a half hours since she'd woken up. Two and a half hours of Alessia poking her with instruments, checking her reflexes, shining lights in her eyes, and telling her not to move. Two and a half hours of being treated like a patient.
Ji-yoo hated being a patient.
She was sitting up now. Propped against the wall beside Jae-min, wrapped in a blanket, a bottle of water in her hands. Her body still ached. Her limbs still felt like they were filled with wet sand. But her mind was racing. The two sets of memories kept colliding — overlapping, merging, separating — and every time they did, a new fragment surfaced. A face. A location. A kill.
And then there was the weight problem.
Not her body weight. The other kind. The kind that lived in her chest and pulled at the air around her.
Gravity.
She could feel it. Constant. Pulsing. Like a second heartbeat that pressed against everything in the room. The water in her bottle tilted. The blanket on her lap shifted. The cot creaked faintly, as if something invisible was pressing down on it.
She was doing it. Unconsciously. Her body was radiating gravitational force like a leaky faucet.
Alessia noticed. She'd been noticing for the past hour. The medical instruments on the shelf were vibrating at a low frequency. The IV stand was bending — slowly, almost imperceptibly — toward Ji-yoo's body. The pills on the counter had stopped rolling and were sitting in a neat little cluster directly in her gravitational pull.
"Your gravity is... leaking," Alessia said carefully. She was sitting on a chair across from Ji-yoo, clipboard in hand. Doctor face on. "I need you to try to control it."
Ji-yoo stared at her.
"I just woke up from a coma. Give me a break, doc."
"I'm not saying suppress it. I'm saying learn to manage it before you accidentally crush the bunker."
Ji-yoo looked at the pills on the counter. Looked at the bending IV stand. Looked at the water in her bottle, which was now visibly tilting toward the left side of the container.
"Huh." She concentrated. Frowned. The gravity pulsed — once, hard — and the pills scattered across the counter, the IV stand snapped back upright, and the water in her bottle sloshed violently against the side.
"Better," Alessia said.
"That was worse."
"Progress is progress."
Ji-yoo grumbled. Took a sip of water. The gravity settled back into its low, constant hum. She could feel it pulling on Jae-min beside her. On Uncle Rico by the monitors. On Jennifer on the far cot. On Yue by the window. Every person in the room was within her gravitational field, and she could sense all of them. Their mass. Their distance. The subtle shifts in their bodies when they breathed.
It was overwhelming. It was beautiful.
It was not enough.
Because something was missing.
Ji-yoo looked around the room. Scanned it again — the same tactical sweep she'd done when she first woke up. The cots. The monitors. The kitchen. The supply shelf. The weapons rack.
The weapons rack.
She stared at it.
Uncle Rico's rifle. Jae-min's Surgeon Scalpel. The Glock 19s. The Benelli M4. A few combat knives.
No scythe.
No massive reaper scythe with a blade that could cleave through reinforced steel like butter.
No Soulcleaver.
Ji-yoo's mouth opened.
Then closed.
Then opened again.
"Kuya."
Jae-min looked up from the radio he'd been fiddling with. "What?"
"I need my scythe."
Silence.
"Your what?"
"My scythe." Ji-yoo said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Soulcleaver. My massive reaper scythe. Where is it?"
Jae-min blinked.
The room went quiet. Even the generator seemed to lower its hum, as if it was leaning in to listen.
"I don't..." Jae-min paused. Rubbed his eyes. "Ji-yoo, you don't have a scythe."
"I literally do. I've had it for years. It's a massive reaper scythe. Eight feet tall. The blade is curved and black and it weighs about forty kilograms but it feels like nothing when I'm holding it because gravity." She made a grabbing motion with her hands. "Soulcleaver. I named it myself. Where is it?"
"You named a scythe."
"With love and care, yes." Ji-yoo's face was completely serious. "Kuya, I need it. I feel naked without it. Not literally naked, but — you know what I mean. It's like walking outside without shoes. It's like being a guitarist without a guitar. It's wrong."
Jae-min stared at her.
Then he looked at Uncle Rico.
Uncle Rico, who had been watching this exchange with the expression of a man trying very hard not to laugh, slowly shook his head. He had no idea what she was talking about either.
"The scythe doesn't exist in this timeline," Jae-min said carefully. "You haven't forged it yet. You haven't — Ji-yoo, none of that has happened here."
The silence that followed was deafening.
Ji-yoo's face went through several stages. Confusion. Realization. Disbelief. And then something that looked like genuine, heartfelt devastation.
"What."
"It doesn't exist yet. In this timeline, you just woke up from a coma with gravity powers. You haven't built Soulcleaver. You haven't —"
"What do you mean it doesn't exist yet." Her voice was rising. The gravity in the room spiked — the water bottles trembled, the monitor screens flickered, the blanket on her lap pressed down hard against her legs. "Kuya. Kuya, no. That's not — that can't be right. Soulcleaver is — it's my weapon. It's me. It's an extension of my arm. I've killed — I've killed so many things with that scythe, Kuya. How can it just not exist?"
"Because this isn't the other timeline."
"I know that! But —" She grabbed Jae-min's arm. Her fingers were shaking. Not from weakness. From frustration. "I can feel it, Kuya. In my hands. The weight. The grip. The way the blade hums when I swing it. I can feel it in my muscles. In my bones. It's in my body memory. How can something that's in my body not exist?"
Jae-min didn't have an answer for that.
Neither did anyone else.
Ji-yoo released his arm. Sat back. Her jaw was tight. Her eyes were wet — not from sadness this time, but from the sheer injustice of a universe that would give her the memories of a weapon but not the weapon itself.
"This is the worst day of my life," she announced.
"You literally died twice," Jennifer muttered from her cot.
"Those were the second and third worst days. This one takes the top spot." Ji-yoo pulled her knees up to her chest. Wrapped the blanket around herself. The gravity around her pulsed — rhythmic, almost like a heartbeat, but angrier. "I need my scythe."
"Ji-yoo—"
"I need Soulcleaver."
"Ji-yoo, listen to me—"
"You don't understand." She looked at him. Her black eyes were hard but underneath them was a vulnerability that Jae-min recognized. It was the same look she got when she was eight years old and their mother wouldn't let her bring her guitar to school. "I can feel what I'm supposed to be, Kuya. I can feel it in every cell of my body. I'm not just a girl with gravity powers. I'm a reaper. I'm the Phantom Assassin. And a reaper without her scythe is just a ghost. I'm not ready to be a ghost."
The room was quiet.
Uncle Rico broke it. He cleared his throat. Shifted in his seat. His eyes were red but his voice was steady.
"Kid," he said. "If you need a weapon, I've got a rack full of them."
Ji-yoo turned her head. Looked at the weapons rack. Looked at Uncle Rico's rifle. Looked at the combat knives.
"No offense, Uncle." Her voice was flat. "But those are toothpicks."
Uncle Rico's eyebrow twitched.
"My rifle has killed more things than you can count."
"Respectfully, no it hasn't." Ji-yoo tilted her head. "I've killed things that eat things that eat things that would eat your rifle. I need Soulcleaver."
"You need to eat something first," Alessia interjected. Firm. Doctor voice. The one that didn't take arguments. "You've been unconscious for seven days. Your body is running on nothing. You can't forge a legendary weapon on an empty stomach."
Ji-yoo opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"...Can I forge a legendary weapon on a half-empty stomach?"
"No."
"What about a quarter-empty stomach?"
"Ji-yoo."
"Ugh." She slumped against the wall. The gravity pulse slowed. The water bottles settled. "Fine. But I'm naming the first thing I forge Soulcleaver. I don't care what it is. A pipe. A hammer. A modified combat knife. It doesn't matter. I'm calling it Soulcleaver and nobody can stop me."
Jae-min almost smiled.
Almost.
Because underneath the whining and the dramatics, he could see what was really happening. Ji-yoo was grieving. Not just for the timeline she'd lost — but for the version of herself she'd been in that timeline. The soldier. The assassin. The woman who'd held a massive reaper scythe like it weighed nothing and cut through enemies like paper.
That woman didn't exist here. Not yet. And Ji-yoo could feel the ghost of her — in her muscles, in her bones, in the gravity that pulsed through her body. She could feel who she was supposed to become. And she couldn't become that person without the tools of her trade.
She wasn't just whining about a weapon.
She was whining about an identity.
Jae-min reached over and ruffled her hair.
She swatted his hand away. But she didn't mean it. The corner of her mouth twitched.
"We'll get you a weapon," he said. "Not today. But soon."
"It won't be Soulcleaver."
"No. It'll be something better."
Ji-yoo looked at him. Her tactical eyes searched his face for a lie. Found none. The sharp smile came back — small, tired, but genuine.
"You're just saying that because you're my brother and you have to."
"I'm saying that because I'm the best marksman in the world and I know what a real weapon looks like."
Ji-yoo snorted.
Then she laughed.
And the gravity in the room settled into something warm. Something that felt less like a dying star and more like a hearth. The pull was still there — constant, present, undeniable — but it was gentle now. Contained. Like a wolf that had been fed.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm holding you to that, Kuya."
"You always do."
She leaned her head on his shoulder. Let her eyes drift to the window. Manila lay frozen and white and dead outside.
In another timeline, she was holding a scythe. In another life, she was the Phantom Assassin, cutting through the apocalypse one enemy at a time.
Here, she was a girl in a blanket, whining about a weapon that didn't exist yet.
But the muscles in her hands remembered the grip. The curve of the handle. The weight of the blade. And deep in her chest, the gravity hummed — patient, waiting, hungry.
Soon.
She'd make it real.
She'd make Soulcleaver real.
But first, she had to eat whatever Alessia was putting in front of her.
She looked down at the bowl. Rice. Canned meat. Boiled water.
"Is this... food?"
"It's nutrition," Alessia said.
"It looks sad."
"Eat it."
Ji-yoo looked at Jae-min.
He shrugged.
She picked up the spoon.
And ate the sad food.
One bite at a time.
Complaining between every single one.