"Haha..." He breathed out slowly. "I love this grass so much."

Time passed.

Not much. Just enough for the adrenaline to start leaking out of Si Hon’s body and leave behind the familiar exhaustion that always arrived after surviving something ridiculous.

He remained sprawled across the grass where they luckily fell, one arm still loosely around Seong back while dark clouds drifted overhead.

The field looked terrible now. Huge sections of earth had been torn apart by the dragon’s impact, debris from the school was scattered everywhere, and the distant sound of alarms mixed with collapsing structures somewhere inside the city. It should have felt tense. It probably should have felt terrifying.

Instead Si Hon found himself staring at the sky.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t particularly feel like it.

(When is it gonna rain though,) he thought idly, watching the clouds move. (It’s been building this whole time and it still hasn’t—)

Drop.

Right on his face.

Then another.

Within seconds tiny droplets were falling from the clouds above, splashing softly against his face, across his forehead and cheek and the bridge of his nose, his uniform, the grass around him, and the massive dragon corpse resting nearby. He stared upward for a long moment before his expression flattened completely.

Si Hon stared at the sky.

"ಠ_ಠ."

A pause.

"Fuck."

Then he closed his eyes and accepted his fate.

The rain continued falling while the world slowly calmed around them. It pattered against the grass around them and against the ruined school above them and against Si Hon’s face specifically with what felt like targeted enthusiasm.

He lay there and let it, too tired to argue with weather, Seong still unconscious and warm against his chest while the drops hit her red hair and ran in thin lines across his collar.

Minutes passed.

Somewhere far away people were shouting. Somewhere closer metal groaned. A siren wailed briefly before dying out. The sounds came and went beneath the steady rhythm of rainfall until eventually another noise started pushing through them. Voices. Multiple voices. Calling names. Running. Searching.

Then the rain stopped hitting his face.

Si Hon frowned.

The sound of rainfall was still there.

So why had it stopped?

He opened one eye.

Then immediately found Jisoo staring down at him

She was crouched over him awkwardly, close enough that her hair hung down around her face, unintentionally blocking most of the rain from reaching him. Water slid from the ends of her hair in little droplets while she looked thoroughly pleased with herself.

"Woah," she said. "Seems like you have company this time."

Si Hon looked at Seong still against his chest. Then back at Jisoo. "Why did you drop the Temporal Lock." His voice came out flat. "What if my brain didn’t work and I accidentally died on the way down."

"Accidentally died?" she repeated. "What kind of sentence is that?"

"A normal one."

"It absolutely isn’t."

She sat back slightly and wiggled her hands in front of him. Even now her wrists were trembling a little from the strain. "Did you not see this? My hands were shaking like crazy. I was basically holding that dragon together using everything I had. I couldn’t keep it active anymore."

She paused.

Then something shifted in her expression. Subtle. The particular quality of a thought arriving that rearranged something else in the process. "Wait."

Si Hon looked at her.

"How do you know what it’s called."

He blinked.

"What?"

"My ability."

Her voice dropped lower.

"Temporal Lock."

The rain suddenly felt much louder.

Andher voice came out quieter this time. "Not one person knows that name. I never named it out loud. Not in front of you. Not in front of anyone." Her eyes stayed on his face, doing that thing they always did when she was running calculations. "Not one living thing knows what I call that ability.... So how do you know it?"

"Oh, it’s because—"

A sound from his chest. Small. Confused.

Seong stirred.

Her fingers moved first, curling slightly against Si Hon’s shirt, and then her head shifted with the slow disorientation of someone returning from very far away. A quiet sound escaped her— not a word, just the noise of consciousness arriving before anything did... and her eyes opened halfway, unfocused, blinking rain off her lashes.

Jisoo straightened up immediately.

Then sighed dramatically.

"We’re having that conversation later."

"Sure."

"No running away."

"I wasn’t planning to."

"I don’t believe you."

"Fair."

"I swear, ಠ⁠益⁠ಠ" she said, the Temporal Lock question filed away somewhere behind her eyes with everything else she was collecting. "Remember, we’ll talk later."

***

Getting everyone up took longer than it should have.

Aeloria arrived first with two of her teammates behind her, picking their way carefully across the cratered field while avoiding the worst of the debris scattered around the dragon’s body.

She took one look at the situation— Si Hon flat on his back, Seong half conscious against him, rain coming down steadily across all of it— and said nothing, which was the most efficient possible response.

Then came with a whisper. "Idiot."

She helped Seong up.

Seong stood. Took one step. Then grabbed Aeloria’s arm without explaining why, her legs moving slightly wrong beneath her, weight distributing unevenly like her body hadn’t fully decided to cooperate yet. Not an injury exactly. More like someone whose nervous system had experienced too much in too short a time and was running a delayed audit of all of it.

Shock, probably.

The quiet kind that didn’t look like anything from the outside.

Mihu appeared next, green hair absolutely destroyed by rain, and immediately took Seong’s other side without being asked while Han and Suha appeared behind her— Han moving carefully, still slightly drained from the earlier mahic, and Suha holding his hand and looking around at the aftermath of the dragon fight with the wide eyed fascination of someone experiencing the best and worst day of their life simultaneously.

"You almost fell." Mihu said.

Seong;"I did."

Mihu:"You absolutely did."

Seong:"This wouldn’t happen if that guy didn’t hold me you know?."

Mihu:"How?"

Seong:"I can just use my thread you know? ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ"

Mihu;"(,,꒪꒫꒪,,)Yea..."

Suha completely unaffected by reality pointed at the dead dragon, then at the ruined school, then at the sky.

"(≧▽≦) THIS DAY IS SO WEIRD."

And finally... Si Hon stood up.