The lab hummed softly, a constant rhythm of filtered air, distant machinery, and faint clicks of diagnostics running. Kim Jisoo sat at the edge of a steel table, his knife laid flat beside him. Across the room, the girl hadn't moved from the wall since she followed him inside. Her black hair spilled over her shoulders, shadows tracing the cuts across her face.
Finally, Jisoo broke the silence.
"Why?" His voice was low, controlled. "Why did you follow me?"
The girl blinked at him. Her gaze didn't waver. Slowly, she slid down the wall and sat cross-legged on the floor, ignoring the cold metal tiles. Her shoulders were straight, her posture tense, like a soldier even though she looked barely out of high school.
"I had a dream," she said.
Jisoo raised an eyebrow but didn't interrupt.
She looked down at her scraped hands, flexed her fingers once. "In the dream, the sky had cracks. Not clouds. Not lightning. Cracks. Like glass breaking. And through them, something watched."
The faint hum of the lab seemed to deepen. Jisoo leaned forward slightly, his instincts tightening like a pulled wire.
"In that dream," she continued, "monsters came. Not animals, not people—something in between. They tore everything apart. I ran, but they found me. They always found me."
She looked up at him then, her eyes sharp.
"And you were there."
Jisoo's breath caught, though his face didn't show it.
"You saved me," she said, the words too steady to be fantasy. "But later… we both died. Always. In every dream, the details change, but the end doesn't. The monsters win. And I wake up."
Jisoo's hand twitched against the table edge. He didn't like where this was going.
"If it happened once, maybe I'd ignore it," she said. "But it's been happening every night. For a month." She held his gaze. "Too vivid. Too real."
Jisoo said nothing. His mind was racing, but his expression was stone.
"Today," she went on, "I saw you. The same face I'd seen in my dream a hundred times already. So I followed." She folded her hands loosely in her lap. "Because everything about you was too familiar."
Silence stretched, thick and oppressive.
From the side, the System leaned against a workbench, his golden hair glowing faintly in the sterile light. Only Jisoo could see him, which made the boy's smirk all the more irritating.
"She's not lying," the System said. "These dreams—precognition. It means she's close to awakening her powers."
Jisoo ignored him. He stared at the girl, trying to read her like he would an equation. She didn't fidget. Didn't look away. Her words hadn't been desperate or frantic—they were delivered with the calm certainty of someone who'd already accepted her own sanity being questioned.
The System tilted his head. "That's why she was drawn to you. Her instinct knows she's a Protector, and her subconscious is bleeding fragments of the future into her dreams."
Jisoo finally spoke, voice colder than he intended. "And you thought following a stranger into an abandoned lab was a good idea?"
"I didn't say it was a good idea," she replied simply. "But it was the only idea I had."
Her honesty startled him more than a lie would have.
The System chuckled. "See? She's braver than you give her credit for."
Jisoo's jaw clenched. He hated being pushed into corners, and the System knew it. He stood, grabbing his knife and sliding it back into his pocket.
"You said we died," he said, turning back to her. "Every time?"
"Yes."
"And yet you still followed me."
Her lips curled in something like a smirk, faint but present. "Maybe I'm stubborn."
"Or reckless," Jisoo muttered.
She didn't deny it.
The System crossed his arms. "She's already connected to you. The dreams are just the beginning. Once her powers awaken, you'll need her."
Jisoo shot him a sharp look. "I don't need anyone."
The boy's green eyes glowed faintly. "Tell that to the version of you that died holding a child in his arms."
The knife in Jisoo's pocket felt heavier. His pulse was steady, but only because he forced it to be.
Lee Hana—he remembered her name now—sat quietly, her face half-hidden by her hair. She wasn't demanding answers, wasn't asking for explanations. She had thrown her cards onto the table and now waited, silent and watchful, for his next move.
It reminded him, painfully, of Haru's wide eyes waiting for reassurance he didn't know how to give.
Jisoo turned away, running a hand over the cold steel of the counter. "Dreams aren't facts," he said.
"No," Hana agreed. "But they feel real enough to be warnings."
"And what do you want from me?"
"Nothing."
The answer was immediate. Sharp.
Jisoo looked at her over his shoulder.
"I didn't follow you because I want something," Hana said. "I followed you because I already owe you."
Her words sank into the sterile air like a blade.
The System's voice was quieter now, almost reverent. "You hear that, Jisoo? The bond's already forming. Even before she awakens, she recognizes you as her anchor."
Jisoo didn't reply. He couldn't.
His instincts—his cursed, always-right instincts—weren't screaming at him to push her away. They weren't warning him of danger. They were whispering something else entirely. Something heavier.
She belongs in this fight.
The lab felt too small. Too full of memories and ghosts.
Jisoo rubbed his temples, finally speaking again. "These dreams. You said they repeat the same ending. Us dying."
"Yes."
"How?"
Hana's eyes flickered with something darker. "Sometimes torn apart. Sometimes burned. Sometimes… the world itself collapses. It doesn't matter. The monsters always win."
The words tightened the air between them.
"And you thought following me would change that?" Jisoo asked.
For the first time, she hesitated. Then: "…Maybe."
The System tilted his head. "Or maybe it already has."
Jisoo wanted to dismiss all of it. He wanted to say dreams were just dreams, nothing more. But he couldn't.
Not when he himself had lived through a nightmare so vivid it had ended with his own death—and yet here he was, alive again, carrying memories no one else should have.
He met Hana's gaze one last time.
"Fine," he said quietly. "Stay. But if you're lying, or if you're wrong, don't expect me to save you."
Her lips curved, the faintest ghost of a smile. "You already did."
The System clapped his hands softly, eyes glittering. "One Protector awakened by instinct, six more to go."
Jisoo ignored him. He turned back to his workbench, but the weight in his chest refused to fade.
Because deep down, he knew Hana wasn't lying. And if her dreams were true, then time itself was already pulling them into the war he wanted no part of.