Discover Top Posts Tagged with #spiderman jungwon

𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙀𝙡𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣: 𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙎𝙢𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨

Tuesday arrives without ceremony.

No thunder. No citywide sirens before breakfast. No headline loud enough to shake the kitchen windows. Just a thin, colorless morning pressing itself against the glass, light leaking through the curtains in tired strips while Dad stands at the counter with his coffee untouched and his phone balanced between his shoulder and ear.

I sit at the table with toast I have no real interest in eating, watching butter melt into the surface until it turns glossy and uneven. The house smells like burnt bread and old coffee, like every morning we have tried to pretend is normal.

Dad has The Sentinel open beside him. Not fully. Folded halfway, the way people fold things they don’t want to look at directly but can’t bring themselves to put away. Victor Kane’s name sits at the top of the page in sharp black print, attached to another opinion column about public safety and accountability. Spider-Man isn’t in the headline this time, but he is there anyway, buried between the lines like an infection.

Dad hasn’t said anything about it. That is how I know it’s bad.

“Yeah,” he says into the phone, voice flat. “I saw it.”

A pause.

His jaw tightens.

“No, I’m not giving you a quote for that.” He reaches for his coffee, forgets why, and sets his hand back down on the counter empty. “Because she's my daughter, and I’m not helping anyone make it worse.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

I pick at the corner of my toast, tearing off a piece and rolling it between my fingers until it turns soft and useless.

Dad’s eyes flick toward me. The irritation in his face shifts immediately into something quieter, careful. He lowers his voice, but not enough for me to miss the edge in it. “I have to take my daughter to school. We can talk later.”

He hangs up before whoever is on the other end can answer.

For a moment, the kitchen settles into the kind of silence that makes ordinary sounds feel staged: the refrigerator humming, the clock ticking above the doorway, the dull scrape of Dad’s thumb against the side of his phone. He looks older in the morning light, the gray threaded at his temples catching pale and harsh.

“You don’t have to read it,” I say.

His gaze drops to the paper. “I know.”

“Then why do you?”

He exhales through his nose, not quite a laugh. “Because not knowing doesn’t make it go away.”

I don’t have an answer for that.

He folds the paper the rest of the way and sets it aside, flattening his palm over the page like he can hold the words down by force. “You’re staying after today?”

The question catches in my chest for half a second.

“Maybe,” I say, too quickly. “Free period. Library. I might work on the mural.”

Dad looks at me the way he does when he knows there is more underneath a sentence than I’ve given him, but he doesn’t dig. Not this morning. Maybe he’s too tired. Maybe we both are.

“Text me before you leave campus.”

“I will.”

“And if anything feels strange—”

“Dad.”

His mouth presses into a thin line. “Let me finish.”

I stop.

His voice softens, but the worry stays. “If anything feels strange, you call me. Not after you decide whether or not it matters. Not after you think you can handle it. Right away.”

The toast sits heavy in my stomach, though I’ve barely eaten any. I nod because arguing would only make him repeat himself, and because some part of me understands the shape of his fear even when it frustrates me. He lost my mother to something he couldn’t chase, couldn’t photograph, couldn’t expose in a paper and force into the light. I think that ruined something in him. I think now, every danger looks like it might be the one that takes what’s left.

“I’ll call,” I say.

He studies me for another second, then nods once. That is the closest we get to peace before school.

The drive to Daylight Academy is quiet, broken only by the radio whispering traffic reports and Dad drumming two fingers against the steering wheel. Graystone moves past my window in damp pieces: storefronts still opening, sidewalks darkened from last night’s rain, people in coats they don’t need yet but wear anyway because September has started threatening autumn. The city looks ordinary from inside the car.

When Dad pulls up near the school, he doesn’t immediately unlock the doors. Students stream past us in loose clusters, laughing, yawning, stepping around puddles with practiced annoyance. A group of freshmen nearly collide with a teacher carrying too many papers.

Dad glances at the entrance, then back at me. “You have your phone?”

I lift it from my pocket.

“Charged?”

“Eighty-two percent.”

“Good.” His hand taps once against the wheel. “Have a normal day.”

I lean over and kiss his cheek before he can say anything else. “You too.”

He huffs softly. “Not likely.”

I step out into the morning and shut the door behind me. Dad waits, as always, until I’m halfway up the steps before pulling away. I don’t look back because I know if I do, he’ll still be watching, and I don’t want to carry that expression into the building with me.

Inside, Daylight Academy has its usual smell of floor polish, damp jackets, and cheap perfume. The hallway noise gathers around me immediately, familiar and uneven, lockers slamming in sharp bursts, sneakers squeaking against tile, voices rising and falling like small weather systems. I move through it with my backpack tight against one shoulder, careful not to scan too obviously for anyone.

Which means, naturally, I find him almost at once.

Jungwon stands near the Chemistry hall with Sunoo and Jake, his hair still slightly damp at the ends, hoodie unzipped over his uniform shirt. He looks rested in the superficial way people can after not sleeping enough: eyes open, posture upright, face arranged into something close to normal. Sunoo is talking with both hands, leaning into whatever story he’s telling, while Jake listens with an expression caught between amusement and exhaustion.

Jungwon’s attention isn’t really on either of them.

I notice that before I can stop myself. The way his gaze keeps shifting toward the front entrance, toward passing students, toward the windows where the gray morning presses itself against the glass. It isn’t nervousness exactly. More like listening with his whole body. Waiting for a sound nobody else knows to hear.

Then his eyes find mine.

It lasts less than a breath. A small acknowledgement, nothing that would mean anything to anyone watching. He doesn’t smile, but something in his face eases by a fraction, and I hate how quickly I notice that too.

Jenna appears at my side before I can think too hard about it.

“You’re doing that thing again,” she says, falling into step beside me.

I keep walking. “Good morning to you too.”

“It is morning. Whether it’s good is still under review.”

I glance at her. Her curls are pinned back today with two silver clips that don’t quite hold, and her camera bag bounces against her hip as she walks. She looks awake in a way that feels personally offensive.

“What thing?” I ask, though I know better.

“The quiet observation thing.”

“That’s just my face.”

We make it to Chemistry right as Mrs. Henderson starts writing on the board, her handwriting narrow and severe enough to make even warm-up questions feel like a migraine. The day folds itself into routine after that, at least on the surface. Chemistry, then AP English, then History. Teachers talk. Students answer. Notes fill pages. The building breathes around us, old and heavy, pretending the outside world has no claim here.

By lunch, the sky has darkened from tired gray into something flatter, more metallic. Rain threatens without falling. The cafeteria buzzes under fluorescent lights, trays scraping against tables, chairs dragging, people complaining about food they will still finish because hunger makes hypocrites of everyone.

Jenna and I sit near the windows again. She has fries, a yogurt, and two cookies she swears she did not steal from someone else’s tray. I have a turkey sandwich Dad wrapped so tightly in wax paper that opening it feels like disarming a small package.

Across the cafeteria, the old corner table remains mostly empty.

That has become its own kind of statement.

Sunoo sits with Jake and two girls from student council today, his voice lower than usual, though his hands still move when he talks. Heeseung is nowhere in sight. Sunghoon and Ni-ki pass through once, not stopping, both of them carrying bottled drinks and the same contained tension I’ve started recognizing too easily. Jay stands near the vending machines with his phone in one hand, expression blank, then leaves without buying anything.

Jungwon doesn’t come in until almost halfway through lunch.

He enters with Amy-Jane.

They are not walking close enough to be anything, but they are walking together. That is enough for my stomach to tighten before I can reason with it. Amy-Jane is speaking, one hand curled around the strap of her bag, her expression thoughtful. Jungwon listens with his head slightly bent toward her, not smiling exactly, but present in a way that looks careful.

Jenna’s gaze flicks to me. For once, she says nothing.

Amy-Jane stops near her table. Jungwon says something I can’t hear. She smiles, small and grateful, then touches his sleeve lightly before walking away.

It is nothing.

It is absolutely nothing.

His eyes follow her for a moment, and the part of me that wants to be reasonable takes notes like a dutiful student. Of course he looks at her. Of course he does. Amy-Jane is kind in a way that doesn’t feel performed. She has clean handwriting, steady opinions, a family name people recognize, and the ability to say the right thing without making it sound rehearsed. She can defend Spider-Man in a classroom without knowing him, without knowing what it costs him to be spoken about at all.

Jungwon turns, scanning the cafeteria, and his gaze catches on me.

The moment is brief. Almost accidental. Still, I feel the shift of it, the small uncomfortable knowledge that both things are true. He can soften for her. He can look for me.

I unwrap my sandwich and take a bite because I need something to do with my face.

Jenna waits until I swallow before she speaks, her voice gentler than I expect. “You don’t have to pretend you didn’t see that.”

I look down at my tray. “I’m not pretending.”

“You are, but I’m not going to make you talk about it.”

“That’s new for you.”

“I’m growing as a person.”

I almost smile. It fades before it becomes anything useful. “There’s nothing to talk about. They’re friends.”

Jenna looks across the cafeteria, then back at me. “Maybe.”

“That was not supportive.”

“It was honest.”

I fold the wax paper into a small square. “Honesty is overrated.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s just inconvenient.”

That sounds like something Mr. Erikson would write on the board and expect us to spend forty minutes discussing. I don’t say that, though. I only push the rest of my sandwich around the paper and try not to look over again.

By the time free period comes, I have talked myself into a version of calm that feels convincing only if no one touches it.

The library is quieter than usual. Rain has finally started, not hard enough to make noise against the windows, but enough to blur the view of the courtyard into silver streaks and dark stone. Students sit scattered between tables with laptops open and headphones in, everyone softened by the weather into a shared reluctance to speak too loudly. The lamps along the shelves cast warm pools of light over the wood, turning the dust in the air into something almost gentle.

I take my usual corner near history and literature.

My mural sketch is already in my bag, edges softened from being handled too much. I lay it flat and smooth my palms over the paper. The city is there in layered lines: the bridge, the rooftops, the narrow streets, the windows watching from every direction. The small figure on the roof remains half-hidden in the upper corner, more suggestion than subject. Anyone else might miss it.

My phone sits facedown beside my pencil.

Three minutes pass. Then six. Then nine.

I tell myself I am not waiting. I am working. There is a difference, even if my body does not seem to know it.

At eleven minutes, a shadow falls across the table.

“Is this seat taken?”

I look up too quickly.

Jungwon stands on the other side of the table with one hand on the back of the chair, backpack slung over one shoulder. He looks a little damp from the rain, small droplets caught in his hair and along the seam of his hoodie. Up close, the tiredness is more visible than it was from across the cafeteria. Not dramatic. Not alarming. Just there, faintly bruised under his eyes, threaded through the set of his mouth.

I shake my head. “No.”

He sits, careful not to jostle the table. For a moment, neither of us says anything. He pulls a notebook from his bag, then a pen, then sets both down without opening them. His gaze drifts to my sketch.

“That’s the mural?”

“Concept for it. Maybe. Ms. Hartman wants the truth of the city, which sounds simple until you try to draw it.”

He leans forward slightly, studying the page without touching it. I expect him to look at the hidden figure first. He doesn’t. His eyes move across the bridge, the uneven rooftops, the crowded windows. He takes his time with it.

“It feels crowded,” he says.

My fingers tighten around the pencil. “In a bad way?”

“No.” He glances up at me. “In a real way. Like everyone’s living close to each other but still not really looking.”

The answer settles in a place I don’t expect. I look back down at the sketch, suddenly less embarrassed by it.

“That’s kind of what I was trying to do.”

“I can tell.”

He says it simply. No performance, no easy compliment. It makes it harder to dismiss.

I nudge the corner of the page. “Ms. Hartman might say it’s too heavy.”

“Maybe heavy isn’t bad.”

“Committees usually prefer hopeful.”

Jungwon’s mouth curves faintly, though it doesn’t quite become a smile. “You could hide the hopeful part somewhere small.”

I glance at the tiny figure on the roof before I can stop myself. Jungwon follows my gaze. The air changes in that barely perceptible way I’ve started feeling around him, a tightening under the skin, a silence with too much inside it.

He sees it.

Of course he sees it.

He does not ask if it is Spider-Man.

Instead, he says, “Small things can still change the whole picture.”

My throat feels dry. “That sounds like something you say when you don’t want to admit the sketch is depressing.”

“It is depressing,” he says, and then, before I can decide whether to be offended, adds, “but not in a pointless way.”

That surprises a laugh out of me. Quiet, short, more breath than sound. His eyes lift at it, and the tiredness in his face softens.

“Sorry,” he says. “That sounded better in my head.”

“No, it’s fine. Depressing but not pointless is probably the closest anyone’s gotten to understanding my art.”

He looks down, turning his pen slowly between his fingers. “I meant it as a compliment.”

“I know.”

The conversation settles after that, not awkwardly, but in the way some silences become part of the table. Rain trails down the windows in thin, wavering lines. Somewhere near the front desk, Mrs. Finch stamps a book with a soft, repetitive thud. Jungwon opens his notebook at last, but he doesn’t write. I keep shading a line of buildings that already has enough shadow.

After a while, he says, “Amy-Jane said your concept was good.”

My hand pauses.

I make myself keep the pencil moving. “She has good taste,”I say half jokingly.

“She said you have a way of making buildings feel like people.”

That is too specific to be a casual mention. It is also too kind.

I stare at the page. “That’s nice of her.”

“She's really good at art, so she knows what she's talking about.”

“I know.”

He looks at me then, maybe hearing something in my voice I didn’t mean to leave there. I keep my eyes on the sketch. The pencil makes a faint scratch against the paper, too loud in the quiet.

Jungwon shifts slightly. “I didn’t mean to make it weird.”

“You didn’t.”

A pause.

“I think I did.”

I exhale, not quite a sigh. “It’s not weird. She’s good at art. And she’s… nice.”

“She is.”

The agreement lands softly, but it lands.

I nod once, because that is what normal people do when they are having normal conversations about normal things. “She defended Spider-Man in English yesterday. It seems you have another fan to talk about Spider-Man with, maybe make a club.”

Jungwon’s pen stops turning.

I don’t look at him. “Not in a dramatic way. People were talking about the article, and she said the headline wasn’t neutral. That people were reacting to the framing instead of the facts.”

The silence stretches.

When Jungwon answers, his voice is lower than before. “She said that?”

“Yeah.”

He leans back, eyes moving toward the rain-dark window. For a second, he looks older than he is. Or maybe just worn down enough that the mask of being fine slips at the edges.

“She’s right,” he says.

I study his profile, the careful line of his jaw, the way his hand rests loose on the table except for the thumb pressed hard against the side of his pen. “A lot of people probably know she’s right.”

“That doesn’t always matter.”

“No,” I say. “It doesn’t.”

His gaze returns to me. There is something searching in it, something almost startled by the fact that I understand. I wonder, not for the first time, how lonely it must be to hear people debate whether you are good while you sit three desks away pretending to care about algebra.

He looks away first.

“I’m tired of everyone sounding so sure,” he says after a moment. “Not just about Spider-Man. About everything. People decide what something is, and then they only look for proof that keeps it that way.”

The words are too honest. He seems to realize it after they leave his mouth, because his shoulders tighten.

I pretend not to notice. “My dad says people like boxes because they make fear easier to carry.”

Jungwon’s expression shifts. “Your dad said that?”

“Not exactly. He uses more newspaper words.”

That almost gets a smile from him. “He seems intense.”

“He is.”

“In a bad way?”

I think about Dad’s hand flattening The Sentinel on the kitchen counter, his voice on the phone, his insistence that I call if anything feels wrong. I think about the way he photographs disaster because still images are the only way he knows to fight time.

“No,” I say slowly. “Not bad. Just scared. And stubborn. And convinced those are different things.”

Jungwon nods like he understands too well.

For a while, we actually work. He asks about the algebra problems Amy-Jane didn’t finish, and I help in the limited way someone can help when they barely trust her own answers. He catches one of my mistakes without making a show of it. I fix one of his signs before he notices. It is quiet, ordinary, almost comfortable. The kind of hour that would mean nothing if I didn’t know what his hands could do with webbing and concrete and the weight of a collapsing world.

The bell rings too soon.

Not the full end-of-day bell. Just the warning that free period is nearly done, a soft chime through the speakers that makes a few students groan and begin gathering their things. Jungwon closes his notebook slowly, like he doesn’t want to move yet. I slide my sketch into my folder and tuck my pencil into the elastic loop.

“You staying for art club?” he asks.

“Not today. Ms. Hartman moved the meeting to Thursday.”

“Oh.”

“I’m waiting for Dad. He said he’d be late, but probably not that late.”

Jungwon nods. “I can wait with you for a bit.”

The offer is quiet. Not grand enough to refuse without making it strange. Still, my first instinct is to look for the trap in it, the hidden reason, the angle where I become pathetic for wanting to say yes.

“You don’t have to,” I say.

“I know.”

That is all. No pressure. No explanation.

I zip my bag. “Okay.”

Outside, the rain has slowed into a mist that hangs in the air rather than falling cleanly. The courtyard stones shine dark beneath our feet, reflecting the old arches of Daylight Academy in broken pieces. Most students rush toward cars or buses with their shoulders hunched, jackets pulled over their heads. Others linger under the covered walkway, complaining about the weather as if it has personally wronged them.

Jungwon walks beside me with his hands in his hoodie pockets, his pace careful enough to match mine without making it obvious. For a few minutes, we don’t talk. The silence is not empty, but it isn’t heavy either. It feels like the quiet in the library followed us outside and learned how to breathe.

Near the front steps, Sunoo spots us from under the overhang. His gaze moves from Jungwon to me with open curiosity before Jake says something to him and pulls his attention away. Heeseung stands a little farther back, leaning against one of the stone columns with his phone in hand, but he isn’t looking at the screen. His eyes track Jungwon for a second, then shift away.

Jungwon sees him. I can tell by the way his shoulders change.

“You need to go?” I ask.

He glances at me. “No.”

“You looked like you did.”

“It’s fine.”

I don’t push. That feels like a small mercy, and maybe he knows it, because the tension around his mouth eases after a moment.

We reach the edge of the drop-off lane. Cars slide past in slow, impatient lines, windshield wipers ticking back and forth. The school shuttle idles near the curb, half-full of students who live farther out toward the east side. A city bus follows behind it, delayed by the mess of school traffic, its windows fogged lightly from the inside. People crowd along the sidewalk: students waiting for rides, parents leaning across passenger seats to shout names, a cyclist ringing his bell at nobody in particular.

My phone buzzes.

Dad:

Running fifteen late. Stay by the front.

I type back that I will. Jungwon watches the traffic, eyes narrowed slightly against the mist.

“Dad’s late,” I say.

“I can stay.”

“Are you sure?”

“I wouldn't offer otherwise.”

The words come out plain, but my chest reacts anyway, stupid and soft. I look down at my phone because it is safer than looking at him.

Then the city makes a sound that doesn’t belong to rain or traffic.

A metallic shriek cuts across the afternoon, long and violent, followed by the deep, sickening crunch of something heavy hitting something that refuses to move. The conversations around us break apart. Heads turn. A few people scream before anyone knows why.

The city bus lurches sideways at the far end of the lane.

For a second, it looks almost slow, impossible in its weight, front wheels jumping the curb as if lifted by an invisible hand. Sparks spit from beneath it in bright, frantic bursts. The driver fights the wheel, but the bus keeps skidding, slamming into a streetlight hard enough to bend the pole halfway toward the ground. Glass cracks. Metal groans. The back end swings out, clipping the corner of the shuttle and sending students inside shouting against the windows.

Everything happens too fast after that.

Brakes squeal. A car horn sticks, blaring one long note. People surge backward toward the school steps, pushing, stumbling, dragging each other out of the lane. The city bus tilts at a sharp angle where one side has mounted the curb, its front trapped against the bent streetlight. Blue-white electricity flickers along something clamped near the front wheel, crawling over the metal like living veins.

A man stands in the street in front of it.

At first, my brain refuses to understand him. He wears a dark raincoat with the hood up, but beneath it, wires coil around his torso in uneven loops, connected to a box strapped against his chest. One arm is covered in a metal brace from wrist to elbow, ugly and improvised, the fingers tipped with copper points. A pulse of light travels from the box to his hand and snaps outward into the wet street, making everyone nearby scream and scatter.

“Stay back,” he shouts.

His voice is amplified somehow, distorted through a speaker clipped near his throat. It buzzes at the edges, mechanical and thin.

Someone near me whispers, “Is that a bomb?”

A teacher yells for everyone to get inside. Another shouts for the buses to unload, but the city bus doors don’t open. The driver pounds at the controls from inside, face pale behind the cracked windshield. Students on the school shuttle scramble out through the rear emergency door, coughing and crying as Coach Thompson and another teacher wave them toward the building.

The man in the street raises his braced hand. Electricity snaps from his fingers to the front of the city bus, and the whole vehicle jolts. People inside scream. The doors shudder but stay sealed.

“Call the police,” someone yells.

Half the crowd already has their phones out.

Jungwon has gone very still beside me.

I don’t look at him right away. I can’t. I feel the change before I see it: the air around him tightening, his breathing going quiet, his attention narrowing until nothing exists except the bus, the man, the trapped people, the angle of the streetlight bent against the windshield. He is not panicking. That is worse. Panic would look human.

This is calculation.

His hand slips out of his pocket.

The knuckles are white.

I turn my head just enough to see his face. His eyes move over the scene with a speed that makes my skin prickle. Bus. Wires. Driver. Crowd. Roofline. Alley beyond the gym. Camera angles. Teachers. Heeseung under the columns, already moving toward Sunoo and Jake. Sunghoon and Ni-ki near the side entrance, both looking at Jungwon without looking like they are looking.

He needs to leave.

The realization arrives cleanly, with no drama attached to it. He needs to leave, and I am standing right beside him, the one person who could make that difficult by asking the obvious question or staring too long or forcing him to make some terrible excuse.

So I give him one.

“I need to call my dad,” I say, my voice louder than it needs to be but steady enough. “He’ll hear about this on the scanner and lose his mind if I don’t answer.”

Jungwon looks at me.

For one brief second, all the noise thins around us. His expression doesn’t change much, but his eyes do. Something startled moves through them. Something grateful, though he would never name it that here.

“Yeah,” he says. “You should.”

I step away from him, turning my back before he can hesitate. I lift my phone to my ear even though I haven’t called anyone, staring toward the school doors as if reception requires my full attention. My heart beats so hard that the phone trembles against my cheek.

Behind me, there is the softest shift of movement.

Not a footstep exactly. Not enough for anyone else to notice under the chaos. Just the absence of him, sudden as a door closing.

I count to five before I look.

Jungwon is gone.

The space beside me is empty.

For half a second, I just stare at it.

The mist drifts through the spot where Jungwon had been standing, soft and useless, as if the air itself is trying to cover for him. Around me, everything keeps moving too fast: students shoving toward the front doors, teachers shouting over each other, car horns blaring from the lane, someone crying hard enough that the sound breaks apart in their throat.

Then the bus jolts again.

The whole front of it rocks against the bent streetlight, metal screaming against metal. The driver’s hands slam against the steering wheel from inside, but the doors still don’t open. Faces crowd the fogged windows, palms smacking against glass. A woman near the middle presses a little boy behind her, shielding him with her body even though there is nowhere to go.

I lift my phone to my ear with shaking fingers.

Dad answers on the third ring.

“Liya?”

“I’m at the front,” I say quickly, forcing the words out before he can hear the chaos and start filling in the blanks himself. “There’s an incident with a bus. I’m okay. I’m still on campus.”

“What do you mean an incident?”

His voice changes immediately. The tiredness is gone, scraped clean by fear.

“Dad, I’m okay.”

“What happened?”

The man in the street raises his braced arm again. Blue-white electricity snaps from the copper tips of his fingers and hits the side of the bus with a crack loud enough to punch through every sound around it. The vehicle shudders. A few students scream and run harder for the doors.

“Get inside,” Dad says. “Right now.”

“I’m going,” I lie.

“Liya.”

“I am.”

“Put a teacher on the phone.”

“I can’t—there’s too much—”

“Liya, listen to me.”

His voice almost disappears beneath a new sound: a web snapping taut.

It cuts through the air above us, thin and bright against the gray afternoon. My head jerks up. A red-and-blue figure swings low over the drop-off lane, coming from the direction of the gym roof. He releases the web at the last second and lands on top of the city bus near the rear, far from the front wheel where the electricity keeps crawling.

The roof dents beneath him.

The crowd erupts.

Spider-Man rises into a crouch, one hand braced against the metal, head angled toward the man in the street. Even from here, I can see how quickly he reads the scene. He looks first at the people, then at the bus, then at the sparking device clamped near the front wheel. Not the villain. Not the cameras. The people.

“Liya!” Dad’s voice snaps through the phone. “Was that—?”

“I have to go,” I say.

“No, you do not hang up on me—”

“I’m going inside. I’ll call you right back.”

I end the call before the guilt can stop me.

The lie tastes awful, but keeping the phone to my ear while the world tears open feels worse. I shove it into my pocket and move with the crowd toward the steps, not because I want to leave, but because the teachers are right about one thing: standing in the open lane is stupid.

Spider-Man points toward the school without looking away from the man in the street. “Everybody back! Inside or behind the columns. Now.”

His voice is loud enough to carry but not panicked. That helps more than I want it to. People obey faster when someone sounds like they believe there is still a way out.

The man in the raincoat turns toward him, his hood slipping back just enough to reveal a gaunt face, rain plastering pale hair to his forehead. The metal box strapped to his chest pulses faintly beneath the wet fabric, wires feeding from it into the brace around his arm and down toward the street. One thick cable trails behind him, snaking across the pavement to the device clamped to the bus’s front wheel.

That is what has it trapped.

Not a bomb. Not exactly.

A lock.

The thought comes clear and sudden. The clamp is holding the wheel and feeding current through the frame, enough to keep the doors sealed and anyone inside too terrified to touch anything metal.

Spider-Man sees it too.

He shifts his weight on the roof of the bus, keeping low. “Okay,” he calls down, voice tilted into something almost conversational. “So I’m guessing this isn’t part of the normal afternoon route.”

The man’s head snaps up. “Stay away from me.”

“Would love to. Really. But you parked a bus on a school sidewalk, and that's kind of hard to ignore.”

The man throws his braced arm forward.

A bolt of electricity snaps toward the roof.

Spider-Man dives sideways, rolling clean across the bus and dropping over the far edge. The bolt hits the roof where he was a breath ago, bursting in a sharp flash. The people inside scream as light flickers through the windows.

He doesn’t stay hidden. A web shoots from below the bus’s side and sticks to the man’s wrist. Spider-Man yanks.

The man stumbles forward, boots scraping against wet pavement, but he slams his other hand against the brace and the web begins to smoke. The strands blacken and snap apart.

Spider-Man lands on the curb between the bus and the school steps, putting himself between the crowd and the man. His back is to us now, shoulders squared, body balanced lightly on the balls of his feet.

“Noted,” he says. “Web-resistant. Annoying, but noted.”

The man laughs once, harsh and humorless. “You think this is about you?”

Spider-Man tilts his head. “And here I thought you were trying to impress the only hero in town.”

The man’s face twists. “It’s about what people ignore. The ones who are actually in trouble—no one looks twice.” He jabs his braced hand toward the school, toward the phones, toward the windows full of faces. “So now they get to feel it. What it’s like to be scared and helpless while everyone just watches.”

The words land strangely, too rehearsed and too raw at once. Like he has been saying them to himself for days.

Spider-Man doesn’t answer immediately.

Then his voice drops, all the sharpness leaving it. “There are kids on that bus.”

The man’s jaw tightens. “Then they’ll learn early.”

He lifts his arm again.

Spider-Man moves first.

He fires two webs at once: one to the man’s ankle, the other snapping tight around the metal pole of the bus stop sign. Using it as an anchor, he yanks hard, redirecting the man’s momentum sideways instead of straight toward the bus. The sudden pull throws off his aim. The blast meant for the windows shoots wide and strikes the wet asphalt. Electricity skitters over the ground in a jagged fan.

Everyone on the steps surges backward.

A freshman girl slips beside me, her shoes sliding on the rain-slick stone. She falls hard, landing on one elbow with a cry that gets swallowed by the crowd. For a second, no one sees her. People are too busy watching Spider-Man, too busy trying not to be the next person to fall.

I reach down without thinking.

“Hey—come on.” I hook my hands under her arms and pull her upright, dragging her toward the inside edge of the column. “Move with me. Don’t stop here.”

Her face is wet, not just from rain. “My brother’s on the shuttle.”

I glance toward the school shuttle clipped near the rear of the city bus. Its back emergency door is open now, and Coach Thompson is lifting students down one at a time, his face red with effort. The shuttle is damaged, but not trapped. Kids are getting out.

“What does he look like?”

“Blue backpack,” she chokes out. “He’s little. Sixth grade. He—he was visiting from the middle school program—”

“I’ll look,” I say, though I don’t know if I can.

Her fingers clamp around my sleeve. “Please.”

I turn toward the shuttle, scanning the students being herded toward the gym doors. Blue backpack. Blue backpack. There are too many bags, too many uniforms, too much motion.

Then I see him.

Small, shaking, standing near the open emergency door with one shoe untied and a blue backpack hanging off one shoulder. He refuses to jump down. Coach Thompson has one hand extended, but the boy keeps looking toward the trapped city bus, frozen by the screams.

“There,” I say, pointing. “Is that him?”

The girl makes a broken sound. “Eli!”

The boy’s head snaps toward us.

Coach Thompson follows the sound, sees us, and waves the boy down with a sharper urgency. “Move, kid. Now.”

Eli finally jumps. Coach catches him badly, more of a grab than a catch, but it gets him on the ground. The girl beside me tries to run for him. I catch her sleeve before she can dart back into the open lane.

“No. Let them bring him.”

She fights me for one panicked second. “That’s my brother.”

“I know. But if you run, someone else has to go after you.”

That makes her stop.

Across the lane, Coach Thompson pushes Eli toward another teacher, who rushes him along the safer path behind the parked cars. The boy reaches us a few seconds later, crying so hard he can barely breathe. His sister grabs him, folding around him with both arms.

I step back, breath shaking.

That was nothing. Barely anything.

But my hands tremble like I’ve lifted something heavier than a person.

A crash yanks my attention back to the bus.

Spider-Man hits the side of the school shuttle, shoulder-first, hard enough to rock it on its tires. A dent blooms in the metal behind him. He drops to one knee but pushes up immediately, shaking one hand like it has gone numb.

The man in the raincoat advances, the chest box glowing brighter now. The cable between him and the bus clamp pulls taut across the street.

Spider-Man glances at it.

The cable. The clamp. The people still trapped inside.

Then he runs.

Not at the man.

At the cable.

He sprints low across the wet pavement, dodging another bolt that tears through the mist where his head had been. His feet hit the curb, then a car hood, then the side mirror of an abandoned sedan. He launches off it and fires a web at the cable, wrapping it once, twice, three times.

The man realizes too late.

Spider-Man lands on the opposite side of the cable and yanks with his whole body.

The cable tears free from the chest box in a burst of sparks.

The clamp on the bus flickers.

For one beautiful second, the blue-white veins along the bus frame vanish.

“Doors!” Spider-Man shouts. “Try the doors!”

The driver slams his hand against the controls. The front doors gasp open halfway, jerking against damage from the crash. A sound goes through the trapped passengers—not relief exactly, but the first breath after drowning.

The man screams.

He slams his braced hand into the torn port on his chest box, rerouting power through the remaining wires. The box flashes hot. The bus clamp sparks back to life, weaker this time, but enough to make the doors freeze again before anyone can get out.

Spider-Man’s head turns sharply toward the bus.

One passenger has made it halfway through the front doors.

A woman, maybe in her thirties, one leg caught between the folding panels as they lock around her. She cries out, hands clawing at the rubber edges.

Spider-Man fires a web toward the door and pulls, muscles straining. The panels give an inch. Then another. Not enough.

The man raises his braced arm toward Spider-Man’s exposed back.

I see it before anyone else seems to.

“Behind you!” I shout.

Spider-Man drops instantly.

The bolt passes over him and hits the bus stop sign instead, blowing it apart in a shower of metal and sparks. The woman trapped in the door screams. Spider-Man rolls under the next blast, comes up beside the bus, and jams both hands into the narrow gap of the doors.

He pulls.

The doors groan open.

“Out,” he tells the woman. “Step toward the sidewalk. Don’t touch the frame.”

She stumbles free. A police officer, finally close enough to be useful, grabs her under the arms and drags her away from the bus. Spider-Man steps back, but the movement is too slow. The man’s next blast clips him in the side.

The sound he makes is small.

I almost don’t hear it.

His body twists with the hit, electricity crawling over the suit in a sharp blue flash. He slams into the curb, catches himself on one hand, and stays there for half a second too long.

The man laughs.

The crowd’s cheers die.

Spider-Man lifts his head.

Something about the motion is wrong. Too careful. Too human.

My stomach turns over.

He pushes himself up anyway.

“You know,” he says, voice rougher now, “for someone who wants to be heard, you’re making a pretty bad argument.”

The man snarls and fires again.

This time Spider-Man doesn’t dodge away. He jumps up.

The bolt hits the ground beneath him as he fires a web toward one of the stone columns at the school entrance. He swings in a tight arc, low enough that his feet skim the roof of a stalled car. At the highest point, he releases and flips over the man’s head, landing behind him near the torn cable.

For the first time, the man has to turn his back on the bus.

That is what Spider-Man wanted.

I see it as it happens. He is not trying to beat him yet. He is pulling him away from the people.

Step by step.

Blast by blast.

Every time the man aims toward the bus, Spider-Man gets in the way. Every time he aims toward Spider-Man, Spider-Man moves farther into the open street, away from the school steps, away from the shuttle, away from the trapped passengers. It is messy and dangerous and nothing like the clean videos people post online with music underneath. His foot slips once. A web burns through before it can hold. He catches the edge of a blast against his shoulder and staggers but keeps moving.

The fight is not a dance.

It is a series of choices made too quickly to admire.

Behind him, the driver forces the bus doors open again by hand. This time, with the clamp weakened and Spider-Man keeping the man’s attention away, the passengers begin to spill out.

One by one.

An older man first, then a teenager with blood on his forehead, then a mother carrying a toddler bundled against her chest. Teachers rush them toward the school. Police try to form a line, but they’re slow, confused by the electricity, too cautious about where to stand.

A little boy appears at the bus doors and freezes.

Young. Maybe seven or eight, with a red raincoat and one hand pressed to the doorframe he has clearly been told not to touch. His eyes are wide and empty with fear.

“Don’t touch the metal,” the driver snaps, panic making his voice sharp.

The boy flinches and starts crying harder.

No adult reaches him immediately. The nearest officer is helping the bleeding teenager. The driver is still half-trapped behind the wheel. The boy stands at the open bus doors, shaking, too scared to step down and too scared to go back.

I move before I decide to.

Not into the street. Not past the police line. Just to the edge of the curb closest to the school side, where the front doors of the bus angle toward the sidewalk. There are still several yards between me and the man, and Spider-Man has dragged him farther down the lane, but my heartbeat doesn’t care about distance.

“Hey,” I call, trying to make my voice steady. “Red coat.”

The boy looks at me.

The bus steps are high from where the front has jumped the curb. Too high for him to climb down without help.

I crouch, palms open. “You’re okay. Don’t touch the sides. Keep your hands to yourself and look at me.”

He sobs. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” My voice comes out firmer than I feel. “One step. Just one. Sit down on the step.”

He shakes his head.

Behind him, a woman inside the bus whispers something, trying to coax him forward, but the boy’s eyes stay locked on me.

I point to the floor of the bus. “Sit first. Like you’re going down stairs on a playground.”

That seems to reach him. His knees bend. He sits, stiff and terrified, hands curled in his lap.

“Good,” I say. “That’s good. Now scoot forward. Slow.”

A blast cracks somewhere down the lane.

I don’t look.

The boy does. His face crumples.

“Look at me,” I say quickly. “Not there. Me.”

His wet eyes snap back.

“What’s your name?”

“Milo.”

“Okay, Milo. I’m Liya. You’re going to slide down, and I’m going to catch your coat. Not your hands. Your coat. Okay?”

He nods once, tiny and miserable.

I reach up, gripping the front of his raincoat as he slides off the last step. He drops harder than I expect, his weight yanking my shoulders forward, but I keep hold of him and pull him against me before he can stumble backward. He is warm and shaking and very, very real.

The second his shoes hit the sidewalk, a teacher rushes in and takes him from me.

“Go,” I tell him, though I don’t know if he hears me.

The teacher carries him toward the doors.

I step back, breathless.

And then I feel it.

Not a hand. Not a touch.

A look.

I turn before I can stop myself.

Spider-Man is across the lane, half-crouched on top of a car, one hand pressed to the roof for balance. The man in the raincoat is several yards beyond him now, closer to the street than the school, electricity gathering around his brace in a frantic, unstable glow.

Spider-Man’s head turns in my direction.

Not for long. Less than a second. But enough to make it feel like he might have noticed me.

Then the man charges him.

Spider-Man turns back just in time.

The man swings his braced arm like a club. Spider-Man ducks beneath it, pivots, and webs the man’s elbow from behind. He pulls, using the man’s momentum against him. The brace slams into the hood of the car with a metallic crack, denting it deep.

Sparks burst from the copper fingers.

The man screams and rips free, but the movement tears more wires from the chest box. The glow flickers unevenly now, pulsing too bright, then too dim.

Spider-Man notices.

He backs up one step, then another, leading him farther from the bus. His left arm hangs slightly lower than his right. The hit to his side is catching up with him.

The man doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. He lifts both hands to the chest box, forcing power into the damaged brace. The copper fingertips flare white.

The air changes.

Every hair along my arms lifts.

Spider-Man’s head snaps toward the bus, then toward the crowd.

He knows before the rest of us do.

The chest box gives a high, rising whine.

“Down!” Spider-Man shouts.

This time, nobody hesitates.

I drop behind the stone planter at the edge of the steps, arms over my head. Around me, people hit the ground in a messy wave. The blast goes off a heartbeat later, not a clean bolt but a wide burst of electrical force that ripples across the wet pavement and blows out the windows of the nearest parked cars. Glass scatters like hard rain.

The sound leaves my ears ringing.

For a moment, I can’t tell what happened.

Then I lift my head.

The man is on one knee in the street, chest box smoking, brace sparking wildly. Spider-Man is still standing.

Barely.

He had webbed himself between two street poles, one line from each hand, and used the tension to pull himself above the worst of the blast. He hangs there for a second, suspended over the lane like a torn flag, then drops onto the asphalt in a rough landing that makes him stumble.

The crowd is silent.

The man tries to lift his arm again.

Nothing happens.

Just sparks.

Spider-Man straightens slowly.

“Yeah,” he says, voice strained enough that the humor barely holds. “That sounded expensive.”

The man lunges at him with his unbraced hand.

Spider-Man meets him halfway.

The last part of the fight is ugly and fast.

Spider-Man steps inside the swing, catches the man’s wrist, and turns under it, twisting his arm behind his back. The man tries to slam the sparking brace into Spider-Man’s ribs, but Spider-Man hooks a foot behind his ankle and knocks him off balance. They both go down hard. Spider-Man rolls with it, ends up on top, and fires webbing in quick, precise bursts: wrists first, then ankles, then the damaged brace, cocooning it until the sparks die beneath layers of white.

The man thrashes once.

Spider-Man presses him down with one knee between his shoulder blades.

“Stay,” he says, breathing hard.

Police rush in all at once, as if the end of the fight gives them permission to exist again. Two officers pull the man’s arms behind him. Another shouts for a bomb squad, even though the box is already smoking itself into silence. Someone calls for paramedics. Someone else calls for more units. Radios crackle. Shoes splash through puddles.

Spider-Man backs away from the officers before they can decide whether to thank him or arrest him.

The bus is almost empty now. The driver is helped out last, limping badly but conscious. The bent streetlight groans above the hood, its base cracked, the bus still pressed against it at a dangerous angle.

Spider-Man sees that too.

Of course he does.

He moves toward the bus again, slower this time. No one cheers. Maybe because everyone can see the way he favors one side now. Maybe because the danger hasn’t fully ended.

The streetlight gives another metallic moan.

The bus shifts.

Only an inch, but enough.

“Back!” an officer yells. “Get back!”

Spider-Man fires two webs to the front of the bus, then two more to the stone pillars at the school entrance. He pulls until the lines go taut, anchoring the bus in place. The streetlight finally snaps at the base and drops away from the hood with a heavy crash. Without it, the bus tries to roll forward off the curb.

Spider-Man digs his heels into the wet pavement.

For one terrible second, it looks like the bus will drag him with it.

Then the web lines catch.

The bus jolts and holds.

Teachers and officers shout. A tow truck will need to come. Firefighters. Someone official with equipment and a vest and the right words for the news.

But for now, it holds.

Spider-Man keeps the tension for another few breaths, making sure, then releases one hand at a time. The webbing remains stretched between the bus and pillars, humming faintly under the strain.

He steps back.

His shoulders rise and fall once.

Twice.

Then his head turns slightly toward the school steps.

Toward me.

I don’t move.

Around us, the world slowly remembers how to be loud. People stand. Someone starts crying. Someone else laughs in a shocked, broken way. Teachers count students, voices shaking as they call names. The police drag the man in the raincoat toward a squad car while the smoking chest box hangs useless against his torso.

Spider-Man crosses the lane, not directly to me, but close enough.

Close enough that I can see the burn mark along his side where the electricity hit. The suit is darkened there, the fabric scorched. His left hand flexes once, then curls into a fist as if to hide the tremor.

He stops near the stone planter, a careful distance away.

“You okay?” he asks.

The question is quiet. Impossible to hear unless you are me.

I nod. My throat feels too tight for anything else.

His mask tilts toward the front doors, where Milo is clinging to the teacher who carried him inside. “The kid?”

“He’s okay,” I say. My voice comes out rough. “Scared. But okay.”

Spider-Man nods once.

He looks like he wants to say more. Or maybe he looks like he wants to leave and can’t figure out how to do it without making that obvious. Police are beginning to look his way now. So are students. Phones are raised again. Somewhere, a news van is probably already speeding through traffic, my father maybe right behind it, furious and terrified and carrying both like weapons.

Spider-Man’s hand twitches toward his side.

He is hurt.

Not badly enough to fall over. Not badly enough for anyone else to understand the shape of it. But I know what I saw. The blast. The stumble. The way he keeps his breathing measured, like too much of it would cost him.

I could ask.

Are you hurt? Are you going to be okay? Where do you go after this? Who checks on you when the city stops watching?

I don’t.

Because the answer to all of those questions would trap him here.

So I glance past him, toward the edge of the lane where the police are starting to shift closer, their formation tightening, hands hovering near their belts. More people are lifting their phones now, stepping forward despite the warnings, drawn in by the aftermath like it’s something they’re allowed to touch.

“They’re coming toward you,” I say quietly. “And people are starting to crowd again.”

Spider-Man follows my gaze for a split second.

I don’t give him time to brush it off.

“You should go,” I add, a little firmer. “Before they decide you’re part of the problem.”

He looks back at me.

The white eyes of the mask give nothing away, but something in the angle of his head shifts—like he’s weighing it, like he already knows I’m right and just doesn’t want to leave yet.

For a second, neither of us moves.

Then he exhales, barely audible.

“Yeah,” he says. “Probably a good idea.”

I nod once, even though my chest tightens at the thought of him disappearing again.

He lingers for half a heartbeat longer, then shifts his weight, already preparing to move.

I turn away first.

It is harder than I expect.

I stare out at the rain-dark courtyard, letting the noise of the crowd fill the space behind me, my pulse beating hard in my throat as I count silently, the way I did before.

One.

Two.

Three.

A web shoots.

I don’t look.

Four.

Five.

The air shifts.

When I finally turn, he is already above the gym roof, a red-and-blue blur cutting through the mist. He swings once, low and uneven, then catches the next building and disappears behind the old science wing like the rain has swallowed him whole.

Only then do I actually call my dad.

He answers immediately.

“Liya.”

“I’m okay,” I say first, because it is the only way to keep him from breaking apart through the phone. “I’m okay. I’m by the front steps.”

“What happened? I heard something over the scanner. A bus, some lunatic with electrical—are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you inside?”

I look at the shattered glass glittering across the street, the bus anchored in white webbing, the teachers still counting students with pale faces.

“Not exactly.”

Dad swears under his breath. Not at me. Not fully. At the world, maybe. At himself for being fifteen minutes late. At every awful thing that keeps finding its way to my school.

“I’m three blocks away,” he says. “Do not move.”

“I won’t.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

The line stays open even after neither of us speaks. I hear his car engine, the sharp tick of his blinker, his breath coming too fast. I stay where I am, one hand pressed around my phone, the other curled into my sleeve to hide how badly it shakes.

Jenna finds me before Dad does.

She comes from inside the building, hair half-fallen from its clips, camera bag twisted across her chest. Her face is pale, eyes too wide, and when she reaches me she doesn’t ask if I am okay. She just grabs my wrist and holds on.

“What the hell was that?” she whispers.

“I don’t know.”

That is the safest answer. Maybe even the truest one.

Her gaze moves over me quickly, checking for blood, bruises, evidence. “You scared me.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Her eyes narrow.

“Not really,” I add.

“That means you did something.”

I look toward the front doors, where Milo sits on the floor with his red raincoat pooled around him, a counselor crouched in front of him. His hands are wrapped around a paper cup of water. He is still crying, but less now.

Jenna follows my gaze.

Her grip on my wrist loosens. “You helped him?”

“He was stuck at the door.”

“Liya.”

“I didn’t go into the street.”

She just stares at me.

“I didn’t.”

She studies me for a moment, then exhales, shaky and annoyed and relieved all at once. “You’re impossible.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. You think you’re regular difficult. You’re advanced difficult.”

That gets a laugh out of me. It comes out wrong, too close to a sob, but Jenna doesn’t point that out. She only squeezes my wrist once before letting go.

Dad’s car screeches into the lane a minute later.

He parks terribly, half over the curb, not even bothering to straighten the wheel. The second he gets out, I can see the camera bag on the passenger seat, abandoned. For once, he doesn’t reach for it.

He runs to me.

I barely have time to brace before his arms close around me. He hugs like he is trying to pull me back through every disaster I have ever stood too close to, one by one, until I am small enough to keep safe in his hands.

“I told you to go inside,” he says into my hair.

“I know.”

“You said you were going inside.”

“I know.”

His arms tighten, then loosen just enough for him to pull back and look at my face. His eyes scan me the way they always do now, searching for hidden damage. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

His gaze drops to my hands. I realize too late that there is a thin line of red across one knuckle, probably from the stone planter or Milo’s raincoat zipper. Dad sees it.

“That’s not nothing.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“Liya.”

“I helped a kid get down from the bus door. That’s all.”

Dad’s expression shifts through fear, anger, and something more complicated. Something like pride that has nowhere safe to stand.

“You should’ve let the adults handle it.”

“There weren’t any adults close enough.”

He closes his eyes for a second.

When he opens them, the anger is still there, but exhausted. Wounded. “You are going to kill me before I’m forty-five.”

“You’re already forty-six.”

“Not helping.”

Jenna makes a small sound beside us that might be a laugh she wisely tries to bury.

Dad looks at her, then back at me. “We’re leaving.”

“Don’t you have to—” I gesture weakly toward the bus, the police, the scene already turning into a headline.

“No,” he says.

The answer is immediate.

I stare at him.

His jaw works once. “Someone else can photograph it.”

He guides me toward the car with one hand on my shoulder, still firm, still shaking a little. Jenna walks with us until the curb, where one of the teachers calls her name and waves her toward the student check-in area. She looks at me, reluctant.

“Text me,” she says.

“I will.”

“I mean actually.”

“I will actually text you.”

She gives Dad one cautious glance, then hurries back toward the school entrance.

The ride home is silent at first.

Not peaceful. Not angry either. Just full. Dad drives with both hands on the wheel, his knuckles pale, his camera bag sliding on the floorboard every time he brakes too sharply. The radio is off. The windshield wipers drag mist across the glass in slow, uneven sweeps.

I keep my hands in my lap and stare at the tiny cut on my knuckle.

The city outside looks different after something happens. Not because it changes, but because it doesn’t. Stores stay open. People cross streets. A man walks his dog under a black umbrella. The world continues with an almost offensive calm, dragging the disaster behind it like a shadow no one wants to look at directly.

Dad turns onto our street.

“You lied to me,” he says finally.

I swallow. “I know.”

“I need you to understand that I can’t protect you if you lie.”

“I know.”

“No, Liya. I don’t think you do.” His voice stays even, which is worse than yelling. “I don’t think you understand what it feels like to hear something over a police scanner and not know if my daughter is under it, beside it, inside it—”

“I wasn’t trying to scare you.”

“That doesn’t change anything.”

The words land hard because they are true.

I turn my head toward the window. Rain threads down the glass, turning the houses into wavering shapes. “There was a kid.”

Dad doesn’t answer.

“He was stuck at the bus door. Spider-Man had moved the guy away, and the teachers were helping other people, and he was just standing there. He couldn’t get down.” My voice thins despite my best efforts. “I didn’t run into the street. I didn’t go near the man. I just talked him down and caught his coat.”

Dad pulls into the driveway and turns off the engine.

For a while, neither of us moves.

Then he leans back in his seat and presses both hands over his face. When he speaks, his voice is muffled. “You sound like your mother.”

I look at him.

He lowers his hands, eyes red around the edges. “That is not always comforting.”

The ache in my chest softens into something worse.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I know.”

“I really am.”

“I know that too.”

The silence afterward is different. Not repaired. Not easy. But less sharp.

Inside, the house smells like morning because we left it too quickly: coffee gone stale, toast crumbs still on the table, The Sentinel folded beneath Dad’s palm print. He locks the front door behind us and stands there for a second, staring at the deadbolt like it has ever stopped anything that truly wanted to get in.

“Go upstairs,” he says.

“Am I grounded more?”

He gives me a tired look. “Do you want the official ruling now, or after I’ve had enough coffee not to sound insane?”

“After coffee.”

“Smart.”

I climb the stairs slowly.

My room is dim, the rain pressing gray light against the window. I drop my bag by the desk and sit on the edge of the bed without turning on the lamp. My body feels strange now that it has stopped moving. Hollow in some places. Too loud in others. The image of the bus keeps replaying in pieces: Milo’s red coat, Spider-Man’s burned side, the web lines holding the bus to the stone pillars like the city had been stitched together by force.

My phone buzzes.

For a second, I think it is Jenna.

It isn’t.

Jungwon: you got home?

I stare at the message until the screen begins to blur.

Of course. Of course he texts like he heard about it instead of lived it. Like he was never there. Like I hadn’t felt the space beside me go empty and watched Spider-Man appear less than a minute later.

I type back.

Me: yeah

The bubbles appear, vanish, appear again.

Jungwon: you’re okay?

Me: yeah

Me: just grounded in a more advanced way now probably

A pause.

Then—

Jungwon: sounds serious

Me: very

Me: might never see daylight again

I almost smile.

Me: both

The next pause is longer.

Rain taps softly against the glass. I glance toward the window, half-expecting to see a shape there, crouched on the ledge like the night itself has learned bad habits.

There is nothing.

My phone buzzes again.

Jungwon: one of the guys told me about what happened

Jungwon: that kid in the red coat

Jungwon: is he okay?

I stop breathing for a second.

There it is.

Small. Careless, maybe. Or not careless at all.

A thread left between us.

I look at the message for a long time, thumb hovering above the keyboard.

Me: yeah

Me: he was scared, but he got inside

Jungwon: good

One word.

Again.

But this one feels heavier than the last.

I should leave it there. That would be the safe thing. The normal thing. The thing people do when they are not standing at the edge of someone else’s secret, pretending not to notice the drop.

Instead, I type before I can lose the nerve.

Me: are you okay?

The bubbles appear immediately.

Then disappear.

Then appear again.

A full minute passes before his answer comes through.

Jungwon: yeah

I stare at it.

Another message follows.

Jungwon: just tired

That, at least, sounds true.

I sit back against the wall, knees drawn up to my chest, phone balanced loosely in one hand. Outside, the rain keeps touching the window, soft and persistent, blurring the glass until my reflection looks like someone I almost recognize.

Me: rest then

The reply comes after a few seconds.

Jungwon: you too

I lock the screen before I can say anything else.

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