“This has to stay a secret, okay? Don’t worry… I won’t tell anyone!”

June spoke as if he were barely holding back his excitement.

I couldn’t respond.

“How long have you been on Earth? How can you speak human? Don’t tell me—

telepathy? My heart’s racing… Did I just make some huge discovery about the universe?”

“Who are you calling an alien?! I’m human!”

I tried to retrace my memories from before I ended up in this situation.

Anything strange. Anything unusual.

Something like magic.

But nothing came to mind.

Nothing that could explain any of this.

My last memory was the sunset.

The whole world had turned pink—neither yellow nor red, but somewhere in between.

I like sunsets.

They’re pretty.

Like always, I was hanging from the horizontal bar, watching the sky.

Geo had told me this himself—if you hang from the bars, you can grow taller.

He said he used to hang from them all the time when he was young, which was why he ended up so tall.

I was jealous.

I’ve always hated how slowly I grow compared to everyone else.

Sometimes I tried walking with my back straighter so I wouldn’t look small or hunched over, but that didn’t actually make me look any taller.

Still, if I kept repeating this “special training” Geo taught me, I was sure I’d grow.

And if not, then it was Geo’s fault.

The field was filled with students doing club activities.

Seeing them playing soccer, I figured it must be the soccer team.

I was with Claire.

We’re best friends.

We’re always together.

I hung from the bar while Claire sat underneath, waiting for Daniel from the book club.

Daniel was always the last of the three of us to finish his club activities.

He said it was because of club work, but I was sure he just lost track of time reading again.

Knowing Daniel, he was probably buried in some occult book.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if every new occult title in the library had been requested by him.

He’s an occult nerd and always slow, but still—Daniel, Claire, and me.

The three of us always ate together.

That was just our routine.

“Late!! Oh—is Daniel reading one of those weird ghost books again?”

I grumbled while still hanging from the bar.

Waiting and complaining are two separate things.

“Cia—"

Claire called my name softly, like she had noticed something.

I turned my head toward her, waiting for what she was about to say.

“Hey, look.”

I followed her gaze back to the field.

A group of students were playing soccer.

One boy at the front received the ball and kicked it forward.

A couple of defenders rushed toward him, closing in.

The black-haired boy slipped past them easily, then sent the ball flying toward the corner of the goal.

The ball shot straight ahead and the net rippled.

Goal.

The boys around him surrounded him, cheering.

“That's the guy you were talking about. The really handsome one.”

Among the cheering students, I caught sight of his neat, well-defined face.

Even from far away, I could see him smiling as he caught his breath.

He wiped away the sweat, exhaling heavily.

Because of the sunset, the whole world looked pink.

Even he looked tinted pink in the fading light.

After watching him quietly for a moment, I answered Claire.

“Hm… is that so?”