READY OR NOT.

- Transmigration? No thanks.

THERE JUST CANNOT BE ANY other reason, I deduce. This is love.

Hanna Kim is standing across the field with the girls track team. Excellent character? Pretty smile? Eyes that can pull my soul in and swallow it whole? Check. Check. Check. Out of all the clubs she could have joined, she's right here, at my club's doorstep. If that doesn't count as a sign, I honestly don't know what does.

"Just saying, but she is way out of your league," Shin Woo reminds me, ever so kindly.

"Gee, thanks."

"No, I mean it."

"There is no crime in staring," I tell him.

Shin Woo gives me this extremely unimpressed look and gestures towards his feet. "It's a crime to be slacking off during practice."

Rolling my eyes, I press down on his feet with my palms as he crunches forward. But my eyes are once again drawn to Hanna like a moth to fire. Right on cue, she smiles at whatever the manager noona is saying.

Oh man, my heart is a whole circus right now.

"Seriously dude, quit it!" I get hit by Shin Woo's hand towel and its wonderful scent, something he probably used to wipe his armpits while he was at it. I throw it back at his face and pull him to his feet. Behind him, Hanna moves closer to the basketball court, still talking with the manager noona.

"How about a match of basketball?" I ask suddenly. Shin Woo catches right on. "You want to show off." There is a dash of exasperation but hey, this is exactly why he is my best friend.

I nod and he scoffs, but doesn't complain. We sneak off to where the basketball club is warming up, without alerting our club president. The court is adjacent to our track field, separated by a steel fence.

A couple of the basketball guys wave when we jump over it. One of the sunbaes jogs to us, landing a solid thump each, on both of our shoulders. "Shin Woo, you finally decided to ditch them and join us?" he asks, his boisterous laugh filling the open court before jerking a thumb at me. "We don't want this midget."

If it were any other day, I would've stuck my nose up high, like I always do in the vicinity of the basketball guys, while proudly proclaiming I was five foot ten and not exactly a midget. But today is different. Hanna's laugh carries to where we're standing and my stomach does a judo flip. Making a point to this meathead can wait.

"We just wanted to play a game," Shin Woo explains on my behalf.

When the game starts, Hanna finally glances in our direction. With spring in the air and the cherry blossoms around the campus in full bloom, everything is tinged with a soft pink hue. The wind in her hair and the falling petals add to it, making Hanna feel like a painting from the museum I would normally ignore. I wonder if she actually knows me. We share a couple of classes but we’ve never crossed paths. I doubt she even knows I exist.

Suddenly, my head gets pushed down by a fierce hand. "Hey!"

"Head in the game," Shin Woo mutters. I push his hand off and quickly correct my hair. Who knows, Hanna might glance here while she looks around. Can't go around with a bird's nest of hair while that happens.

"You're pathetic," he finally says.

"Exceptional observation." But I do sober up. "You'd understand when you're in love."

He only hmphs.

Unlike me who is in this just to get the attention of my crush, the basketball guys take the game pretty seriously. Especially the ones on the opposite side. The ball never reaches my hand and worse, my team is losing.

“Shin Woo, a little help would be amazing.”

He bounces to me, light as a feather. “You bet,” he says wiping the sweat from his forehead, “it’s just, I’m on the opposite team.”

Which, quite honestly, is to do with meathead hyung’s obsession with being on the same team as Shin Woo whilst not being in the same team as me.

In short, he sucks.

“Pass the ball!” I yell but none of the guys in my team do.

Like I wished for, I notice Hanna standing at the corner of the court watching the match with a couple of girls. But unlike what I wished for, our team is biting dust. By the next ten minutes, our team is horribly losing. Irrevocably. Maybe Shin Woo is right. I might be a tad bit pathetic.

Yet I persevere. I run, I jump, I tackle, I try every darn thing to steal the ball from the opposite team and score a point but like Shin Woo, meathead is right too. God, I’m a midget.

Twenty minutes in and I slump to the ground when the meathead sunbae blows the whistle. This was a disaster. I quickly glance at Hanna to see her talking to some of the basketball guys from the other team. Exactly the picture I envisioned. Just, I am nowhere in it. Great.

“If only someone had passed me the ball,” I grumble, shooting a glare at my lovely teammates who are resting like boulders around Shin Woo and I.

I see it before my brain registers it. It is one of the guys from my team. In hindsight, I can’t quite remember his name. But I remember the rest of it. I see the stray basketball being picked up, see the flick of his wrist and the joke in the air, and see as he throws the ball at me. He is smiling. Everyone is. I watch as the ball revolves towards me. I know it is going to collide but my hands aren’t fast enough. Everything happens in slow motion— the ball smashing me square in the face, the way the smiles turn into looks of horror and even Shin Woo reaching out to me. I don’t feel the impact as my nose gets squashed. I don’t feel the pain for a second, too. I clutch my nose, dazed, but that is when I see the red droplets.

“Is that . . . is that blood? My blood?”

Then the pain hits and that’s when I faint.

Honestly, this day couldn't get any worse.

Someone is sticking a finger into my nose.

My eyes flash open, only to get blinded by absolute darkness. The mattress under me feels uncomfortable, cutting into my sore muscles. And it is cold. Very, very cold. I pull out the thing in my nose, but weirdly enough, Shin Woo's hand feels alarmingly thin.

"Shin Woo-ah," I call. No response.

“Shin Woo?” Still nothing.

"Kang Shin Woo, stop messing around. Turn on the lights."

He finally listens. There's some shuffling to my right and I wait patiently as he searches for the light. This should be the infirmary, I think. But once my mind clears, the vivid flashback of passing out under the eyes of half of the sophomores hits me like a truck and with flaming cheeks, I clutch my head in my hands.

Did Hanna see? God, I should've just stuck with the crunches.

At last, Shin Woo finds the darn lights and turns them on. A warm, orangey glow falls on me, lighting my surroundings dimly. This time, my brain registers everything all right but it is my body that stumbles back in shock a second too late.

Around me –instead of vacant beds and vials of medicine– huge, looming trees welcome me. It is nothing like I’ve ever seen. The harsh green of the leaves appear wet and gloomy, like no man has ever walked underneath the shade of them. So silent, so still. Like a dark canvas of just barks and twigs that was meant to be haunting and scary. Far from the warmth I’m used to from the trees in the park near my house.

On a normal day, I’m not a scaredy-cat but this is different. Before my brain can process everything my eyes are seeing, I scramble to my feet. The crunch of the ground under my feet when I move feels alien.

The infirmary nurse is definitely MIA and so is Kang Shin Woo. With every growing second, the fear in the pit of my stomach grows rapidly, like liquid fire pulsing through my veins. Where is this place?

"Glad you are awake! My gran used to say how sticking it in the nose always works."

I whip to the direction of the voice only to see a . . . wait, is that a flying meatball with legs?

Two feet to my left, the sight of an odd creature welcomes me. The creature smiles at me, head round and only consisting of two eyes and a mouth, no nose in sight. Limbs, thin to the point of looking like dried twigs from the trees around me, make its hands and legs. Before I can reel from the shock, a deadbeat voice infiltrates into my ears, a languid tsunami forcing its way into my senses until it fondles me like an uncomfortable caress.

"Congratulations. You've unlocked the portal of Erede. Happy gaming, hero."

And I faint for a second time. You know what, this day just got a whole lot worse.

t o b e c o n t i n u e d

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

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