“Could it be tickets to an American football game?”

I absentmindedly received the tickets.

Two crumpled tickets. Who knows how long they had been stuffed in a pocket.

“But why two tickets?”

“It’s far from town, and I thought you might feel awkward, so I got two tickets for you to bring a friend. You could come with your parents too. Touching, right?”

“Well, I suppose I should be moved by your consideration.”

I chuckled and smoothed out the deeply creased tickets with my palm.

Looking at the location, it was at a stadium away from town as Victor said, but not so far as to be unreachable.

“A friendly match between Roingham High School and New York Spring High School…”

As I was bent over reading the fine print on the tickets, Victor poked my forehead.

“I’m telling you in advance, don’t come with a guy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t buy tickets for guys. Come with a girl.”

“Hmm…”

At those words, I blinked blankly and then asked.

“What about Adrian?”

“Hey, is Adrian a girl?!”

“I was just asking, why are you getting upset…”

Victor, who had been grinning smugly the whole time, suddenly got irritated like a cat whose tail had been stepped on at the mention of Adrian.

I narrowed my eyes at his reaction.

“Funny. I haven’t even said I’m going yet. I’m not that free, you know. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“If you accepted the tickets, it’s the same as saying you’re coming. Why are you backing out now?”

“Even if I go, it would be to monitor whether you use your abilities in the competition or not. Not to cheer you on.”

When I said that teasingly, Victor snorted.

“I don’t do that kind of thing. I win everything without cheating. I’ve never lost in my life.”

And then that arrogant smile anticipating victory…

I glared at him with a disgusted look.

‘He’s just not cute at all.’

Still, I could feel that I had grown closer to Victor over the past few months. At first, we used to bicker over every little thing we said to each other.

Training together every afternoon and closing dungeons. Maybe it’s because I even got rides from him in the mornings?

It’s already been almost two months since we first closed a dungeon as a team.

During that time, we’ve closed 6 dungeons together, training after school every day. When you spend half the day together, it’s only natural to become close.

‘Well, I guess as a friend I could go cheer him on.’

I casually examined the tickets, then stuffed them into my back pocket. Victor picked up his gym bag from the ground, slung it over his shoulder, and made me promise several times.

“Anyway, you’re coming. This squirrel will be watching to see if you show up or not. You better.”

“I said I got it. Just train well. Don’t show me you losing to another team after I went all the way there.”

Victor boasted that would never happen, then left with his gym bag.

After finally sending Victor off, everything around became quiet.

“A sports game, huh.”

I muttered, thinking of the tickets stuffed in my pocket.

Belatedly, I realized something I had forgotten.

“But I don’t have any friends besides you guys…”

Come to think of it, I realized I didn’t have any friends, let alone female friends, other than the dungeon team.

…Who should I go with?

* * *

“So, you’re asking us to go to the football game with you?”

Jena asked me with a baffled expression.

During lunch break at school. I finished eating early in the cafeteria and started looking for candidates.

The first candidates were the queen bees touching up their makeup sitting in the bleachers.

To be precise, it was Regina and Jena. For some reason, Queen Bee Chloe was nowhere to be seen.

‘I haven’t had a long conversation with any female classmates while adjusting to this school.’

As I’ve said before, I don’t dislike the queen bees that appear in teen movies. I just think they’re tricky to deal with, but I’ve long known they have their cute sides.

“Yeah. Chloe’s in the cheerleading squad, so she’ll be going to the game this Friday to cheer. Why don’t Regina and Jena come along too? I have one free ticket…”

“No way. Big is on the football team!”

Regina exclaimed in a sulky voice while fixing her eyebrows in a hand mirror. I watched her for a moment before abruptly asking.

“Don’t tell me. You still have feelings for McQueen?”

“Oh my! What nonsense are you…”

“Then there’s no problem, right? You said you don’t have feelings anymore.”

At my words, Regina’s lips twitched as if to retort, but then her face suddenly turned bright red. Jena laughed brightly at Regina’s face flushed like an apple.

“Really, Huntington, you’re so insensitive.”

“I’m insensitive?”

“Of course she’d say no when you ask if she still has feelings for someone who’s obviously overflowing with lingering attachment. Regina still has feelings for Victor!”

“Jena, don’t say such strange things!”

“Even if she says she doesn’t have feelings anymore, McQueen is handsome enough to make non-existent feelings appear, right? Of course, I’m on Regina’s side, but I understand Regina’s heart too. In the current situation, it’ll be hard to see McQueen’s face.”

I asked Jena, who was repeatedly making and erasing her bangs with a thin comb.

“Then what about you, Jena? Don’t you want to go watch American football with me?”

“Well, if Chloe is going for cheerleading, I could go too, but…”

Jena trailed off, switching her phone camera to selfie mode and twisting her body this way and that. She seemed to be looking for the optimal selfie angle under natural light.

Then Jena and I appeared small in the camera screen. Jena tilted her head.

“Hmm. By the way, Huntington, don’t you wear makeup? I think it wouldn’t be bad if you tried.”

She stared at my face intently, so I said seriously.

“Please refrain from saying things like the opening of ‘makeover of shy girl with glasses into queen bee’ that often appears in teen movies. I don’t like setting up flags like that.”

There are a few clichés I dislike, and ‘makeover of shy girl with glasses into queen bee’ ranks about 3rd.

2nd is the cliché where posting something on social media leads to it going viral and somehow resolving the main plot in a slapdash way.

1st is continuing a slapstick plot and then ending with a self-help book-like lesson like ‘But I decided to love myself for who I am’.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you really are a funny one.”

Regina and Jena laughed as they watched me scratch my goosebump-covered arms.

Even as lunch break was ending, it wasn’t easy to choose a friend to take to the football game. As I was checking the time, Regina spoke up.

“By the way, why isn’t Chloe at school yet?”

“She didn’t come to school?”

“Yeah. She hasn’t shown up all morning and there’s been no contact. I wonder if something happened?”

Regina tried calling Chloe.

Just then, a sweet ringtone sounded from higher up in the bleachers.

“Hey girls.”

We looked up at the familiar voice to see Chloe in a pink jacket.

But she looked very different from usual.

The accessories and skirt all in pink were the same as always. However, she had a thick cast on her left foot and was using crutches under both armpits.

“Oh my gosh, Chloe! What happened?”

The three of us went up to where Chloe was in the bleachers. We could see Chloe’s face, which looked more haggard than usual despite the full makeup.

“I slipped in the bathroom while taking a bath this morning. They said I have a hairline fracture in my leg bone. I was late because I had to go to the hospital for that.”

“That must have hurt!”

‘For a queen bee, she fell in a pretty ordinary way.’

I thought quietly. Chloe let out a big sigh.

“Actually, I was filming ’14 Morning Routines of a Busy Woman Starting Her Day Beautifully’ for TikTok, but there was a rose-scented soap from a department store brand under my feet. I slipped on that. You know how my TikTok channel has been growing lately. I got greedy and ended up with a big injury.”

‘I was wrong. She fell like a queen bee after all.’

I corrected my thoughts.

Beside me, Regina and Jena expressed their sympathy.

“Oh, Chloe. I’ll write my lucky words on your cast to help you get better soon. If it has my wish, your leg bone will heal quickly.”

“I’ll write words you’ll like with my pink eyeliner too. Get well soon.”

“Oh my, there’s such a thing as pink eyeliner?”

Chloe looked at the two of them alternately with a very touched expression.

“Thank you so much, Regina, Jena.”

And so the two of them wrote words of encouragement all over Chloe’s cast as she sat on the bleachers.

Get well soon, our cheerleader fairy, xoxo, things like that.

“Huntington, you write something too.”

“Ah… Then give me black.”

In the end, I also wished for Chloe’s quick recovery with black eyeliner. And I thought.

‘Then Chloe won’t be able to do cheerleading this Friday.’

Forget cheerleading, it would be hard for her to even show her face at the stadium. With Queen Bee Chloe not coming, there’s no way the other two would come along either…

I stood up after crouching down to leave a message of support, and Chloe was taking a selfie to show off her cast.

“Don’t wander around too much and rest at home as much as possible, Chloe.”

At my words, Chloe let out a sigh.

“I want to do that, but I just realized I don’t have any looks that go with a cast. Girls, do you want to go to the shopping center on Friday to buy a skirt that matches the cast?”

“Oh, that sounds great!”

“Perfect. I wanted to buy a necklace anyway! Then while we’re at it, let’s take Huntington along and get rid of that stuffy style… Huh?”

Regina turned around excitedly but then stopped.

“Where did she disappear to so quickly?”

* * *

Teen queen bees are nice. But shopping with them was scary.

As soon as I sensed something strange, I quickly slipped away from the field and went back into the school building.

In the end, I couldn’t decide who to take to the football game.

My parents wouldn’t refuse if I asked them to come along, but since they prefer baseball to American football, it was questionable whether they would enjoy it.

“I’ve lived in this world for almost a year, but I still don’t have any female friends. I’ve been wasting my time at school.”

It was an occasion that made me disappointed in my social skills once again.

But it couldn’t be helped.

Whenever I had a hard time after being possessed in this world, it was more comfortable to trudge to Koreatown and vent my feelings while eating an 18,000 won sundubu-jjigae with rice sold separately, rather than making new friends to confide in.

‘I’m not even from this world originally, just someone possessing a body, what kind of worries could I share?’

This is the result of living alone, solving problems and suffering on my own. At this rate, no one will come to see me when I’m dying someday.

For a moment, the face of Allen, Juno Huntington’s best friend, flashed through my mind.

The real Juno might have confided in Allen whenever she had troubles.

But I’m not the real Juno, and I wasn’t keen on taking the bus alone with Allen to a stadium on the outskirts of town. Above all, Allen was the XY chromosome Victor said not to bring, so he was out of the question.

“…Would he hate it if I went with Adrian?”

It’s a difficult situation for me, who’s only gotten close to Victor and Adrian in this world.

I’m not sure exactly why Victor dislikes the idea of going with Adrian, but it doesn’t feel right to do something the person who gave me the tickets told me not to do.

Just then, someone grabbed my shoulder.

“Then why don’t you go to the game with me?”