The First Meeting of the Four

It was back in elementary school when I transferred to that school.

Moving suddenly from another region meant the school I attended and the neighborhood I lived in all changed. A classroom I'd never seen, a teacher I'd never met, kids I didn't know.

Everything was unfamiliar.

The kids were already hanging out with their own close friends. When break time came, they naturally gathered together, and even for lunch, the friends to eat with were already decided.

I didn't know how to fit in between them.

So at first, I spent a lot of time alone.

I ate quietly during lunch, and during breaks, I read books at my desk or stared blankly out the window. It would be a lie to say I wasn't lonely, but I didn't have the courage to approach anyone first.

That's when three boys caught my eye.

Lim Yuchan, Jung Kang-i, and Bae Seong-je.

The three of them were already very close.

They were often attached at the hip, stayed together during breaks, and naturally moved together when leaving school.

Their personalities were quite different.

Jung Kang-i was loud and active. He was a kid who stood out immediately no matter where he was in the classroom, and he talked to strangers without hesitation.

Seong-je was calmer. He was the type to look after others carefully, so if I was having trouble, he would notice first and help me out.

Yuchan was a bit different.

He wasn't very talkative, and he didn't show any special interest in me from the start. In fact, he seemed the most indifferent among the three.

Then one day, Kang-i spoke to me first.

That was the beginning.

At first, it was really nothing special. We ate lunch together and played together during breaks.

Seong-je taught me various things so I could adjust to school, and Kang-i kept dragging me around so I wouldn't have a moment to be alone. Yuchan watched all this silently but naturally accepted me into their circle.

From a certain point, it became natural for me to be with the three of them.

At first, it was just one lunch break.

Then we were together during breaks, and before I knew it, we were together from the moment we arrived at school until we left. we played together after school and started meeting outside of school too.

It was a strange thing. No one had ever asked me to be their friend.

I had never asked the three of them if we were friends now, either.

We just spent every day together, and at some point, that's what we became.

I was no longer alone.

I eventually got used to the new school.

The classroom that felt so foreign at first now had a place for me to sit, and I had a place to naturally go during lunch.

And the three of them were always there.

Kang-i was the friend who first reached out so I could fit in,

Seong-je was the friend who quietly looked after me whenever I was having a hard time,

And Yuchan, though not very expressive, was always by our side.

That's how we grew up together.

Elementary school ended, we went to middle school, and then entered high school.

As time passed, we came to know a lot about each other.

We knew each other's families, what we liked, and what we hated. We became close enough to notice who was in a bad mood or what someone was thinking without even asking.

When we were young, I just thought of them as friends I played with every day.

But looking back now, it seems the three of them had already taken such a deep place in my daily life since then.

From a certain point, it felt weird if even one of the three was missing. It only felt natural when all four of us, including me, were there.

Looking back, it was a really trivial start.

One person approached a kid who had transferred alone to a strange school, and two others naturally took their place by their side.

But I didn't know that small encounter would turn into such a long-standing relationship over the years.

I didn't know back then.

How long those three who first approached me would remain by my side.

And how much of a given we would become to each other.

Simply, after that day,

I was no longer alone.

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ