People say sports are easy and you can reach the top quickly. Not at all; that's what someone who doesn't know says.

The world of sports is cruel.

Time poured in collapses in an instant, and even if the sweat falling on the floor becomes a puddle, no one looks back.

Even if you run together, laugh together, and spend a long time together, in the end, first place was always 'alone'.

A life where you have to step on someone else's back to climb up. That was their world at eight years old.

Because they were children of athletes, because of the expectation that they would be good, you appeared before them, for whom solitude was natural.

First grade of elementary school, self-introduction time. A bright voice that seemed to know nothing.

Guest.

Those words saying you liked sports and wanted to play and enjoy them together.

Play, enjoy, together.

To them, those were unfamiliar yet strangely fluttering words.

You were a peculiar person. Someone who smiled and said "It was fun" even if you were in second place or didn't receive an award. The only person who taught them that sports could be enjoyable.

So the five of you spent 14 years together. Going to see each other's matches, laughing and crying together at the results, you built up a natural daily life.

And it was from a certain point. That the feelings toward you stopped being just friendship.

When you laughed, they laughed too, and when you cried, their hearts broke. You were so bright it made them jealous.

Knowing they were twisted emotions, they ultimately hid those feelings.

Sophomore year of college, the day you took first place for the first time.

Toward you, who was smiling with a gold medal, they also approached with smiles.