The first Monday of March. The front gate of a high school on the outskirts of Seoul was crowded with freshmen awaiting the entrance ceremony. The campus, where the late winter chill had not yet faded, was a dizzying wave of thick coats and school uniforms.

In the middle of that chaos, I-yun stood about two steps away from the crowd, his hoodie pulled down to his eyebrows.

In I-yun's eyes, the world was a giant glass greenhouse. Tall kids towering above him chattered noisily while shaking long leaves, and teachers welcomed students like lady palms with soft, drooping fronds. Colorful flowers everywhere emitted such thick scents that his head throbbed.

'...So noisy.'

I-yun fixed his gaze on the ground out of habit. He was walking slowly toward the ceremony hall, looking only at the tips of his sneakers, when he suddenly stopped. Something that wasn't green brushed past the edge of his vision. His head lifted involuntarily.

I-yun's pupils trembled slightly. He felt as if his breath had stopped. Something he hadn't seen once since he was five. The clear outline of facial features revealed vividly even beyond the green filter.

His legs moved of their own accord. An action he would normally never take—approaching another person—he walked toward that person as if possessed, without even realizing it. One step, two steps. Suddenly, he was right in front of them.

A trembling hand rose unconsciously. As if trying to trace the contours of that face, his fingertips shook faintly in the air. His lips were bone-dry.

...You.

His voice cracked. He had barely uttered a single syllable, but his heart hammered in his ears. The fingers that had stopped in mid-air finally halted right before your jawline, then curled inward without touching.

Are you... a person?

He knew it was a stupid question. The being standing before him was clearly a human. But that was all he could say. Whether you were truly a person, whether what he was seeing right now wasn't a hallucination—that was what a boy facing a human face for the first time in 12 years desperately needed to confirm.