✩𝘚𝘶𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘈𝘶✩
She turned around to leave when she realized the bookcase was tilting in the direction of Jungwon more than it should, and the books were now falling off the shelf. Jungwon flinched at the sight of the books falling d...
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Miss Esmèe left Damin alone to let her process everything. She walked around the yard as she grasped the reality she was in.
She was in the past right now. They were more like her. And something about wights and hollows.
"Damin, watch out for the ball!" A voice yelled from a distance.
If it hadn't been for her peculiarity, she probably would've been hit in the head with the ball. Damin swiftly turned around and the ball went back in the direction it came from, ultimately hitting somebody.
She let out a gasp and ran towards the black-haored boy that was now on the ground, holding onto his nose that was bleeding.
"I'm so sorry!" She apologized, guilt washing over her.
Almost all of them burst into laughter but Chenle's one was the loudest.
"Don't be sorry, he totally deserved it." said a boy, and the majority of them nodded, some of them still laughing at him.
"Ugh, screw you Renjun." The boy on the grass muttered, standing up. "Hey, I'm Haechan but you can call me yours."
Groans and laughs were heard at Haechan's failed attempt to flirt. Damin also couldn't help but slightly cringe at it, giving an awkward smile at him.
"Don't mind him, he's stupid." She assumed that this one was Renjun. Before anybody could say anything else, someone from inside the house yelled, "Food is ready!"
That was all it took for the guys to run to the house, racing to get the food first and pushing each other.
"Guys will be guys, am I right?" It was the same girl that Damin saw from the window. "I'm Karina, nice to meet you."
"I'm Damin, nice to meet you too." She smiled. As they walked to the house, Karina told her everyone else's name.
When they sat down at the dinner table, Damin swore she'd never seen a table as big as this one in her entire life. Well, maybe in Harry Potter but that was it. They were all like a big family despite not being blood -related to each other.
"Everybody, we have a guest joining us for dinner today, so I expect you to behave yourselves." She said, eyeing Haechan and Renjun in the end.
"Yes Miss Esmèe." they all said in unison. Then she pointed to each person in the room and recited their names, most of which Damin immediately forgot, as happens when she's nervous.
The introductions were immediately followed by a storm of questions, which Miss Esmèe answered with efficiency.
"Is Damin going to stay with us?"
"I don't think so."
"What's her peculiarity?"
With that question, everyone's heads turned to Damin. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat due to the sudden attention all on her. Slowly but carefully, she focused on the glass in front of her, and then it began rising.
"Woah!"
"It's like Kun hyung's!"
They proceeded to ask her more questions and eventually, Damin warmed up to them. Sure 25 new names were very hard to handle but by the time food arrived, she had remembered at least half of them.
When the covers were finally lifted, a feast of kingly proportions was revealed: a roasted chicken, its flesh a perfect golden brown; a whole salmon and a whole cod, platters of roasted vegetables, loaves of bread still cooling from the oven, and jellies Damin didn't recognize but that looked delicious.
It shouldn't have surprised her that peculiar children have peculiar eating habits, but she found herself sneaking glances around the room in between spoonfuls of food.
Ningning, the levitating girl, had to be belted onto a chair that was screwed to the floor to prevent her from floating up to the ceiling.
So the rest of us wouldn't be swarmed by insects, Hendery, the boy who had bees living in his stomach, ate under a large mosquito net at a table for one in the corner.
They seemed especially interested in what life in the twenty-first century was like.
"What sort of flying motorcars do you have?" asked a boy named Yuta.
"None," said Damin. "Not yet, anyway."
"You lied!" He looked to Chenle who just laughed.
"Have they built cities on the moon?" another boy asked hopefully.
"We left some garbage and a flag there in the sixties, but that's about it."
They seemed disappointed. Sensing an opportunity, Miss Esmèe said, "You see? The future isn't so grand after all. Nothing wrong with the good old here and now!"
It got her wondering: Just how long had they been here, in the "good old here and now?"
"Do you mind if I ask how old you all are?" she said.
"I'm seventy-three," said Haechan.
Ningning raised his hand excitedly. "I'll be forty-six and a half next week!"
Damin wondered how they kept track of the months and years if the days never changed.
"I"m seventy-five," said a girl named Winter. She looked no more than nineteen.
"I'm nearly sixty-nine," said Winwin with his mouth full of food.
Then it was her turn.
"I turned eighteen," she told them. She saw a few of their eyes widen. Taeyong laughed in surprise. They were surprised when they met Jisung and Chenle due to how young they were but they didn't expect Damin to be even younger than them.
It was strange to them that she should be so young, but what was strange to her was how young they seemed.
It was as if the unchanging days of their lives here, this unending summer without death, had grabbed their emotions as well as their bodies, trapping them in their youth like Peter Pan and his Lost Boys.
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