The message Hyomin broadcasted yesterday was automatically received by Amber, since her contact was in the class’ group. She sighed when she saw it again in the morning. It’s been 8 AM, and coincidentally, her appointment with the doctor was at 1:30 PM, right a half hour before the entire class member visit her.

“Mom,” she put down her phone on the dining table and took a plate. Her mom glanced at her, “Yes?” with her eyes stuck on her laptop.

Amber took a huge spoon of spaghetti, poured the barbecue sauce and mixed them. “Can we change the appointment time?”

“Of course not,” her mom finally gazed away from the laptop. “The doctor is very busy, you know. It even needed days to make a single appointment, and you want me to change the time for today? 1:30 PM has been perfect,” and Amber looked down.

“Well, here’s the case. My friends –I mean, the entire class member, want to visit me at hospital today. And the bad thing is they think I’m really hospitalized. Their timing is coincidentally matches our timing too.”

Her mom raised her eyebrows behind the laptop, and said, “Oh my. It may be the time to tell them about your identity.”

“What are you actually doing?” Amber approached her mom with a plate of spaghetti on her hand, and she took a spoon of it. Amber peeked at her mom’s laptop, and it was currently opening a webpage. The heading was ‘Gender Switch’, and it was an article about gender switch. Sounded so absurd, isn’t it?

“What is that?!” Amber asked with full of spaghetti. She took over her mom’s laptop and read it, but it was a nonsense and trashy article. It said, someone could accidentally change their gender by magic, transgender surgery or if you’re a clown fish, you can change your gender.

Amber squinted and closed the tab immediately. “Mom, please stop reading such trashy articles!” and her mom was just laughing. “Did you secretly have transgender surgery, Amber-ah? Or did someone magically change you?

Amber gapped , but her mom’s last guess was so near to the truth. So she just awkwardly shook her head and said, “You’re kidding me.”

“Is that magic?” her mom asked back, and she couldn’t answer even a single word.

Amber stayed silent, and then she inhaled deeply and spoke, “It’s not magic. It’s a curse.”

…

Kris sleepily drove towards Soojung’s house. As the plan said, Soojung and several other class members will wait in Soojung’s house, and Kris, as the volunteer to be a driver, has to picked them up and driven them to the hospital.

He yawned, he was in a peaceful nap before, but Soojung called him and ruined his beautiful dreamland. It’s just about one past a quarter, and she wanted him to pick her up?!

Kris checked his phone to see Soojung’s address, and after then he threw his phone to the dashboard. He tilted the drive to the right, and stopped right in front of a minimalist house. Kris pressed the horn once, and leaned his back on the seat. He put his arm in front of his eyes and began to sleep.

“Kris! Kris!” slowly he could hear the faded choirs outside the car, and small thumps all over the car’s windows. Kris groaned, woke up and automatically opened the car’s doors.

All of the passengers immediately rushed in the car, debated about where they had to sit, and Soojung immediately took the seat right beside Kris. She chuckled at her losing friends, and said, “You guys are so lame!!”

“We’re going to do a hospital visit… and you guys rush like this,” Kris said in a cool way. When the doors have closed, Kris drove the car backward, turned the direction and headed towards the hospital.

At the same moment, Amber has sat down at the doctor’s room (guys, it needed such a long time to pick kids like Soojung up) and had her test result paper came out. The doctor leaned closer to her and her parents, and said, “We have two suggestions to get over this problem,” and she signed two with her fingers.

“First, to wait until she changes naturally. There’s no guarantee, and she may stay like that until she’s old.”

“Second, we can do surgeries.”

Amber sighed and said, “It’s all silly. Do you have another suggestion?”

The doctor shook her head. “I’m sorry, but that’s all we can do. If it happened by magic and sort of fantasy things, we obviously can’t.”

Amber’s dad nodded and said, “Thank you.”

“But if I may know it, what caused you to change?” the doctor stood up, made up her table and folded an envelope filled with reports to give to Amber’s parents. Amber widened her eyes a little, and then she muttered, “The curse caused this, I guess.”

“Sorry?” the doctor tilted her head a little, and Amber looked up. “The curse. The curse caused this.”

…

Kris’ car stopped exactly in front of the hospital’s entrance door, followed by Luna’s car that drove by a driver. You could imagine how did the hospital’s terrace flooded by high school kids that were just 10 years old mentally. They slammed the car’s doors, started to chat with each other and played around.

“Guys, please!” Joonmyeon, the class president scolded them, but as usual, no one listened to him.

Soojung laughed. She led the way towards the hospital with Hyomin, followed by a bunch of insane human beings and approached the customer service spot. “Excuse me,” Hyomin murmured.

“Oh, how can I help you?” the lady behind the customer service table stood up politely, and Soojung started to spoke, “Where’s the doctor’s place?”

“What?!” Hyomin widened her eyes. “What disease does she suffer?!”

Soojung chuckled and said, “Her sister told me that she had her butts swollen. It makes her grows too,” and the entire class members were surprised. “What?!”

“But Joseph, her cousin, told me the different thing!” Hyomin yelled, and Soojung widened her eyes. “He told me that she suffers diarrhea. With unstoppable vomit and sudden pregnancy, but he said he was kidding at the last one. You know, she’s too flat to pregnant.”

Soojung had to progress it for a moment, and then she yelled, “So they told us different things?!”

The entire class members argued together with Soojung and Hyomin, and it made a huge noise. Right at the same moment, Amber and her parents passed them. Her cheerful mom’s eyes immediately stuck at Soojung that time, remembered that she was her child’s friend, and called, “Jung Soojung?” while Amber tried to cover her face so hard and escaped.

Soojung looked around to find the sound source, and then she gasped softly when she saw Amber’s mom. “Ahjumma!!”

Amber’s mom approached her, examined around and said, “Woah, is one of your class’ member sick? This is a large number for a visit, for sure.”

Joonmyeon tilted his head and said, “I thought Amber’s the one who is sick…”

Hyomin and Soojung stared at each other in surprised face, and then Hyomin said, “Uh… I’m sorry Ma’am, but we thought… Amber’s the one who is… sick?” she tilted her head.

Amber’s mom widened her eyes a little and said, “What? Who said that? Amber isn’t sick. Even she’s here,” she pointed at a direction, and immediately the students tip-toed to stare at the spot Amber’s mom pointed at.

There was a figure of a boy standing, and all the students could see was just his back. All of then turned their face to Amber’s mom again and said, “T-there’s just a boy. Did she cut her hair?”

“You guys haven’t known it yet?” Amber’s mom said with her eyebrows raised. “Amber, come here!” she yelled to the boy figure.

God… Amber held her breath, closed her eyes and covered her eyes with her palm. She gulped her saliva and cursed in her breath.

“She’s a bit shy,” her mom muttered. “Oh, but should I call her a ‘he’?”

All of the class members needed a moment to progress Amber’s mom’s word, and then Joonmyeon as the speaker said, “S-so… he’s Amber..?”

Kris quietly nodded and he muttered, “So my guess was right.”

The students started to cause huge noise, they were so damn surprised because of the fact, but some of them were still confused.

Amber’s mom nodded and said, “So she hasn’t told you yet.”

Amber could hear all the yelps and gasps behind there, so she just turned over and said, “Hi guys. Hello, I’m Amber.”

“JOSEPH?!” Luna screamed, and Amber sighed. “Hard to admit, but Joseph is me.”

The noise started to grow bigger, and finally the lady behind the customer service table stood up and spoke boldly, “I’m sorry, but would you like to calm down the noise?”

The noise did calm down. Soojung boldly said, “Let’s move to another place,” and she walked towards the hospital’s café, followed by the students.

Amber looked down, but Soojung immediately took her by the hand, and boldly yet angrily talked to her. “Come on, Amber.”

Amber thought, a confession won’t be this hard.

…

Soojung’s expression has never been this angry. She took a place right in front of Amber when all of them had arrived to the café. They remained silent for a while. Amber gapped her lips; she wanted to say something but Soojung’s speech cut it immediately. “Tell us.”

Amber sighed; she leaned back to the chair. “Listen, guys. I wasn’t expecting for this-“

“Tell us,” Soojung repeated her speech, now it’s bolder and it’s more to a scold.

“Fine,” Amber adjusted her position. “Soojung, do you remember that time when we had a basketball match?”

“The one with Kris?” Soojung pointed at Kris. Kris stared at Amber curiously, and Amber looked away; she nodded. “Yup, that one. It was a burden for me, losing from Kris. I told you that I wanted to win no matter what,” and Soojung nodded, her mind flashed back.

“And I said I wanted to be a boy. In the morning, it badly came true.”

Kris widened his eyes a little, realized that indirectly he caused all of these. Luna opened widely and said, “So Joseph is a fictional person?”

Amber nodded slowly. “Yes. But now I regret all of it.”

All of them remained silent. Kris leaned back and said, “Have you tried something?”

Amber nodded again and rubbed her face, she mumbled. “Yup. I tried to sleep, but when I woke up, nothing changed. I went to the doctor, but she said I’m one hundred percent a boy.”

“But what about Jessica sunbae?” Hyomin said, and Amber raised her shoulders. “I- I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting for being idolized.”

“Wow, it sounds so unbelievable,” Luna said, and she chuckled gently. “Even I thought you were handsome at first.”

Amber raised her shoulders. “Well…”

Luna glanced at her wrist watch and said, “Well, we should go home now,” and all of them stood up.

Amber nodded, she hung her head lower and said, “Thank you for the visit… I’m sorry.”

One by one visitors walked outside the café, some of them were still inside, waving their hands to Amber. And the last one to leave was Kris. He stood beside the corner of the table and said, “When are you going to tell Jessica?”

“Shut up,” Amber said, stood up and walked away from the café, leaving Kris alone who can only stare at her leaving figure.

uhh what is this ㅜㅜ such a short and bad update. I swear I'll work harder!