The soccer ball bounced and jumped off the uneven wall, and the boy ran back and forth across the open ground, trying to catch the ball, but it looked like he was just chasing after the soccer ball’s tail.

Watching the boy’s clumsy figure, the girl somehow thought of a dog chasing a frisbee...

And once she had this thought, she couldn’t suppress it. In her eyes, the image of the boy chasing the soccer ball and the dog chasing the frisbee actually overlapped.

Then the corners of the girl’s mouth curled up—she was amused by her own thoughts.

But she immediately realized that thinking this way was disrespectful to the boy playing soccer below, so she quickly straightened her face and put away her smile.

The boy on the field was trying to stop a soccer ball that had flown out, but in the girl’s eyes, it was a struggle doomed to fail.

But the boy didn’t want to give up, stubbornly chasing after the ball, just like a dog whose entire attention was drawn by a frisbee.

He stretched out his leg with all his might toward the soccer ball in the air.

He kicked the ball.

He kicked the ball toward the wall that was just a short distance away.

The ball hit the wall.

The ball bounced straight back the way it came.

The ball hit the boy square in the face!

Thud!

This time, the girl who had been keeping a straight face couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing.

※※※

Ryan Howard squatted on the ground, rubbing his face hard with both hands, letting out a low whimper, the pain bringing tears to his eyes.

He wiped away his tears, then touched his nose, and, finding there was no nosebleed, finally breathed a sigh of relief—no disfigurement!

Then he slowly stood up, frowning as he looked around at the windows on the high platform.

While he was grimacing in pain and sucking in cold air, he vaguely heard laughter.

He remembered that no one lived in the houses around here...

As usual, all those windows were tightly shut, with nothing inside.

Just then, a gust of wind blew through the alley, swirling up grass and dust from the open ground, making Ryan Howard feel a chill and shiver involuntarily.

This reminded Ryan Howard of something—supposedly, the reason no one came to this wasteland was because of ghost stories, that a child had seen a girl in red by the window. But these houses really had been uninhabited for a long time...

Coming back to his senses and looking around, Ryan Howard realized that it had gotten much darker.

He looked up, and at some point, the sunset had disappeared, and the sky was filled with dark clouds.

※※※

John Lee carried a huge hiking backpack, then picked up two big boxes from behind the van, turned around with difficulty, and shouted toward the open door, “Olivia, what are you doing? How come you disappeared after just one trip upstairs?”

“Coming, coming!” The girl jumped out from inside the door, her red sleeveless T-shirt swinging up, faintly revealing her belly button.

The low-rise shorts made her long legs look especially striking. If you looked closely, you’d notice that her legs were different from other girls’ long legs—not slender, but with slightly thicker thighs, and when she exerted herself, the muscle lines were obvious. They weren’t fair, but rather a bit tanned, yet the muscles paired with her wheat-colored skin made her look fit, brimming with irrepressible youthful energy.

“Does it really take that long to put something away?” John Lee complained, then nodded toward the van’s trunk. “Hurry up and move, looks like it’s going to rain.”

As the girl leaned in to crawl into the van and dragged out a woven bag, she said to John Lee, “I was just upstairs watching the sunset. It was really beautiful.”

“Sunset?” John Lee leaned back, barely lifting his head to look at the sky full of dark clouds, and questioned.

“Just now, I told you it was just now. The sunlight was streaming through the gaps in the clouds, it looked just like holy light, so beautiful!”

There really had been sunlight just now. John Lee smiled. “So, do you like this place?”

“I do, Dad.”

“As long as you like it. The two of us might be staying in this house for three years.”

※※※

When the girl moved her things upstairs again, she went to the window for another peek, just in time to see the boy crouching and crawling into the grass, with only his butt sticking out and wiggling.

Hmm, now he finally doesn’t look like a dog chasing a frisbee, but more like a dog burrowing around in the grass...

The girl stood by the window, the corners of her mouth raised, watching.

The boy busied himself in the grass for a while before backing out, then carefully restored the grass to its original state, and only then pushed his bicycle away.

Watching that sneaky figure disappear from view, the girl withdrew her gaze and stared at the patch of weeds where the boy had been busy, lost in thought.

Chapter 5: How They Met

Ryan Howard pushed his bicycle into the building entrance before the first raindrop hit the ground. Behind him, the rain poured down, as if someone had dumped buckets of water from upstairs.

Ryan Howard looked back and thought, that was close.

Then he pulled out the chain lock, looped it through the wheel, and locked the bike to the iron railing of the stairs. He took his backpack out of the bike basket, slung it over his shoulders, and headed upstairs.