Apparently Jessica had given information on where I was staying.

Great.

I could feel my hands tremble as I gripped onto my bag’s strap as I followed Kyuhyun to the side. It wasn’t something comfortable, with the way his eyes looked. There weren’t butterflies in my stomach, either. Not like how it would usually emerge.

I looked at him face to face, and for the first time ever as I stared into those eyes I felt…nothing. No sadness. No anger. It was just complete blankness, from my sight to my heart.

“You haven’t—” He stopped, then began again by properly looking at me with eye contact. “You haven’t been around lately.”

“Oh, I was— w-was just with Sica,” I said. “We went to Busan for three days.”

Silence.

I gripped onto the strap tighter. The still and quiet atmosphere was mentally killing me in slow motion. 

“Listen,” he said. “About that day—”

Uh-oh. I already knew where it was going.

I quickly interjected. “I’m sorry.”

He looked rather surprised with me.

I repeated. “I’m sorry.” My head was bowing down, my back almost hurting. Finally, I raised my head with a weary sigh. “The other day you were busy, and I shouldn’t have bothered you in the first place. It was my fault. I’m sorry.”

He looked away, completely dried out of words.

“I should’ve been thinking on what you’d go through afterwards, and how it’d absolutely bother you,” I said. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m sorry—”

His arms suddenly wrapped around me, rather awkwardly, then I felt myself being pushed against his chest. It was like that for a minute, then he broke the silence, but didn’t break apart.

“How long have we known each other?” he asked.

I struggled to answer. “S-Seven— No, eight years?”

I heard him sigh.

“Yeah,” he said. “We could practically be considered as brother and sister, huh?”

My heart skipped, but not in a good romantic way. I just knew where he was leading up to.

“Rika, I love you,” I heard him whisper. “You’re like my sister.”

It took me a moment to reply, but with that hard shift in my chest I put on a smile. “I know.”

We slowly pulled away.

“And besides,” I said. “I am, like, three years too young.” I tried to make it as a joke.

“Rika, it’s not the age,” he admitted.

It made me wonder. Then what?

“I just can’t accept you as any other than my sister,” he said.

I felt as if I had a mental blackout for just a second there.

“Oh,” I said. “Okay, then.”

I realized that I was still holding onto the music box.

“Oh, h-here.” I handed it to him, but he pushed it back to me.

“Keep it,” he said. “I had missed your birthdays for three years already.”

I nodded, and I held onto the fragile piece in both hands while clutching onto it protectively as if it were my very own heart that would shatter within the next second if I let it slip.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A large bowl of ice cream had been placed in front of me.

“Unnie…” Krystal looked at me pleasantly, but not even her smile or even the ice cream could make me move. “Please, just eat a little bit.”

I didn’t respond. I was like a statue. My face had been frozen to the same blank expression since the moment Kyuhyun left me in the hallway.

I heard my phone ring on the table, and Krystal took a peek at the ID.

“Giant?” She looked at me, picking the phone up to show. “Who’s that?”

I didn’t answer.

The phone stopped ringing, and silence fell again inside my mind. I couldn’t even hear the roaring public atmosphere around the ice cream parlor.

Now Krystal was really starting to worry.

“Unnie,” she said, clutching both my hands in hers.

I heard my phone ring again. It had been ringing for approximately ten times with the same ID known as Giant. I had no idea what the guy wanted. Probably checking up to see if I was actually working on the plan for his and Jessica’s so-called ‘date.’ Well, I got news for him. Deal off. Time to move on.

The phone rang again. It stopped. Rang again. Then stopped.

Just as the last ring rang through my ears, a voice boomed from behind me.

“Don’t you ever pick up your phone?”

My heart jolted in surprise. The voice got my mind whirling, my body moving, and my soul jumping again, as if it had just restarted my entire system.

I turned. “K-Kris?”

He was just a few feet away, that signature angry scowl on his face as he clicked his phone shut and walked over to me.

Krystal looked surprised. “You two know each other?”

“Apparently,” I heard Kris say as soon as he reached our table. He turned to me, one hand on his hip. “Hello? Are you even doing your part of the deal? I’ve been calling for half the day already. Where the heck have you been?”

I noticed that Krystal was shifting her eyes from Kris to me repeatedly.