“Happy birthday, Amber!” Mr Liu cheers as he grabs her into a hug.   “Thanks, Dad!”   When they let go of each other, she realises that her dad has three red roses in his hand.   Amber frowns and guffaws as she receives the roses from him. “Um… thanks. You’re giving me three red roses as a present?”   “That’s from your mum, Jackie, and me. Jackie said don’t expect more as she is sure your fans all over the world will give you lots of presents,” he explains good-naturedly.   Amber chuckles at the message, “Okay?”   “Alright, time for breakfast!” he prods. “You have a long day ahead of you.”

 

━━━━━━━━━━━

 

“Happy birthday!” Key, Kris, Se Hun, and the f(x) girls greet Amber as soon as Luna opens the door for her. She has arrived at the f(x) dorm to spend her birthday with the girls. Sulli is not around, obviously because of To the Beautiful You’s filming.   Amber chuckles and beams with gratitude as they shower her with confetti and Key holding the birthday cake he has made for her. “Oh God, thank you, Key!”   “Anything for you, baby!” Key winks.   Amber laughs louder, “Thanks, boo!”   “Blow the candles!” Krystal says.   Key extends the cake in his hands towards her and exclaims, “Make a wish first!”   She does and blows the candles. She feels heat creeping up, covers her face, and fans herself. “You’re making me embarrassed with all this attention!”   “Oh, you deserve it, girl!” Luna pipes in as she waves to Kris, “Look! Even Kris flew all the way from China for your birthday!”   Cheers and hoots fill the room as “KrisBer” is chanted. Amber crosses her arms as she faces Kris, who is smiling charmingly.   “NO!” Luna shouts disapprovingly. “It’s LunBer! LunBer!”   Se Hun scoffs. “Everyone knows Kris hyung is in Korea for Sera noona’s birthday1,” he makes a point. (refer to Overboard and Shades of Green)   Amber gives Kris a look as the guy grins sheepishly. “What a nice friend,” she mutters.   “Hey, I’m here for your birthday too! Sera’s birthday is on the 21st, but I came to Korea early for yours!” he argues defensively.   Amber gives him a light punch on the chest. “I know. I appreciate it!”   “KrisBer is real okay!” he insists and pulls her in for a tight hug, only to be separated by Krystal.   “No, no, no!  Puh-lease, KryBer is more real okay!” She pulls Amber to her side and gives the girl a hug. “Happy birthday, Ber!”    “Noona! Me! Happy birthday!” Se Hun shouts and extends out his arms to receive a hug from her. Amber jumps up and circles her arms around his neck. When she withdraws from him, he puts a red rose before her as the others follow his action, even Key is balancing a cake on one hand as he holds the rose in the other.   Amber creases her brow and looks at them one by one oddly. “What on earth is with red roses?”   “Red rose is a symbol of love, baby,” Key points out matter-of-factly.   Amber makes a gesture as if she is going to puke. She takes the roses from them, “I hope there’s nothing in these flowers. I don’t wanna be Sleeping Beauty.”   “Yeah, dream on, Servant!” Krystal taunts.   “Krystal! Be nice to the birthday girl!” Victoria reprimands her.   Krystal sticks out her tongue mischievously. “Soweey…” She hugs Amber again, “I love you!” She adds, “As if my rose isn’t real enough!”   “My rose is real too!” Se Hun says.   “Alright, can’t we just eat? Like now?” Key asks with a tone full of sarcasm. “I’m hungry and I’m tired of holding the cake!”   “Let’s eat!” Luna cheers with her hands up in the air as the others follow to the dinner table, where their leader has cooked lots of lunch for the seven of them.   “Here, put them here,” Victoria says, taking a glass vase with her. “You can take it home with you tonight after the fan meeting.”    “Thanks, Vic.”   Amber strides over to where the others are gathered. As she waits for Victoria to serve them all, she takes her phone out of her pocket and reads the birthday tweets from her fans and text messages she has received from: JB, JR, Kevin, Ki Seop, Xander… Henry and the other SuJu boys… Yuri and the other SNSD girls… Ki Kwang… Hoya, Sung Yeol, Sung Jong… Miss A members (despite having tweeted and called her at four o’clock in the morning to sing happy birthday off key), HyunA, Tiffany…   She sighs. The other Infinite boys have texted her, but he hasn’t. She tells herself that he is probably still caught up with What is Mum sitcom filming and would text her later on.

 

━━━━━━━━━━━

 

Amber chills at Tiffany’s place towards late afternoon as they have decided on. Tiffany made taco for the birthday girl and they are now eating Magnum ice creams as they sit on the carpet with their back resting on the bottom of Tiffany’s bed.   “I wanna get a dog,” Tiffany says.   “That’s nice. Let’s raise them together,” Amber suggests.   Tiffany chortles, “It sounds like we are a couple or something.”   Amber agrees, “It does.”   “Would Myung Soo mind sharing?”   Amber turns to Tiffany and gives her a confused look. “Who’s Myung Soo?”   Tiffany bursts into laughter as Amber watches her in amusement. She grins at the thought and pulls out her phone to check her messages. She jumps up into a sitting position when she sees the name ‘명’. Subconsciously, her smile widens and she eagerly opens the message:

 

Happy birthday! I’m sorry I can’t spend the day with you ㅠㅠ but I LOVE YOU! I love you more than I did yesterday and I’ll love you even more tomorrow! Only if you love me too, that is :P What you doing tonight?

 

She replies to the message before seeing the notification from twitter that she has received tweets from Eric Nam and Neo, one of Henry’s friends from America that she hangs out with recently. As she waits for the message to be sent and opens twitter, she hears Tiffany humming in a teasing manner. “Speak of the devil! Was that our Myung Soo?”   “Our Myung Soo?” Amber gives her a condescending look. “It’s my Myung Soo!”   Tiffany gapes and takes a small pillow to hit Amber with. “You arrogant little b! Now that you have a boyfriend, you’re acting all snobby!”   Amber rolls with laughter and glances at the time. “Alright, I better go! I have a fan meeting to go to.”   When Tiffany sends her to the door, she gives Amber a red rose, identical to the ones her parents, Jackie, and her friends have given her. “What’s the red rose for?” she tries to look for a reason.   “I love you!” Tiffany says with a bright smile.   Amber lifts an eyebrow incredulously. “Everyone has been giving me roses. There must be something going on!”   Tiffany shrugs offhandedly. “I’ve planned on giving you a rose to wrap up for the taco. I don’t know what they have on mind for you.”   Amber takes the rose anyway and returns to f(x) dorm to put the rose in the vase filled with water and the other roses. The others are getting ready to go to SM building for the fan meeting as Amber stares at the roses. There are now ten roses including the ones from her parents and Jackie. There must be something, she knows, she can feel it, something they aren’t telling her. But she guesses, she should enjoy the suspense and watch the surprise later.

 

━━━━━━━━━━━

 

The fan meeting goes well without any catastrophe. She jokes around with Krystal, telling her to buy her this and that and taco, and talks to the fans, catching up, playing around. She tries to not get distracted whenever Krystal whispers cryptical things like, “So, you like the roses?” or “How many do you think you’ll get by the end of the day?” without answering her plead, “You’re part of the scheme, aren’t you? What does everyone has in plan for me? Tell me!”.   By the time they finish, it’s around 20:00 and the driver drops Amber home first. The girls exchange mysterious looks as they bid their farewell and Victoria says, “Have fun for the rest of the night, Amber! We’ll see you tomorrow!”   For the rest of the night Amber talks to her mum and Jackie on Skype via her dad’s iPad before he goes off for some private talk with his wife. She then spends her time on twitter, replying to her friends’ tweets and posting photos that she has promised the fans at the fan meeting. She snickers at the photo she has taken earlier this morning while on the toilet. She has her fringe up in Mohawk style and considers how much like a boy she looks like. It makes her self-conscious, at times, and lowers her self-esteem at the reminder that Myung Soo’s type of girl is that with long-hair and innocent look—completely the opposite of her. Again, Suzy’s Invincible Youth 2 incident comes to mind and she exhales a wistful sigh. She knows she shouldn’t doubt Myung Soo, but when he keeps saying it on TV, at interviews, and in public, what could she do but become convinced?   The sacrifice will be worth it in the end, Amber. Se7en and Park Han Byul went through that for seven years! You’ve only gone through this for three years; that’s nothing!   She returns to her phone and receives a late reply from Myung Soo:

 

How was the fan meeting? What you up to now?

 

She writes back:

 

Just lying around on my bed, twittering. How was filming?

 

It hasn’t been a minute before she receives another text:

Please log in to read the full chapter