The rustling of leaves blew past Amber’s ears as memories kept playing inside her head.

The beating of her own heart. It was louder than the banging of a drum. She saw palm trees and tall grasses coming from behind. It was familiar. They entered a steel gate with words wrought out above it.

A church.

 She was recalling the day she attended her parents’ funeral.

She remembered this: The day her uncle told her that her father had another daughter; that she had a sister. Her uncle said that it happened way before her dad met her mom.

Her sister’s mother was her father’s high school sweetheart. They were both in love that they were ready to get married anytime of any day. But when Amber’s grandfather knew about this, he extricated the girl away from her father to somewhere he couldn’t find her. By the time he knew and returned to their house, the woman was gone along with her sister who was still in her tummy. They were supposed to name her Jackie. He searched for them in every city, every district but to no luck. Years after, Mr. Liu met Amber’s mom.

 Her father had protected this secret all these years with her uncle and before her father’s death; his uncle instantly knew what he meant by “Find her. They’re going to kill her next,” in his text message.

 “I’ll go back to Seoul and find her, Amber. You’re going to stay here in LA for the time being. I’ll be back for you, I promise.”

“I want to help, uncle. Father would have wanted—“

“He would’ve wanted you to be safe.” His uncle crouched up to her height and patted her head. Her fringes fell over her eyes. She scrunched it away and sniffed.

“I’ll be back kiddo, before you can even say Uncle.” He held her shoulders one last time and went off.

Amber looked at his silhouette as he walked farther away from her.

------

Amber didn’t know what had happened to her parents.  She knew they saved her from a burning lodge but that was all she could decipher.  There was something in that fire that kept her from remembering though.

Burning wood.

Her father running to help her.

Her mother gagged with clothe in .

Someone shouting out her name.

She screamed.

And then everything was just gone. She didn’t remember anyone in LA. Her friends. Her neighbors. All she could retain in her memory was her mother’s screams and someone calling out her name. It would play randomly in her head, and every time it did, she would howl, screech and hurt anyone who came near her. She was a threat to her classmates which had cost her to lose all her friends and her grades had also dropped in the process.

She was counseled often times by a child therapist. It had hurt Amber so much that the therapist did hypnotherapy to stop her from committing to memory all that happened that day. She forgot all the little events she knew that had taken place in that lodge. Amber had switched to another boarding school and did remarkably well in her academics. She participated in this dance workshop where her peers attended and had since become obsessed with dancing.

Her uncle never came back. Neither did her sister. Amber kept in constant communication with her uncle despite everything. He was the only family she knew.

But he became too busy with her grandfather’s deteriorating health long after. When Amber turned 18, Grandpa Liu died a miserable death. He gave all his properties and businesses to her uncle.

Amber had forgotten the reason why her grandfather hated her, but she knew that it was his fault that they had migrated to the US. It was his fault that her parents had to suffer and work tedious jobs to get by. It was his fault that those arsonists, those bastards, ruined everything that she was.

And so, it was some odd curiosity when she learned that her grandfather had wanted to see her before he died.

He had wanted to see Amber.

He told her uncle to prepare an immediate flight to the States. He repented for not having to see his son before he passed away, and because of that, he accepted Amber with open arms. Amber didn’t get to see this of course. He died of pneumonia.

There was another secret Grandpa Liu had kept from her uncle all these years; something Soojung discovered while she had eavesdropped on Mr. Kim’s secretary. Grandpa Liu made 2 wills. The last one was written off as Amber being the succeeding inheritor of the Liu properties after her uncle, and the previous one was to never let that “mess of a granddaughter” step in and claim his riches.

And now, Mr. Kim had taken hold of it.

------

“I didn’t know Grandpa made another will,” Amber ran her hand through her blonde hair.

She had relayed all these things to Soojung the moment she finished sharing her story. The stars were beginning to appear in the darkness of night. They were still in the balcony, lost in their conversations.

Soojung leaned on the railing while Amber paced back and forth in confusion. Soojung told her about the other will Mr. Kim was holding and how he had devised a plan to make the last will worthless, saying that it was made when her grandfather was not in his right state of mind. He wanted to prove that when her grandfather made that will, he was already senile and deranged.

Amber took hold of the railing, sighed and stood up defiantly. “Hey, I don’t want you to get involved anymore, Krystal. Stop eavesdropping. Stop anything you’re doing. Let me handle this.”

“You’re really a doofus, you know that?”

“I’m just looking out for your safety. If that secretary found out about you what would happen then? Or worse, what if Kim finds out and--

 “Amber, you’re the one that has to stop. Believe me when I say this again and again until it drills a hole in your head. I wanted to be involved in this because it’s you. And it’s for Mr. Liu too. I owed both of you my life. I am with you in this, okay?”

 “You’re a crazy secretary.”

Soojung smiled.

“Still beats being a .”

“Hey!”

Soojung pulled her closer and cupped Amber’s cheeks with both hands.

“Don’t worry. You’re my .”

----

The necklace was everything to Jackie. Her mother gave it to her when her kidneys began to fail and her face had turned jaundiced and sallow. She could remember her mother’s wrinkled pained face when she succumbed to her chronic renal failure. She kept having nightmares about it at night.

So when she learned that her father was the heir to Liu advertising, she left Hawaii guns a blazing, without even so much as a backup plan. She wanted her father to pay for everything he did; for not caring for her mother and for leaving them without anything to hold on to. But when she returned to Korea, the news in the airport’s foyer had stricken her hopes with disappointment and regret.

She didn’t know her uncle had died.

She didn’t even know her father was in a fire accident and also surrendered to his death years ago.

“You’re sister. She had the same necklace as you. Your father gave me that before we separated…” Her mother’s words echoed in the back of her head.

She pulled her stroller behind her and decided to have a talk with her sister, as the newscaster on the television plastered on the waiting area of the airport announced Amber Liu’s designation as CEO.

___

Well, she can’t quite get in that easy though. She made efforts to explain fully her situation and told her that she was the CEO’s sister but she was put off as an avid fan. Well, at least that was what she made out of it; with all the raised voices and sign languages the guards gave her.

Good thing she had another plan. She placed her necklace inside a crafted box and addressed it to her sister. She gave it to a walking stranger who told her she was sending parcels of products to the CEO for picking out. The stranger accepted it and went off.

She waited outside the building the whole day every day, but her sister didn’t come out to look for her.

After countless episodes of waiting, she decided that it would be nonsensical to wait even more. She would have to work out another way.

She walked off and saw a pastry shop, which eventually made her stomach grumble. ”First I need to get some decent food,” she sighed and copped out her bag for money but she realized it wasn’t there.

There was a measly little hole on her bag pocket where the money had been in.

Jackie sighed and sat down the edge of the pastry shop’s window trying to look for money or even spare change, when a tall fair woman caught her attention.

 “Umm, I think you dropped this lady.”

She said her name was Sulli.

----

A/N: *cringes* Hi guys! So it's been a year right? Sorry for being this late in updating. I guess I  got caught up with work. But that's that. At least I'm back! :) My mantra every morning will be "I WILL FINISH MY FANFICTION". LOL

I just want to thank everybody who did not stop subscribing to this outdated story. For the upvotes and for the comments, for subscribing despite my lack of updated chapters... Thank you! :)) Just comment down there if you find the story lacking in some parts or if it's a bit confusing for you. The succeeding chapters will be more on familial encounters, flashbacks and other parts that I might have missed in Amber's/Krystal's memories.

See ya next chap! :)