Hand in hand they walked the journey back to past in a heavy snowy day. Breaths of winter lavished the ashy sky with extra chill and loneliness. The cemetery laid halfway up a mountain from where there was a broad view to the city, a beautiful place for one's immortal sleep.

Amber wiped snow off the ceramic board with her parents' name written on while Sehun poured a bottle of soju around the grave. Behind the glassy surface, they hugged each other tight and smiled brightly in a piece of memories. Like defiance, the pines' canopy of leaf where the old couple laid their heads under was still green under layers of snow.

She talked to her Pa and Ma for a while with something that only the parents and daughter understood, something they used to talk before the family was split, worlds apart. Amber replaced the picture of her parents with the one capturing the three of them, the younger them. "It has gone with me since the first trip out of the country, years ago. This way, wherever I go, I'll still be with them." She said and put the picture from the grave into her journal. It was too sad to the point it wasn't sad anymore. Lacing her fingers into Sehun's, she introduced him for them, as her boyfriend.

"It's a lot easier to breath because of you."  She wrapped her arms across his waist on the alley out and Sehun kissed her forehead. It was good to know her parents. They looked to have been a happy family.

They arrived to the house where Amber was born and raised, to the yard where she learned to walk and run. She opened all the doors and windows while Sehun took this time to discover the place in which there were plenty of stories about a warm household in the pictures and paintings that scattered elegantly across the living room's wall and stairways.  Amber took down one of the pictures which including Henry and his family in their engagement and faced it against the wall. Just with it, Sehun knew how her life had turned upside down. He conceived a life of light and dark in this house. Of all the corners, where did she laugh and cry?

There was hardly any dust on the white sheets covering the furniture, on the glassy windows and wooden doors. Amber supposed it was Donghae's mom who took care of the house and took a mental note to send him a message afterward. She owed the Lee's family a visit. Sometimes, she wondered if she disappeared forever, would it be better than counting the time people repeating about her family again and again? It was as old as time, but it was still new until the case was solved. Even telling them how she had been living those last years was a boring routine.

"I have no other excuse to delay seeing them. The project is almost completed." Walking to her old room, she opened the door to a balcony and looked down to the back yard. The leafless tree stood alone, reaching its twigs to all the directions. New air encroached into the indoor space, leaving the room with its fresh smell.

This house was the only possession they left for Amber. She should have treasured it, but deep down inside, she wished to find a way getting rid of it. There were so many things in this house that were unhealthy to keep. But at the same time, it was hard to throw them away. Just like the old pictures of her called off engagement, she wished they were never the last pieces capturing her whole family.

Sehun followed her suit to the balcony. He leaned on it with arms at either side of hers, trapped Amber in the intimacy between the wooden structure and his body.

"Should I go with you?" He bended a little and said to her ear, pressed his cheek onto hers. They warmed each other up.

Amber signed away the bad notions in the sudden contact. She sheepishly smiled and quickly turned around so that they faced each other. Her smile turned to provocative smirk, revealed the foxy lady inside.

"Should you go with me?" She mimicked her boyfriend.

"Ohhh... come onnn, Ambie." Sehun grunted, knowing that she did it again, her nerve wrecking joke.

"Call me Ambie again and you'll stay home forever. I'll never take you to anywhere with me." She pointed to his nose.

"I don't know you love staying home with me that much, Ambie. A secret boyfriend doesn't sound too bad..." His thumb brushed her, from cheek to chin, left arm s around her waist.

"Yah, stop it, your ert thought."

Amber pushed his chest and both laughed in the old bicker of them. Sehun would never get enough of it, childish efforts to dominate in their relationship.

"But really, Amber? Don't you want to introduce me with your old friends? "

"It just... It's been a long time and the first meeting is always boring and heavy. I promised I'll introduce you to them later. We still have time."

She rubbed the outline of his arms assuring. While without warning, he got a hard grip on her both side of her shoulders. Wrinkles formed on his forehead and she could easily pick up plead in his eyes.

"Then I'll bear with you, every boring and heavy thing. You don't have to keep it from me all the time."

Amber was keeping inside of her something from the day she got back in town. Sehun would never withdraw the wish to have never asked her to go back, so would the affirmation of a strange vibration lingered on her dazedness these days. This place held nothing good for her to come back. The project should be finish soon for them to run away from here, to get back to how they used to live.

"I can handle them. Sure, Sehun ah. You bear with me enough. Let me deal with them. You're here and I need nothing more."

Slowly, he released his grips before she grasped them right away into her hands. Why did it hurt him so much, the distance that couldn't be unclouded between them? And it would be a lie to say he didn't mind what the hell going on between she and Kris. They kept updated him with news from her parents’ case and such. But the fact that everything had been earlier settled by Kris and the Donghae oppa of hers that he never had a chance to meet destroyed his ego bit by bit. Never had he feel so small and incapable like this in his life.

"I don't know why sometimes I wish to be Kris huyng so much. Is it because I can't do anything for you?" He said weakly with undeniable pain.

"What's the matter with Kris here, Sehun? It's the matter of you and me. We are both obliged to confront different things, things we have to put back together sooner or later. I just ... I just want to leave a space for both of us to breathe."

She knew this was not fair for Sehun. She had never kept a thing from Henry before, but with Sehun, time changed everything. Her life was not the matter of causes anymore. It was the matter of effects for what she and even Sehun had done in the past, for the debts they had to pay.

"If so, who we are to each other, Amber? Should we as well be friends like nothing happened? We suppose to know each other well, to share and motivate. You keep concealing troubles and I keep living in a fake safety, that we're both okay and we don't need help. I don't need that kind of falseness."

He hissed with oblivious stern in his voice. He meant them with everything he said.

"What do you mean by that, falseness? Must we be the most unhappy couple in the world to be real?"

Out of sudden, she felt so dizzy. The air surrounding went solid and Amber leaned further on the cold balcony for more support to stand tall when his hand slipped out of hers.

"So you mean everything around us is real, don't you? Then how about the message from Henry, telling that he's sorry on behalf of Tiffany on the day you went out and came back with Kris? And don't tell me that has nothing to do with you avoiding me for the rest of that day. You've been acting weird Amber."

Sehun finally blurted out what he had been keeping for himself. This was not his intention at first. Amber went home alone on that day and she said to be tired, she wanted to take a rest. The day after, when she asked him to check for the schedule on her cellphone, he saw it by chance, Henry's message. She didn't even tell she had met Henry again in Seoul. If it was Amber, Sehun knew very well that must have been her predicament. But it hit him hard, that even when they were a unit, she still kept things away from him.  

"You check on my phone, Sehun? You check on me?"

She thought to yell at him. But eventually, there was no energy left inside of her to yell. It felt like falling down from a building and gravity didn't take effect on her anymore. She couldn't differ if it was for her fail attempts or for the broken belief between them. Everything she managed to utter came out to be weak and lifeless, like it was someone else's voice rather than hers.

"I admit this is violation of your privacy. I trust you, I do. But Amber, if you refuse to tell me what's really happening, this is also a lie. And if you want me to ignore all the strangeness in your behaviors, then don't call me your boyfriend."

They left the place without a word talking back to each other. It had never come to their mind that things could turn out like this between them, debatable, fragile and clearly cut the both of them very deep.

Kris came home from work to his dark and cold apartment. It was snowing along his way. Sometimes just like this at the end of the day, he only wished to be disappeared. Everything seemed to soar, either at work or in the case with Sky Diamond. Next week, the new collection would come out while Sky Diamond was summoned in court for the lawsuit. And when things in his life gradually fell into their right places, there was always a missing piece in this picture. Amber was. Just like today he couldn't see her, wind seemed to be too cold to withstand. It had never come to his mind that he could be so weary like this for someone. Who said holding on was hard and letting go was easy? He didn't buy it, because letting go of Amber was a million times harder than keeping her.

He shut the door and went to the glassy roof garden. Somehow, that opening space was a lot warmer than his home.

Kris found Amber there, sitting cross leg on the bench in a far corner and watching falling snow. With a large sweater, knitting scarf and Eskimo boots, she looked to be lost in Earth from another planet. Amber was drinking a glass of wine and the bottle was her only friend.

He came took a seat beside which made her starlet a bit. Though, she quickly regained her composedness.

"What are you doing here, at this hour?" She asked him while Kris asked himself inwardly where the tint of pink on her cheeks came from, the red liquid inside that glass, the chill outside or seeing him here in the middle of her personal minutes.

"A little bird tells me you need a friend to drink with." He sniffed, too embarrassed to hear how unfamiliar that kind of words sounded from him. "Just kidding, I just go out for some air."

"I see. Do you want some, if you don't mind drinking from this glass with me?" She swung the glass in front of her face and Kris nodded. Amber seemed to be a little more comfy with him than usual which deep inside, he secretly thanked for his luck.

They exchanged gulfs of wine from the bottle that she had drunk nearly a half. Beginning with a little of silence, they filled the night with something from the French wine label that she loved, his father's favorite Chile label to how their samples was processing.

"This is the first time we drink together, right? We should do more of this, oppa..."Amber poured the last drip of wine from the bottle and gave the glass to him to take."...before I leave the country. You know, when we're done..."

"I almost forget that we don't have much time left." He swallowed half of the glass along with a choke inside his throat. Could it be more transparent, that she neither belonged to this city or him? "It seems like yesterday when you ran into my car and end up arrived here in Seoul. What if you can stay here longer or we aren't so busy..."

"I'll think of you instead of old memories when someone speaks about Seoul, oppa. Don't worry." She giggled and slightly patted his back outside his coat. It was tingling where she touched.

"So should we find another day for a drink? Or just right here like this is fine for me. Just call me. Isn't it sad to drink alone?"

"I only drink when it's so hard to sleep. A glass of wine usually helps but it doesn't work tonight." She exchanged unstable gaze with him and faintly smile before hanging her head low. "Sehun doesn't either call me or receive my call. We've never picked up such a fierce fight like today, and it's my entire fault."

And with that she walked to the edge of the garden, where she just had to reach out her hand to catch snowflakes.

"I'll think of Seoul when it's snowy, too. Nowhere on Earth has that snow fallen so heavy like in this place. It falls too much tonight. Tomorrow will be a hard day."

Abruptly wine was so bitter on the tip of his tongue. If there was a way that they could share small talk without her mentioning Sehun in the middle, this wouldn't be so desperate to get closer to Amber. Yet this couldn't be truth. To some points, he hated how she loved Sehun so much, how everything in her life led to Sehun at last, how they shared long days together but just one bit of time only for him, she wouldn't spend.

A thrilling thought sparked inside of him and for the first time of his life, Kris did what his heart told him to without thinking about good and bad, about right and wrong. Swiftly he stood up and stepped to where she was standing. Halting right behind her with his coat ped, he enveloped an embrace and wrapped his coat around her frame, tightened his arms until no air was left between her back and his chest. He even heard it, how his heart pounded so fast and hard, how his ribcage nearly burst in the moment their bodies met.

"Please, I'm begging you. Only for five minutes... No... One is enough, can you just stay still? 

Amber grasped upon the tightness of his hug. Instinctively she reached both of her hands to untangle his arms but they stopped half way and end up dropping at either of her sides. Even through layers of thick materials, it echoed right into her senses, his heart beats.

"I love you, Amber."

His breath brushed the skin of her face when he heaved a long foggy sigh. And that, Kris tore the final limit they both had drawn.

He shut his eyes. This could be right, could be wrong, and could be good or bad. But right in that moment, his mind went blank and his legs went weak. He loved Amber. It was helpless and incurable, like a pill of poison that he was so willing to consume.

 A/N. It's been a while. My dear friends, I hope you guys haven't forgotten Sehun, Amber and Kris. And I have a new Kaiber fic, here's the link.

April's Songs

Check on it if you have time ^^