In a frosted New York hospital, on the seventeenth floor, in room 1721, a boy fights for his smile. Hoseok is studied intently underneath florescent lights. He lies dormant, the shadows playing tricks on his sight and the monsters crowding his thoughts. These lifeless dolls with sewn on buttons for eyes do their dirty work without a word and Hoseok takes it all little by little constantly adding up in his mind which doctor’s touch made him flinch out of his skin and which inch of the scar on his haywire chest flashed ugly and cold against the fingertips of someone who would never really care to know about the day it’d gotten there.

     In a frosted New York apartment building, on the twelfth floor, in room 1271, a girl fights her memories. Mornings call for heavy cloth to curtain the sun from Winter’s eyes, preserving the dull, grey, walls of armor that is the space she’s occupied for almost every hour since the incident. When her eyes finally flutter open, it’s almost out of habit rather than will. There isn’t much point to awakening when there’s never anything or anyone there to greet you, only the essence of strawberries drug out by the ambiance of a gelid November’s air as her arms stretch to meet the messy, wavy, golden brown hair atop of her head that she’d never bothered to fix.

     There are things that can’t be fixed; things that won’t be fixed. In life, changes come in two types; openings and endings. That day was a connection they’d never escape; the string that’d sewn together their destiny, weaving itself through two strangers who hadn't exchanged a single word, and ending everything that ever was. But Winter doesn’t remember, or rather, she remembers to forget. And Hoseok refuses to believe it’s happened at all.

     When they finally do meet, it’s at the end of their stories. Yet somehow, a smile finds the eyes of a girl who’s always refused to look and a voice takes over a boy who vowed to never listen again.