Last night, Winter woke up with Karina watching her sleep. If it was someone else she'd find it creepy but there was something with the way Karina is looking at her at that moment. Guilt. But what for?

"Can't sleep?" Winter asked.

"Yeah, I had coffee before going to bed. You know, I thought of watching over everyone and I don't want to be a crying mess again," Karina joked.

"Earlier in the aviary..." Winter said, eyes looking anywhere but the girl in front of her. 

"Before the earthquake there's something I wanted to tell you," she continued while trying to sit up, hoping it's going to give her the courage that she needs right now.

"I already know." Karina said, facing the opened window. "I've experienced it far too many times I lost count." 

"Were you scared?" Winter asked although in reality she wanted to ask if it hurt.

"Of what I saw?" Karina countered, "At first yes, my first experience wasn't really pleasant and it didn't helped that I was at the point in my life where I was desperate to know more about my parents and then as if the necklace knew what I needed, it reeled me in. I saw my mother for the first time but it was the last time Jimin saw her's. It was her mother's funeral. Our mother." Karina said.

"I didn't know what she looked like, all of them who attended in the funeral. Their faces were a blur, just swirls that resembles like a black hole. The only recognizable figure was you, yours always looked clear to me," she continued.

"How old were you?" Winter asked, "when you saw them, I mean"

"Eighteen. I just graduated high school and I didn't know what to do with my life. If not for Minju and Giselle I wouldn't have opened my college acceptance letters. How about you?"

"Eleven. They came in the form of dreams. I didn't know what to make of it at first too but it kept happening every night that there was I time I didn't want to sleep," Winter said.

"I saw you die, you know, not you but Jimin. We were at this war and you were... Jimin was bleeding and losing blood and I know I was supposed to help her because I'm a medic but I let her bleed." Winter said, facing Karina who is also looking at her.

"I'm sorry I didn't say anything, you must've wanted to ask a lot of things after finding out about Phoenix Blood."

"I'm at fault too. I pretended I didn't know anything either." Karina said, shifting her gaze on her own fingers.

"In the aviary, I told you the bird led me to something that I was looking for, remember?" Karina lifted her gaze, not asking for confirmation but rather looking at Winter to see if she gets what she's saying.

"It was you. I saw you, in the soccer field. You were one of those applicants participating in the campus tour. You looked so done with what's happening in front of you. You still have your hair long back then and god you looked so much like Minjeong. I thought I wouldn't see you again after that, you know, that you were just a pigment of my imagination" she continued, looking anywhere other than Winter.

"but you were there at the party. When Giselle showed me a photo of you, I already know I needed to talk to you but I got scared when you called me Jimin that night, that you'd see me as Jimin, that you'd expect me to be Jimin. I wanted to get to know you so when Giselle asked me to bring her things to your apartment, I purposely wore my necklace hoping that you'd see it and recognize it. When I woke up, I saw you holding it, completely still and I knew you were in a memory. I saw the conflict on your face when you noticed I've woken up but I didn't say anything." Karina said, playing with her fingers in her lap, "I just want you to know me before I tell you everything. It wasn't fair to do that to you, I'm sorry."

"No, it wasn't just you," Winter said, holding Karina's hands.

"You were right. I wanted to get close to you at first because you looked like Jimin. I kept dropping hints to you too but things happened, I get to know you for you. I still don't know why we're seeing this but I like what we are now, I thought maybe we can move past that and just be ourselves and so I did everything with that intention everyday after that."

"I know it doesn't makes sense right now. The two of us in that memory. I'm sorry I don't have all the answers for you. I wish I did. But none of that matters, okay? I'm here now, you and me are connected and it has brought nothing but good things," Winter assured Karina.

Karina was quiet for a moment, thinking.

"I'm always whomever or whatever people need me to be," she said strongly, "but you're the only one who needed me to be me," Karina said, a sad smile crept in her face.

Winter wanted to lighten the mood, to shift the air from the direction it is heading. She can feel the heaviness in Karina's words but she felt it even more when she saw tears falling on her lap. 

Winter loved that Karina felt everything deeply, the good and the bad, even though she worked hard to hide it from the world. She was a m