Amber had never been more thankful that her parents were at work at this time until this very moment, as she walked through her house still crying and dripping with slime as she made her way to the bathroom.

She removed her slime covered clothes, almost gagging at the squelching sound they made when they hit the tiled floor at her feet, before turning on the shower and stepping underneath the warm spray of water. She stood completely still for a moment, her face tilted up towards the falling water to wash away most of the slime and the tear tracks running down her face, before she reached for the shampoo with a small broken sigh and started to wash her hair to get rid of the rest of the slime.

She thought Onew was different, that she could trust him and he wouldn’t hurt her. But, instead, as far as she knew, he was just like everyone else. He just saw her as a toy, a plaything to use for his own amusement. She let out a shaky breath as she slowly started to cry again. It felt like her heart was being torn out of her chest, she should have never trusted the boy, should of never opened up to him and shown weakness. She shouldn’t have fallen for him.

But, even now, she wanted to be near him, despite what he had done. She wanted to go back to when he was trying to make her laugh, when he was buying her ice cream in the park and seemed to care so much. Krystal had told her that the boy had been watching her in the park for months, studying as he watched them all play baseball. Was all that for this, for this senseless prank? It was like he wanted to get closer to her to cause as much damage as possible.

It was like he wanted to try and break her heart.

She rinsed the shampoo out of her hair, watching as it dragged the last balls of slime out of her hair, before turning the shower off, reaching for a towel and wrapping it around herself as she stepped out of the shower. She looked down at the floor, at her slime covered clothes and the puddle of goo the clothes were creating on the floor, debating what to do with them but, at the same time, not wanting to touch them. She pushed her hair out of her face and decided to leave the clothing for now, instead padding through the house and leaving wet footprints on the carpet as she went to her room and closed the door behind her.

In the rush to school that morning she had forgotten her phone, something she was thankful now for considering the state of her when she came home. She unknowingly saved her phone from possibly being broken.

She looked at her phone to see she had three text messages and two voice messages, all from Onew, but she didn’t want to read them or hear his voice. She didn’t want to hear the laughter and his disbelief over her trusting him so much. That’s what she was expecting and she didn’t need it, she was already beating herself up over it enough.

She instead ignored the messages completely and called Krystal. She knew her friend would still be at work, in a coffee shop she worked in part time, and, as expected, it went straight to voicemail, but she wanted to leave a message to get her friend to come around as soon as possible.

“Hey, you’ve reached Krystal!” Krystal’s recorded voice rang cheerily in the tomboy’s ears “I’m busy at the moment so I can’t take your call, but leave me a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can”

After that there was a long, monotone, beep and Amber started to speak, cursing under breath at how shaky her voice sounded. It sounded like she was about to cry again.

“K-Krystal? I know you will probably be tired after work...” Amber paused, suddenly feeling selfish for wanting to ask the girl to come round. But she needed someone to talk to “But can you come round? P-please? Something happened...”

Amber’s voice trailed off and she sniffed as her eyes started to tear up again. She hung up quickly, before the phone could record her as she started to cry again, silently and more calmly than her previous sobs but that didn’t stop her getting angry at her own weakness. She picked up her pillow and threw it at her door, the soft pillow not making much of a sound as it hit the door and slid down to the carpeted floor. She felt so stupid.

It took an hour for Krystal to arrive, with Amber spending the time staring at the unread messages icon on her phone and eating the secret stash of chocolate in the drawer of her bedside table. She rarely ate chocolate, the bar she was now eating having been left untouched and unopened for nearly 4 months. It was when Krystal came into the room, using her spare key to get into the house, and saw the tomboy pushing another bit of chocolate into and a nearly finished bar on the bed sheets that she knew what happened was big, though, she had her suspicions to begin with because of the sound of the message left on her phone.

She sat on Amber’s bed silently and pulled two tubs of ice cream out of the plastic bag in her hands. She had stopped off at the supermarket to get one, thinking the tomboy would probably need it and she was proved right when Amber reached out for it eagerly. Krystal handed a tub to her and one of the spoons she got out of the kitchen before heading up and it was only once the tomboy had opened her tub of ice cream and started to eat it, hugging the cold tub as if it was a life line, that Krystal spoke.

“What happened Amber?” She asked quietly, not wanting to seem like she was pushing the girl to talk because, whatever had happened had obviously upset the tomboy. Krystal had never seen her this bad, with her eyes red and puffy from crying, her hair all over the place as it was left to dry from her shower without it being brushed, and her hand shaking slightly as it lifted spoonful after spoonful of vanilla ice cream to her lips.

But that didn’t stop the girl from speaking, swallowing the ice cream in and sighing softly to herself “Jinki is just like everyone else...”

Even saying it didn’t seem right to Amber, something seemed off, but there was nothing to prove she was wrong, nothing to say Onew was innocent even if she wished and hoped he was for the sake of her own heart. Krystal looked at her in confusion, obviously not understanding what the girl was saying and so Amber put her ice cream down before explaining everything, the note and being slimed, how he wouldn’t even defend himself when she came to the conclusion it was him and how it lead to why she was like this now, stuffing ice cream into and acting like she had just broken up with her boyfriend even though she never even had a boyfriend at all.

Krystal pushed her hair out of her face, letting out a angered huff as Amber told her story. She knew Amber wasn’t popular at her school, that she was picked on sometimes and was an outcast, but this...this was too far.

If Onew did this and it wasn’t an emotional assumption on Amber’s part, even though Krystal understood why this conclusion had been reached from what the girl had said happened, Onew had better hope that he never met Krystal, that she knew for sure. She couldn’t stand seeing her friend upset, she was always so strong. But just as she was starting to open up more at school it seemed like Onew had completely ruined it.

Krystal didn’t understand, she didn’t understand how someone could flirt so much, even if it was unknowingly so, and lead someone on like he had done with Amber. She didn’t understand how he could let her fall for him just to crush her and her feelings.

Some people disgusted her.                             

She stayed with Amber for a while, a few hours, before she told the tomboy that she had to go. Amber nodded, understanding that it was getting late and Krystal still had homework to do, and smiled weakly at the girl over her now mostly melted tub of ice cream.

“Thank you for coming Krystal...”

Krystal leant over and hugged the tomboy, tightly and warmly, telling the girl that there was no need to thank her before she left and started to head home. She felt sorry for her friend because of how she had been treated but, she also felt angry that she couldn’t help. She didn’t know Onew or anyone else in Amber’s school, there was no way she could go and stand up for the tomboy in the way she wanted too.

She sighed and rubbed the back of her head as she walked down the street, she hoped that it was all a misunderstanding and that Onew was innocent after all.

Author's notes:

I've been so tired lately. Writing this fic is the only thing keeping me going, I'm not even joking.

Aigo, I need a holiday.