From: Oh Sehun

To: Amber Liu

Amber, please pick up the phone. I’m sorry for what my mother told you. You need to know that I don’t agree with her. Please don’t leave me like this. I love you.

From: Oh Sehun

To: Amber Liu

Amber, it’s been three days since you left Busan. Where have you been sleeping? You haven’t been home for so long. Please, can we talk?

From: Oh Sehun

To: Amber Liu

I’m back in hall, there’s class tomorrow. What’s going on between us? Everything’s been going on so well, please disregard what Umma said. Call me or leave me a message, please?

From: Im Yoona

To: Amber Liu

Babe, what do you mean you’re taking the next week off too! I’m going mad trying to manage Changmin. He’s crazy! Call me back when you can.

From: Choi Minho

To: Amber Liu

In case you didn’t know, your Sehun is driving me nuts with his messages and calls. I can’t keep fending him off like this. Woman, you have got to speak with him and put a proper end to this.

From: Oh Sehun

To: Amber Liu

I miss you so much. Why are you doing this to me?

From: Kim Jongin

To: Amber Liu

Hey Amber, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Sehun but the dude is acting as sick as a dog. It’s worse than anything we’ve seen. Whatever went on, I know he loves you like mad. Please don’t be mad at him anymore?

From: Kim Kibum

To: Amber Liu

What the ? Where are you? You were supposed to meet us for dinner two hours ago. I didn’t chase you out of my house for you to hole up at Minho’s. You better get your here or we are going to drag you out. You can’t hide like this forever.

From: Oh Sehun

To: Amber Liu

I haven’t been able to do anything without you. Are we really over?

From: Amber Liu

To: Oh Sehun

Come over tomorrow. We will talk then.

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When I was tiny, my parents moved around from place to place. One year we would be living in a shoebox apartment in the city and the next, out in the country where I could have a room to myself. Whenever we packed everything up in one house, on the last night we stayed there, I would walk around, touching various walls and shelves, telling myself to remember everything because it was the last time I would be there. How it would be the last time I would wake up in that bedroom and brush my teeth over that sink.

This ritual was oddly comforting. I adjusted quite well to leaving places and people and also easily assimilated to new environments.

When my eyes opened that morning - I had finally fallen asleep in the bed that was so empty without Sehun, I knew that day was going to be the last time I would see the boy. After a week or more of disappearance, when Key’s sofa got too much for me, I asked Minho whether I could borrow his rollaway bed for a few nights. The idiot finally kicked me out yesterday, claiming I was cramping his style so back I was in my own place.

My mobile phone had been ringing off the hook, bombarded by messages from the boy and also Yoona and my friends. Avoiding Sehun was something I didn’t have a choice with, I knew I would come undone if I saw him again too soon. He had always been able to squeeze by my reservations whenever we had an argument. Having already established some distance apart would help him - and me - adjust to the eventual break up.

I really should have known better than let a child worm into my life and now derail my normal programming like this. I had never taken so much time off from work without advance notice before - I was going to need to grovel at Yoona’s f