A/N: The words in Italics = Flashbacks as Krystal tell Sulli her story.

Sulli was lying on Krystal’s bed, doing her homework when she accidentally dropped her pen and it rolled under the bed. She stuck her hand under the furniture, trying to find the pen by touch only to stumble on a thick book. Curious, she dragged the object carefully from under the bed. It was a photo album. The album looked like it was under there for a long time judging by the thick layer of dust covering the surface.

 “Soojungie, why do you keep this photo album under your bed?” Sulli asked as she picked up the mysterious book from the floor. She did not miss the panic that flashed in Krystal’s eyes when she saw the black leather bound book.

“N-no reason. I must have accidentally p-placed it there.” Krystal stuttered. She tried to stay calm but she failed miserably.

Sulli raised a perfectly sculptured eyebrow to her panicking best friend. Krystal had always been a bad liar and Sulli could read her like an open book.

“That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard. Now tell me the truth.” She demanded as she sat down next to Krystal.

Krystal sighed in defeat. There was no use trying to hide it anymore because she knew the taller girl would not take a no for an answer. “I hid it under the bed because I didn’t want to be tempted to look at the pictures inside. I wouldn’t be able to resist if it was lying in plain sight.” She fiddled with her fingers nervously.

“What’s wrong with the pictures?” Sulli asked, confused by her friend’s confession.

“They remind me of the memories from my childhood that I wish to forget.”

“Why didn’t you get rid of this album then?”

Krystal gave Sulli a hollow smile. Truthfully, she had tried to throw the book away several times but she could not bring herself to do it because no matter how badly her brain wanted to forget, her heart would never let go of him. Her heart would always win in that battle. “Because I’m too stupid to learn how to let go of the memories of him.”

“Him?” The word had triggered her curiosity as she never knew Krystal had a love interest before.

Krystal simply nodded before gesturing towards the object in Sulli’s hands. “Open it.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to force you to tell me a secret if it’s going to hurt you.” Sulli felt guilty when she saw the girl she thought as a sister hurting.

“I’m fine. You knew my other secrets and it’s time you know about this one.” Krystal smiled reassuringly.

Sulli hesitantly opened the first page of the album. In the first picture, there was a younger version of Krystal hugging a boy that looked about a year older than her. The cheeky grins on their faces showed how happy they were.  Sulli turned to the next page to find a picture of Krystal with the same boy. They looked slightly older than they were in the first picture. The next few pages were filled with pictures of them smiling, laughing and playing together. The only difference was their ages in each picture. On the last page of the album, there was a photo of them at Krystal’s birthday party when they were in middle school. Unlike in the other pictures, they did not look genuinely happy. The boy had an annoyed scowl on his face while Krystal faked a smile, pretending to be happy. It was captioned ‘the last photo of us’.

Sulli closed the album and set it down between her and Krystal, who remained quiet the whole time. “The boy in the picture, he looks really familiar but I just can’t put a finger on it. Have I seen him somewhere before?”

Krystal chuckled lightly at the question. “You saw him almost every day at school.” Something suddenly clicked in Sulli’s head. Seeing the realization on her face, Krystal decided to confirm the fair skinned girl’s assumption. “Yes, it’s D.O-sunbae.”

“You and D.O-sunbae were childhood friends? How come you guys treat each other like total strangers at school?” Sulli asked, still unable to comprehend the information she just received.

Krystal smiled bitterly at the memory. She took a deep breath, preparing herself for a walk down memory lane that would only bring her pain. “Yeah, back when we were little, we were inseparable. I was five and he was six when we first met.”

A five year old Krystal was hiding in the bushes, her hands clenched in anger as she watched a group of bullies harassed a defenceless boy. They pushed him to the ground and kicked him after he refused to let go of the toy he desperately tried to hold on to in his tiny hands. He yelped in pain and was forced to let go when one of the naughty boys roughly pulled his hair. After they got what they wanted, they mocked the crying boy who was sitting on the ground, covered in dirt and ran away.

Krystal slowly approached the poor boy and crouched next to him. “Are you okay?” She patted the sobbing boy’s back to comfort him. “Are you hurt?” She asked again, concerned when the boy had not stop crying. The boy nodded and pointed to his bleeding knee. Apparently, he accidentally scraped his knee when he got pushed down earlier.

“Where do you live?” she asked as she helped him to stand up.

“I live just across the street from the big purple mansion.” He answered after he finally stopped crying. Krystal grinned at his answer when she realized that the big purple mansion he had just described was her house.

“Well, I guess we’re neighbours then.” She stated, earning a confused look from the boy next to her. “The purple mansion is my house.” She explained and the boy nodded in understanding.

“I’m Jung Soojung by the way. You can call me Soojung. What’s your name?” Krystal extended her hand for him to shake.

“I’m Do Kyungsoo. You can call me Kyungsoo. Nice to meet you, Soojung-sshi.” He smiled before shaking her hand.

“We became best friends that day. We promised that we would stay by each other’s side no matter what until we die.” Krystal found herself chuckling bitterly at how foolish she had been back then to believe that he would actually keep all his promises.

“What happened? What made you guys stop being friends?” Sulli asked out of curiosity.

“Growing up got in the way of our friendship.” Krystal sighed.

It was Kyungsoo’s first day of middle school and he could not be happier than he was at that moment. He was excited to make new friends and experience new things. As he was impatiently waiting for his father to take him to his new school, Krystal came out of her house, looking gloomy. He made his way towards her, grinning from ear to ear even when she scowled at him in return.

“Hey, Soojungie.” He greeted the pouting girl cheekily. Kyungsoo frowned when the said girl ignored him and chose to stare at the ground instead. “What’s wrong?” He asked in panic when she finally looked up to meet his eyes. Her brown orbs were glazed with unshed tears and her bottom lip quivered as she tried to hold back the salty droplets from falling.

“You’re going to a new school today. You’ll make lots of new friends and will forget all about me.” She said in tears.

He chuckled at the silly girl. “Idiot, I’ll never do that. Yes, I will make new friends, but you’ll always be my best friend and I would never forget you.” He wiped her tears away with his thumb.

“Promise?” Krystal held out her pinky.

He nodded and linked his own pinky with hers, “I promise.”

That was the first of many promises that he would break.

“At first, he was still the boy I knew, still my best friend, but over the years he grew more distant and we drifted apart. When I first joined the school, he would hang out with me when he had some spare time, but it became less frequent over time and on his last year in middle school, he had stopped spending time with me and avoided me like the plague.” Krystal took another deep breath, hoping that the action will make the pain go away.

“Soojung-ah, Kyungsoo is here to see you.” Mrs Jung said as she knocked on her daughter’s bedroom door.

It took a few seconds for the information to finally sink in. She quickly made her way downstairs, not wanting to waste even a second of the time she had to spend with him. Krystal found Kyungsoo waiting for her in the living room. She greeted him with an excited grin, only to have him scowl at her in return.

“Can we talk outside?” He asked impatiently, hating the idea of spending more than the necessary time with her.

She quickly nodded and followed him outside. Even though he was cold towards her, she kept smiling.

“I’m going to go straight to the point. I don’t want you to talk to me at school anymore, especially in front of my friends.” Kyungsoo demanded. He could see the hurt in her eyes, but he did not care.

“W-why?” Krystal asked while trying to keep her tears at bay.

“Because I’m embarrassed to have you as a friend.” He said coldly before he turned his back on her and walked away.

Krystal ran to her room and locked the door. Tears finally rolled down her cheeks as the pain stabbed at her heart. She stood in front of the mirror and stared at her reflection. She was wearing thick glasses on her face and ugly bracers in . No wonder Kyungsoo was embarrassed to be her friend, she thought, when she saw the ugly girl in the mirror staring back at her. The poor girl crawled onto her bed and cried herself to sleep.

Sulli pulled her best friend into a comforting hug when Krystal broke into tears. She gently rubbed the sobbing girl’s back to soothe her broken heart. “You don’t have to continue telling me the story, Soojungie. I know it’s hurting you, and I can’t let you force yourself to do something that’s causing you a lot of pain.”

“It’s okay, I want to finish the story.” Krystal wiped away her tears. “It’s probably better if I tell someone how I feel rather than letting it pent up and eat me up inside.” Sulli nodded in understanding, showing her support for her best friend.

“A month after my mom left us, Dad decided to move to LA because he said living in our old house reminded him too much of Mom. I made Mrs Do promise not to tell D.O-sunbae before I did. However, days passed and I still hadn’t told him because I never got the chance to. I couldn’t talk to him at school and he avoided me when he’s at home. It was my last day in Korea and I had no choice but to tell him at school because our flight was scheduled to depart at five.”

Krystal nervously waited outside Kyungsoo’s classroom. After a few minutes of waiting, Kyungsoo finally came out with his group of friends. He was happily talking to a girl when Krystal interrupted. “Kyungie oppa.” She called out to him. Immediately, his laughter died down and a scowl was etched on his face when he saw her. He tried to shake her off by ignoring her, but he eventually gave up on the idea when Krystal persistently followed him.

Kyungsoo roughly pulled Krystal by her wrist, away from his snickering friends to the rooftop where they could talk in private.

“What do you want?” He slightly raised his voice towards the girl.

“I know you said not to talk to you when we’re in school, but I-.” Her sentence was cut off when Kyungsoo yelled at her in frustration. “But what? But you think it’s fun to be a nuisance to me?!”

“I’m sorry, but I want to tell you th-.”

“No, I don’t have time to listen to you. My friends are waiting for me. Let me tell you one last time, do not talk to me at school ever again, got it?” He left without even sparing her a second glance.

Krystal sighed in defeat. He probably would not care even if she managed to tell him, she thought, so she gave up on the idea of saying goodbye to him.

Krystal was cleaning out her locker when a voice interrupted her. It was the girl who Krystal saw talking to Kyungsoo earlier. “Well if it isn’t the ugly girl who thought she could be friends with someone like Kyungsoo. You poor delusional girl.” She smirked.

Krystal ignored the girl and continued stuffing her belongings into her bag. “I see, so you’re ugly, delusional, and deaf too? Your of a mother must be embarrassed to have a daughter like you, that’s probably why she left.”

Slap. The girl held her left cheek in pain, surprised when the usually timid girl suddenly had the courage to fight back. Krystal grabbed her collar, “Don’t you dare bring my mother into this.”

“Soojung! What the hell do you think you’re doing to Sayeon?!” Krystal was roughly pushed away by a furious Kyungsoo.

“It’s not what it looks like, oppa. She’s the one who started it and she insulted my mom!” Krystal desperately tried to explain.

“That’s not true, she’s a liar! I was just trying to talk to her but she suddenly slapped me and accused me of stealing you away from her.” Sayeon pretended to cry, shamelessly acting like the real victim.

“Kyungie oppa, that’s-.”

“Enough, Jung Soojung! I asked you to stop talking to me at school so you attacked one of my friends? You know what, forget about not talking to me at school, from now on don’t ever talk to me again!” He pushed her, causing the heartbroken girl to stumble backwards and fall down.

“Kyungie oppa, please!” Krystal pleaded.

“No, I don’t ever want to hear you call my name with that filthy lying mouth of yours. I hate you.”

Krystal knew he meant it when she saw the pure hatred in his eyes. She never felt so much pain before. No matter how much Kyungsoo had hurt her before, it was nothing compared to the pain she felt the moment he uttered those three words. It felt as if someone had stabbed her heart with a poisonous blade. No tears fell from her eyes as the pain was too great that her brain had temporarily lost its functions. She felt empty and her heart was numb.

Krystal got up and dusted herself off before she uttered the words that took him by surprise, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Do Kyungsoo-sshi.” She gave him one last hollow smile before she walked away and out of his life.

“That jerk! When I see him at school tomorrow, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind!” Sulli’s hand clenched into a fist as she felt the anger course through her entire body.

Krystal chuckled at her best friend’s reaction. “It’s fine, Sulli-ah. You don’t have to do that.”

“Why not? He deserves it.” Sulli pouted.

“I just want to forget. Bringing up the past would reopen old wounds and I’m not sure if I can go through all that pain again.” Krystal smile sadly.

Sorry there's no Kyungstal moment in this chapter. I wanted to reveal what happened between them in the past. If you're confused about her mom, don't worry because I'll write about Krystal's family in future chapters.