"I guess it's because I feel like, I care too much and she doesn't care enough."

    There, she said it. Amber had finally said it. The one thought that had been circling around her head, waiting to be spilled out into the world. She dropped her head down, afraid to meet the concerned eyes of her two friends. She bit her lip, hoping that someone up above would send down a chopper to fly her out into the seven seas and drop her on an island somewhere filled with fire-breathing dragons and cannibals. Oh, my God, I don't wanna live anymore.

    "Okay? Since when do you take notice of things like these?" Amber heard Henry ask. Damn it, not that question. 

    Amber slowly brought her head up to find Key glaring at Henry while mouthing him something that couldn't be understood by Amber. Key jumped up in surprise when Henry grinned at pointed at Amber. He didn't think it would take Amber such a short time to get it together to face Henry's question.

    "Oh, Ambie," Key fake-laughed, "I was just," he looked at Henry, trying to find the words to say, "agreeing with Henry, about what he asked."

    Ugh, not you too.

    "So, don't you think we deserve an explanation, Ams?" Henry asked again, wiggling his eyebrows at Amber. Her friends were eager to find out what was going through her mind and happening in her life. Who could've blamed them? Friends will be friends.

    "Uh, just. Um, you know Krystal and I..." Amber began but trailed off almost immediately. What could she say, really?

    "Krystal and you.....?" Both Key and Henry mused, their eager and curious faces urging the blonde to go on.

    "We," Amber started again, "We, don't seem to the best pair of friends."

    "Well, duh, llama-brain. That's because we're the best pair of friends," Key flicked Amber's head with his finger jokingly, "But yes, do continue enchanting us with why you think you and Ms. Jung aren't the best of friends."

    "I just don't think," she paused, "I don't think she likes me."

    "Hmm?" Key hummed, tilting his head to the side.

    "I, um, I mean she," Amber stumbled over her own words, "she talks to me and all, but I feel like she doesn't really, you know, actually like me." Amber looked at her sweaty hands. "I don't think she likes me as a person, not genuinely," she continued, locking eyes with Key and wondering how her best friend must be thinking of her right now, so insecure about the weirdest thing.

    "Go on...?" Key pestered. Nothing was going to stop him from finding out the details that went down between the brown-haired sophomore and her unfeminine friend. "Amber, just say what you wanna say. You know Henry and I aren't people who judge," he said, sending an encouraging smile over to her friend.

    Amber who was stuck between wanting to pour everything out to her two friends and jumping off a cliff, threw her head back in frustration. She swallowed an imaginary lump down and placed her hand which was balled into a tight fist onto the table. "I," she started while grazing her thumb over the side of her index finger, "Do you guys really wanna know?"

    "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?" Key bellowed as he stood up from his seat. Noticing that his voice had traveled along the quiet walls of the library, he quickly looked over to the direction of the librarian. He sent the lady in horn-rimmed glasses a pleading look, begging her to spare him. Shooting a glare at Key, she then dragged a finger over , threatening to have his cut if he caused further disturbance in the library. Key bowed and bowed and bowed, and puckered his lips as he nodded obediently at the librarian. He wouldn't be able to hear Amber's story with a cut-out throat, would he?

    He sat back down and reached over to pinch Amber's tiny nose once the librarian stormed away to a different section in the library. "Tell me now or I'll break your cartilage with my bare hands," he whispered threateningly, with her nose still in the spot between his thumb and index fingers.

    "Violent Key is horrifying. Ams, I suggest you listen to the glamorous boy," Henry whispered into Amber's ears as she struggled to get her nose free.

    "Alright, alright. Key, let go of my nose," Amber said, her voice came out sounding very nasally. With a huff of annoyance, Key dropped his hand and freed Amber's almost-squished nose. Her fingers immediately went to the sore part of her face and started massaging it.

    "You have three seconds to that hole in your face, before I put one there permanently."

    Jesus Christ, somebody's scary when they're determined.

    "You almost broke my nose, Kim Ki-Bum. At least give me a few seconds to, I don't know, get over the traumatic experience?" Amber said, still massaging her nose.

    "Key word, almost. I could have if I wanted to, Liu. Now, spill it," Key spat, growing extremely impatient with her evasive friend. He wanted to know everything and all Amber did was stall and stammer. He didn't have time for stalling and stammering. If this was his only chance at figuring things out between the Krystal and Amber, he wouldn't let another second go to waste.

    Amber closed her eyes, inhaled then exhaled. Knowing that she couldn't buy herself anymore time, she opened to speak.

    "I annoy her," she finally said, "And she hates me." The truth always hurts.

    She slowly opened her eyes, letting the bright light seep into the back of her retina. Key and Henry were both staring at her with intense faces. A look of pity mixed in with sadness shot through their eyes as they continued to look at Amber. They silently waited for her to speak again. Nobody in their right mind would interrupt Amber's confession session.

    "Am I really that annoying? And stupid? Because she keeps telling me that I'm empty-headed and I talk too much. I know I talk too much but I don't know, I just wanna talk to her. I wanna be able to tell her things that I hear from school, but I never know what to say, so I talk about the only thing I know, which is basketball," she paused, "but every time I talk about it with her, she rolls her eyes and gives me this, this shut-the--up look, but I don't want to because it's kind of the only thing I can talk to her about." She stopped and sent her friends a confused look. She wanted to go on, but felt lost at what she wanted to say.

    "Maybe she doesn't like basketball?" Henry rushed in to save the day, shrugging as he said it.

    Amber thought about it for a while, then replied, "Yeah, she doesn't, but it wasn't exactly basketball I was telling her about. I thought it'd flatter her or boost her self-esteem or something, so I told her about Min-Ho and the boys' crush towards her because girls like being told those things right? But then she started to-"

    "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait," Key interrupted, "you told her that Min-Ho, Tae-Min and the other players had this crazy obsession over her? And you constantly repeated this to her?"

    "Yes?"

    "Amber, I say this because I care," Key reached out to hold Amber's hand that was on the table, "Get a brain."

    "Seriously?"

    "Don't you 'seriously' me, you dimwit. If I were Krystal I would be annoyed at you too," Key stated as he shook his head.

    "Why? I don't get it," a frown formed on Amber's eyebrows.

    "Because Amber, dear, some people have patience and some people don't. Girls, are a race of have limited patience. Krystal is a girl. You do the math," Key sighed, "And you probably freaked the crap out of her."

    Amber leaned backwards into her chair and let her arms dropped to her lap. "."

    " is right. Just what were you thinking when you decided to tell Krystal she's a long line of lovesick apes tailing behind her everyday at school?"

    "I was thinking, 'oh, maybe she likes the attention so, why not?'"

    "Amber. Amster. Ams. Not all girls are desperate for attention. And didn't you get the hint that Krystal isn't one of them air-heads by the way she rolls her eyes whenever you bring that issue up?" Key asked then scoffed at his friend's stupidity.

    "Gee, Key, I can't really be sure since all she ever does is roll her eyes whenever I try to talk to her," Amber said with a litter anger in her voice, "It's not just about the boys. It's every damn time I open my mouth to ask her how her day was or if she had lunch yet."

    "I greet her at the hall, she rolls her eyes."

    "Krystal! Hey, morning." Amber ran up to a still barely-awake Krystal standing by the lockers. She grabbed her books out of her locker with her eyes still closed as the blonde senior continued being cheery in the morning. Amber shot the semi-conscious girl one of her jubilant smiles when Krystal slowly lifted her eyelids open, but Amber's own eyes twitched a little when Krystal rolled her eyes then walked away without a single word.

    "I ask if she has any problems with her homework, she rolls her eyes."

    Amber sat herself down in front of Krystal and took out a few pieces of blank paper. "Do you need help in anything Math-related?" she asked Krystal who took a moment to turn away from the window. The brown haired girl then reached out her hand to pick up her phone on the desk as she muttered 'no'. Amber who wasn't fully convinced, smiled at Krystal, hoping that she would ask her something. anything. "Are you sure?" she asked. Krystal responded by giving her eyeballs a slight roll and went back to typing away at her phone.

    "And when I'm actually talking to her, like, we're in an actual conversation where she doesn't exercise her eyeballs every three minutes, she--," Amber stopped suddenly as her mind brought back mental pictures of what happened a period of time ago when she and Krystal were having their tutoring session at school.

    "So, this is how it's done," Amber pointed at the formula on top of the page and then to the equation, "You just sub the formula in, then it's all the calculator's work from there on."

    "And that's it?" Krystal bit lightly on her pen while she stared at the mathematics problem lying in front of her.

    "And that's it," Amber smiled brightly, "It's not exactly rocket science, right?"

    Krystal's lips curled into a smile as she nodded her head. She scribbled something on her notebook, then put it into her bag along with her stationary. "Why couldn't I get this before?" She asked, looking at Amber as she leaned backwards.

    Amber too, leaned back into her seat and intertwined her fingers behind her head. "That's because you didn't have this awesome tutor to show you the righteous way of tackling quadratic equations."

    "Oh yes, my 'awesome tutor' who seems to be flunking her music class," Krystal scoffed, "Nobody flunks music class, Amber."

    "Um, yes, they do. Music is cool and all, but why do we gotta learn about notes and chords and keys?" Amber grinned sheepishly, a little embarrassed at her non-existent musical talent.

    "Because without them, there will be no music, stupid," Krystal scrunched up her eyebrows and started laughing.

    Amber started to argue about making music without knowledge about music theories when Krystal suddenly got up from her seat, forgetting about her conversation with Amber and made a run towards the classroom door. She turned towards the door to find Krystal standing there talking to someone on the other side. They talked silently among themselves, with Krystal occasionally making skin contact with whoever stood outside the door. She would gently push the person or motion a 'high five''.

    Stretching her neck, Amber tried to catch a glimpse of Krystal's friend outside. They seemed pretty close, with the way that they were interacting with one another but Amber didn't know of anyone else outside the group who would be this close, this friendly with Krystal. The two of them were still talking, with Amber quietly sitting at the corner of the class, eyes locked onto the both of them when the person on the other side moved a little to the side, revealing his face.

    Amber couldn't help but feel a pang of something right in the middle of her chest when she saw that it was Suho who stood opposite Krystal, who was receiving those light punches and that sparkling smile. Why was she feeling like this?

    Before Amber could find the answer to her question, Krystal walked out of the class and disappeared from Amber's sight. Amber frowned, unsure whether the duo just took their conversation outside or if Krystal had left with Suho to some other place. So, she sat there, silently waiting for the brown-haired girl to walk back in and apologize for her abrupt leave.

    None of which actually happened.

    It took Amber exactly 10 minutes to figure out that the sophomore's bag was gone and that she wasn't going to come back in anytime soon. Upon realizing that, the blonde continued sitting there, eyes wide with shock and a tinge of something else she couldn't quite put a finger on. The tutoring session was going so well, she and Krystal were talking, they were laughing and it felt like things were going to be better between them, but then the brunette got up and left, forgetting that there was someone else in the room other than her and the guy she seemed to be having a great time talking to. 

    She walked away without even saying good-bye, without so much of a nod. Was Amber that unimportant, that invisible to Krystal? Or was Krystal simply being rude again? Amber kicked the desk that she had just spent two hours with Krystal discussing over mathematical problems and walked out of the class.

    "Amber," Henry's voice rung through Amber's ear, bringing the tomboy back to reality. 

    She ran a hand through her blonde fringe and sighed. "Yes, Henry?"

    "Amber," Henry said again as he took off his hat and put it in front of him. "Maybe she's just rude," he continued, "people do that sometimes, they get so engrossed in a convo with someone else, things just slip their mind."

    "Yeah, it happens, kiddo," Key added, trying to convince Amber that Krystal was just behind in the manners department.

    Amber let out a breath, "That just proves the theory of me caring too much and her not caring enough because it's obvious, isn't it?" She looked to her two friends, who hung onto her every word like puppies, "It's obvious that she doesn't like me enough to care about how I feel."

    Key glanced at Henry and then back to Amber. She really was putting a lot of effort into thinking about this Krystal problem and that just comes to show that Krystal had made her way into Amber's life and marked a little spot in Amber's heart as her own. Krystal was rapidly becoming something of high importance to Amber and if things didn't work out the way Key hoped it would, he was afraid that his best friend would lose herself even more than already did. So, putting his bet onto this one, last chance, he sat up and leaned closer to Amber.

    Lowering his voice a few octaves, he said, almost mysteriously, "Well, there is something you can do."

    Hearing that, Henry leaned in as well while Amber just remained in her position, staring blankly at the desk. "What is it?" She asked, sounding uninterested and much like she had given up on trying to solve this Krystal issue.

    Key glanced over at Henry again. Henry fully understood where Key was going with his words and nodded his head in agreement, encouraging Key to carry on. Hoping that he wasn't making a mistake by planting this idea into his innocent friend's head, Key looked back at Amber and spoke seriously.

    "What if you did the same to her?" Key asked quietly.

    Amber brought her head up instantly and looked at Key with her eyebrows scrunched together, "Are you asking me to up to Krystal?"

    "Not exactly up," Key replied, "Just giving her a little taste of what she's been feeding you."

    "What the heck?" Amber scoffed, "No, man. That's playing it too far."

    "Amber, we're not asking you to be an ," Henry said.

    "Yeah, we just need you to not acknowledge her the way you do," Key explained.

    "What do you mean 'not acknowledge her the way I do'?"

    Key put a hand to his chin and looked at his blonde friend, "Meaning, you can't treat her, talk to her the way that you do now."

    "And in what way do I do that now?"

    "You know, like she's a freaking princess and it's your duty to always be looking out for her. Don't go the extra mile to make sure she's doing fine or whatever, don't talk to her like she's the only friend that you care about, and do not look at her like she's Bella Swan and you're Edward Cullen," Key said, making the last bit sound a little harsher than it should.

    Amber threw her head back and laughed, "I appreciate the Twilight reference, but I've never looked at her like that. We do not have something that intense going on between us."

    "Fine, whatever that helps you sleep at night, but Ams, I think you should really give this a shot," Key urged.

    Amber opened to speak, but could only leave it hanging open as she saw how serious her two friends looked. So, this wasn't a joke to them. They really were asking her to try something with Krystal.

    "Why should I?" She asked.

    "Oh, my God. Don't you read romance books? Watch romance comedies? This is basic knowledge about the romantics, Amber," Key put a hand on his face, "Okay, when someone who keeps pestering someone else stops his pestering and starts ignoring that someone else, someone else will start to notice and before you know it, someone else is begging someone to come back into someone else's life so they can start a life together in the woods and by the mountains in their little cottage with the fireplace."

    Amber and Henry stared blankly at Key when he finished. "Um," Amber blinked.

    "I think," Henry glanced at Key then at Amber, "what Key is trying to say is that, maybe if you ignore Krystal, she'll realize that things have changed and you know, she'll uh, she'll maybe become less ferocious with you?"

    "Ferocious?" Amber and Key said together.

    "I'm trying to help you decipher his crappy- explanation," Henry pointed from Amber to Key, "so, sue me for not using a better, more fitting word."

    "Alright, alright, thank you, Sir Henry, for your accurate deciphering," Amber did a little hand motion and took a bow in Henry's direction.

    "That's right, appreciate me and appreciate God for blessing you peeps with my existence," Henry put his hands together and pretended to pray to a God he had as much faith in as he did with his 2 dollar made-in-china chain bracelet.

    "Why does that sound like something Key would say?" Amber asked, but it sounded more like a statement than a question.

    "Heck no, why would I say something even remotely similar to what homoboy says? That's--"

     Key slapped both of his dorky friends at the side of their faces with the books he picked up on the table. "Both of you, stop talking. Now is not the time to be talking about yours truly. First, we deal with Amber's problem, then we can go back to talking about me, as per usual."

    "Always the self-worshiping, conceited homoual, eh, Key?" Henry asked, after he swatted the book he was slapped with away.

    "Shut up, RiRi, we're going off track here," Key snapped, "so, Amber, are you gamed or are you not?"

    "Gamed for what?" Amber asked cluelessy.

    "Your mission to get Krystal Jung Soo-jung to notice your existence by ignoring the heck out of her," Henry answered, smiling mischievously at the blonde.

    "Uhh," Amber scratched the back of her neck, contemplating if she should go with her friends' idea.

    "Look, Amber," Key placed a hand on Amber's shoulder, "all you need to do is to ignore her. Show her that you absolutely could not care less about her existence whatsoever and you let fate handle the rest."

    Amber looked into the black irises of her best friend. If Key's eyes could talk, they were practically screaming 'SAY YES' over and over and over again. "So, all I have to do is, ignore her?" Amber asked timidly, still unsure of the water she was about to tread on.

    "Yesssss," both Key and Henry mused.

    "That's it?" She still wasn't sure.

    "That's it," they both replied.

    Amber bit the inside of her cheek as she stared at her two friends sitting eagerly awaiting for her to agree on their crazy plan.

    Should I do it? Will Krystal really start noticing me if I pulled this off? What if she doesn't and this whole thing blows over?

    But what if it does, Amber? And you guys become great friends.

    Amber leaned forward, grabbed Henry's ugly purple hat and put it on her head.

    "Then, it's up to fate, huh?" She said and both her friends nodded rapidly. She lowered her eyes towards the desk and let her lips form into a barely-noticeable smirk.

    A/N i hope this long- update didn't bore you guys to death :] sorry for the spelling and grammatical errors