"YOU WHAT?!" Key dropped his empty can of green tea on the table and yelled, completely forgetting about the presence of everyone else in the cafe. From the far corner of the table, Henry coughed hard and very loudly, having almost choked to death by an ice cube. Did they really hear it right?

    "You're lucky this is empty," Key continued, his brows arched downwards as he signaled to the empty cup in hand, "or else you'd be going home smelling like green tea."

    "Heh, at least she'd smell nice for once," Henry said before falling into yet another coughing fit. Gee, thanks Henry.

    "Shut up, Henry," Key beamed at the joker and then turned towards Amber, "just, what the hell were you thinking?"

    "I wasn't," she replied, looking down at her hands, watching as her palms started to glisten under the bright cafe lights.

    "Damn straight, you weren't. Why did you do it?" Key asked.

    "I, I don't know. I was going to go home, I told her that, and she heard me, but then she said she wanted to talk and I, I panicked because why would she want to talk to me? And then I thought of how I've been treating her and, and it's like, muffcheekshivkn."

    The rest of Amber's words came out muffled after Key reached out his accessory-decorated hand towards . "How you've been treating her?" He asked, "you did what we told you to do, right? You just ignored her?"

    "Mmm mm. Hmm mm hmmm hmm."

    "What?"

    "Key, your hand," Henry said.

    Key looked from Henry to Amber. "Oh," he said, realizing that his hand hadn't moved from Amber's lips, he then quickly pulled back. "Now speak, peasant."

    "Well, um, I did ignore her like, for a while," Amber said sheepishly.

    "And then?" Key pushed on, squinting his eyes at the figure that was slowly shrinking mentally before him.

    "And then I didn't," Amber replied. She reached for her cup of hot mocha and downed it in one go.

    Key's eyebrows immediately bunched together. "What do you mean and then you didn't"

    Wiping away the mocha stains at the edge of her lips, Amber took her time in thinking of a reply. One that would hopefully save her from an early death because she knew whatever that she was going to say, they was only one direction they were heading to; a direction that his best friend would most definitely find distasteful.

    "Ya think we could get an answer before the apocalypse?"

    "Aish, you guys have the patience of a 14 year-old teenage girl," Amber pretended to roll her eyes. 

    "Only when it comes to you. Get to the point, Am, before I start pms-ing all over you."

    "I ignored Krystal. And then I didn't." Short, simple and true. Hopefully Key doesn't interrogate her any further. 

    "You're holding out on something, girl. I know you are," Key stared threateningly at Amber. He brought his hands up and started to crack his knuckles slowly, making sure Amber knew the gravity of the situation with every crackle his bones made.

   Why does this happen all the damn time?

    "Uh, I did what you told me to. You said to brush her off, right? And I did. I ignored her, I brushed her off, I even showed up late for her math tutoring session," Amber quickly confessed out of fear for her dear life.

    "And then you kissed her," Key stated nonchalantly, like it was a normal thing Amber did every other day.

    "Jesus Christ, Key. No need for you to remind me of what I did."

    "Yeah, whatever, but that still doesn't answer my question. Why'd you do it?" Key asked.

    "And don't pretend like it's a bad thing because you know you enjoyed it," Henry snickered as he winked at Amber's way. She flinched and threw him a disgusted look.

    "Oh, my god. I did not enjoy it. It was purely out of, out of..." Amber trailed off, failing to find the right words to say.

    "Out of lust? Yeah, I couldn't agree more," Henry picked up where Amber left off.

    Amber quickly got up and pushed Henry's head back with her outstretched arm. "Shut up, you idiot. It wasn't out of," she paused, "lust." Why does the word feel so wrong?

    Yet so right?

    "Aye, say what you wanna say but Key and I know what's up under the hood."

    Amber pretended to throw daggers at Henry with her eyes, but she knew she couldn't stay mad at him for long. Annoyed maybe, but not mad. Especially when there was some part of truth in his words, although Amber would have one hell of a time getting herself to admit it.

    "Right, so if you and Henry are done playing dumb with one another, can you please save my poor soul and you know, ANSWER MY GODDAMN QUESTION?" Key yelled again for the second time in the morning. Heads turned over and Amber quickly got up and bowed in their direction, hoping for them to carry on ignoring the trouble-making trio, no thanks to her two friends. 

    "Alright, alright. But there's something I gotta say to you first," Amber sat down after apologizing to the people at the cafe.

    "What is it?" Key beamed. 

     Amber's lips curved into a smile. One that can only be mistaken for heart-warming or simply, erted. "I hope that you'd one day find someone who finds your explosive temper and violent personality attractive."

    "Oh, don't you worry about that, honey, because they will," Key leaned backwards into his chair and took a sip from the chocolate latte he ordered. "I'll make sure they will." He then looked up at Amber and pierced his demanding eyes through hers.

    Amber catching Key's drift, pulled his chocolate-y drink over and took one last sip. No more stalling, just go for it. 

   "Okay, umm. So, what would you like to know?"

    Key dropped his head back and sighed heavily through his mouth. How many times was he supposed to repeat his question? "I would like to know, why you, Amber Liu, kissed Krystal Jung," he said with a very forced-smile plastered upon his moisturized face.

   "Uh, that. Umm," Amber ran her fingers through her blonde hair, making it messier than it already is. This is going to be a tremendously frustrating morning. "I umm, you know..."

    Knowing fully well that Amber wasn't going anywhere with her words, Key moved on to a simpler question. One that her blonde friend could hopefully answer. Or else she'd be facing his ultimate wrath-- Key's version of the female menstrual cycle.

    "Just tell me everything you did before the big smooch happened."

    Henry slammed his fist onto the coffee table, laughing hyrsterically at Key's words. Amber's eyes widen in shock, as if this was the first time she was being told that she had given Krystal her first kiss. Yes, the first kiss.

    Her mind and stomach did somersaults whenever she thought of it; her lips on something else other than her cheeseburgers and tacos. Something that was warm and alive; something that felt as fragile as a heart did whenever her eyes fell on a certain brunette.

    Something that belonged to her. 

    Oh, no. Oh, no no no no, no. NO.

    "Am, why are you smiling to yourself?"

    Amber quickly shoved her illicit thoughts away, only realizing now how contagious they were. She immediately turned her head away from Key in attempt to hide away her face form her ever-so-curious friend. I did not just smile like a dork in front of my dorky friends?

    "See, I told you she enjoyed the kiss." She heard Henry say and almost instantly, she felt both sides of her face grow into the shade of the hibiscus flower. The involuntary warmth she felt pooling together on her cheeks made her want to shrink herself into the size of an ant and crawl into a dark hole somewhere; somewhere preferably without the existence of Key and Henry. "And from the looks of it, she enjoyed it a lot more than we thought she did."

    "Okay. I'm confused, so do you wanna talk about the kiss or do you not wanna talk about the kiss?" Key asked.

    "Talk about the kiss, Am. Tell us about the kiss." Amber could feel the excitement building up within Henry for what was possibly coming up soon. Do I wanna talk about the kiss?

    "Why should I?" She decided to ask, trying to play it cool in front of her buddies. Amber concluded that it was a good reply. It didn't imply that she wants to talk about the kiss, neither did it imply that she didn't want to. It gave her a spacious route to escape, if she ended up feeling the need to. 

    "Cause I feel like if you don't, your face is going to explode," Henry replied. "Don't you feel a little hot in here, Ams? Like, it kinda feels like you're blushing or something?" He teased Amber until she whipped her head over to look directly at him. She bored her eyes into Henry only to find him staring right back with mischief dancing joyously in his eyes. She willed herself to not blink, to win this dumb staring contest she had with Henry. 

    But it wasn't long before she felt her eyes start to strain and water start to form beneath her dry orbs. Finally, she turned away, not looking forward to see the look on Henry's face knowing that she was going to blink. "If I talk, does it has be about the umm, the kiss?" She asked quietly, feeling embarrassed at the last two words that had barely escaped .

    "Of course--"

    "Not!" Key threw his cashmere scarf at Henry, shutting him up. "Just tell us what you want to tell us. No pressure."

    Amber looked up at her friends, but mainly at Key because Henry was still trying to get Key's expansive green scarf off his head. She ruffled her hair, but not in frustration like how she usually did, because this time she wasn't frustrated, just a little flustered in a giddy way.

    "Okay. Umm, remember when we talked about our plan to get Krystal to notice me more?" She waited for Key to nod his head in response. 

    "And at first I repulsed the idea of it 'cause I thought what you meant was for me to be a back to her?" She waited again.

    "But you said I only had to ignore her, right?" She asked.

    "Mmhmm," Key replied.

    "Well, I did tell you that I uh, did more than ignore her, right?" A nod. 

    "Okay, yeah, umm, by that I mean," Amber let her eyes dart around the room, searching for a nicer, more pleasant way to put this, but there wasn't. "I was an to her."

    She didn't wait for a response from her friends, whichever that was listening to her. She couldn't. She knew she had crossed the line. The only principle she did not bare any disdain whatsoever to, she flushed down the drain, along with all the crap that had happened in her life.

    She made someone feel bad; she made someone feel bad because of her. 

    "I was a total , dumb- tool, and a lying piece of ass snake to her."

    Key looked on as Amber put a hand to her face and covered her eyes, most probably out of disgust for what she had done. Things had always been like this for Amber. Even though the situation might not be as bad as it seemed, she always had a knack to over-think things. Her mind, her subconscious exaggerated things beyond limit and she was always the one to pay the price at the end of the day. 

    "Hey," Key reached out his hand over to pat Amber's head, "hey, it's okay. I'm sure you weren't that big of an to her. You're Amber, and the Amber that we know, can and will never be anything less than an angel to people."

    "Yeah, dude, everything's cool. You shouldn't worry about it too much," Henry voiced out.

    Although sobs weren't heard, and tears weren't falling, everyone around the table, including Amber, knew that it was hurting to breathe right now, but of course, only the blonde herself knew exactly how much it hurt. It pains her, having to realize how mean and unreasonably y she was towards Krystal for the past week.

    In one split second, she thought of and saw everything; the way Krystal picked at her pen nervously while trying to do her math work because she was afraid of asking for help from Amber; the way her eyes widen in paralyzing shock when Amber yelled at her in the hallway; the way her face cringed when Amber spat out words of venom that she didn't mean to her; the way her face, her eyes, and everything else lighted up when she thought Amber was going back to become her normal self.

    The way she looked, like everything was crashing down on her at the same time when she realized that she was wrong about Amber; the old her wasn't coming back. 

    "I don't want to see you again."

    Why did she act like that? Why did she have to be such a jerk to Krystal? Because she goddamn sure didn't deserve any of this treatment.

    Why?

    Amber shut her eyes tightly into a straight line. She willed herself to be blind and mute for a moment, just long enough to block out the rest of the world.

    She knew the answer. 

    She knew exactly why she had treated Krystal the way she did.

    At first, Amber did try her hardest at ignoring her like Key had told her to, to just brush her off like she wasn't anything important, like she didn't matter, but who knew it would take so much out of her to give the brown-haired sophomore the cold shoulder. Every second she spent ignoring Krystal, was an hour spent suffocating, drowning in her own sea of thoughts. 

    She couldn't do it. 

    She couldn't not talk to Krystal. She tried, but all that she achieved at the end of the day was a big pile of self-loathing. She loathed the part of her that was so weak, she couldn't even go through a day without burying her thoughts on the fact that she had to ignore Krystal, that she couldn't speak, couldn't talk to Krystal and how much it hurt not being able to do that.

    So, she turned all that self-loathing into something else; something angrier; something harder to contain. She stopped her sad attempts at ignoring Krystal and went all out at being mad at her. She convinced herself that the only way she could talk to Krystal without seeming like ignoring her was killing her from the inside out, was to be tremendously hateful towards her.

    If she was hateful towards Krystal, she wouldn't have to ignore her. She wouldn't have to try so goddamn hard to push her out of her head and pretend that her existence didn't bother her like pebbles in a shoe.

    At least by hating Krystal, she was allowed to think of her.

And hate she did, or fake-hate. It was going well too, until that cursed afternoon after their tutoring session.

    "Things were going fine during our session. I wasn't as angry as I pretended to be the day before and I guess Krystal took it as a good thing because she started talking to me more," Amber explained to her two friends.

    "She kept asking me these questions about how I feel and how life was, so I assumed she was starting to notice that things have changed because she never really did that before. Yeah, so everything was flowing smoothly right to the end of it. I was leaving when out of nowhere she pops the question 'wanna hang out?' And like I told you before, I freaked. Big time. So, I ran."

    Key frowned, then blinked a few times, trying to get Amber's words to register in his head. "You ran?" He asked. 

    "Well, no. Um, not exactly," Amber breathed out in attempt to laugh, "but I did leave the class. Yeah, I totally walked away like a badass."

    "And then what happened?" Henry asked, resting his chin on his hand.

    "And then, she followed me out. That, I did not see coming. Like, who the heck expected that she was going to freaking follow me out of the class? She didn't even like, pack yet or anything."

    Key and Henry nodded approvingly together, eyes wide with anticipation of what might follow after that. They hung on to Amber's words like how Amber used to hang on to Krystal's and she found this scene rather amusing. Is that how I look like too when I stare at her talk?

    "So, she followed me out and kept like, calling for me, asking me where I was going and why. As if it wasn't already hard enough to not talk to her the way I usually do, I panicked again because she sounded like she was getting closer. And her voice, I just couldn't handle how she sounded at the time. Before she could get to me though, I turned around to ask her to shut up and guess what happened?" Amber left her question hanging, letting her friends get the mental picture of where this was heading.

    Henry already had his jaw hanging loosely and mouth wide open. "You guys kissed?" He managed to mumble out the question.

    "Yeah. We knocked into each other and she lost her footing, but I caught her before she fell. And then umm," Amber paused, thinking about the next scene.

    Amber's heart was beating so fast and so out of rhythm, it was a miracle that she, her body was still functioning because it definitely felt like she might have just lost the ability to do anything else but stare at the pair of coffee-brown eyes lying so still beneath her. How she managed to breathe was well beyond her understanding.

    What was that look in her eyes? Curiosity? Shock? Disbelief?

    Affection?

    Why isn't she letting go?

    Why aren't I letting go?

    Why isn't she looking away? 

    Why is she looking at me like that?

    Am I looking at her like that too?

    "And then umm.....?" Key asked, mimicking what Amber had previously said. He was dying to know what she had to say and Amber looked like she was having one of her zoning-out episodes again.

    "And umm, you know, that happened," Amber finally said after a lifetime, leaving the eye-gazing part out.

    "By that, you do mean the kiss, right?" Key asked as he stared questioningly at his blonde friend.

    "Yeah, what else would I mean?"

    Key squinted his tiny eyes at Amber, hoping and waiting for her to add something else to her short reply. Was she hiding something? Why did it feel like she was? "That's it?" He asked, wanting a conformation so the voice in his head would have a reason to let things go.

    "What?"

    "That's all there is to your story, right?" Key tapped his index finger on the round table, "You had your math tutoring session, she talked, you didn't want to. Math session ended, you wanted to leave, she didn't want you to. She ran after you, you stopped, the two of you knocked into each other--"

    Key stopped talking. Henry and Amber could tell that that wasn't the end of his sentence, that he still had something to say, but he clammed up and leaned back into his chair with a displeased look. He turned his head a little to make it face Amber's direction. He looked straight at her, telling her with his two eyes that he might or might not be aware of the little details she had inconspicuously left out during her short story-telling session.

    Amber looked right back at him, face blank and eyes giving out nothing, but unaware to Key, she was having an internal battle with her insides. She was struggling so hard to keep her emotions in check, to stop from opening and giving out precious information that she held a lot more closer to her heart that she thought she would.

    She wouldn't tell him; she wouldn't tell anyone. As much as Key might plead and beg and cry, she wouldn't hear any any of it.

    Talking about the kiss to her friends was already a move of borderline crazy, but what could she have done about it? What's been said has been said; there was no turning back. But Amber had another chance at keeping something else a secret. The kiss might have been the craziest, most exciting and memorable thing that has happened to her in the past eighteen years of her life, and she had wanted to make it something that only she knew about; something that was only known to her.

    But now that it was gone and she couldn't keep that personal piece of memory to herself, Amber looked for something else that could meet the standards of the kiss. Something that stood on the same ground as the lip-contact she made with Krystal; something that could take her breath away and make her head dizzy from the lack of oxygen in her brain; something that made her forget everything else in the world, that made her stop whatever she was doing and just smile.

    And not just a smile smile, but an actual smile smile.

   One that came from the deepest part of her heart that made her eyes disappear into tiny slits; that made her laughing lines more visible than anything else in the whole wide world; that made everyone else in the room want to share a little piece of that smile as well.

    And Amber had found it.

    This time, she wasn't going to tell anybody about it. She made sure that only she herself had the one key to open the door that allowed her to relive that hauntingly wonderful moment in life that was etched to her brain like a scar that was never going to go away, no matter how much time had passed and how much more incisions were newly made and added.

    The memory was infinite. And it was irreplaceable.

    Only Amber would remember how her insides melted in both curiosity and adoration as she lost herself in the eyes of a brown-haired sophomore; how she felt her legs grow weak and unsteady when she thought she saw something heart-stopping gleamed through the eyes of the one she held so close to her heart yet she hadn't completely realized yet; how the very thought of their short moment of connection with each another through the windows of their soul made her heart soar to the happiest place her subconscious had to offer. 

    Yes, this memory would remain a secret; a secret that was hers alone to keep and hers alone to think about.

    Does she feel the same way too?

    "Yeah, we knocked into each other and we kissed," Amber continued Key's sentence that was left hanging in the air, "then, we went our separate ways and, that's it."

    Key sat up in his seat. "That's it?"

    "Krystal."

    "Yeah--"

    "I don't want to see you again."

    "That's it."

A/N okay i don't know what kind of ending that was but ohgod i struggled so much for this chapter but it's still such a meh. sorry for the grammatical errors made and for making you guys wait for this update. hope it wasn't a disappointment :]