Taemin’s P.O.V:

“Isn’t that a little…” Aerri stopped her words, tugging at her sleeves as she blushed. I smiled. “Weird?” I completed for her. “No!” she violently denied, turning and looking into my eyes. She quickly averted her eyes, and looked at the road as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world to see. “I don’t know…” she confessed in a whisper.

I hugged her a little closer. Unlike before, she didn’t tense up as much as she did then. “Whenever I’m with you, I feel weird too. I don’t know why either, maybe because we are usually awkward with each other? But it’s not that I hate it. You are the only person that I don’t want to hide anything from.”

“Whenever you are around, I feel really comfortable. Just feeling your presence somewhere around me makes me happy. When I’m around you, I don’t feel the need to act like SHINee’s Taemin. In front of you, I can just be Lee Taemin.”

I paused for a moment. Waiting for a while, as Aerri’s back grew comfortable against my chest. “I… I feel that way too…” Aerri confessed.

I couldn’t help but smile.

How stupid! It’s now that I finally understand all those subtle little hints from the time I met her for the first time! The way her eyes widened when she met me for the first time, the way she smiled around me, blushed around me, preparing a gift for my birthday, that hand-made card, her reaction when I kissed her forehead, when I put on the jacket for her, when we tripped on her bed, when she bought us drinks, when she massaged my calves for me, when we texted each other, when she slept in my arms, when we sat next to each other in the flight, when we held hands, the steward’s misunderstanding, our date today, the game we played, the questions she asked, how she shared her past with me; all of it, they weren’t just coincidental. I wasn’t just a comfortable friend. Inside her heart, she holds the same feelings for me, just like I do for her…

“Then I guess we both feel the same way towards each other.” I said, thoughtfully. Aerri chose to remain silent. I didn’t bother. It’d be better if I didn’t excite my heart any more after just finding out what I did.

We stood silently, and perhaps because of the cold winds, I felt a bit dizzy.