"Why do you like me?"

He glances at her from the driver's seat, his fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. She has her gaze fixed outside the window, eyes on the suspended clouds in the faraway sky above them. Her hair is red now, and it dances to the pulse of the wind, he recalls how the colour of her cheeks when they first met was of the same shade as the colour of the leaves at that moment.

There are a lot of reasons why Taecyeon likes this particular girl with half-moon eyes and cherry lips and perfectly aligned pearly whites named Tiffany. Of course she’s his best friend, almost like his backbone who has been right there standing by his side and shares everything from the most beautiful smiles to the ugliest tears. He likes her for the silly side of her, how she is not afraid to bid her image goodbye by acting like a five-year-old, sometimes much more outrageously childish that he wonders what is she exactly. He likes how she always insists on believing that there’s a rainbow after every rain and that it’s always better to be grateful of the love she has rather than to be saddened by the love she doesn’t. He likes her even when she wakes him up at the most ungodly hour when he’s already deep in his slumber just because she has been watching a horror movie in the darkness under the blanket with Taeyeon and now she’s too afraid to fall asleep. And then, there’s her being far prettier than any other girl even though she can never eat ice-creams without smudging it all over to her cheek.

She turns at him, and raising her eyebrows, she asks again. “Why do you like me?”

The road is clear save for one or two cars that pass by every half an hour. The sun is rising on one corner of the horizon and he realizes the reason of his continuous yawns. The summer air is warm and dry but he can still smell the lingering scent of spring. He smiles. “Because you’re not anyone else. You’re you, and no one else is.”

She smiles back and places her hand on top of his. “So when are you going to let me drive?”

He looks at her and smirks. “I don’t just like you, I love you with all my heart and soul, but even so, after you crashed my dad’s car that he kept unscathed for 20 years in a matter of seconds and almost made me an orphan by giving him a heart attack, never.”