Seasons are changing and so is everything around the couple but there’s one thing that remains unfazed ­–Kyuhyun’s love for Yoona. The latter’s liking for the former has changed too. From a simple emotion of affection, her feelings towards him has blossomed into a much deeper, confound, and honestly complex emotion called love.

She just hasn’t told him yet.

Christmas has just rolled in. White minuscule dots of frosted snow falling from the sky and alabaster white sidewalks. The season of joy and giving. Yoona can see everyone wearing thick coats and Christmas themed sweaters, the sight of passersby donning red or green knitted sweaters with Rudolph, Santa, or a simple Christmas tree on them nauseates her, but she can’t do anything about it.

Because it’s not their fault she hates Christmas.

She can only sigh as another customer orders a pumpkin spiced latte. Although she shouldn’t complain about her job, she can’t bring herself up to feel up and jolly like how the customers and her coworkers are. But due to the holiday, the café is swarming with customers, so that’s a plus. Maybe a Christmas bonus might be bestowed upon her on this fine white day.

 “So what are you plans for later?” Seohyun casually asks while making the ordered drinks. Her hands are busy, seeing that she’s done this a thousand times already, and she’s wearing a cute brown reindeer headband to compliment the Christmas decorations hung on every wall and ceiling.

Yoona turns sideways to look at her, and juts her lips out while sparing her coworker’s question a thought. “I don’t have any. I just plan to sleep,” she flashes her a megawatt smile.

“Are you kidding me?” the other girl asks and clucks her tongue in disapproval. “You should go out, Yoong. Let loose, have some fun! Do you want to hang out with me tonight? We’re going to a club. You should come, you’re going to have a great time,” she beams and tries to persuade the other as much as she can.

The girl with deer-like eyes shakes her head and politely ignores her friend’s request. “You know I don’t like those places.”

“Just this once? Pretty please with a pumpkin spiced latte on top?” The pleading girl asks holding a cup of piping hot Christmas in her hand. She slouches and dejectedly places the cup of coffee by the delivery counter when Yoona shakes her head no. “What about Kyuhyun? Aren’t you spending Christmas together?”

Yoona stops to ponder about it. They’ve never actually planned anything and she guesses that he would be busy tonight. “No.”

Seohyun frowns when she realizes that Yoona will be spending another Christmas alone. “Can’t you ask him?”

The other shakes her head. “Seohyun, it’s fine,” she soothes as she tries to ease her friend’s worries. “I’m not even excited about Christmas. I’m used to it,” and later on adds, “really,” when she sees the hesitance in Seohyun’s eyes.

Yoona’s  co-worker tries to convince her to hang out with her for a day, but before she can try again, a customer places his order, successfully capturing all of Yoona’s attention. Her question is left unanswered in the air as Yoona asks the customer what he would like.

“Yoona? Why are you still here?” her manager asks when she sees Yoona working alone. “It’s Christmas. We’re closing early. Go home.”

“No, its okay,” she grins. “I don’t mind staying here.”

“Well, it’s not okay for me. So go home and spend some quality time with the people dearest to you,” her manager says as he grabs his coat from the coat hanger and places it over his shoulders before grabbing his brief case. “I’m closing up, go get your other stuff from the back,” he commands, referring to the staff room.

Yoona huffs as she steps outside the café and feels the crisp winter breeze. She shivers and exhales a puff of air, a cloud of white appearing in front of her face but vaporizing the next. Her heart drops as she waves a goodbye to her boss and starts walking home when she sees him step inside the car. He honks the car horn when he pulls out of the driveway as a farewell to her.

Yoona, although she will never admit it, is pleasantly surprised when she sees Kyuhyun waiting under her building. Confusion paints itself over her face, every meet of the eyebrow, purse of the lips, and scrunch of her nose shows how puzzled she is over his presence in front of her.

“What are you doing here?”

Kyuhyun takes his hands out of his coat pockets and points up. Gullible, the shorter of the two tilts her head upward to where his finger is pointing and sees his other hand holding a herb.

Or is that ‘herb’ a mistletoe?

Before she can even begin to wonder about it, a pair of soft lips gently presses itself against her own. Her eyes flutter shut after she overcomes the shock and tilts her head more for comfort. She leans onto him before he pulls away and presses his forehead against hers.

Grinning cheekily, he says, “Mistletoe.”

“So what brings you to my humble abode?” Yoona asks while shrugging off her coat with Kyuhyun following after. She grabs both of their coats and places them by her bed while Kyuhyun shakes off the sprinkles of snow in his hair.

“I wanted to spend Christmas with you.”

“What about your family?” she asks and heads to the kitchen. “Tea or hot chocolate?”

He lets out a long ‘um’ while pondering and when he eventually decides, he says, “hot chocolate.” The male plops down on the couch like he’s done it a million times before and grabs a throw pillow to place under his head.

“So?” she asks loudly from the kitchen.

“What?” he answers, distracted.

“What about your parents? Aren’t they going to be disappointed and sad that you’re not there?” she walks out of the kitchen holding two giant mugs filled with large quantities of the steaming hot chocolate drink. She hands him one and he accepts it, smiling gratefully when he sees that she has added marshmallows in his. He begins sipping and allows the burning liquid to travel down his throat and warm his insides before talking.

“I told my family, and they’re fine with it,” he informs. “Surprisingly, they were really encouraging. They couldn’t wait for me to get out of the house,” Kyuhyun’s lips start to form a frown when he realizes that he doesn’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing. Yoona chuckles at his expression and a comfortable silence falls over them.

But Kyuhyun, being the hyperactive kid he is, can’t stand silence no matter how comfortable it is due to the day being Christmas, and suggests making cookies. On other days, Yoona would reject the random preposition. But it was Christmas, and after being released from the adoption center, she would always either spend Christmas alone or with people she didn’t know.

After Jinho, this was the first time she would be spending Christmas with someone special to her, and just like all the other days she’s spent with Kyuhyun, she feels scared. Yoona doesn’t why, she has learned to trust and depend on Kyuhyun a lot, so why does she doubt him now? Maybe it’s the fact that it’s her first time celebrating this holiday with him, and that the feeling of following the traditions of Christmas is so unfamiliar that it even feels surreal. But she’s dealt with all this doubt before, and through all the uneasiness that floats around her mind, she sets it all aside and takes his hand and follows him to the kitchen.

After countless of flour fights, chocolate chip stealing and shoving, and hours of measuring, they finally managed to finish making the cookie dough and all they had to do now was wait for it to finish baking in the oven.

 “Hey, it’s our first Christmas together. Pay attention to me,” he says when he sees her spacing out. He waves his hand in front of her face to grab her attention. “Earth to Yoong?”

“What?” she mumbles, still dazed. He titters at her expression and gently pinches her nose as a sign of affection.

“Did you realize it’s our first Christmas together?” he shoots her a gentle smile. His legs are stretched across the couch and his head on Yoona’s lap, twirling a strand of her hair between his fingers.

Yoona hums in agreement with her fingers entangled in his soft locks. “I’m pulling out a white hair,” she says randomly and that’s when Kyuhyun realizes that she wasn’t playing with his hair, she was looking for white hair. His face turns into fifty different shades of red because of embarrassment and pulls his scalp away from her grasp. “Hey! Don’t look for white hair!”

Yoona laughs out loud and after much arguing, agrees to settle with playing with his hair and not look for white hair or as Kyuhyun would put it, ‘strands of discolored hair that never fail to remind him of his age’.

“So what do you usually do on Christmas?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on. Tell me what you do,” he persists.

Yoona shrugs nonchalantly.

He stops playing with her hair and narrows his eyes at her. “Why won’t you tell me? Did you spend it with an ex boyfriend?”

Yoona shakes her head sideways, signaling a no.

He pauses. “Did you… spend it with Daehyun?” His voice lowers at the mention of his name, not sure if it was right to bring him up.

Her eyes soften at the mention of her deceased best friend. She falls silent for a moment and this time, Kyuhyun doesn’t do anything to break it. He allows it to linger because he knows she needs some time to herself. He starts to grow baffled when she starts to smile gently. “No, I didn’t spend it with him. I just never really spent Christmas,” her voice turns from her normal tone to a low whisper. “I only took part in the traditions for the sake of Jinho and ever since he was gone, I just never really felt the holiday spirit. Thus, ending with me not celebrating Christmas.”

She feels his gaze on her and when she faces him, she doesn’t know if it’s pity or sympathy that’s swirling in his eyes. She decides it’s both, but more of the former.

“Don’t look at me like that, you know I hate it when people do that.”

“Look at you like what?” After staying silent for so long, his thick voice croaks slightly.

“Look at me with pity.”

“I’m not looking at you with pity.”

“Then what were you looking at me with?” she challenges, her defenses are starting to build themselves around her again.

“Love?” he answers like the smart-aleck he is. Kyuhyun gets up and presses a chaste kiss on Yoona’s lips before holding her fragile face in his large hands. His eyes turn flash from mischievous to serious.

“It’s okay if you didn’t get to spend Christmas with anyone last year, or the year before that. You have me now. I will try to make the rest of the Christmas and every other holiday in the future count. I will make up for the Christmas presents, New Year kisses, and Valentine’s Day chocolate you missed. I swear, Yoong, I will do my best to make all these things up to you.”

There are tears welling up by the girl’s eyes, but she blinks repeatedly, trying her best to hold the teardrops of emotions in.

“Thank you, Kyuhyun.”

“I love you,” he declares for the first time. The muscle placed inside his chest is beating so rapidly that he thinks it’s going to break down any time soon because of overexertion. Every part of him is shaking –trembling. But he wills himself to calm down and capture her plump and soft lips instead.

Kyuhyun gets even more addicted whenever he kisses her. It was the taste. It wasn’t like she books, she doesn’t have the taste of strawberry or candy. Although he can’t deny that the taste of her lips were sweet, she tasted like nothing else in the world –not even the most exotic fruit in the world could compare. She just tasted of Yoona. His doe-eyed Yoong. His broken yet precious Yoona.

Although Yoona doesn’t say those three words back, he knows that she’s not ready and that she will eventually utter them to him in the future so he lets it slide this time. He just hopes the time come soon.