"Come in." Taeyeon smiled as she pushed her apartment door wider to allow Tiffany to walk in with her luggage. "I've to apologise though. My home is not really that big since I'm living alone."

"It's okay. I understand." Tiffany walked in and saw the common bathroom on her left side before turning to her right. "Wow... your apartment is really compact but looks homely."

Tiffany walked further in without her luggage as she saw the kitchen area, the dining area and the living room. She was impressed with how organised Taeyeon's apartment was.

"Let me bring you to the guest room first." Taeyeon said as she pulled the luggage to the brown door. "There's nothing much in here though. My parents usually use this room when they come over to visit me sometimes and spend the night."

Tiffany followed Taeyeon from the back and was surprised that the guest room was bigger than what she had expected, especially with a queen size bed, a small tv and a dressing table that was placed facing the bed. "Wow, this room is bigger than what I had in mind."

"There's a bathroom inside here too." Taeyeon said as she walked further in and pushed the sliding door to show to Tiffany. "This room doesn't have a closet because my parents usually doesn't bring that much clothes when they come over."

"It's fine with me too since I'll only be here for one night." Tiffany replied as she took a seat at the edge of the bed.

"Wait here while I'll go and get a towel for you from my room." Taeyeon said and was about to walk out from the room when Tiffany called out to her.

"Taeyeon. Can I... see your room too?" Tiffany asked nervously as Taeyeon smiled and nodded her head.

The two girls went to the room next door and just when Tiffany was about to step in, Taeyeon stopped in the middle of the door and turned around to face her..

"Wait a minute. Can I just make sure that my room is in proper condition before I show it to you?' Taeyeon grinned dorkily as she blocked the door entrance.

"Are you hiding anything from me again?" Tiffany folded her arms and glared at Taeyeon who quickly shook her head vigorously. "I don't care if it's messy. It's not like I've never seen it before. Unless you're hiding something or maybe someone inside."

Taeyeon pouted and stood aside, allowing Tiffany to walk in.

Expecting the room to be messy, Tiffany was surprised once again when she saw how cleaned the room was. Turning to face Taeyeon who was chuckling to herself, Tiffany realised that Taeyeon was just pulling a prank on her earlier on.

"Yah!! Were you teasing me just now?" Tiffany pouted as Taeyeon nodded her head. "But I can't believe that your whole apartment is so neat and tidy."

"I have a housekeeper who will come to clean my place every morning after I left for work, except for the weekends. Which explains why the house is in top condition." Taeyeon explained as she showed a thumbs up with a wacky expression.

Tiffany laughed at Taeyeon's dorkiness as she watched the girl walked to her closet to look for a towel for her. Tiffany took the opportunity to look around the room and her eyes automatically stopped at a plush toy that was placed on the chair at the balcony.

"Is that my totoro?" Tiffany asked as she pointed to the plush toy before making her way to the chair.

"Mwo?" Taeyeon didn't really hear the question as she pulled out a pink towel from her closet drawers and turned around to see Tiffany hugging the totoro doll.

"It smells like you. Just like the big white teddy bear that you sent to me." Tiffany said as Taeyeon gave her the pink towel. "Since when do you like pink?"

"It's just one of the towels that I have. I only have one pink towel." Taeyeon replied while rolling her eyes at Tiffany who was giggling. "Wait.. Are you telling me that you already knew who sent you the white teddy bear? Is that why Bora called me teddy-bear lover?"

"Initially I didn't know but after hugging it a few times, I was able to detect your familiar scent. You're the only one whom I know, who uses Davidoff Coolwater." Tiffany replied. "You didn't change your perfume even after all these years?"

Taeyeon shook her head and gave Tiffany a shy smile.

"Is it because I was the one who bought the very 1st Coolwater for you?" Tiffany tried to guess.

"That is part of the reason. I actually love the scent so I didn't see the need to change it." Taeyeon explained herself. "Do you want to take a shower first since it's almost 10pm already?"

************************

Taeyeon was in the living room, watching the TV when Tiffany was done with showering 30mins later. Taking a seat beside Taeyeon, both of them had their eyes fixed on the square box in front of them until Tiffany turned her body sideways to face Taeyeon.

"Are we just going to spend the night watching TV? If that is the case, there's no difference with me staying at the hotel."

Taeyeon saw the frustrated look on Tiffany and smirked a little. "You seem like you're ready to shoot me with a lot of questions right now. But before that, let me get something first."

Tiffany watched as Taeyeon left the couch and walked towards the common toilet before turning to her right where the store room was. Soon, the small girl returned with a brown box in her arms.

"Do you need help?" Tiffany asked as Taeyeon shook her head while making her way back to the couch, placing the box onto the round table.

"It's not heavy since it's just papers inside and some small gadgets." Taeyeon explained before taking a seat beside Tiffany. "This box contains the reason as to why I broke up with you."

Tiffany eyes widened and her hands were about reach for the box when Taeyeon stopped her. Tiffany had a questioning look on her face while Taeyeon just smiled.

"Before I show you what's inside, I need to ask you something. Remember the day that I asked you for a break-up?" Taeyeon asked as her face started to frown a little.

"I will never forget it." Tiffany replied as she retrieved her hands from the top of the box and hugged herself.

"That means you should remember the question that I asked you that day. Me or Nicky?" Taeyeon repeated the question, causing Tiffany to frown. "You hesitated and I started to lose my consideration. I guess after keeping all the pain inside of me, I got angry with everything. I ran all the way to the rooftop and only realised my mistake after I calmed myself down. From that point onwards, I've been regretting my words until today."

"I hesitated not because I couldn't choose, Taeyeon. I hesitated because I was shock to see you glaring at me. It was the first time that I saw so much emotions coming out from you. Furthermore, I thought it was just you being jealous as normal. I really didn't expect that you would ask for a break-up because of my hesitation." Tiffany sighed as she leaned back into the couch. "I was angry at you for being jealous and for not trusting me. For the next 3 months, I distanced myself from everyone that was close to us. But when you left for Japan, I... I started to miss you."

Taeyeon smiled when she heard Tiffany's truthful confession but she quickly hide her smile and put on a straight face. "It's not that I don't trust you. It's me that you shouldn't trust."

Hearing that from Taeyeon, Tiffany sat up straight and looked at her in the eye. "What do you mean I shouldn't trust you? What did you do? What were you hiding from me?"

"I... I cheated behind your back. I was caught kissing a girl passionately at a pub when I was drunk. Nicky said he saw everything." Taeyeon replied, keeping her poker face on.

"What??!! Is that why you hated him?" Tiffany started to raise her voice and soon, Taeyeon was hit with the pillow from the couch. "How could you do that to me, Taeyeon? How could you cheat on me behind my back? After all these years, I blamed myself for the break-up for nothing. I hate you. I hate you, Kim Taeyeon."

As Tiffany continued to hit Taeyeon repeatedly with the pillow, Taeyeon just let herself to be beaten until Tiffany stopped and started crying. Taeyeon then stood up, causing Tiffany to look up at her with swollen eyes.

"Like I said before. This box contains the reason as to why I broke-up with you. I'm leaving you with a choice of forgiving me for what I did or you can start to hate me from today onwards. This is also the key to my apartment." Taeyeon placed a single key on top of the box. "I'll be in my room."

The moment Taeyeon closed the door to her bedroom, Tiffany grabbed the key and walked to her room. Taking her belongings and stuffing them back into her luggage, her tears started to flow again.

"How dare you cheat me behind my back? The worse is making me like a fool all these years, thinking that it was my fault that we broke up. Stupid, Kim Taeyeon. Getting drunk at a pub and even get caught kissing another girl by Nicky. Now I know why you hated him... all.. these... years.." Tiffany paused her actions when she realised something. "Wait a minute.. Why didn't Nicky informed me anything about this at all and why was she drunk in the pub in the first place?"

Tiffany sat on the floor with her luggage almost packed, spread opened in front of her. "If she had admitted everything to me, why did she keep mentioning about the box? It seems to me like she wanted me to see what is inside the box."

The longer Tiffany conversed with herself, the more she felt that something was amiss. Taking a deep breathe, she stood up and walked out from the room. Making her way to the box, she slowly opened it and saw a neat stack of sticky notes, a small voice recorder player along with Taeyeon's old phone.

************************

Taeyeon was seated at her balcony while hugging the totoro doll when she heard a soft knock on her bedroom door. Soon, light footsteps was heard as Tiffany appeared near her sliding door. Looking up, Taeyeon saw that Tiffany had a solemn face.

"Can I join you?" Tiffany asked as Taeyeon nodded her head and pointed to the chair beside hers.

Silence engulfed as the two girls admired the night scenery from Taeyeon's balcony. It's been an hour since their small fight in the living room earlier.

"I... I saw everything in the box." Tiffany's voice broke the silence. "Initially, I wanted to be angry with you for hiding everything that Nicky had done to you from me but I stopped and thought about what happened earlier. You didn't know the truth until you went to Japan and met with that girl again. So if you had came forward to me about your cheating, my reactions would have been the same as earlier."

"Which means you would end up hating me." Taeyeon intercepted as Tiffany sighed.

"Was Seohyun talking about you when she asked me about unintentional cheating?" Tiffany's question made Taeyeon confused before she started explaning what happened before when Seohyun gave her the scenario. "I even told her to tell her friend to talk things out with the partner and said that the partner will understand that it was not her fault. But when it comes to myself, I jumped to conclusion and even started to hit you. Oh my god... did it hurt?"

Taeyeon chuckled when she saw the sudden change in Tiffany's expression. Her worried face made Taeyeon smiled a little as she shook her head. "It was just a pillow. Even though the impact of you hitting me was quite strong, it was still bearable. By the way, I didn't know Seohyun would actually ask that from you."

"I was shocked too. I even thought that the person was Yoona." Tiffany giggled a little. "Anyway, what if I had just taken the key and left the apartment without looking at the box? Would you have just let me go like that?"

"Can I have the key back first?" Taeyeon stretched out her hand as Tiffany placed the single key on her palm. "I know that your brain works faster than mine. As in you'll start thinking of the whole situation and analyze even before you could finish packing your luggage. Anyway, even if you had wanted to leave, you won't be able to do so. You will still need to come and look for me since that key is actually my store room key."

"What?" Tiffany's eyes widened as Taeyeon started to laugh like an ahjumma before running away from Tiffany. "Yah, Kim Taeyeon!!! How dare you make fun of me."

They spent time running around the living room for 10mins until Taeyeon surrendered and dropped on her couch. Tiffany took the opportunity to hit her with the pillow again but this time round, it was softer than before. Much, much softer.

"Okay, okay... I'm sorry. I give up." Taeyeon held up her hands as Tiffany stopped her actions and meronged at her before taking a seat at the couch. Taeyeon sat up straight and noticed that her round coffee table was filled with the sticky notes. Her old phone and the voice recorder player were inside the box. "You read everything?"

Tiffany shook her head as she explained that the ones on Taeyeon's right side are the ones that she had read but the ones on the left, she had yet to do so. "I listened to the voice recorder first. Initially, I don't understand what the conversation was about until I heard your name. That was when I started to recognise Nicky's voice. Then I listened to it all over again before I took the phone and looked through it. At first, I didn't know what I was suppose to look for until I caught a glimpse of what was written on the sticky notes so I went to your inbox. The last thing I did was to look through these." Tiffany pointed at the sticky notes as Taeyeon nodded her head.

"You really love pink, don't you?"  Taeyeon asked as she pointed at the pile of sticky notes on her right side which was only filled with pink sticky notes. "You only read the ones in pink."

Tiffany just shrugged her shoulders and gave Taeyeon a puppy look. Taeyeon took a deep breathe and started to tell Tiffany everything, starting from the time when Nicky met up with her to claim about the so-called photo that he had of Taeyeon kissing another girl passionately at the pub until the time when Taeyeon met Marina again and found out the truth.

"I felt like a complete idiot when Marina told me the truth. The fact that I kept thinking that I've cheated on you behind your back almost drove me crazy since I couldn't forgive myself. All the messages and sticky notes that Nicky sent to me made me feel guilty almost everyday and the fear of losing you kept getting stronger. Everytime he threatened to tell you about the incident, I cried by myself. I felt pathetic" Taeyeon paused as she bite her lips, trying to control her tears. "I was at my wit's end. I couldn't tell anyone. Not even Soo or Yul. They will surely nag at me and expect me to tell you the truth. But if I tell you the truth, I might lose you. Seeing how you reacted earlier, I might even cause you to hate me." Taeyeon covered her face when she couldn't hold back her tears anymore. "I... I... You.."

Tiffany had enough of seeing the pain that Taeyeon had been holding back all these years. Shifting herself closer to the crying girl, she wrapped her hands around Taeyeon's shoulders and pulled her into a hug, crying along with Taeyeon.

"Nicole was right. Being strong and giving comfort are not something that can be done easily. I'm stuck here, not knowing how to console you or how to be strong for you. I'm even crying along with you." Tiffany said as she started sniffing while trying to control her tears. "You have been strong for me and always there to give me comfort when I needed it. Gomawo, Taeyeon-ah."

Silence filled the living room as the two girls remained in each other's embrace until Taeyeon heard a soft snoring sound. As she slowly distanced herself from Tiffany, she realised that the girl had fallen asleep. A smile appeared on Taeyeon's face as she slowly carried the sleeping girl into the guest room.

"Ppany-ah, you don't know how relieved I'm feeling right now." Taeyeon whispered softly after she had tucked Tiffany into bed and squated beside her. "Things had not been smooth sailing for us before and I'm not sure how the future will be. I understand that you need time to think about all these but I'll wait. Good night, my mushroom. Sweet dreams."

Taeyeon stood up and closed the door behind her after switching off the lights. In that darkness, an eye-smile appeared on the sleeping girl who then shifted her body sideways before she really went off to dreamland.