0052

It was already darkening when they decided to leave the market and head back to her building in Apgujeong (it would take a while, since it was getting closer to rush hour) where noona was expecting them. On the way to hail a cab, Chanyeol found a fried chicken restaurant and went inside to buy two doses for his maknae line since they had waited for him all afternoon.

It had been their decision to not leave, Chanyeol hurriedly assured, at her bothered expression, it had nothing to do with her, he pushed.

And even though she knew it wasn’t true, while she waited for him outside of the restaurant, while he ordered, Ji Woo pondered on how guilty she should feel and just how much she didn’t. He had made her day so happy and full and light and she hadn’t felt like this in approximately six years. It had been a long time since the young pianist felt so genuinely, bubbling, happy.

Bouncing on the balls of her feet, relaxing in the warmth of her padded coat and the rim of the folded paper bag inside its large pockets, the brunette thought on the day of tomorrow. Tomorrow there would be the crude reality of dealing with that oppa and answering the, definitely, many questions that would come from those unnies knowing she had been with Chanyeol in the afternoon. What would they think if she told them that she had not only had lunch and picked flowers with him, but also was heading to his older sister’s apartment to have dinner with the most beautiful flower arrangement she had made herself?

Sigh.

They would probably misunderstand. But then again, how much of it would it really be a misunderstanding?

A gust of wind blew her hair in her face and she laughed at how she must have looked sputtering the threads that had glued on her chap stick covered lips, out of .

When she could see again, there was a white rose right in front of her face. Literally so close to her nose that her eyes crossed trying to achieve the notion of the item that had been shoved, out of nowhere, in her face.

Immediately fighting the repulsion it brought her, Ji Woo crinkled her eyes against the icy wind that had begun to wheeze through the streets. Chanyeol stood on the other end of the flower, all flushed from the cold, snuggled inside his thick coat, ears tinged red. The night had inexorably fallen down, even though the moon still wasn’t up in the rapidly darkening sky. In Seoul there were no visible stars.

  Fingers aching from the cold, blotted in red and shaking reached for the abhorring innocent flower. She wanted to avoid touch it but even though every cell on her body was rejecting the gesture, she reached for it and grabbed it, giving the male a tight smile. She just wanted to throw it away as soon as she got home.

“Tha-thanks.”

There was no response from him, he didn’t have a kind smile like she expected him too. There was, instead, a rather curious expression. His brilliant big eyes appraised her reaction to the most singular detail. Tightening her hand around the stem, Ji Woo hoped it had thorns, for just a second, so that she could prickle herself and this intense but seemingly useless moment could disappear. But Chanyeol didn’t let go of her eyes, and ridiculously, she couldn’t let go of his either. She had bravely tried to clear but it had gotten stuck and she just couldn’t break the way he was looking at her. His hand had yet to let go of the rose and so he was holding it lightly, his hand almost touching her fisted white knuckles.

“Thank you oppa,” Ji Woo didn’t miss the way Chanyeol frowned deeply at her fake smile, but he had ended up letting go of the stem, a look of displeasure spreading through his beautiful features. For a person known to be the loudest amongst twelve, Chanyeol was so infuriatingly quiet that her nerves were quietly and slowly coming undone. Wouldn’t he just let go? She had made an effort and accepted it. “It’s beautiful.”

“I know you hate them.”

Her charismatic straight eyebrows scowled further, raising creases in her forehead. He knew? Well, since Chanyeol had been in the waiting room in SAC for her performance and had obviously seen her dump the congratulatory arrangement of roses in the trash bin. How could she forget? Her scowl might have disappeared for a second but it came back with a vengeance, as her full lashes blinked abruptly and she looked up through them at his blank expression. That annoying one. If he knew she hated them, why was he gifting her one? The stem on her hand felt so heavy too.

“If you knew…”

“Why did I give it to you?”

Ji Woo nodded slowly, her straight hair bobbing along with her head, cheeks blooming in pink with the cold. All light from the sky had disappeared, the streetlamps blinked, awake.

“Because I really think it’s beautiful. And that it suits you. Whatever made you hate white roses isn’t really the roses fault.”

Her scowl deepened and she wanted to retort that he had nothing to do with it. Could he perhaps have confronted her in hopes of knowing why she just couldn’t bear the sight of the roses? But then again, he was right. And the rose was beautiful. She stood a long time there, their shoulders touching as he faced her side, his hand holding two doses of fried and yangnyeom chicken that she could smell from where she stood. He knew nothing to speak like that, so sure of himself. But if she told him that, he would probably just tell her to speak him to him, then. To just tell him.

Ji Woo didn’t find the idea awful, even though she had never really spoken to anyone about it except for her older sister. She just found it too sudden and she wasn’t ready for it right now, right here. Chanyeol would surely understand, right? Still, while Ji Woo might have found his actions creepy or absurd, she had found it endearing, that he had noticed something like that and, further than that, had tried to understand it.

This oppa, right here, was really a much more caring person than people gave him credit for. But she was happy with that too, with that part of him not being public knowledge.

“You’re right oppa.” She offered him one of her lethargic genuine smiles, raising the hand with the flower to her eye-level. He was right. She used to love them for a reason. Her grandma also used to say that they matched her. “It is beautiful.”

Her very genuine, endearing smile seemed to temporarily throw him off a loop, when he realized she wasn’t going to either tell him off or answer him in a way that he could push her into speaking about it.

“I-It’s just… You know… You should direct your hate towards what earned it. Not toward flowers. I noticed you really liked them.”

 Remembering they were in public, Ji Woo absolutely refrained from urge to coo at his cuteness. Clutching the rose in one hand and reaching for one dose of yangnyeom chicken with the other, Ji Woo set pace to hail a cab further down the street, with Chanyeol hot on her heels.

Chanyeol’s noona was so unbearably alike her younger sibling that for a second, Ji Woo thought that instead of the apartment under hers, she had entered a dimension where Chanyeol was a girl.

She bowed profusely at the warm welcoming of the girl, as tall as her, at the door of her own house and beamed at the way her eyes lit up and a grin broke out in her face at the offering of the beautiful flower arrangement.

“Are these for me?”

“Of course, Yoora-sshi”

“Ji Woo made it herself, dragged me all the way to the Yangjae flower market.”

Lost in the similar features his sister shared with him Ji Woo almost forgot he was just behind her, taking off his shoes by her discarded ones. Yoora’s eyes crinkled happily and she took her long fingers in her small hand.

“Thank you so much. The last time I received flowers was in my college graduation.”

“Tch. Should have chosen a better boyfriend then.”

Chanyeol huffed in a soft tone, almost as if he didn’t want his noona to hear his displeased comment. She did, and demonstrated so by rolling her eyes fervently at him, a small smile lingering in her eyes as she appreciated the flowers in her arms.

“And how did you know that yellow was my favorite color? I love these. Thank you so much, Ji Woo-ssi.”

She blushed a little. She never did liked being treated formally by older people. Except it was just to awkward to ask her to lower her speech right away. She bowed twice before passing the threshold when the older woman beckoned her fervently.

“Kai-yah! Hyung brought chicken!!” Chanyeol had completely left her, his feet advancing, anxiously, towards the living room down the hallway. Yoora tugged her hand towards the kitchen where she had fetched a crystal jar to deposit the beautiful flowers that flowed and pended over the rim of the crystal in beautiful sunshine hues.

“Oppa told me you like yellow.”

The older one snorted a snigger.

“Pff. As if. That giant?”

“I might have used my ways…”