HANBIN POV

The next few months passed by in a blur, it was a whirlwind of happiness for me. Hayi and I went out at least once every week. Each day, I discovered something new about her. She was a surprising girl and every day, I managed to unravel something I never knew before. Hayi couldn’t cook very well, but she could appreciate beauty. Hayi had learned to play the piano before and taught herself how to play the guitar. She wasn’t good at playing the piano but was pretty decent at the guitar. She came to my gigs and each time, she brought me a single tulip flower because she knew I liked them. My band soon called her my tulip girl, and she became the only pair of eyes I searched for every time we played.

“Hey superstar! You shone out there today. I loved that last song, it showed your range and tone, baby.”

Hayi came backstage and planted a kiss on my cheek as she said that. I gave her a smile, reaching out to receive the tulip she brought me. Hayi recently took to habit calling me baby after protesting that it was unfair I could call her babe, so I let her. It was endearing and I couldn’t care less about what came out of her lips.   

We tried to talk on the phone most nights. We would speak for hours, doing homework through the night until one of us needed to crash. Hayi asked me about my past exes so I asked her about Ahyoung and Chaemin and her previous crushes. We were completely honest about everything and she heard my twisted theories on things that only seemed to make sense to me. There was a particular night we talked and I remembered us sharing about random things about ourselves.

“ I believe that God picks who goes to heaven even before we were born.”

“ That’s kinda messed up Hanbin, but it does make sense to some extent. Here’s mine. I like daisies.”

“ I like tulips”

“ That doesn’t count, I knew that before.”

“ But you just shared your favorite flower, why can’t I share mine too?”

“ Mine’s different, I never told anybody that before.”

“ Okay fine. Here’s something I never told anybody before.”

“ And what’s that, superstar?”

“ I love you.”

I went to support Hayi in her cheer performances too. She was charming when she performed. She held a smile throughout her performance, but the one thing that caught my eye was this particular moment: when she was tossed in the air. You could see her smile through her eyes. Her joy was infectious. As she landed, her eyes held my gaze. It was then I realized that I was smiling too. It was fun to see her excelling in the things she was good in. Her confidence, her flair. She was being her when she did what she loved.

All this time, Hayi bloomed like a flower. She became more beautiful every single day. Her beauty wasn’t the sort I had seen in people like Chaemin. It was simple and understated, like a daisy. If you hadn’t looked close enough, you might even look past her beauty and never see her raw, genuine core.

The way the sun kissed the curves and angles in her face, the way her hair glowed in the light, the way her eyes turned into 2 crescent moons, the effortless pout her lips held even when she was smiling, the way her hair smelled when I kissed her on the fore