-

     The soft jingle signaling a customer echoes throughout the quiet flower shop, a pair of curious eyes peeking out from the doorway leading to the back, noticing the figure of a woman browsing the aisles of flowers.

    The woman stares at some of the flowers intently, giving each blossom careful attention, almost scrutinizing. She then looks up, scanning the shop, assumedly looking for the shopkeeper.

    “Hello?”  The girl looks at the sign by the door, “It says they’re still open..”

    The other girl in the shop reveals herself from her hiding spot behind the doorway, greeting the other enthusiastically, her long blonde locks bouncing along with her happily, “Hello there miss! Is there anything I can help you with?”

    “Oh, no need to call me miss, my name is Wendy,” Wendy gives the florist a small smile in response to her excited greeting.

    The florist responds with a beaming smile of her own, “Okay Wendy, you can refer to me as Minju. Is there anything specific you’re looking for?”

    “Ah…” Wendy feels for something in the right pocket of her coat, fishing out a small blue note, “I was wondering if I could get a bouquet of pink carnations, sweet pea, and azalea.”

    The florist looks back at Wendy quizzically, “That’s a pretty unusual choice for an arrangement you have there…”

    She then looks at Wendy sympathetically, “... A sad one too.”

    Flashes of broken smiles and whispers of shattered promises flash through Wendy’s head. Trails of a heart broken beyond repair. Endless understanding twisted and abused. A love taken for granted.

    Wendy returns the sorrowful look with a small smile, a wistful glint dancing across chestnut irises as they hide behind crinkled eyes, “It’s not a final goodbye.”

    “That’s good to hear,” Minju mirrors Wendy’s smile.

    The petite florist starts to make her way around the shop, collecting each requested flower with careful precision, “Who are they for, if you don’t mind me asking.”

    “My girlfriend.”

    She pauses her actions before looking back at the shorter brunette, “Oh, is she going away on a trip for awhile?”

    Wendy responds with a soft chuckle, “Something like that.”

    Minju finishes choosing the flowers for the bouquet and makes her way back to the counter, tying the plastic around them securely with a purple ribbon, “Well, I hope you don’t miss her too much while she’s gone. Good luck.”

    Wendy hands the other girl payment for the flowers, taking the bouquet from her and making her way back to the exit. She pauses for a moment before looking over her shoulder, a forlorn smile gracing her features, “Thank you, I’ll need it,” and as fast as she had entered the shop, she disappears in the crowd of city dwellers bustling to and fro along the sidewalk.

    Minju watches Wendy’s figure vanish into the mass of people, the small woman drowning in a coat just a bit too tall for her with the flowers pressed close to her chest.

    “What a peculiar woman…,” she looks over at the leftover flowers from the bouquet, “Pink carnations, sweet pea, and azaleas… Huh.”

    The blonde glances back at the glass door that Wendy had exited through minutes prior, letting out a faint sigh.

    “Whoever those are for will miss her terribly.”

-

    “Hey, it’s been awhile.”

    A short brunette sets an arrangement of flowers onto the stone in front of her.

    “I guess you were never much for words anyways,” the girl releases a small laugh.

    The gentle spring breeze surrounds her figure, soft locks of brown billowing slightly with the wind.

    “Thirty-five, huh,” a humorless chuckle, “time sure does fly by quickly.”

     A wistful gaze, chestnut eyes filled with hundreds of things to say, and yet she can’t seem to formulate any of them onto her tongue.

     Her brain fails her, so she relies on her heart, broken and rigid, yet still beating.

     “Going home that night was surreal. ‘That was a dream,’ I had kept chanting to myself. There was no way that everything that had just taken place was even fathomable as a reality.”

     Another breeze picks up, the brunette placing her scarf under her nose, the March air chilling, but oddly comforting all the same.

     “I had become a shell of myself. Walking the halls that we had ran through childishly. The kitchen I held you in as you cooked breakfast for the two of us,” fists ball up at her sides, gripping the edges of her coat, “Sitting on the couch you had fallen asleep on countless nights waiting for me to return from that stupid job,” the girl grits her teeth, inhaling deeply before whispering, “it all felt so foreign without you by my side.”

     “And yet I stayed there. Whether because I couldn’t believe you were gone, or because part of me actually wanted to stay, I’ll never understand myself. But maybe because the smallest part of me was waiting for you, like you did for me.”

     She directs her gaze toward her feet.

     “I went months sleeping in a bed too big and living in an apartment that taunted me with the missing presence of you.”

     The girl shifts on her heels, an old wound that cut too deep reopening. Silence filling with the sound of a once broken heart attempting to stay together.

     “Everything here reminded me of you, there was nothing left for me here, so I left.”

     A small smile graces her lips despite her eyes begging anything but happiness. Chestnut irises filling with silent pleas of sorrow, regret, guilt, and loneliness.

     “I work at a hospital in Toronto, Canada now, and have been for the past four years.”

     A sigh escapes chapped lips.

     “I’ve been taking care of myself though. No overworking. I’ve learned my lesson. I wouldn’t want to worry you any more than I already have,” her eyes crease slightly from the smile that forms.

     But the smile that appears is just as broken and exhausted. Telling a story of grief and haunting memories of a dying girl in her lover’s arms.

     “It still hurts, Joohyun,” a tear drops from the corner of her eye and lands on the stone in front of her, “I thought I could finally face you after five years.”

     Tears fall directly below her as she refuses to look up, her scarf loosening around her neck, “So why does it hurt just as much as before.”

    Shattered shards of a love once so bright fall to her feet with every teardrop.

    Minutes that feel like hours pass as the brunette’s breath begins to steady and she calms herself.

    She scoffs at her own behavior, “No matter how much time passes, you always fill my thoughts. You make an old wound feel new again.”

    A tired sigh leaves her lips as she stares wistfully at the ground, “I love you so much. I hope you’re doing well, wherever you are.”

    Wendy picks up the flowers from the ground in front of her and places them more properly in front of the gravestone, dusting off the top of it in the process.

    She steps back once again, taking in her lover’s grave one last time.

    “Happy 35th birthday Joohyun.”

-

(A/N) She died at age 29 in August, so it’s been about 5 and a half years to be more precise but :^)

Pink carnations: Signifies that someone is unforgettable

Sweetpea: Departure, goodbye, thank you for a lovely time

Azalea: Take care of yourself for me

And hopefully this satisfies all those who were screaming that Wendy’s life was ruined. She’s as okay as someone (who held the love of their life in their arms as they watched their life slip away) could possibly be :D

And this epilogue kind of , but it was the best I could do with school, sorry about that, but hopefully you enjoyed it nonetheless.

But on a serious note, thank you all for sticking around for this fic until the end. It means a lot :)