“STOP RIGHT THERE, YOU THIEF!” Kyungsoo screams as he runs out of his home with his clothes disheveled and his usually straight ink black hair pointing in every which way.

The so-called thief stands frozen in place as he sees the short man furiously stomping his way over to where he stood. He didn’t think he would ever get caught, much less be confronted about what he was doing if he did. He was caught red handed by the owner of the house and all he could see, while staring into the eyes of the very livid homeowner, was his life flashing before his eyes.

“I have had my fill of your constant acts of thievery!” Kyungsoo points an accusing finger at the strange man as he arrives to stand before him, “All this while, I swore I would get you. It was only a matter of time!”

The thief opens his mouth to speak, but is abruptly cut off by Kyungsoo. “Save it! I don’t want to hear it. It’s been seven times! Seven! And it would have been eight if I had not caught you today.” Kyungsoo moves forward, invading the thief’s personal space, “You’ve been stealing flowers from my precious garden for three months now and I FINALLY caught you red-handed!”

The thief, once again, opens his mouth to speak, but Kyungsoo wasn’t having any of it. “Wait until I call the police on you,” Kyungsoo reaches for his phone in his back pocket and starts dialing, “Maybe then you will think of the consequences of your actions and start repenting for having stolen the precious flowers from my beloved garden!”

At the mention of the police, the thief begins to panic. Out of sheer fear, he throws himself at the homeowner, “Give me the phone!” The thief wrestles the phone out of the shorter man’s hands. It’s a struggle as both men have a face full of elbow here and there, but in the end the flower thief successfully ends the call. “Could you please listen to me for one second?!”

Kyungsoo scoffs and stares wide-eyed at the man who, not only practically assaulted him just a moment ago, but also had the audacity to raise his voice at him. “Fine!” Kyungsoo pauses for exactly one second. “Time is up!” He grabs the flower thief by his collar and brings him down to his eye level. Kyungsoo tries to rip the phone from the other’s grip, but it proves to be rather difficult since this thief was almost a head taller than him. Never had Kyungsoo hated his shorter stature more than he did in that moment.

Not one to give in so easily, the thief manages to grab both of Kyungsoo’s hands in his and holds him in place. “Please, stop fighting me!” The thief watches as Kyungsoo continues to squirm. Sighing, the thief tries again. “I’ll give you your phone back. Just stop trying to call the cops. I swear, I had and have a good reason for stealing your flowers.”

At the sudden change of tone from the other man, Kyungsoo halts his movements. The other’s voice had softened and it gave Kyungsoo the vague feeling of when a small child admitting to their wrongdoing and could start crying any second if they weren’t quickly forgiven. Kyungsoo relaxes his arms and is promptly let go by the stranger. He extends his hand and waits for the other to give him back his phone.

“Here you go,” Jongin places the phone into Kyungsoo’s hand, who promptly puts it back into his back pocket, “and my name is Jongin, by the way. I’m sorry I-”

“Stole my phone? Attacked me? Stole my flowers for the past three months?”

Jongin rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment and replies, “All of the above?”

The anger that was starting to fizzle out within Kyungsoo’s being suddenly begins to burn with more intensity than before. “You think you’re real funny, don’t you? Keep it up! Keep acting like a smartass!”

“No, I-”

“You know what, just save it. I don’t care to know what excuse you come up with. You probably have only been stealing my flowers to give to some girlfriend because you’re just too cheap to buy your own.”

“That’s not-”

“Look me in the eye and tell me that you’re not stealing my flowers to give to someone else!”

Jongin quiets downs as Kyungsoo continues to yell at him. He does as Kyungsoo says and looks him the eye, but Jongin can’t bring himself to tell the shorter man that he is wrong because technically, he isn’t. Jongin can only look away under the homeowner’s burning gaze.

Kyungsoo motions with his two hands up at the sky in exasperation and screams, “SEE!? Gosh, of course you would be stealing for your girlfriend! I mean look at you!” Kyungsoo motions to Jongin. “How could you not have a girlfriend with all that sun-kissed skin, body like a model, and soft looking brown locks!”

Jongin stands agape as he stares at the other man. With the way the other man was screaming, it kind of sounded like he was also accusing Jongin of being in the wrong for looking the way he did. Quite frankly, Jongin didn’t know if he should take what he was hearing as a compliment or an insult. He didn’t even dare ask which it was, for fear of angering Kyungsoo any further.

“You know what? I want to meet this girl.”

At the uttering of those words, Jongin instantly jolts out of his own thoughts. “What?”

Kyungsoo crosses his arms and taps his foot impatiently as he burns holes through Jongin’s skull. “I said, I want to meet your girlfriend. I want to see if this girl even deserves you gifting her with stolen flowers from my beloved garden.”

“Uh…” Jongin scratches his head and stares at Kyungsoo as if the shorter man had grown another head, “You want to meet my girlfriend?”

Inhaling deeply and slowly losing what little patience he had left, Kyungsoo grits his teeth and replies, “Yes, I believe that’s what I said. Twice. Now, let’s go! Get moving!” Kyungsoo pulls at Jongin’s plaid long sleeve and tries to make him walk ahead, but Jongin only shuffles his feet ever so slowly.

“Meeting my girlfriend...that’s gonna be, somewhat, difficult. You see-”

About to lose his patience, Kyungsoo gives Jongin an ultimatum, “Look, pretty boy, it’s either you take me to where you’re taking the flowers you steal from me or I call the police and press charges against you for property theft. So, which is it gonna be?”

Realizing that there will be not getting through to Kyungsoo at this moment in time, Jongin decides to just it up and take the angry homeowner with him to where he was going. It’s a short walk to their destination, but the tense silence between the two makes the journey feel like an eternity too long. The warm sun of a summer afternoon is not enough to warm the frigid air among them and so Jongin resigns himself to having a less than happy partner to take with him.

Kyungsoo mumbles and grumbles about the “mannerless youth of today” as he walks alongside Jongin. He isn’t paying attention to his surroundings and only follows Jongin as he leads the way. It’s not until the sounds of children playing in the suburban neighborhood and the sound of the occasional vehicle passing by, cease, that Kyungsoo finally looks up to see where they have arrived. His eyes widen when he looks up and it makes his chest tighten with an overwhelming sense of sorrow and guilt. Of all the places, Kyungsoo never expected for his flower thief to lead him here.

“Uhm, Jongin?”

“Oh, so he speaks!”

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “Ok, you know what? There is really no need for the attitude.”

“I beg to differ. You very literally threatened slash blackmailed me to bring you here, not even ten minutes ago. I think I deserve to be a little petty don’t you think?”

Kyungsoo sighs. He had royally screwed up. “Ok,” Kyungsoo guiltily rubs his forearm, “I may have crossed the line a bit back there-”

“A bit?” Jongin raises a questioning brow.

Kyungsoo opens and closes his mouth, clearly not knowing what to say because, in truth, he really had overreacted over the situation. Now that he knew where Jongin was going all this time, he only felt worse about the way he handled things. He was in the wrong and that knowledge was really starting to eat him up from the inside.

“Well, since we’re here, we might as well go inside.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t feel like intruding on Jongin’s time so he speaks up, “Uh, you know, I’m just going to wait here. I think you deserve to have your time alone with,” Kyungsoo motions to the vast cemetery in front of them, “the person you’re here to visit.”

Nodding in understanding, and not really wanting a stranger tagging along, Jongin leaves Kyungsoo at the entrance of the cemetery and makes his way to the grave of his beloved.

Kyungsoo was thinking of just leaving but his conscience decides to kick in right then and there, making him stay put where he stands until Jongin came back. Jongin didn’t take long and Kyungsoo was both relieved and anxious about that. Relieved because he didn’t have to keep standing in front of the cemetery entrance like a weirdo and anxious because, well, he knew he had to apologize and to do that he would have to swallow his pride and admit he was wrong. Kyungsoo didn’t like admitting to his own faults, but in this situation it couldn’t be helped. He takes a deep breath as Jongin approaches him. “Hey, uhm, I just wanted to-,” Kyungsoo looks up to meet Jongin’s gaze and as he does, he notices how red Jongin’s eyes had become. A fresh new pang of guilt flourishes in Kyungsoo’s chest and if he thought he couldn’t feel any worse than he already did, he was wrong. Oh, so very wrong. “Oh gosh! Jongin I’m so sorry! I didn’t know that you stole those flowers to bring them here. If I had known I wouldn’t have made such a fuss-”

“I tried to explain, but you wouldn’t listen…” Jongin begins to walk away, leaving a guilt-ridden Kyungsoo behind.

Kyungsoo’s words are cut short as he watches Jongin start to walk away. he doesn’t know what else to say because Jongin is right. He didn’t let the other explain. All Kyungsoo cared about and all he could think of was that someone was stealing from his precious garden. His beloved garden. “Jongin.”

The taller man stops in his tracks and looks over his shoulder, “Yes?”

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Kyungsoo continues, “I really am sorry for how I handled things and I don’t mean to justify any of the things I said or did, but I did have my reason for reacting that way…” Kyungsoo trails off and notices how Jongin tilts his head to the side as if asking him to elaborate. “...you see, the house I am living in, that garden, it wasn’t mine from the beginning. It belonged to my grandmother, the woman who raised me.” Kyungsoo breathes in slowly and looks anywhere besides Jongin’s direction, “She passed away a couple of years back and left me her house and her garden. She loved that house and that garden so, in her absence, I make sure to take care of them. When I noticed that someone had been cutting the flowers from my grandmother’s garden, I freaked. I couldn’t believe someone would do that and then I caught you today…”

“And you were angry...because I was stealing from your garden, your grandmother’s garden.”

Not trusting his own voice to speak clearly, Kyungsoo bites his bottom lip and nods. It’s silent between the two as both men try to digest what they both have just found out about each other. Kyungsoo fidgets where he stands as he is overcome by grief at having remembered the passing of his own loved one. To think that Jongin only stole his flowers because he wanted to bring them to a grave of someone he once knew. Wanting to mend his wrongs, Kyungsoo comes up with a plan. He doesn’t know how Jongin will react, but Kyungsoo thinks it’s worth a try. “Hey, Jongin. If you…” in a moment of hesitation, Kyungsoo pauses. He tries to keep in mind that he isn’t the only one who has lost a loved one, Jongin has too, and so he ultimately gathers the courage to speak once more. “If you, or whenever you come by to visit your person, if it’s alright with you and if you still want to,” Kyungsoo wrings his hands in nervousness, “even after how I treated you…you can come to the house and pick any one of the flowers in my garden.” Kyungsoo looks down at the ground. A pink hue dusting the tops of his cheeks as he waits for Jongin to reply.

“Th-thank you…”

Kyungsoo looks up with a look of surprise on his face. He expected Jongin to reject his offer or at least yell at him for being so rude and inconsiderate so, when he saw a teary and sniffling six foot man, Kyungsoo was more than taken aback. “It’s no problem, really! I just felt bad after what I did and I wanted to try to make it up to you…” Kyungsoo trails off as he watches Jongin try to dry his eyes with the end sleeves of his shirt. He feels a sudden urge to go console the man and Kyungsoo probably would have, blame his lack of impulse control, but Jongin spoke before anything could happen.

“You know, my girlfriend really liked your flowers.” Jongin in a breath of air, “She always stopped to admire them when we passed by that house. So, thank you.”

A small and shy smile forms on Jongin’s face and it takes everything in Kyungsoo not to hug the saddened man right then and there. Kyungsoo takes a breath and sighing in relief he smiles. “No problem, Jongin. After all, it’s for our loved ones.”