“How do you passive aggressively say you in flower?”

Yongguk looked at the man who just burst into his shop. “That’s an odd request,” he said.

“Yeah, well I’m an odd person. Help me out.”

Yongguk shrugged. “Why not?” Business had been slow recently, so it wasn’t like he had anything better to do. “Let’s see.” He opened the notebook he used for orders to a fresh page. “It’d help if I knew why you wanted the message. Makes it more personal.”

The man crossed his arms. “The asshat ate all my girl scout cookies,” he said simply.

Yongguk blinked. “They...what?”

“I’m on a diet, so I was saving them for cheat day,” the man explained. “But when I got back from class yesterday they were gone.”

“Okay...” Yongguk said. He considered telling the man that seemed a little too inconsequential to go as far as making a personalized bouquet, but he needed the money. Instead, he clicked his pen and started taking notes. “Well, you’ll want geraniums for stupidity, hm, yellow carnations for disappointment, and orange lillies for hatred. I think that should get the point across.”

“Wow, you planned that out quickly,” the stranger commented.

Yongguk shrugged. “What can I say, I’m a poet. When do you need it by?”

“As soon as possible? It’s date night.”

“Wait,” Yongguk stopped writing and looked up at the man. “You want to give this bouquet to your girlfriend?”

“Boyfriend, actually,” the man corrected. “And yes. Is there a problem with that?”

“It just...do you plan on breaking up with him? If so, I can throw in some cyclamen.”

“What, no!” The man looked taken aback. “I’m not breaking up with Daehyun. That’s absurd! I love him!”

Yongguk paused for a moment. “Blatantly using flower language to insult him seems like a weird way to express your love.”

“Well maybe sometimes I want to say ‘I adore you’ while secretly saying ‘but also I hope you die in a fire.’”

“I see. Should I also throw in some yellow chrysanthemums, then?”

“What do those mean?”

“They symbolize slighted love.”

The man smiled. “I like that. Let’s do it.”

Yongguk nodded and added a few more notes. “Okay, that’ll be $30. I should have it ready in about an hour.”

“Sounds good,” the man said. He took a wallet out of his pocket and handed two twenty dollar bills to Yongguk. He deposited them in the cash register and gave the man his change.

“Can I get a name for your order?” Yongguk asked.

“Sure, it’s Youngjae,” the man said.

Yongguk quickly jotted the name down, then looked up and smiled his best customer service smile. “Pleasure doing business with you, Youngjae.”

Youngjae smiled back, and Yongguk watched him leave the shop before starting on his bouquet.

***

A week later, another young man entered the shop. He looked kind of nervous as he looked around at all the flowers.

“Can I help you?” Yongguk asked.

“Um...yeah,” the man said in an accented voice. “Do you know anything about flower language?”

“I’m fairly well versed in it.”

The man brightened. “Great. So, my boyfriend gave me this bouquet last week for date night and he doesn’t usually do flowers, so I thought it was a really sweet gesture. But I had a friend over yesterday, and he said the flowers all meant negative things like hatred and disappointment. So, I figure I must have done something to upset him. No idea what it was, but he’s been kind of huffy all week, so I figure I should probably just apologize. So yeah, I was wondering if you could make me something that means ‘I’m sorry and I love you. Please forgive me’ but in flower.” He smiled nervously when he was done talking.

Yongguk resisted the urge to laugh. “I think we can come up with something.”