The summers of Kang Seulgi’s life have always been too short. It’s not that she hates being covered by the fat flakes of snow that fall from the sky in winter, and she’s not one to ever turn down another opportunity to run through the fields of flowers in spring, but all the same, she has spent summers wishing that they would never end.

It’s not exactly like she adores the simplistic routines of her summer days either. She finds herself back here in her mother’s flower shop each time she's back home, helping out with one thing or another. Truth be told, she can’t see herself t the bonsai forever, down to every last leaf. Nor can she imagine chiding Gunther Pringles the Sixteenth to stop trying to chomp her arms off. (Her mom lost the battle in naming the piranha plant but insisted on keeping only to Gunther XVI when she carved his name onto the signage by his left.)

But summer is when she finally gets to spend time with well, Bae Joohyun.

In the term time, Joohyun had always been too busy for her. She was always doing something with someone else, or always studying something that was way beyond Seulgi’s level anyway.

And even though it’s not like Joohyun hadn’t offered to explain the latest spells that she had been learning in school, Seulgi stopped accepting those offers after the first few times they studied together. She didn’t know anything about transmogrifying the silver-crested caterpillars in Madame’s gardens into anything, much less one of the birds-of-paradise. She couldn’t hope to turn one of those caterpillars into one of those brilliantly orange crane flowers growing in her mom’s greenhouse, much less the flapping, warm, hollow-boned variety that fluttered in Joohyun’s open palm.

Seulgi would like to think she’s pretty adept at those spells now; while not exactly common, her secondary familiar is a transmogrified greater bird-of-paradise, her very own flamboyantly plumed companion. (A bird that is, arguably, constantly too full of himself. She’s half glad the bastard has decided to ditch her this summer, having chirped all schoolyear about making a trip to the Mediterranean when the weather worked out for him.)

“She loves me, she loves me not.”

Seulgi’s finally in her last year of school, which also translates to her being deprived of Bae Joohyun’s presence in the term time for a few years too many. Even bumping into her in the hallway and hearing her laugh unabashedly to one of the upperclassman’s jokes was far preferable to not seeing her at all for months on end.

Seulgi came to the bitter conclusion at the dawn of this summer’s break that spending an entire schoolyear telling herself to get a grip already! did not pan out very well for her. With each term, she figures that maybe, she’d be over the girl whose smile shone in the sun by the time she heads home, luggage in toll.

“She loves me not. She loves me.”

But no, the second Joohyun appears, it’s like she’s not spent the rest of the year trying to scour her from her brain. No amount of concoctions filled with Damascus roses helped her case at all and she was starting to think that potioneering was a false craft. In fact, she’s half-convinced that the pots she had borrowed to use in school were lined with remnants of forget-me-nots, which was pretty likely since everyone wanted to brew the perfect pre-exam elixir.

Joohyun only reappears in her then too-long summer a quarter-way through the break. She popped up yesterday from behind the counter, sending Seulgi, whose eyes were glazed over tallying the sums for the day – her mom was sick and her brother also off in the city somewhere – toppling from the high stool. She knows she’s screwed when the apologetic smile on Joohyun’s face soothes her pain in a knee where a bruise is sure to form when the sun rises on the morrow.

Joohyun helped her up before she brandishes, hyper-excitedly, her acceptance letter to one of the city’s most prestigious potioneering labs. Seulgi had congratulated her, tried not to let the sinking feeling in her heart get her down when she cheered Joohyun’s accomplishment. She had to tell herself she was being utterly delusional when she thought she imagined a frown on Joohyun’s face when she told her that she was still busy with the flower shop yesterday.

Seulgi sighs, tearing the last petal off the flower. Not again. “She loves me not.”

Well, she has three-quarters of her summer left to spend with Joohyun. She’ll make it count.

*****

There is something absolutely wrong.

Hang on, why can’t she move? What is happening? What in the seven gods did she do to—

And, she does the only logical thing to do when you wake up and your feet are burrowed beneath moist dark soil and your hair stiff and soft and not even the slightest bit frazzled and oh, hey, that never happens, but hey, you also never wake up as a flipping flower, do you?

So, she screams.

Until the hawthorn next to her grumbles, “Shut up, kid.”

*****

The morning hours allow her to get accustomed to her new situation. Predicament. Form. Whatever you want to call it, she’s fine with that.

What she’s less fine with is that she doesn’t know how to turn herself back into a bipedal being whose veins filled with blood. Not have sap-filled xylem and whatever the humans decided to call them.

Good lord, oh, calm down Seulgi. Calm down, Seulgi.

*****

Time passes. Thankfully, she can see the sun making its way across the sky above her and can firmly conclude that it’s slightly past midday. Is it weird if all of her being yearns to stare at the sun?  Hmm, actually, it is probably the case.

As far as she can tell, she’s a sunflower. Never before has her spectacularly gigantic head felt this unwieldy.

At least she’s between the hawthorn shrubs and the mountain of overgrown hydrangea bushes, which might mean that someone might eventually come for her and transfer her somewhere else.

But then what?

What are they going to do with her?

What can they do with her?

Honestly? Seulgi would suggest offering some prayer to Persephone. And a sacrifice. She’s prayed to her thrice today already, but do prayers as a flower even work? While she’d normally offer up the flower itself… Actually, she does doubt that sunflowers were good offerings for gods. Given their sheer abundance in every garden ever, they might even be offended and there’s no way she wants to be turned into something worse than a sunflower for that.

Then there’s the matter that Persephone is probably too busy entertaining the whims of an ever-attached mother. It’s come summertime after all. Seulgi doesn’t quite rest her laurels on some harried immortal coming to her aid anytime soon.

*****

The sun continues creeping across the sky and the ground beneath her is sadly no longer as moist. Her feet, or to be more accurate, roots, feel less like they’ve been plunged into an ice bath but more like they’ve swelled so much that they’re full to bursting. It is unpleasant, to say the least. Is this what plants always feel like?

Good lord, being overwatered must . She hopes that someone comes in soon to give them a sprinkle though. She hopes that she doesn’t need to start gaining more empathy for plants dying from sheer dehydration simply by virtue of common suffering.

Maybe that’s why the hawthorn is so prickly. She has not been the perfect gardener in lieu of her mom’s absence, this she admits.

She’s usually better than this, but in Joohyun’s extended absence, she had grown more likely to vacillate between dreaming about the girl, or diving into a mountain of dusty tomes so she could forget about missing her while in an effort to find new ways to dazzle Bae Joohyun.

Is this punishment, then? Did the gods deem it fit to punish her for not caring better for the world’s flora better?

That… can’t be it. If that was it, she’d probably be turned into one of Madame’s butterflies first.   

“You.”

The voice is gravelly.

At first, she’s not really sure where it’s coming from. It takes nothing short of a herculean effort to swivel her gaze to the direction of the voice, and in so doing gains a deep understanding of why plants prefer to remain where she plonks them in the soil.

She manages, eventually, to find herself staring at Gunther Pringles XIV, a piranha plant far, far, far taller than her. Her mother’s white-spotted red demon plant had never been this much taller than her and it’s all she can do to hope that Gunther didn’t acquire a sudden taste for radiantly yellow petals held together by a yellow-spotted brown head.

“Gunther!” She manages to squeak. “Hello.”

The plant lurches forward: his sharp teeth gleaming in her face and iron-rust breath saturating her senses. “You,” he repeats again, “aren’t meant to be here.”

“Er…”

Privately, she agrees with that assessment. She would really much rather place an entire acre of land between her and Gunther right now.

But as it stands, she can’t actually move. Come on Seulgi, Gunther only eats meat! Piranha plants don’t eat other plants. Madame has always said that they posed little threat to other plants. Posed no threat. At all. Except to the vermin of the forest that would unwittingly cross paths with these plants. So it’s all good.

It’s. All. Good.

With a blast of meat-rancid breath, Gunther guffaws. “OH HO! You’re really not meant to be here.”

Can the soil beneath her swallow her up yet?

She only winces before she finds her voice again. “Hi again, Gunther.”

If piranha plants had eyes, she’s sure his would have lolled back. As it is, the simmering judgement emanating from him is strong enough to make her wither. (Not literally, of course, because then she’d be dead and that just won’t do.)

“I can smell you. The magic on you. Spells and charms and wishes… But you don’t smell like her either… No flesh and blood and bones anymore on you.”

“Yeah, I’m a flower now,” she mumbles.

“I can tell,” he snaps. “Aha. You’re the kid who named me. Spent hoursssss arguing with your mom about it.”

“Are you mad?” Good lord, she hopes not.

“Mad? Why would I be mad? It’s not the stateliest of names, kid, but am I going to be sipping champagne flutes on the arms of rich men in a grand ballroom anytime soon? No, kid. But… Pringles?”

Perhaps she should reconsider every single moment in her life that led up to this moment: explaining her choice of naming a piranha plant something woefully stupid.

“Pringles – you know the people in the city? There are many cities and many people – they make up a huge corporation. Business. Company.” She struggles to find the right words. She’s not sure how to break down multi-national corporation in the vocabulary of a plant.

“I know what that is.”

How does he know anything about the world beyond the walls of the greenhouse? Never mind.

“Anyway, Pringles is a brand. I think? There’re lots of flavours. Basically, they’re potato chips, in a can. They’re really good. People all over the world like them.”

“Huh. So… you’re saying that you’ve named me something that’s pretty famous.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

His mouth stretches in what approximates for a grin. “Excellent.”

*****

The rest of her day is spent getting used to being a plant and being coached by her newfound plant friend on the very fundamentals of being a plant.

She doesn’t have to do much and save from tracking the sun’s passage above her, the passing of time feels much murkier than it does than before.

That’s normal, Gunther concedes. A plant’s meant to be sedentary, and everything happening inside her, all these tiny leaves budding slowly on her sides, or the maintenance of the pigments in her bright petals, all that’s done without her quite realising that it’s going on anyway. Most of the plants around them are pretty quiet, Gunther points out. Existing in a constant daze blurs all your days together. You’d hardly remember to talk to the others around – it’s not their fault that the rest of them are boring shrubs. Only his kind, the kind that had to fight for his daily morsels, would bother to track the days.

He does warn her that if she doesn’t quite pay attention to the days, they’d speed by and the next thing she knows, she’d have lived out the whole of her flowery life and someone would come by to find a lone wilted flower.

"And then what?” What happens to her, Seulgi, who’s not actually a plant?

“I dunno, kid. You should be back to normal soon anyway. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

It’s to her great relief that Gunther actually likes her, because where would she be if he didn’t? She doesn’t dismiss the possibility that he’d uproot her if she upset him. But so far, he’s been plenty amicable – he maps the greenhouse out for her, and they find common ground over hawthorn’s testiness.

It’s almost dark when she hears a loud rapping on the glass door.

Her voice is somewhat muffled, but there’s no mistaking it. “Seulgi? Seulgi? Are you there? The others have been wondering where you’ve been all day! Seulgi?”

The insistent rapping persists for a good minute.

“That’s your friend, right? The pretty one you like?”

“I… what? No!”

“So, she’s not your pretty friend that you like?”

“No!”

“Sure. She’s trying to sneak in. Look. She’s opened the window at the front.”

“I can’t see, Gunther, I’m so much shorter than you are!” She tries twisting to get a better look, but her stalk’s stuck firmly in that particular angle for the day, refusing to budge.

“Pity. Oh, look, she’s coming our way. Heads up, but I’m going to eat her. Starving.”

“Gunther, what? No!”

“No? Hey, kid, I’ve not had my feed today and that girl’s trespassing.”

The light treads of Joohyun’s footsteps draw closer. “Seulgi?” She calls out.

“No eating her dude, no, no, no…”

“Hey, she’s real pretty.”

“Fine, okay, she is! And you aren’t allowed to even take a single bite from her, okay?”

Gunther swivels to stare down at her. “Are you commanding me right now, puny little sunflower? You don’t have other friends around here, you know.”

“Yeah,” she hates that her voice shakes, “but you really can’t eat her, okay? If you do that I’ll never feed you any of those iguanas again!”

“Bringing out the big guns huh, kid. So confident. Even though you’re not even in any real position to threaten me.” If he could, he’d put his head in his arms he didn’t have to effect melodrama.

Joohyun draws closer. If Seulgi had a heart, it’d be beating faster. Joohyun, no, don’t come any closer!

“Fine. Pretty girl’s safe from me.”

At this, Seulgi exhales. She would punch him, if she could. But she can’t, so she just settles for a pathetic bow of her head in hopes of making him feel marginally worse about himself. If it achieves its intended effect, she cannot tell.

“Seulgi, where are you? Seulgi?”

Joohyun draws closer, a confused crease on her face. Then, Joohyun turns away and continues shuffling about the greenhouse, trying to find a girl she’s clearly unable to spot standing anywhere. When they were younger (and a lot smaller), Seulgi would hide behind the taller shrubs, jumping at poor Bae Joohyun when she found her.

Seulgi’s heart sinks when she hears Joohyun’s footsteps fade, the smaller bell of the backdoor tinkling lightly.

If she strains her ears, she can just about make out the sounds of Joohyun’s footsteps against the wooden staircase, going upstairs to look for Seulgi.

I’m right here, Joohyun-unnie!

But she can’t say that.

Sullenly, she sinks into the soil.

She’s not very sure how long she’s going to be stuck at as a flower. But however long that is, it’s one day less to spend with Joohyun.

“Cheer up, kid. It’s not going to last forever.”

Seulgi can’t help it. She scoffs. “Like you know.”

The piranha plant only chuckles. “More than you think, kiddo.”

*****

Another day elapses without much fanfare, save for Gunther’s constant grumbles of how if he’s not fed something right now, he’d burst into flames on the spot. It’s perhaps, a tiny bit of an exaggeration, she knows that piranha plants won’t die from daylong starvation, but he’s nothing if not prone to dramatics. Joohyun does swing by again, only to leave with clear disappointment over her face.

It’s her third evening as a flower and with every passing minute, more despondence fills her being. The moon has begun to make its passage into the darkened sky, but Joohyun hadn’t shown up all day.

Is Joohyun busy? Did she head back to the city for something? If so, what’s she doing? If only she could follow her to the city…

Is Joohyun looking for her still? Did she decide that it was too much trouble to look for her, the kid from down the lane? But really, why would Joohyun want to spend more time with her when she could just head off to that star-studded lab in the city? Who can she even be in Bae Joohyun’s life when her friends are snagging fancy new jobs for both kinfolk and humankind alike?

“Looks like the pretty girl isn’t visiting today, huh.”

“Astute observation,” she grouses.

Gunther cackles, or it’s what she assumes the dry rattling noise is. “Aww, cheer up kid. Don’t look so downcast, will you?”

She sighs. “I can’t.”

“Well, granted, you need a fresh watering sometime soon. Else you’d wilt and that won’t do, would it?”

She groans. “Oh, leave me alone.”

“What, dehydration getting to you? But look, it’ll work out.”

She wants to cast a dubious look at him. She’s not this trusting. “How would you know?”

The plant shrugs, drawing back slowly, coiling its long stalk as he lowers himself to the ground. “I just know things.”

That he does. But what would he know about Joohyun? Or anything to do with what she feels about her?

Nothing, that’s what.

*****

Her mom’s the one who finds her the next morning an hour or two after the sun starts peaking from its place behind the clouds. She’s well! At last! The flu bug has been so unkind to her this season.

“A sunflower?”

Clearly confused, her mom stops humming the tune to her favourite song and turns to stare at the floral iteration of her daughter. Hey mom, it is me! I'm Seulgi. Kang Seulgi, your daughter! But, naturally, even though her mom boasts the greenest fingers to ever grace the earth, she can’t quite hear the tiny voice of soft sunflower plant.

Before she squats next to Seulgi, she tosses a slab of meat to Gunther. He promptly gobbles the chunk down with relish, his chops loudly.

“Oh, look at you, you must be starving! I’ve never seen you quite like this before, Mr Gunther. Where could Seulgi be? That girl… where could she have run off to? That unnie’s place?” Her mother muses aloud. “Never mind. Now, what do I do with you, little sunshine? Hmm, how did you even get here…”

“That unnie’s place,” Gunther parrots, clearly amused.

Seulgi doesn’t really want to indulge her least favourite piranha plant with a reply.

In the time her mom heads off to find the correct gardening tools to transfer the sunflower elsewhere, all Seulgi can think of is how she'd much rather be in the pretty unnie's house.

And what would they be doing?

Joohyun has always liked baking with her. Maybe that’s what they might be doing? Seulgi loves anything that Joohyun makes, and save for their initial disastrous first attempt way back, something that Joohyun's mother still teases them for when Seulgi pops over for a cookie, they’ve had a pretty successful confectionary production track record.

Or maybe they’ll be drawing? Seulgi has a fresh box of charcoals upstairs and Joohyun’s not one to turn down an invitation to stain her tiny, white hands with sooty carbon. Last summer, they spent entire afternoons trying to draw the things they’ve seen apart from each other. Seulgi had faithfully recreated an updated version of Madame’s garden, and Joohyun had delighted at the new rows of ixora planted to host Madame’s newest avian colony.

Or perhaps they’ll be back here, in the greenhouse. That would’ve been the most likely option when mom was sick since Seulgi would have had to stay in the lower floor of the shophouse the whole time. While she’s not exactly the best with the plants, she’s always had a lot of luck with Gunther. Come to think of it, the bastard has never made any attempts to attack her. Seungwan’s always complained about that, what with her poor friend being Gunther’s favourite victim.

Or maybe they would be doing the laundry, which ordinarily is a pretty boring task but with Joohyun around Seulgi would be happy to spend a good chunk of an hour getting the creases out of sun-dusted skirts.

Anything else would be great. Never has she spent so many summer days without Bae Joohyun.

She sighs. Being a plant .

Truly, it’s a miserable existence.

She winces when her mother digs her up, hacking off a tiny bit of her roots as she does so. And only for her to hum a little, realising that the bed of sunflowers outside is overcrowded as it is before she returns Seulgi to her original location, albeit inside a small flowerpot.

(And good lord, it tickled when her mom grabs her hairy stem. Never again will she touch any of the sunflowers with anything vaguely thought to resemble affection.)

Her piranha plant only sniggers when she complains of being brutally manhandled. C’est la vie.  

*****

She had been so sure that nothing could surprise her any more than waking up as a sunflower could.

That is until she finds herself awoken by the sharp yelp of a tiny daisy plant in the ground next to her. A yelp that sounds suspiciously like—

“Joohyun?”

 A beat.

Then, just as incredulously, “Seulgi?”

*****

Joohyun gets over the shock of becoming a flower really well in stride. Or cycle? Growth cycle? Never mind. But she kind of just accepts it without as much freaking out as Seulgi expects her to.

When asked, Joohyun points out, “These things happen.”

“But how? Aren’t you worried that we’ll be stuck like this forever?” Seulgi demands, her voice rising from all those days of pent-up panic.

“If that does happen, so be it. But I suspect we’ll be back to normal pretty soon, okay? These things never last forever. It takes too much from the universe for that.”

“What do you mean?”

Joohyun clears . “Okay, let’s go back to transmogrification. The very basics. What do you remember?”

“Er… That I couldn’t change the flower into that pretty bird.”

Joohyun huffs out a laugh. “Yes, that indeed. But what else? Why couldn’t you do that?”

“Because I couldn’t?”

“Are you telling me, or asking me?”

“Right, yeah, I couldn’t… It wasn’t because I didn’t know how it worked, right? I knew about it in theory, but I didn’t have the appropriate components to the whole spell.”

“That’s right. Turning flowers to birds needs more than just sheer willpower. But that’s not everything about why you couldn’t do it then.”

“Huh? I thought I was just…”

“No, come on, you weren’t dumb, you understood the instructions perfectly. You read them and asked me about them – it was clear you understood the mechanics of the spell itself very well. But without the extra catalyst to the whole equation, it wouldn’t work. Your reserves just weren’t enough to be expended on a spell being deemed too frivolous.”

“I see?”

Joohyun laughs. “I guess it’s a lot more complicated than that. I could go on and on about the theories that have been considered but I will stop. But what I am saying is that being turned into a flower? That tends to defy a lot of the law Nature sets forth. We should be back to normal soon enough.”

“Are you sure?”

Sensing the dubious tone in her voice, Joohyun’s voice becomes wholly placating, “Yeah. See, when it got to me, it turned me into a tiny flower. The bigger the plant, the harder the spell. You’ve heard of people who’ve been turned into trees, right? That takes a lot of deliberate effort. Years and years of preparation and stuff. I don’t recommend it.”

“Joohyun-unnie,” Seulgi sighs. “I’m still scared though.”

“Trust me. We can’t stay flowers forever. There is no precedence for that kind of permanent accidental magic, okay?” Joohyun’s voice is low, trying harder to reassure.

It kind of works. “Okay. I trust you.”

“There, that’s not so hard, is it?”

“Yeah, it isn’t,” she agrees. “You are really smart, unnie.”

“Me?” Joohyun repeats, her voice rising in wonder.

“Yeah! You know so many things.”

“No, no. I’ve just had more time to learn all these things. You’ll get there, one day,” Joohyun insists. “So… since we have quite a bit of time, won’t you tell me about your semester?”  

*****

“You look pretty good as a flower too.”

Joohyun snorts. “Seulgi. I’m a daisy. How much of me can you even see?”

“Not much,” she admits. “You are pretty small. But you’ve always been kind of small. Undergrown… Would you be considered undergrowth now?”

In that moment, she’s sure that the world has never witnessed a daisy plant filled with greater murderous intent than the one planted next to the sunflower that goes by the name of Kang Seulgi.

*****

She gets around to telling Joohyun about the time she brewed a series of rose-filled potions, hoping to all the gods that it’ll work out. Just well, to show that she’s gotten so much better at potions, even though they’re still not her forte. All those tiny exact measurements…

But Joohyun asks, “Hang on, what you brewed something with Damascus roses? What did you want to do with something so potent? And, speaking of which, so dangerous if it went wrong? Kang Seulgi!”

“Er… It didn’t go wrong, I think? I mean, it kind of did… But I’m fine, see?”

“As fine as you and I can be as plants, I suppose… but fine, you did look good when I last saw you… That doesn’t mean that you should be brewing potions like that! What could you want to forget so badly?” Joohyun demands.

Joohyun’s current daisy-hood does not do anything to diminish the menace in the sharp tone of her voice. Seulgi can only wince as she mumbles, “You.”

“You?” Joohyun repeats. “What? Hang on, you’re saying… me?” There’s only confusion in her voice. “You wanted to forget me? But… but why? I… I don’t understand.”

“I… I, well, thought it was necessary!” If she could run, she certainly would have fled. But as it is she’s rooted to the spot and so any flight options won’t quite work out for her. But whatever it is, her voice seems to have fled from her and all she does is stay mutely planted in the ground.

“But… why? Do… do you hate me?” Her voice cracks as she finishes, clearly hoping she hears a negative to her question.

No! Of course not. “I… I…I could never. Just… just drop it, please?” It comes out almost pleadingly.

“You know,” Joohyun’s voice softens. “You could tell me anything.”

Her voice is small as she acknowledges it, “I know. But…”

“Okay I get it. Not today. But please, talk to me.”

By their side, Gunther snorts. “I’d eat my hat if this little bud ever does.”

She swivels, as best as she can, to affect her fiercest glare at him, creasing her petals just so, something she has gotten a little better at since Gunther’s constant aggravation from Day 1.

“Shut up, Gunther.”

“What? I’m just saying. I get that I’ve never actually worn a hat, but you never know until you’ve tried, right?”

Maybe he's right, but it is all she can do from willing herself to turn back into a person to strangle the darn plant there and then.

*****

The next time she comes to, Seulgi nearly shrieks from being able to feel the warmth in her limbs – never before has she been so thrilled by the prospect of wiggling her toes. Looking around, she finds herself back in her room. Every fibre of her being is charged and twitchy, almost like they’ve not spent the last few days being all stuffed and turgid.

Or, did she… imagine that?

She groans. It feels great to be able to throw herself onto her bed again. But did she imagine everything? It felt so real, existing as a daisy… Was it real? Those days of being defined by sunlight and soil, and oh dear, Joohyun.

If the past couple of days was something she dreamt up, then great! Everything will just be back to normal then. She’ll just be that kid that runs up to Joohyun’s house, a bunch of daisies in hand, offering to braid them into Joohyun’s hair – as she’s always done.

The status quo is certainly far preferable to… whatever their last conversation was.

But in her experience, she’s not that lucky.

She scrambles downstairs, heart thudding as way louder than her noisy footsteps against the wooden stairs.

“Umma!” She calls out, throwing the door to the greenhouse open. “Umma, are you there?” 

“Ahh, rise and shine, darling. I see you’re already awake.” Her mom looks up from her place by the hydrangeas. “And here I thought you’ll be asleep for at least another hour!”

“Umma. Umma. Did I? Was I?”

Her mom laughs. “Seulgi-ah, what are you asking me?”

“Was I a flower?”

She laughs again. “Such silly questions – of course you were. Didn’t you get it resolved already?”

“What?”

“You know, the universe must’ve thought you needed a kick in the bud. After all, you’ve been at this for years darling.” Her mom gets up, dusting her apron. “Can’t say I’m not surprised, she’s such a kind girl… Makes your favourite cookies too.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Umma, what are you saying?”

Her mom gasps. “Oh… it seems like you really don’t have a clue. You might want to pull up that tome you bought when we went to town. There’s a chapter on flower magic – take a look at that before you find yourself a dandelion, okay?”

*****

She plucks a bunch of daisies from the flowerbed before she dashes down the lane to find herself gulping before knocking on the chestnut door.

In seconds, Joohyun’s mom greets her, the lines at the sides of her eyes deepening as she smiles. “Seulgi-ah! Look who's here at last. Aigoo, our Joohyun has been asking for you for days now, she was so worried, ‘umma, I don’t know where Seulgi is, where is Seulgi? Umma, Seulgi isn’t at home again...’

“Anyway, come on in! I’m sure she will be glad to see you. I told her not to worry, you’ll pop by soon, and I was right! Go on, you can head on up. Would you like some of the cookies Joohyun’s baked for you? They’re not as fresh as the day she hoped to catch you, but there’s a jar on the counter right there.”

Oh. Was that from when Joohyun broke into the greenhouse? Her cheeks warm, slightly, at the very idea that Joohyun’s missed her. And don’t friends say they miss their friends too? But that’s a good starting point, at least, to know that Joohyun has been seeking her company out.

“Maybe later, thanks, ahjumma.”

With that, she heads upstairs, fingers folding tightly over her stalks of daisies. She's never climbed the stairs this noiselessly before. When she knocks and opens the door to the second room on the left, she finds Joohyun leaning against a wall and staring right at her. It makes her want to take a few steps backwards and slip back down the hallway, but she didn’t rip all these flowers from the ground just to run away!

And so she steps in. For a moment she’s not really sure how to start, but Joohyun’s the one who breaks the silence.

“Seulgi.” It’s completely neutral, devoid of anything to tell Seulgi what might be on Joohyun’s mind.

And that kind of terrifies her. Seulgi imagines that Joohyun knows that, since she spends the next few seconds just watching Seulgi’s eyes widen, watch her hands continue to clench over a fistful of flowers and a handful of dread.

“So, you know. We’ve had a pretty interesting day.”

Seulgi chuckles, nervously. “Yeah, we did. It’s not like you get turned into daisies every day.”

Joohyun hums in agreement, the sunlight framing her face like a halo. Good lord, she’s really the prettiest person that Seulgi’s ever seen.

And Joohyun really is as kind as Seulgi’s mom claims. Joohyun spares Seulgi, in the end, from actually fleeing, by offering a smile. It’s a watery one, but she holds out her arms in an invitation for a hug. Which Seulgi accepts even though she knows the second she does, her heart flaps to the beat of a hummingbird’s flutters.

Joohyun has never quite smelled like “…damp soil and the faint scent of daisies. It’s a pretty distinct layer on you – different.” Seulgi muses aloud, before realising that she’s said that sentence aloud.

Thankfully, Joohyun doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she says, wryly, “You know, Gunther Pringles XIV said some pretty interesting things to me after you stopped being a flower.”

“Sorry?”

“Mmhmm. I’m pretty sure that ‘Chapter Fourteen: Side Effects of Floral Magic’ has something to say about the topic. Specifically, there is an entry on wishes, somewhere on the bottom right of the page. You might want to give that a read.”

“What? Umma told me the same thing. Well, more or less, at least.”

Joohyun shrugs. “Your mom knows all this by heart, I’m sure. She’s great with this sort of magic – I’m almost envious… I’ve missed this.”

“This?”

“Mmhmm. This.” Joohyun hugs Seulgi even more tightly. “I missed you.”

“Oh.”

Joohyun pulls back, the instant loss of warmth forcing Seulgi to catch a whimper that would’ve otherwise escaped .

“Oh?”

Seulgi’s arms fall limp before she realises that she is still holding onto the flowers. “I meant that I missed you too.” And that she was so afraid Joohyun didn’t miss her at all, so those fears could at least be laid to rest now. “I’ve brought flowers for you. Can I braid them into your hair?”

Joohyun levels a glare at Seulgi, mock-menacingly. “I’ve just spent a good amount of time as a flower, Kang Seulgi!”

“Does that mean that your answer is a ‘no’?” Seulgi deflates a little, looking down at her flowers. “I’m really sorry guys, for plucking you guys out from the ground for no reason at all. Rest in peace, you guys.”

Seulgi doesn’t quite know what to do: does Joohyun not want to spend time with her then? That’s…

Okay, Seulgi, that doesn’t follow at all! She has just told you that she missed you! If she missed you then that should mean that she wants to spend some time with you, right?

With that rationalisation in place, she puts on a determined grin and suggests, “It’s okay, do you want to do something else instead? Like come over to my place. We can draw. I mean, that’s only if you want to, of course!”

Joohyun laughs, forcing Seulgi to look back up at her, confused. “No, no, I was just pulling your leg. Come on.”

She chuckles, somewhat nervously even as she joins Joohyun on her bed and begins to weave the daisies into Joohyun’s dark hair.

“Unnie, next time, I’ll make you a flower crown. You can be Princess Baechu again! Or are you Princess Daisy… Nah, we’ll stick to Princess Baechu.”

“Is that so, Your Royal Highness?”

“Have I been upgraded to a princess too?” Seulgi giggles. “Are you going to make me a flower crown too?”

“Naturally. I’ll crown you king of anything you want.”

Including you? Seulgi bites that treacherous question back, choosing instead to focus on the task at hand. She won’t want to rule over Joohyun, after all. Winning her heart though? That’s quite another matter.

Joohyun starts to hum. It’s a light melody that Seulgi doesn’t recognise.

“I’m almost done… there! Look in the mirror, you’re really pretty in it.” Admiration creeps into her voice. “You’re prettier than all these flowers.”

“Thank you. You know what? I never get tired of hearing that from you.”

They continue gazing into the mirror, and Seulgi continues, yet again, to marvel at the way Joohyun’s small face is framed by the cascade of her dark hair, with the few daisies smiling up at them from their place on top of her head.

Oh, hang on, there’s one flower that’s a little askew – she should adjust it.

“Anyway, you might want to know that your piranha plant isn’t going to keep your secrets,” Joohyun reveals after a while.  

“Sorry, what?” Seulgi’s hands freeze mid-air. “What did he say?”

“Something that I think you and I would be very interested in. I don’t know, I don’t think you wanted me to know about it though.”

“I… Gunther! I hate him.”

Would her mom kick her out of the house if she cast Gunther out during a snowstorm, come winter? Maybe her dad would stop her mom from booting their only daughter out if he’s home… She doubts she can count on her brother to intervene.

What had Gunther possibly told Joohyun that Seulgi’s not written about in some of her letters already? Seulgi has definitely told her about that horribly embarrassing incident in the aviary. Or was it a mistake to ramble about her everyday life to the plant? She told the plant that she dreamt that she became a bear, and in that dream, she realised that she wasn’t able to eat a single Pringle again for the rest of her life. When she woke up, her eyes were wet. Her roommate, already awake, snickered when Seulgi related said nightmare to her. Could that be it? That was embarrassing…

“He told me you liked me.”

Wait, what? WHAT?

Seulgi jumps, jerking backwards such that her head hits the window. “Ouch.”

Immediately, Joohyun’s hand reaches out to rub the back of Seulgi’s head as she twists around to look at her. “Is that true?”

It’s not like she can keep it under wraps now, could she?

Good lord, she’s really going to have to kill the plant. And that’s only if she survives the inevitable heartbreak. Gunther had better pray that she doesn’t. Or maybe, he should pray that she does survive this because the brat’s not getting any treats for the rest of forever if she perishes.

Seulgi only nods, mutely, not daring to look at Joohyun. She doesn’t want to see the disappointment. She doesn’t quite have enough in her for that.

How is it that you’re like everyone else? Falling for me. I thought we were friends. But I guess you just hung around me because I’m pretty, like everybody else.

Or maybe, if Joohyun remembered: I thought it was a joke when you last told me that it’s inevitable that everyone falls for me. Guess you weren’t kidding huh.

And more devastatingly, what if Joohyun doesn’t want to be friends?

So, she opens to apologise. “I’m so, so, sorry. I swear, I tried to stop! I read the books on this, and I tried really, really hard to make the correct potions, but none of them worked! I wanted to forget you – but not you! I would never want to forget you, but I just… I just wanted to stop.”

“Hey, look at me.” Joohyun’s voice is soft, which Seulgi can only frown at. She obeys, anyway. She can’t stop the tears though even as she swipes at her eyes with her hand.

There’s no anger in Joohyun’s face. Only a somewhat contemplative, if not even nervous, tinge to it.

“Shh, don’t cry, please.” Joohyun murmurs, firmly. Then, more loudly, she insists, “I will never hate you for liking me. Besides,” Joohyun says as she squeezes Seulgi’s hand, “I like you too.” The last few words come out so casually that Seulgi’s not quite sure if she’s hearing things. All the same, her heart stops in its place.

Did Bae Joohyun just tell her that with her expression so neutral that Seulgi can’t read it at all?

“Sorry?”

“Oh, you heard me.” Joohyun rolls her eyes. “Come on. Is it that hard to imagine that I could like you back too?”

“I…”

“I mean. I hope you still like me. And that this is something you want to hear.” Joohyun’s lips squeeze into a pout, on instinct. “If you don’t, I… that’s embarrassing. Here I am, with cookies and a bouquet I bought from your mother earlier this morning…”

“You… you have a bouquet? Is it for me?” Seulgi rubs her ears with her free hand, knocking the side of her head. “Can you say that again?”

“…I have sunflowers for you?”

“No, no, I mean. Erm. The part where you might like, like me back thing.”

“I’m sorry, I think I should start with that, right?” Her face creases for a moment before it falls in realisation of what Seulgi was asking for when she asked her to repeat herself. Any bravado remaining on her face vanishes completely before she scoots her way behind Seulgi, wrapping her arms around Seulgi’s trembling shoulders.

“Why are you apologising? You really don’t have to—”

“No.” Joohyun sighs. “That’s not right. I feel terrible, hearing that you tried concocting potions to forget me. I hate knowing that you could have messed up, big time. You know that you could have overdosed on those things, right? Greater potioneers have. Almost always because of a bad relationship. Over matters of the heart and all that.”

Seulgi shakes her head, attempting to reassure, “But I’m fine, see? Nothing happened to me. I really mean it, you don’t have to be sorry—”

“No. I’m sorry because I didn’t tell you sooner. Or if I’ve been too busy trying to finish my studies and took too long to reply many of your letters. But you know, you kept writing. I read all of them.”

“You did?”

“Let me spell it out to you – I loved reading all of them.” Joohyun unfurls her arms to draw circles against Seulgi’s temples. Can you see it?”

Seulgi sees it: Joohyun, perched on the edge of a bunk bed, pouring over her letters as the moonlight spills into the room. She reads them over and over in the wan light. Sometimes she tries to draft a reply but falls asleep halfway through her attempt.

Seulgi can only imagine that she wakes up with her cheeks smeared with ink. Or that she’d draft something impulsively, with lines that veered into “I like you”s, but those were balled up and tossed into the fireplace.

“Oh.” With each scene that flashes in her mind, the doubt in Seulgi’s heart grows smaller, weighs her heart down a little less.

“I was terrible. Each time I was late in sending a reply I felt bad, knowing that you were probably hoping for a reply. I don’t excuse myself for that. I mean, sometimes I wondered if you did have a crush on me – I could never quite tell – we’ve spent so much of our lives together and like it’s not that long ago that you were actually shorter than me.”

“Joohyun-unnie, you’ve not been taller than me for a few years,” Seulgi decides to point out. Breathing the air around them makes Seulgi’s chest feel tighter than it has ever been, stretched by a thin thread of hope.

Joohyun laughs. “You’re right. But I’ve seen so little of you since I left the academy. And even before then, sometimes it felt like you were avoiding me, especially towards the end of our time there.”

“I was,” Seulgi admits. “You had your friends. I… I didn’t want to feel like a waste of your time.”

Joohyun draws back then turns Seulgi around. Now face-to-face, Seulgi sees the shock on Joohyun’s face. Her hands reach out to cup Seulgi’s face so they are staring squarely at each other.

“You were never a waste of my time, okay? I… like I said, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did to make you feel that way, but I have never felt that way – would never feel that way.”

Seulgi frowns as it comes back to her, remembering how Joohyun would continue to wave at her in the corridors.

Or sought her out during lunch to spend her breaks with her even when her friends were eating elsewhere, running up to her with that bright smile breaking across her face to tell her about something cool she learned how to do that day.

Or when she saw Seulgi ruining the tip of her pen as she gnawed anxiously over a question she couldn’t solve, Joohyun would come right up to her and offer some help. She’d never try to solve it outright, of course, she was a stickler for forcing Seulgi to work through the problems herself, but her words were always encouraging, her guidance sharp and clear.

“Joohyun-unnie. That’s… that’s in the past now, okay? I guess I just felt bad because your friends were ultra-cool. Or ultra-smart. Or that’s how they looked to me then. Underclassmen usually stick together – so did you guys.” And even though it feels like the itch in is nearly gone by now, her curiosity still pushes her question out and she asks, “But… why did you decide to tell me now?”

“What?”

“About this – a confession? That’s what you just did, right?”

Joohyun shrugs, but her shoulders are stiff and it looks more like a grimace than anything.

“I’ve had some time to think about it when I was away. And it’s probably a little selfish, deciding that I would tell you sometime this summer. If I embarrassed myself, well, I’d be able to just disappear for a bit. Gunther’s blabbing sped the timeline up a little bit, so here I am.” Then, Joohyun bites her lip. “You don’t… you don’t have to say anything back. I get it if you don’t want to. It’s okay.”

“It’s not though! You said you wanted to disappear if I didn’t like you back. Which you know for the record I really, really, really do like you but, can we skip past all this and get back to the I like you bit, because I, Kang Seulgi, like you back too!”

A pair of wide eyes blink back at her. Joohyun frowns. “We can’t not talk about this, Seulgi—”

Seulgi shakes her head frantically. “That’s not what I’m saying. Burying bad things is bad. I get it. But… this is not what I imagined it,” she mumbles the last bit aloud to herself.

In her daydreams, any confession to Joohyun (as improbable it was to her) would mean she’d go up to Joohyun with a handful of her favourite flowers and with a sunny grin, tell Joohyun everything about her feelings for her. And Joohyun would grin and perhaps the sun would be shining above them, and Joohyun’s eyes would be warmer than the star our orbit revolves around because she is the brightest star in Seulgi’s life, and then she’d accept the flowers and tell that that hey, I like you back too.

And instead, Joohyun’s the one with flowers. Joohyun’s the one who told her first!

“You said you had flowers for me?” The question is blurted out, and Joohyun’s large eyes blink again before she throws her head back and laughs, completely nonplussed by the change in subject.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Seulgi shrugs. “You have got to do this properly. With all the flowers. Then maybe, we can talk about it. But you know, maybe not when my brain still feels like it’s stuffed with pollen?”

“Seulgi—”

“I promise. Next time.”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Joohyun exhales, but her lips are curled downwards ever so slightly.

Seulgi mirrors Joohyun’s expression as she reaches out, pressing her hands against Joohyun’s face, her thumb pulling the corners of Joohyun’s lips upwards. To that, Joohyun blinks, before she bursts out laughing, incredulous.

When Joohyun is done laughing, Seulgi continues, “I really do promise. I never break my promises to you.”

“You’ve never,” Joohyun agrees.

It’s apparent that she decides to let the matter rest, and this elicits a breath of relief from Seulgi.  Then Joohyun leans downwards to grab the sunflowers from underneath the bed.

“Hang on.” Joohyun leaps to her feet, clutching the flowers close to her face to hide the pink burning across her cheeks. “Kang Seulgi, I like you! I got you some sunflowers because you are just like them. You’re the kindest, warmest, prettiest girl I know!”

With that, Joohyun smiles so widely that Seulgi’s heart aches. It aches and makes tight but it’s also the kind that is tinged by a pleasant warmth, the kind that speeds through the nerves in her whole system and makes her start tearing again.

Joohyun nearly drops her flowers before Seulgi giggles, hiccupping slightly as she jibes, “You look funny like that.”

“Me?” Joohyun pouts as she extends her handful of flowers towards Seulgi. “You’re saying that I look weird? Are you making fun of me now? Oh my god, just take the flowers! If you don’t want them…” Her bottom lip sticks out even further and Seulgi has to resist the urge to poke Joohyun’s cheeks. Joohyun looks impossibly prettier through the wet sheen of her tears.

“Kidding. I love sunflowers. Did you know that if you’re a sunflower, you can feel the seeds on your head?”

“No, I didn’t.” Joohyun shudders. “I didn’t have to know.”

Seulgi giggles again, the tears in her finally subsiding. “Sorry. Oh. Oh right.” She sits up straight.  “Thank you for the flowers. I accept your confession, Bae Joohyun. I like you too!”

*****

Seulgi concludes that it is her best summer ever.

Soon after, her mom grumbles that Seulgi has perhaps stolen a few too many of the flowers from her shop for the art of braiding flowers into Joohyun’s hair.

Even in the summer, she knows they aren’t perfect. Joohyun and Seulgi, who grew up knowing the best and the worst in each other, are entirely aware that even if the pieces of themselves fit perfectly together, they fit together with all their thorns that invariably found their way into them. They spend hours of slow afternoons underneath the tall oak tree behind Joohyun’s house slowly pulling out the barbs from their skin.

Some of them do cut deeper than the surface and Seulgi, prone to crying as a default, is sometimes left crying. It’s not like they’ve grown to become two opposing figures that were meant to hurt each other, but no two pieces exist in perfect symmetry, and edges must be hewn off before they fit.

When they’re done, Seulgi never lets herself wonder for too long if it’s worth it, for after all, removing skin-deep hurt often hurts more than she prefers. But Joohyun’s smiles and light kisses on her hands soothe that pain. When Seulgi cries, Joohyun has a handkerchief ready to dab away her tears and allows Seulgi to make the stupidest, entirely #NoJam jokes. When the sun sets and paints the sky all oranges and purples, they’d get up to head home, their sides hurting from laughter.

Most of the time, Seulgi marvels at who Joohyun is, and how Joohyun’s laugh makes her heart soar. Perhaps she’s also a little too thrilled when Joohyun procures a boxful of Pringles for her that when she hugs Joohyun – (Joohyun’s opinion: Seulgi jumped on me!) – the shorter girl loses her balance and they tumble to the ground.

Before the end of summer, Seulgi finds her hands tangled in Joohyun’s hair as she presses her lips against Joohyun’s for the first time, daring and hoping that this feeling will last forever. When she draws away from Joohyun, the girl only giggles at her lipstick smeared chin and it makes Seulgi’s heart stop again when she playfully leans in to kiss the spot anyway, staining her skin further.

She never quite tells her mother, but her mom shoots her a knowing grin anyway when Joohyun and Seulgi step back into the shophouse from the greenhouse after one of those escapades a few days later. And that’s even after she’s sure to have wiped away all the lipstick from her face.

Sometimes, she sits by Gunther’s spot (post-bribing with a healthy chunk of iguana). She’ll wait till he’s done chomping it down to talk about her summer. He’s never quite able to tell her anything anymore, and she’s loath to admit that she misses his gravelly voice.

“Joohyun and I drew today! Look at this.”

“Did you know that iguanas love the sun? Okay, you don’t have to look at me like that. You do. Okay.”

“TODAY SHE TOLD ME SHE REALLY LIKES ME. Do you think that that’s code for anything? Oh, come on.”

But all the same, he nods with all the gravitas of a carnivorous, ungainly piranha plant to things she says. And on occasion, he’d stare at her, pretending to bite her hand off before shaking his head at the stupid things she does.

One day, after she has shredded a few too many petals off daisies as she tried asking each of them that question, Gunther nods to, “Do you think she loves me?” with so much conviction that her heart blooms with happiness and she jumps about, whooping. She’s so excited that the plant nips at her again, in complete judgement at how this kid has lost her head over a girl again.

Seulgi finds that she doesn’t mind that minor abrasion he accidentally leaves against her wrist when he pulls back too quickly. She only grins, pats his head somewhat awkwardly, before she runs to the front to borrow her mother’s expertise for oh, umma, can you help me with those flowers for love, please, please, please?

And her mother doesn’t even spare her more ribbing when they hurriedly arrange a bouquet together before Seulgi’s current-favourite parent wishes her the best of luck and sends her daughter sprinting towards Joohyun’s house with those flowers in hand. Seulgi has to tell her some pretty important words before Joohyun beats her to it again!