The flower shop didn't look like much from the outside.
A cracked sign. Chipped blue paint. Wind chimes that sounded more like ghosts than bells. But when Aika stepped through the narrow door, the smell hit her first — jasmine, soil, and something like old sunshine.
It didn't feel like a shop.
It felt like a memory.
Ren stood behind the counter, arranging a small bouquet in quiet concentration. He wore a plain black T-shirt and an apron smeared with green stains and petals that clung like secrets.
He looked up. Didn't smile. Didn't need to.
"You came," he said, as if she might've vanished since yesterday.
Aika stepped closer, brushing her fingers along the edge of a shelf lined with dusty ceramics and tiny cacti. "I wanted to see it."
He handed her a small flower — not fresh, but pressed, perfectly flattened inside a slip of tracing paper.
A pale hydrangea. Blue-tinted. Paper-thin.
"I made it for you," he said. "It reminded me of… you."
Aika stared at it, caught between breath and silence.
"You press flowers?" she asked.
Ren shrugged. "Sometimes. When they start dying, it's a way of saying they're still beautiful. Just different."
Aika didn't realize how tightly she was holding the paper until her fingers trembled.
"You're not supposed to make people cry in flower shops," she whispered.
"I didn't mean to," he said softly.
But maybe he did. Just a little.
---
They left together an hour later, walking beneath a sky stitched with gray. The kind that warned rain before it spoke it. The streets were quieter than usual — like the city was listening.
Aika tucked the pressed hydrangea into her notebook like it was a secret. Her fingers kept brushing against the pages, as if she needed to keep checking it was still there.
"I like this," she said. "Walking. With you."
Ren didn't answer right away. His hands were in his pockets, his shoulders tense like he was holding up something invisible.
"I'm not good at being close to people," he said finally.
"I figured."
"They leave," he continued, voice lower. "Or they lie. Or they ask you to open up, and when you do, they flinch."
Aika stopped walking.
Rain began to tap — soft at first, like the sky was testing the ground. Then heavier. Fuller. Real.
She turned to face him.
"My mom promised she'd never leave," she said. "She used to braid my hair every Sunday morning. Said even if everything else fell apart, that part wouldn't."
Ren met her eyes, his expression unreadable.
"But she left anyway," Aika finished.
They stood there in the rain, just two kids telling the truth. No umbrellas. No shelter. Just honesty — raw and wet and cold.
A drop slid down her cheek. She didn't know if it was rain or something else.
"I don't want to be someone who leaves," Ren said.
"Then don't."
It was so simple. So brave.
He stepped closer.
The rain soaked through their uniforms. Her cardigan clung to her arms. His hair was matted against his forehead. Everything was blurred — the world behind them, the sky above, time itself.
But not this.
This was sharp. Clear. Real.
Ren reached out, slowly. Gently. His fingers found hers.
They didn't intertwine. Not yet.
He just held her hand — like someone holding a fragile thing for the first time.
Aika didn't speak. She didn't have to.
In that moment, silence said everything.
---
Later that night, with her notebook still damp at the corners, Aika wrote:
> He gave me a flower that had already died.
But it was still beautiful.
Maybe that's what love is — not saving things before they break,
but learning how to hold what's broken and still call it beautiful.
Today, he held my hand.
Not like he owned it.
Like he understood how easily it could be lost.