Chapter Text
As in an often laundered children's smock,
cast off, its usefulness now all but over,
one senses running down a small life's clock.
Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems,
and in among these clusters one discovers
a tender blue rejoicing in the green.from Blaue Hortensie (Blue Hydrangea) by Ranier Maria Rilke, 1906
translated from German by Bernhard Frank
For the entire weekend, Seonghwa searches high and low, starting with the likely places and working his way into less and less probable ones. His mother's manuscript has vanished. The only explanations left are the ones that make him feel he must surely be going insane, but he swears he can feel his grandmother's corpse laughing at his distress.
There is no place left to look.
The only other people who knew that book existed are dead. His mother hadn't come to claim it in all the years she'd been resting cold and buried. His grandmother, though… maybe her insidious ghost is back to torment him one final time.
He shakes off the thought, refusing to entertain ideas of ghouls being real, and tries to accept the unexplainable loss. Tears prickle his tired eyes after looking under the chair in his childhood room for the fifth and final time. Maybe reading it again had all simply been a dream.
It seems silly that he would grieve an unpublished book more than he ever has a person passing away, but… that book was everything to him as a child. He's memorized the lovingly typed pages, but he knows that he will start to lose those memories just as he'd lost his mother's features and her voice.
He cries in the shower, surrounded by porcelain and fading blue floral-patterned vinyl, staring down the single seedling dandelion in the blooming chaos and wishing to stop. The same way he always did growing up in this house so he wouldn't be punished for showing any emotion that wasn't respect for his elders. He tells himself the fact that he can't let himself cry anywhere else is fine, actually. It's not as though there is anyone in his life who would want to know he is unhappy.
He dresses after and goes to work at the nursery, which he'd renamed from 'Flora's Garden' to 'Flora's Secret' the second he inherited it. His grandmother had been furious at his insolence in between her bouts of dementia, claiming that he would kill her legacy, and it gave him a level of sick satisfaction that he knows is probably wrong.
He'd thought it funny, if a little dark. He had been a secret. None of the regulars knew she'd even had a grandson, despite the fact that he'd worked at her nursery near as long as he could hold a trowel.
He'd made one other change that had, in fact, hurt the business… but by the time he got to that one she'd been too far gone to care about it. Flora's Secret no longer sells red roses, no matter how lucrative they are.
When people ask, they are often disappointed. Some even yell, desperate for a single scarlet bloom to apologize to their jilted lover. He tries to direct them to flowers more appropriate for that purpose; soft pink carnations, white tulips, or blue hydrangeas.
Nobody wants to hear it. He doesn't really mind. Red roses are the most overblown, misinterpreted flower, and have become ultimately meaningless because of movies and valentine's day. They are now everyone's go-to for any reason. He won't compromise on this, no matter how many people leave bad reviews.
The day at work goes like any other, Mondays especially slow for business. He works alone, tends to his plants, singing to them quietly. They flourish under his careful touch. A few people come in looking for custom bouquets or seed packets, but he is mostly left to grieve his lost book and work in peace.
He closes up shop and heads back to his grandmother's house with only a couple hours of daylight left, and goes straight to the garden to check on those plants as well. They don't need much tending, but he keeps up with it anyway. A habit that won't leave him.
The routine isn't a comfort, it is simply what he does. Starting with the vainglorious and pristine white hydrangeas under his childhood bedroom window, he plucks the dead buds and leaves, clears the ground of any sprouted weeds, checks each plant for bugs. He collects snails into a bin.
This time, instead of disposing of the snails in the sewer as he was taught, he delicately places each snail onto the rose bush. As he lovingly waters the freshly planted mint below, smiling at the barely perceptible wilt to the rosebuds, he hears rustling behind him and turns.
There's nobody there.
He scans the neatly planted lines of the lush garden, looking for a rabbit or stray cat. Nothing is out of place, no movement. He must be hearing things. He turns back to his watering.
A few seconds later, more rustling. He turns again, on high alert, scanning the direction the sound came from with sharp eyes. There is movement this time, and he carefully walks toward it, near the white hydrangeas. The movement is gone by the time he gets there, no sign of whatever caused it. It must have been an animal.
He pivots to go back to his routine, and sucks in a breath. On the table in the middle of the paving stones sits his mother's manuscript, standing on end. Clearly placed there with purpose. Next to it sits a handful of large blackberries, still on their vine.
He rushes over and picks up the book, clutching it carefully to his chest. He doesn't touch the berries, wary. He looks around again, eyes seeking whoever may have placed it here, and finds nothing but the still evening air. The walled garden is strangely quiet now, as though even the wind is holding it's breath.
He debates with himself for a while, looking around even though nobody is there. He feels watched, despite the fact that no eyes are on him. He's alone in the garden. He stares down at the blackberries. He isn't going to eat them, but ultimately decides to pick them up, curiosity besting his fear.
He examines the vine of berries, rolling the sharply cut stem between his fingers so they spin like a slow carousel. They are the truest black of any blackberry he has ever seen, no trace of blue or red shining on them even backed by the descending evening sun. The vine is the most interesting part; it's a true green, firm and proud, but sparkles with a sheen of gold as though fine glitter has been sprinkled over it. It looks unreal, like fruit from a dream.
Despite himself, he wonders if it would taste like a dream, too. A whisper in his chest assures him that it will, some deeper instinct knowing things he cannot. He decides to take the berries inside with him, certain somehow that it is safe. That deep feeling flickers like a flame with approval, and he knows he's making the right choice.
He turns to take the gift inside, in a trance. As he passes below his bedroom window, he is shaken from his intoxicated stupor by a sight even less likely than dream-berries on a glittering vine.
His grandmother's white hydrangeas have turned blue.