off limits ✧ zb1 applyfic

✧ twenty two

On most saturdays, Narae would go to her father's company's warehouse, picking out new flowers and plants to grow in her garden. And today again, she'd made the warehouse her home, but for a different reason. She'd been given a mission, and like any missions related to flowers, she was determined to successfully wing it. For the school festival, she'd been tasked with making twenty flower stands, along with supplying red roses. But she wasn’t quite sure what the school wanted these flower stands to look like.

That was why she had enlisted Gunwook's help. Waiting for him to arrive, she lined up all the flowers she'd selected, whistling cheerfully. When she'd first invited him to the warehouse, he'd seemed hesitant, but he could never resist the call of duty. After all, it was his job as student council to help her with this task. Narae grinned to herself, thinking of how easily he'd agreed when she'd brought up that point.

"Um, hello?" a familiar voice resonated through the large warehouse.

Narae immediately spun on her heels, tilting her head to see Gunwook, who stood hesitantly near the entrance. She gestured for him to come in, and so he did, his eyes darting in every direction, thoroughly inspecting his whereabouts.

"Sorry if I'm a bit late," he started, still preoccupied with the place he was in, "Jaewook took the wrong road."

"Oh, Jaewook drove you? She should've come in!"

Gunwook winced, rubbing the back of his neck. "Ah, no, that's not necessary. She's kind of in a bad mood, anyway."

Narae shrugged, still a bit disappointed she hadn’t gotten to talk to Jaewook. She didn't know much about the woman, but if she was Gunwook's sister, she could imagine she was as nice as him. And she hadn’t even been able to attend her performance last time, since it was taking place at a bar. Hopefully there would be another opportunity to listen to her music.

"So, um..." Gunwook finished looking around the warehouse, as his eyes landed on the long line of various potted flowers. "About the festival."

"Ah, yes!" Narae clapped her hands, bringing her attention back to the topic at hand. "Here, these are all the flowers I thought would fit the flower stands."

For a second, Gunwook stared holes into each of the flowers, before turning back to her with an awkward smile.

"Can you... Tell me more about them?"

He didn’t even need to ask. Talking about flowers was like second nature to her, she could do it for hours. She should've brought him a chair to sit on, because he was going to be standing here, listening to her, for a long time.

"Those are hydrangea," she started, poiting to the first flowers, "a classic for stands. I thought this red variety would really fit the summer theme. They're really effective, but kind of a typical choice for this sort of things."

Even as Gunwook nodded, she knew he wasn’t fully paying attention.

"For a bit of a twist, these are autumn starbust azalea."

"That's a mouthful."

Narae chuckled, proudly presenting the white and coral flowers. "Yes, they're quite fancy. There's autumn in their name, but their color is so vibrant, I think it would fit just fine. And their shape is a lot more eye catching than hydrangea."

"Okay," Gunwook deadpanned, trying to make mental notes.

Completely absorbed in her explanations, she moved onto the next pot. "If you want a little more variety, tuberous begonia are a great option. Instead of monochrome bouquets, you can get a bunch of different colors, and it'd still look coherent. Not as striking, but super cute."