Winterbloom [BL]

Chapter 2: Encounter

Huh... strange. I thought the old lady lived alone. Might be the gardener, I mean, she is pretty old.

Huey had always been under the impression that the old lady didn't have any relatives to visit her, probably because he had never really thought about it. Other than the attractive photographer grandson who was a dream.

He worked his brain for a few more seconds before realising that he would've looked like a creep peering into someone's fence like that, especially that of an old granny living alone. Not to mention that no one in the neighbourhood would recognise him anymore so for all he knew, he appeared to be a total stranger walking around a residential area where everyone knew each other, spying on a grandma while carrying a bunch of luggage. The scene made no sense, and thus, Huey put aside his curiosity about that unknown figure, took a detour around the park area, and headed back to the bus stop. Soon enough, he forgot all about it, eager to see his new hostel room that had no roommate.

All alone and to himself in a compact little room. No parents, no dog - he loved them, really, but solitude was golden nonetheless - just him and the potted plants he brought along.

Yes, he brought plants with his luggage.

They have names too: "Lily" the Peace Lily, "Blu" the Blue Pearl Sedum and "Echo" the Echeveria; all adorable little indoor plant beauties. You could tell that he wasn't the most creative with the names, but he truly loved them like they were his own children.

Huey didn't want children, by the way. Not because he's gay; he didn't even want to adopt any in the future whether or not gets a partner, which is unlikely anyway given his extremely specific... ahem... dream fantasy inspired... ahem... type of guy. He was pretty intolerant of people anyway, as we've already covered, so yeah, no human kids. They're an annoying hassle, that's it. He had more than enough seedlings to spend his time parenting after.

Back to Lily, Blu and Echo - he grew them from scratch with seeds from their parent plants, putting his sweat and blood into their nurturing... quite literally.

The sweat could be expected from how he often spent warm summer afternoons gardening. As for the blood, it was an experiment he ran in his little balcony garden back at home. He wondered if blood, containing all the nutrients it does for the human body, would effectively act as fertilizer if given to seedlings. He had dug online for this question, but he wanted to experimentally figure it out for himself anyway.

So he ordered an injection syringe and prepared some sibling seeds into two groups: one given his blood every other day and the other grown normally. Of course, he made sure only to extract a healthy amount of blood, having done the research for it. Besides, not much was needed for those tiny seeds in the first place.

He hypothesised that the blood will help them grow larger than the normal group given water and sunlight alone, and it was proven correct over the two weeks he was measuring. Unfortunately for him, his mother caught him conducting such a concerning experiment and he got severely lectured and grounded from gardening for a week, which made sense.

A/N: Pleeeaase DO NOT take inspiration from this and absolutely NEVER try it at home!!! It can be considered self-harm. Huey's the insane scientist, you don't need to be one. Otherwise, this book will probably get canceled 😭!

So yeah... his sweat and blood. Huey actually wanted to bring more of his precious little babies over to his new home but had to accommodate for other things in his limited luggage space. His parents insisted he only take one, aware of his undying love for them, but he stubbornly smuggled two more anyway, with a lot of difficulty at that. The designer pots were kind of... very heavy. His kids deserve the best quality homes after all.