YELLOW | yj x bg

☀︎ ten.

—yeonjun

Today, unsurprisingly, I found another reason to love you.

You were sitting in your favorite position; hugging your knees to your chest. You opened my palm and told me to close my eyes. My heart skipped several beats as you placed something unfamiliar in my hand. I opened my eyes and you startled me with a small, "Surprise!" I looked down and gazed admirably as the sunflower in my hand.

Normally I don't care about sunflowers, or any flowers of sorts. But if you're the one to give them to me, they take on a different meaning entirely.

Did you know I keep your collection of flowers you gift me once every month in a little treasure box in my house; a vase reserved for each flower, I let them bathe in plenty of sunlight by placing them next to my window. The flowers we'd exchange in secret as if committing a malicious activity, a secret shared only between us two.

In fact, I have a secret I wish to confess even now: I can't remember the last time I stored something so preciously. Something whose fear of losing was so intense that I couldn't even begin to imagine myself parted from it. I don't know what your strange obsession is with flowers, but it's contagious. Because I've never cared about flowers more than I do now.

Whenever I pass a meadow, I'm careful of my every single footstep- making sure not to trample on grass. A new meaning has sprung into existence. Now I don't view flowers as just 'flowers' anymore, but rather as a tapestry of beauty- stems, petals, growing buds, thorns- all of these features woven together to tell an unforgettable story.

You told me once, after much persistence from my side, that the reason you love flowers so much is because they have a secret language of their own. They don't converse in the way us humans do with each other. How presenting someone with a bouquet of flowers can convey your meaning better than words can. Because the language of flowers is a language no other can compete with.

I was frozen in admiration just at the fact that the thought even entered your brain. Everything from daffodils, chamomiles, daylilies, daisies, yellow roses, Lydian brooms, forsythia, azaleas- I keep them all with me. Each one attached with a specific memory of you and I.

Even top-class models voted, 'most handsome faces in the world,' can't compare with the way you look under the hazy hues of the afternoon (somehow when the sun is at its zenith is when the scattering people underneath it feel at their lowest- eyes drooping down, about to doze off at any second), holding a calla lily in the crux of your delicate fingers up to your nose, breathing in its fragrance with your eyes closed, so preciously as if you're in the midst of breathing in its entire history- how many people have touched it whether roughly or lovingly, how many gazes have landed upon it and how many of them couldn't glance away, in what soil was it birthed in, what trials and hardships did it face at times of lack of air or sunlight or water.

You just emit a different kind of beauty, Beomgyu. One that even an outsider can glance at and say that you've truly lost yourself in the world inside your head. Forgive me for this analogy, but sometimes I feel like you're an angel who descended from the great skies of heaven just to get people on this earth to unearth their true purpose in life- to make us realise how much goodness and joy can paint our world in dazzling colours, if only we allow it to.

My window frame has turned into my safety haven. I used to let my plants die out of carelessness, but that was before you came into the picture. Each memory attached to a flower speaks wonders to me.

For instance, you were having those fits that I call 'Beomgyu's Bubble of Bursting Energy' where you tag me along for cosmic adventures I don't deserve to have. When we ended up on a sunflower field, you plucked one out of the soil- that was the thing about you, you never plucked off a petal, your main goal was to pluck off the flower as a whole.

You must have heard of that quote, "when you're in a field, you pluck off the prettiest of flowers." Even when you capture something beautiful, you never drain it of its life. It's funny how that's exactly what you've done with me- you've filled me up with life. You transfer that overflowing love in your cupped heart into mine without knowing it at all.

And those mustard-colored petunias you stole from your neighbour's garden. You made stealing such a small and insignificant thing as if we're part of a gang who's planning to break into a museum and conduct a money heist- a mission impossible. Damn, I didn't know how dramatic you could be.

You acted as if that one flower holds the value of a million-dollar statue, and that is when I began to see you in a different light. I keep myself going with the thought that maybe one day you'll regard me with that same level of importance- willing to reuse me, recycle me right on the spot.

The yellow hibiscus is where Hueningkai takes full responsibility. You begged him, even got on your knees to add onto the dramatic effect, to bring back flowers that are native to his country before he took off to a vacation in Hawaii for summer vacation. And recently I've come to learn that Hueningkai is not one to break his promise, especially when it's to his best friend of all people. And so he came back with a yellow hibiscus still intact.

Although they were a bit tattered from the 9 hours of traveling and being cramped up in a tight space in the overpacked luggage, that's what made them beautiful and unique from all other flowers. That's what I remember you saying.

You've given me a lot, so I feel selfish for wishing for one thing more: I just wish you could look at me as you do to your favourite flower.