off limits ✧ zb1 applyfic

✧ one hundred and three

Being a boyfriend wasn’t so terribly hard, Gunwook had recently concluded. Or maybe it was being Narae's boyfriend, specifically, that came so easily. All of his life, he'd been surrounded by love stories that scarcely deserved the title to begin with, and he'd naturally assumed relationships were simply difficult. Some were based on appearances and mutual benefit, like his parents'. Some were toxic and tumultuous, like so many Jaewook had had. In the case of his older brother, he seemed to be happy enough, but his girlfriend was terrifyingly high maintenance. It made sense to conclude dating was very hard work, for a reward which was barely worth the trouble.

It wasn't like that with Narae. Sure, she was a bit all over the place, and clumsy enough to have his attention on her at all times, but it wasn't "maintenance". It was... Easy. In fact, he'd been there, in her bedroom, listening to her talk about all of her plants and their watering needs, and he hadn’t even needed to say a single word. There was something about the sheer passion in her voice that made it impossible not to listen, and Gunwook thought that if every day with Narae was like that, he wouldn’t mind doing this his entire life. This was not hard work. In fact, it wasn't work at all.

The same couldn’t be said about taking care of plants.

"This one's a Jade plant," she continued, her voice just as upbeat as when she'd stared. "It needs a lot of sunlight, so it's best to put it on the windowsill. My window's facing the south, so it's perfect!"

Gunwook chuckled, squishing his cheek against his closed fist. "Wow, you even need to think about which windowsill you put them on? Sounds hard."

"Eh, it can be fun figuring out the best layout. You seem interested, though. You wouldn’t like to have your own plant to take care of, one day?"

The question made him pause for a second, as a vague memory surfaced in his mind. He'd been no more than thirteen when his parents had decided to go on a trip together, leaving him with his two still teenage siblings. His mother had put them in charge of caring for her beloved orchid, but neither Chanwook nor Jaewook had been very responsible, and spent more time out of the house than in. Gunwook, always panicked at the idea of disappointing his parents, had taken it upon himself to care for the flower, even though he had not been given the instructions for it. Only when its roots had started to rot, did he realize that, maybe, orchids weren't meant to be watered every day. Thankfully, his older siblings took the fall for him — after all, it wasn't his responsibility to begin with— but he could still vividly remember the scolding they'd received. Gunwook had sort of assumed, then, that he wasn’t meant to take care of flowers.

How ironic that Narae would one day become so dear to him...

"I don't think I'd be very good at it," he said with laughter. "They probably wouldn’t survive with me."

"Well, there are plants that don't need much care, you know! Zebra plants like these need very little watering, for example."

Gunwook had no time to get into the fact that he was worried about the exact opposite, because his stomach spoke for him. As it grumbled, he pressed a hand on his abdomen as if to muffle it, praying that Narae hadn’t heard him. Alas, she turned to him with round eyes and, thankfully, no mocking smile.

"Hungry? Let's go downstairs and eat some snacks," she said, running to the armchair he was sitting on.

"No, it's fine, I—"

But she was already tugging on his arm, pulling him to his feet. "Come on, I'm hungry too!"

Although he wasn’t quite sure she wasn’t just saying that so he would be less embarrassed, Gunwook let himself be convinced. Her hand still holding onto his arm, she pulled him out of the room, and he followed her down the stairs. He tried to ignore how warm her fingertips felt on his skin, how her hand couldn’t even fully encircle his arm, how hot his ears were starting to grow. Maybe he needed some watering, too.