Secret Flower Boy (NamJin)

Chap 9 - Eucalyptus

Namjoon and I walked home a few steps behind our siblings the next day, playing a weird, unspoken game of football with the stone he'd started kicking a few minutes ago. We had a day off school today since the boiler in the secondary school had broken, but the primary school hadn't been, so Namjoon and I did the usual routine of picking up our siblings from school.

"You're pretty good at this," he murmured, kicking the stone my way.

"Thanks," I smiled slightly.

"Do you-" he cut himself off mid-sentence. "Would you like to come to my mum's flower shop tonight? I didn't have the chance to show you around or anything last night cause we were uh, busy," he ducked his head down. "But only if you want to, maybe, I know it's your night off and I dunno if you like hanging around in weird flower shops that smell like pollen but-"

"Yeah," I cut off his rambling. "That'd be cool, thanks."

He looked up from the stone we were kicking about, his usual emotionless mask had dropped and he looked at me with a look I couldn't decipher.

"Uh, what time should I come 'round?" I asked, kicking the stone to him to divert his attention from me.

"Just whenever you're allowed to," he said quickly. "Our shop closes at six but I'll probably be there 'till half past seven or something."

We'd reached our little departing point so I looked up at him and smiled. "Thanks, that would be lovely."

"No problem," he said. "I'll see you soon then?"

"Definitely," I said.

He called on Jungkook and Jiho and they ran to catch up with him, flashing me identical grins like their brother did.

-----

I stood outside the florist at quarter to seven, debating on whether to go in or not. What if Namjoon was in one of his weird moods? What if he was just joking when he said I could come? I squinted in the dark, shivering as another crisp breeze fluttered over me.

"Welcome," I jumped as I heard Namjoon's voice. He stood at the open door with an eyebrow raised, the bell on the door ringing. "Are you gonna come in any time soon? You've been standing out here for ages."

I turned beet red, ducking my head as I walked past him inside. "I was just admiring the weather," I grumbled.

"I seriously doubt it," he chuckled. "It's way too dark to see most things out there, never mind admire them."

"I eat a lot of carrots," I glared at him. He threw his head back and laughed, a full blown, genuine laugh. I just stared at him in shock, my jaw almost dropping to the floor.

"What?" he said after he'd recovered, looking at me, puzzled.

"Uh, nothing. Absolutely nothing," I blinked, trying to convince myself that I didn't just see Kim Namjoon actually genuinely laugh. "So, do you usually get many customers here? It seemed actually pretty busy yesterday."

"Kind of, it depends on what time of year it is," he said. "As you can imagine, Valentine's Day is really busy, Christmas and spring are busy times too. The good thing about flowers is that you can sell them all year 'round, it's hard to grow some at winter and it's always different ones we have in stock but I guess that can be a good thing. There's so many flowers that you can't just say you don't like them. It's like fruit, you may not like one but there's got to be one out there that you like, unless you're allergic or have extremely bad hayfever, I guess," he shrugged.

"I take it you like them, then?"

He laughed bitterly. "You'll have to blame my mum for that one, I'm afraid. She's a complete plant nut so I've been brought up with the names and meanings of plants, flowers especially."