Hitoka is a generally pretty nervous person. She is most fearful around new or intimidating people, and didn’t do well talking to strangers. So when her grandmother asked her and her great aunt, Hanako, to take over her current flower shop, she was petrified.
It didn't help that Hanako could only help with the shop when Hitoka was at school. But despite her grandmother only running a flower business, she was spreading her company all over Japan, and making a lot of money. So Hitoka had a rather large paycheck each week. It almost made her nerves worth it.
And the shop always smelt heavenly, even though the pollen from some of the flowers were sometimes slightly annoying, the smell was worth the irritation. There was an run-down coffee shop and convenience store in the line of stores that matched the flower shop’s aesthetic. But on the inside of the florist, though not too fancy, took hours of work to make it look the way it did. There was a lot of bamboo wood paneling and she and Hanako grew vines on the brick wall they shared with the coffee shop. It wasn’t an easy process, it took lots of research on flowering vines, but she guided Morning Glory up a finishing line. It sorta made the vines look like they were floating if you were close enough. Then she set up a long white marble table, a few centimeters away from the vines, the table covering the pots that held the Morning Glory to make it look neater. Afterwards placing lots of potted plants and pre-made bouquets on top of and around that area. It easily became her favorite part of the store.
She didn’t think she would become so attached to the store, but after spending so many months working on it, it became her safe space. When nobody was in the store she could sketch, and the flowers made good practice. Hitoka fell in love with the store and the few regulars that frequented it. A sweet old man, with plenty of crows feet, that would come every Thursday asking for a single red rose. He would make a light conversation and every few weeks tip her with a 1000 yen folded into a butterfly. Every Friday a loud old woman with a fire in her eyes and a confident stride would ask for two red roses. The woman told her that she would never let her husband beat her. After a few weeks of the same pattern Hitoka found out they have been married for fifty years, and they both like going to this florist because its walking distance from their house.
There were a few other regulars that she recognizes. She only had one online regular, because Hanako took care of most of the online orders. He’s a rich teenager that orders an expensive bouquet of red and white roses one to three times a week to his father’s hotel. She had to ask her grandma that the Jinguuji Hotel was placing an online order, and she confirmed that she made connections with the owner’s son. And now their flower shop is in business with the most famous hotel in Japan.
The in store customers consisted of mostly older people that liked to babble about the weather and their grandchildren, middle aged men asking for bouquets to surprise their wives, and students asking for a few flowers to confess their feelings with. However she doesn’t get too many customers because the company is much bigger online, thanks to her grandmother.
And then there was a boy a year or two older than her, he had a long buzzcut that was dyed blonde and heavy eyeliner underneath both of his eyes. She had originally been exceptionally frightened by him when she saw him through the glass. Though she forced herself to calm down when she saw the gentle way he tied up his dog at the bike rack a few meters away from the shop. He still made her nervous when he entered the shop with an intense look on his face and stalked up right to her counter and gruffly asked if they had any orange lilies. He was very polite to her when she responded that they do, and pointed to the shelves holding different lilies, but timidly warned him that they mean hatred. Apparently he knew.
The next day a boy with a cute face and light brown hair that flipped up at the ends angrily asked for flowers that means ‘fuck you.’ Hitoka wasn’t expecting to be nervous around him because of his friendly exterior. She was much more frightened around the boy that came to the shop the day before, but grew to be twice as uneasy around the boy with the creampuff hair.
He barely tried flirting with her, before seemingly stopping himself because he was absolutely fuming. He explained he had to look up what orange lilies meant to understand that the flowers were not in fact an apology, but the start of a war. After explaining what a few different plants meant he decided on Petunias. And the two kept coming back for months, looking increasingly more angry every time they came back to buy more flowers. Hitoka was eventually able to settle her nerves around them and realized their personalities and appearances were switched. The blonde had a hostile and intimidating looking appearance, but he was secretly a sweetheart. While the other was much more sweet looking, he had a more aggressive personality. She obviously couldn’t tell them that though.
Eventually they did slow down their visits until they each got a cactus and stopped coming back to the shop. Though not completely as the blonde, who she learned is Kyoutani, sometimes comes back for small succulents.
When Hanako offered to take care of the shop more often when Hitoka entered her first year of high school she immediately declined. Because without realizing it she had fallen in love with the store, that at first had scared her to no end. She convinced her that she could do any added homework at the register when nobody was in the store or when they didn’t need help.
And besides, the only people that made her more nervous than new or intimidating people, were pretty girls. She generally didn’t get any pretty girls in the store, despite the fact that they’d fit the charming setting, they normally didn’t have any reason to get flowers.
Until Kiyoko Shimizu.
Seeing Kiyoko so frequently at school was bad enough. Kiyoko recruited her for the future volleyball manager, and in a daze induced by her beauty, she immediately said yes. Her heart thrummed so loudly in her chest when she was around she’d swear you could hear it from outer space. But the thought only made her even more anxious.
Kiyoko was easily the most beautiful person she had ever met, and everyone else she met clearly thought so as well. Its not like she thought she had a chance with Kiyoko, but her head got the better of her most times.
And it only got worse when Kiyoko found her at work, they didn’t talk long, mostly about the volleyball club and what Kiyoko observed about each member. How they worked best, and how she could bring that out in them. Sometimes Hitoka would tell her the meaning of a flower if she asked. And the lump in her throat only seemed to grow when Kiyoko spoke to her for longer periods of time at work. Until eventually Kiyoko stayed so long on a Thursday a regular, Akio, met Kiyoko and gave Hitoka a look she’d never be able to decipher.
She learnt how to become a volleyball manager quickly with Kiyoko’s help, but even when she knew she learnt everything, Kiyoko didn’t stop talking to her.
It took a long time for Hitoka to warm up to Kiyoko. To be able to talk to her like she could talk to Hanako or Akio, and some days she still had trouble expressing what was on her mind to her. But it did get easier with time.
One Tuesday afternoon Kiyoko hadn’t walked with her to her store, which made her a little tense, because it had become a routine for Kiyoko to walk her to the store when there wasn’t volleyball practice. And what if she didn’t like her anymore, or she lost interest in her, or she didn’t want to be her friend at all and she only wanted Hitoka to become manager. Her stressed thoughts were forcefully put on an erupt halt with the opening of a door and the chime that accompanied it. Kiyoko stood there in all her glory, her face flushed, and money clutched in her hand.
“Do you have Gloxinia?” She asked when she stepped in, closing the door behind her softly. Hitoka quickly nodded and ushered her to the the table where they recently got a supply of different types of Gloxinia. She knew what the flowers meant, and her grandmother insisted on buying only flowers with nice meanings like these, but some of their best sells had rotten meanings.
Kiyoko placed a small black pot of Gloxinia on the counter and payed her, Hitoka wanted to say it was on the house, but the words wouldn’t come out. Especially when once Hitoka handed her the receipt, Kiyoko just delicately pushed the flowers toward her and pushed up her thin framed glasses that were falling on the bridge of her nose.
“For you,” She said gently, adverting her eyes. “I’m normally against picking flowers, but you’re the exception.” Kiyoko picked the flower with the longest stem and leaned over the counter to push the flower behind her ear. Hitoka was too shocked to be nervous or to even react. Until it all came at once, and she could feel her her entire face heat up, and she put the backs of her hands to her flushed cheeks.
“Thank you very much!” She blurted several moments later, then finally finding it in herself to ask her to go to the coffee shop next door. Not so surprisingly, the volleyball team took the news of the date well, after Tanaka and Noya warned her to take care of Kiyoko, they celebrated with her. Even if they seemed slightly disappointed that Kiyoko did not want to date them, they said they valued her happiness more. Hitoka suspected they were infatuated with other people anyways.
They went on several more dates after the first, and frequently went to each other's houses. Kiyoko would often comment on the flourishing Gloxinia with fond eyes. And two years later their relationship was still healthy and strong, and she conquered some of her nerves. She was still nervous, but she likes to think Kiyoko made it easier. Kiyoko pushed her and made her confident in herself. They thrived together, even with her dreadful nerves.
Kiyoko was still one of her regulars that would make her nervous. But now it was a good nervous that Hitoka worshiped.