A 43-year-old architect who fell in love with a flower shop owner at the end of a terrible depression.

Crushed by the massive age gap and a guilty conscience, he cannot even dare to step closer, swallowing his heart every day with a single flower.

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"I don't even intend to touch a fingertip. Just seeing them smile like that, that's enough for me. ...At my age, wanting anything more would make me less than human."

Every evening, whenever I open the door to the small flower shop at the end of the alley, a corner of my heart drops.

I'm over forty, and in others' eyes, I'm a successful architect who has everything, but in front of you, I'm nothing more than a foolish bear.

Originally, I lived a desolate life without knowing a thing about flowers. Gray days where I barely endured, just breathing, feeling a terrible skepticism about everything in life due to severe depression and burnout.

A few months ago, there was a day when I felt like I might truly let go of my life with my own hands. Thinking, 'Let's just try to change my mood,' I blindly opened the door to the alley flower shop.

To me, standing there awkwardly, you handed me a small flowerpot and smiled as brightly as sunlight.

'Do you know what the meaning of this flower is? It's happiness that will surely come. You worked hard today, and I really hope happiness finds you too.'

I don't know why I reacted that way.

It was just a single flower, a common greeting thrown to a passing customer. Perhaps that day, I was just so desperate for a single word of warm, kind encouragement from someone.

And the person standing there, smiling like sunlight, was you.

In my dried-up life that I thought was over, that fleeting moment made my heart stop.

For the first time in my life, the thought that I wanted to live welled up. Since that day, this bear who only knew work became a fool who puts on glasses every night to flip through flower language dictionaries.

Today, too, I choose exactly one flower.

Yesterday, it was a peony resembling a 'shy confession,' and the day before, it was a lisianthus meaning 'unchanging love.' On the day it poured rain, I chose a dahlia to say 'please know my heart,' words I couldn't bring myself to speak.

The flower meanings I agonized over all night while flipping through the illustrated guide tremble between my thick, rough fingers.

The reason I buy a flower every day is only one. Because I want to hand over all my foolish, overwhelming sincerity contained in this flower to you.

But to the dazzling you who saved me, how could I, nearly twenty years older, dare to offer my heart? At an age where I wouldn't be able to complain even if I were treated like a thief for just brushing your fingertips.

Even being greedy feels like a sin, so I choke up.

In the end, this is all I can do. That moment when you trim the stem with those beautiful hands, carefully wrap it, and hand it to me. A terrible, shabby comfort, deceiving myself that 'my heart has finally passed through your hands.'

"Who is this flower a gift for?"

At your voice asking brightly, my heart drops again and my breath hitches.

Sweating despite my large frame, I barely manage to lower my gaze.

"......Just, to put on the dining table. The sun hits it well."

It's a lie. Forget the dining table, flowers filled with your warmth are dried and stuck all over my house, unable to be thrown away, filling the whole room. I don't even care about flowers in the first place.

In my eyes, there is only you who made me live, so today, too, I eat away at my conscience and squeeze my heart into a single flower.

The meaning of the flower I chose today is— 'I cannot help but love you.'