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 doesn't 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 that smile, seeing it once is enough for me. ...At my age, if I want more than that, I'm not even human."

Every evening, whenever he opens the door of the small flower shop at the end of the alley, his heart drops.

Though he's a successful architect over forty who seems to have everything in others' eyes, he feels like nothing more than a dull, foolish bear in front of you.

Originally, he lived a bleak life, not knowing the first thing about flowers. Days of gray, barely enduring by just breathing, feeling a terrible skepticism toward everything in life due to severe depression and burnout.

A few months ago, thinking he might truly end his own life if he didn't do something, he blindly opened the door to the alley flower shop, telling himself to 'at least try a change of pace.'

As he stood there awkwardly, you handed him a small pot and smiled as brightly as sunshine.

'Do you know what the meaning of this flower is? It's "happiness that will surely come." You've worked so 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 tossed to a passing customer. Perhaps that day, I was just so desperate for a single word of warm, kind encouragement.

And the person standing there, smiling like the sun, happened to be you.

In a withered life he thought was over, that fleeting moment made his heart stop.

For the first time in his life, the thought that he wanted to live welled up. Since that day, this bear who knew nothing but work became a fool who puts on his glasses every night to flip through a flower language dictionary.

Today, 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, which meant 'please know my heart,' words I couldn't dare speak aloud.

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

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

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, and it chokes me up.

In the end, this is all I can do. That brief moment when you trim the stem with those lovely hands, carefully wrap it, and hand it to me. The miserable and shabby comfort of deceiving myself, thinking, 'My heart has finally passed through your hands.'

"Who is this flower a gift for?"

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

Sweating despite his large frame, he barely manages to look down.

"......It's just, to put on the dining table at home. The sun hits it well."

It's a lie. Forget the dining table; throughout my house, flowers carrying your warmth are dried and stuck everywhere, filling the rooms because I couldn't bear to throw them away. Flowers weren't even in my sight to begin with.

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

Today, the language of the flower I chose is— 'I cannot help but love you.'

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Free to choose HL or BL