Black Nightshades

Chapter 7 • Trouble

Deciding this was of no use he quietly slipped inside the storage room, his last hope.

As soon as he entered, his mind entered panic mode. There was absolutely no need for him to worry about something so simple. It was just another customer. There had been so many instances when he had taken over the shop while his mother had been busy and he had managed just fine. But this time, for some reason, he was so conscious of himself. Willing himself to calm down, he took a quick look at all the flowers placed there.

He could recognise a handful like roses, sunflowers, lilies, tulips...and that was four of them. He had been too busy ace-ing in science as a kid to bother about flowers. You ask anything related to science, he can answer but appearance of Black Nightshades?

...??

As unfortunate as it was he couldn't match the flower with the common name. But even the scientific name proved tough. From what Senku could remember of his taxonomy (the study of science concerned with classification) he did when he was six years old, it definitely started with an S and was ended with -num. Sulanum? Selenium? Wait, that's an element. Salanum? The problem was that it had been quite a few years since he had bothered with taxonomy. And this was biology. It wasn't that he was bad. He was just better in chemistry.

Googling it was also out of the option as his phone was stuffed in his bag somewhere. Besides, doing so would mean walking out of here, searching for it awkwardly as Gen watched, running back to the storage room as fast as he could and then looking it up. He was pretty sure people didn't normally do that.

He started with the basic distinguishing trait. If they were named black nightshades, then they must be black, right? If I were my mother where would I put black flowers? Were there even flowers with black petals? Taking firm steps towards a random direction he began to sort through the many flowers there.

"Tulipa, Narcissus, Paeonia, Ipomoea..." he muttered the scientific names of the flowers he worked.

A dark coloured flower would stand out in the midst of light coloured ones. There were yellow, white, pink,orange, purple, red, orange and other colours. Black was nowhere to be seen. Until now he had never been this mad at scientists for their weird naming habits. Why name it black nightshades if it wasn't black?

He tried the next thing that came to his mind. If I were my mother then what would I do to make sure my son- he smiled slightly at that, -knows about things I'm passionate about?

I would try to teach him, Senku answered to himself, ...everyday?

Realisation dawned and he hated himself. Trying to teach him everyday was exactly what his mother had been trying to do for a long time. But Senku being Senku, had never paid attention to anything outside the range of Science.

In short, he deserved this.

Senku took a deep breath and calmed down. This was useless. If all he could do was hide behind the door as he tried to remember name of a flower, can be call himself a genius? Offended by that, he racked his brain trying to think of other ways. Selanum? Or was it Solonum?

What he needed was time. If he could distract Gen enough to remember how Black Nightshades looked or the scientific name he would give no reasons for Gen to think he did not know about flowers. He quietened and listened. The faint sound of someone talking was heard. He slowly approached the door and pressed his ear to it.