• Word count: 1.7k words • Summary:It starts on a crisp winter morning with a rose. It continues on a lazy summer afternoon with a bouquet. It doesn't end on a pouring monsoon evening even with those three magic words.
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Sometimes the thing you are searching the most in your life, never comes to you, no matter how hard you try to find it. But when you finally give up and stop searching for it, it may just right there, find you itself.
That thing was love in the case of Harrison.
IT HAPPENED ON ONE COLD CRISP MORNING. He was brisk walking on the pavement, enjoying the cool wind hitting his face when he was stopped by a little "Excuse me!"
He stopped and plugged the earphones out of his ears, turning to find a woman around his age, holding a piece of paper in her hand.
"Yeah?" He asked, shifting her eyes from the paper to his face.
"Er..." She walked closer. He could sense a brief hesitation in her movement, nevertheless, she stood in front of him, speaking - "Do you have any idea where this (she read out from the paper) Mi-Michi and Mavey's Bookstore is?"
The name seemed familiar to his ears. Before he could think any further, she interrupted him: "It's near some Burger shop... I forgot its name."
The bells rang this time.
"Yeah... It on the opposite side of the post office to the left!"
Oh, of course, she didn't know where that was either. He could tell by her expressions. She must be new here.
"Thank you." She smiled, though. He could again read the hesitation in her voice and movements. She was moving away from him, walking towards the wrong direction, away from the bookstore, from the post office. And that's when he offered to walk her there.
He wasn't looking out for anything that day. He wasn't looking out to talk to her. To notice the slight smile on her lips, or the great complimenting colour outfit she was wearing. Or the way she hid her embarrassment over small things. Or the rose she gave him either.
The rose.
Yes, it was the rose that did it all.
He wasn't expecting anything more than a thank you. And definitely nothing like a flower, a rose specifically.
When they stopped outside the bookstore, she did say thank you, but she also fiddled inside the handbag she was carrying. She plucked out a pink rose and handed it to him. He couldn't deny it because he never had learned to expect it in the first place.
Someone just gave him a rose. Someone he didn't even know the name of.
"Wait... What's your name?"
But she had got inside the bookstore and he had some urgent errands to run.
There was a shop tag attached to that rose. He could read it. He knew where to find her again. He did find her again.
