12 Roses

0 | Prologue

Flowers are a nice and subtle way to either say "I love you" or "Screw you."

The difference between flowers and people, however, is that a flower is always beautiful. It doesn't matter if it is the start of a beautiful love story or marks the end of a life, it will always be beautiful.

Perhaps that just means that every aspect of life is some kind of beautiful.

That was what everyone in your town was taught: never be saddened by the passing of time.

Friendships, good ones that is, transcend lifetimes, love, even more than that. It mattered not if you linked fingers or walked down the aisle, it would never be whisked away with time nor place nor dimension, because then it was just a small insignificant detail, but love is not measured by size.

The town of Chisai was, put simply, very small (hence the name).

There were only thirteen shops, four of which dedicated to tea, then a bakery, a motel, no stoplights, a school, and a large tree in the centre.

Lanterns were hung in the branches, each one put up by one of the townspeople.

For the past couple of years, the population has been standing on the fence between 704 and 705, mainly because the Yurekos couldn't decide if they wanted to both be Yurekos or if Hatsu's wife wanted to move to Tokyo.

The small town lacked hustle and bustle so it was easy to notice small things, things that make appreciating life a lot easier.

At exactly 3:00pm, the bakery begins smelling like blueberry muffins - that meant that Koko had started baking a new batch of bread. Of course, you can't actually go in expecting the first batch - that always went to Nanami, who got off work at exactly 3:00pm.

There was a white cat with black patches around its eyes that slept on the windowsill of Suguru's tattoo shop, even though he insists that he hates animals ("He's just a little softy with some drawings on him," your mom says).

There is a designated grass mower for the centre of town, but he's always careful not to not cut the small purple flowers that grow in the grass.

It was easy to miss if you were just driving through, perhaps trying to get to a bigger city or simply needing the washroom in one of the shops, but the townspeople know that the small details are what make Chisai what it is.

The very first shop in Chisai was a flower shop, across the street from the large tree. It was made entirely of wood and wasn't connected to any of the other shops, and it was the only one that had a dirt path leading up to the door rather than stone tiles.

It used to be run by the founders of the town, the apartment right above it housing them for the fifty seven years they lived in Chisai.

Now, it was run by your family, who were not descendants of them, but were the descendants of some unlucky teenage girl that was kicked out of her house in the big city and ran all the way here (at least, that was the story).

You always knew that the townspeople, your parents included, always added a bit of drama to stories that were completely true otherwise.

Little details inflated, like the meanings of colours and age like a pretentious English teacher who called a woman who wore red lipstick a whore.

Sometimes it was hard for non-locals to properly understand what was happening in town. Frankly, nothing interesting ever happened at all. The last wedding was eight years ago.

The thing about Chisai, however, was that flowers were the language. That part wasn't dramatic.

Give a yellow carnation instead of a red one to a girl on a date, it didn't matter how beautiful it was, her hand would find itself slapping you across the face right before she storms away to tell her friends about it, which eventually will equate to the whole town, which will eventually lead to coerced exile.

Flowers give a truth that a human mouth couldn't give. How expensive the flowers are, their meaning, how many there are, every single detail speaks volumes about how you feel, far better than words.

A flower can't lie.

Roses represent love, but their thorns remind you that it can be painful.

Black dahlias represent death, but their beauty reminds you that it is part of life, and shouldn't be forgotten or scorned.

There was a rumour that the town had gone through the many names of flowers before ultimately settling on its current name.

Upon entering the town, there is a large sign of chipping paint that said "Chisai," with remnants of old names like Amaryllis and Lotus Flower beneath the paint. The mayor always wanted to repaint it, but the town just kept surrounding it with more and more flowers so people didn't really pay attention to the chipping paint.

A few metres behind that sign as you moved down the road was another sign, slightly smaller, but more cared for, with new paint every time it became difficult to read.

It read "deaf child - drive slow."

That child was you.

A child so treasured by an entire town, so treasured that everyone learned sign language and it was a required subject in the town's only school.

The town was inclined on details like that. The things that were whisked away with time, lifetimes even - but never the love. The love stayed.

A/N:
• Anything in sign language is "in italics and between quotations like this"