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Korekiyo, Gonta thought, looked a lot like a great black wasp.
It was an easy thought to occur to him, with Korekiyo always sitting in front of him in homeroom, their inkblot hair resting over their back like a sleek carapace. They never slouched, rarely spoke, and seemed perfectly content to keep their attention focused on the flaky, mite-eaten tomes they seemed so fond of. Quiet, and yet ever-present, just like a wasp.
Gonta would never say such a thing out loud, of course! He was a proper gentleman and knew from trial and error how people often felt about being compared to insects. It was awful enough during moments in homeroom when someone would break the spell of flipping paper and scratching pens to leap from their chair and shriek at the sight of a tiny spider skittering over the windowpane with its pipe cleaner legs.
Those were the times that Gonta felt most grateful for his size. Perhaps it was unbecoming of him to use his booming voice and hunter’s reflexes to leap from his chair and rush to his charges. Then again, a true gentleman couldn’t sit by and let a misunderstood friend have their life squashed away!
It was strange. Whenever Gonta cupped an insect in the palm of his hand with students swarming around him and begging him to kill it, he always caught Korekiyo watching him. Never crying out, never frightened, just a steady gaze over a matte black mask. Always watching.
Truthfully, Gonta wanted nothing more than to strike up a conversation with them (as a gentleman does). Perhaps, if Korekiyo would be so inclined, he’d take their bandaged hand and offer it a kiss, so long as he remembered to keep his posture bowed and his other arm crisply tucked at the small of his back.
But Korekiyo never seemed like one for small talk. Any talk, really.
It was a Wednesday in April when Gonta walked into homeroom. Though usually the first one at his desk, he had lingered out on the grounds to watch the cherry blossoms flutter around him in a honeyed rain. Dozens of waxy pink shells stuck to his hair like cicada sheds.
It surprised him to find only Korekiyo in attendance. They sat at their usual desk in front of his own, their posture mantis-like and disciplined as they studied a fossilized book with a flecking gold leaf cover.
Gonta smiled. “Good morning! Did Korekiyo see the cherry blossoms outside?”
Korekiyo glanced up at Gonta for only a second before they settled back to their reading, the tips of their fingers rubbing at the edges of the book’s cover. The mesh of their mask contorted as they replied in a quiet mumble. “Mm. Yes, quite lovely.”
Over the top of their head, Gonta saw a bundle of color resting on the top of his desk, a curious splash of pink and lilac that made him readjust the smudged frames of his glasses and walk over for a closer look.
There was a bouquet on his desk, an artful arrangement of pretty ruffled peony petals that stood out like a lady’s petticoats against rubbery bell jar foxgloves that smelled like maple syrup and nectarines. Someone had tightly wrapped it up with a silky platinum lace that reminded Gonta of a powdery moth’s wings.
He took up the bundle with shaking hands, almost too afraid to touch it, and that his bumbling clumsiness would tear it all down. “T-This is…” he breathed. The flower smell was dizzying.
Korekiyo, their head still bowed to their pages, gave a wheezy laugh.
“Foxgloves paired with peonies, a message of bashful admittance from a secret admirer,” they said. They readjusted their mask, pulling it higher over their cheekbones. “Well… maybe not so secret in this case, hah.”
“Oh, Gonta understands.” Gonta smiled. A tingling haze swam over his cheeks as he held the flowers close to his nose and shut his eyes. “Who could have left them, he wonders?” He spoke gently, in a tone that gave off that he knew very well who had.
He heard the smile in Korekiyo’s voice. “Who, indeed?” they agreed.
That was the catalyzing event, the beginning of a series of gestures that marked a chrysalis of a relationship. The bouquet gave way to sporadic tokens, single blooms left for Gonta to discover at his desk, and for Korekiyo to murmur a quiet meaning to add to their declaration.
The first token was a single pansy, sunny yellow with a Rorschach face. Korekiyo barely glanced up from their book when Gonta picked it up. “To show that someone has been thinking of you,” they said, the smile clear as a chime through their voice.
“But who?” Gonta played along. He couldn’t keep the charmed laugh from bursting out of him. “Who is that someone, hm?”
“It’s hard to say.” A crackling giggle sputtered from their mask, shoulders bobbing in mirth. “You see, I’ve been so focused on my reading that I hardly see who comes and goes.”
Korekiyo’s game was set, a childish one, but Gonta didn’t care. It still felt like a proper courtship, something refined as opposed to an outright confession. It was a savoring of emotions, a way to see his admirer in a new light from afar. He thought of proper gentlemen and ladies swiveling about each other in their dazzling pearl-strewn dresses and crushed velvet suits, elegant chitlin rustling as they preened and swarmed about each other. Wouldn’t they do something like this? A masquerade of declarations?
The second token was another modest single flower, a honeysuckle clipping with slim petals bursting from its fuzzy core like antenna, its scent an echo of vanilla as Gonta held it to his face.
“Devotion,” Korekiyo mumbled. As always, they kept a book open at their desk, but when Gonta was around, they never turned the page. Their head craned downwards, hair spilling and curtaining their face. “Devotion and affection.”
Compared to the last gifts, this was much bolder. Gonta was almost glad that Korekiyo wasn’t looking at him to see his flushed cheeks. He felt warm, only breaking from his reverie when he saw something latched to one of the honeysuckle’s petals, a tiny white sack with a cottony shell.
Gasping softly, Gonta cupped his large hand around the flower’s head and slowly lowered it for Korekiyo to see, knees bending slightly. “Look.”
“Hm?” Korekiyo tucked away a glossy ribbon of hair behind their ear and gave a small start, an exhalation puffing the fabric of their mask as they looked. “Oh, dear! I wouldn’t have cut that one if I had seen that it had a passenger. Sincerest apologies, Gonta.”
“No, Korekiyo did nothing wrong. Bug friend isn’t hurt, see?” Gonta hardly even processed the confession spun in Korekiyo’s words. He kept his hand protectively cradled about the flower as he straightened his posture and looked at the clock. “Gonta has time to take them outside, he thinks.” He took a step then paused, a sting of anxiety icing his chest as he met Korekiyo’s jewel beetle eyes. “Would Korekiyo mind…” he stopped himself, thought for a moment, then grinned. “Does Korekiyo think whoever left the flower would mind if Gonta put it back outside?” There, the game was back on.
Korekiyo’s laugh was a soft chuff, fond and warm with delight. “No, Gonta, I dare say they wouldn’t mind at all.”
Under the dappled shade of the hydrangea shrubs lining the courtyard, Gonta gently tucked away the honeysuckle cutting. His fingertip brushed at the cocoon’s side, palm pressing against mulch shavings as he whispered to it. “There you go, little moth friend.” He suspected several species that it could be, but the soft shell and sizing was a sure giveaway for a moth, rather than the shiny chrysalis of a butterfly.
As he stood, his eyes widened as his nose caught the smell of perfume and he glanced back down. “Oh!”
The hydrangeas dotted the shrubs in a mix of blue and purple popcorn ball puffs. Insects congregated around them, whizzing specks of black mites and fat honeybees. Teeming with life and nurturing health and, Gonta thought, the perfect reciprocation to Korekiyo’s gifts. Maybe it was flashy, but what gentleman worth their salt wouldn’t go all-out? They looked like fireworks paused at their brightest.
How strange. He had always focused so deeply on the bugs surrounding them that he had never considered the flowers themselves outside of being a pollen source.
Gonta smiled to himself as he ambled back down the courtyard to the school doors. He’d come back in the evening for a cutting, the heartiest of the bunch. The purple would be best, he thought, less pastel than the blue, and more complimentary to Korekiyo’s ebony shell.
He wondered, what would a hydrangea mean to Korekiyo? Their little assigned definitions and meanings seemed utterly random, but they were never negative, only positive and kind.
The hydrangea wouldn’t be any different, surely?
Few insects lived long lives.
Flowers were the same, and Gonta didn’t waste any time in gathering his cuttings in a decorative bushel to present the very next day, the white-speckled branches tied up in a stringy hemp rope with three orb-like blooms squashed together. It wasn’t nearly as pretty of a decoration as Korekiyo’s ribbon work, but it was all Gonta could scrounge up from the depths of his dorm room. It was that or a strand of mounting wire, and that was much too impersonal for his liking. A gentleman would never!
It was just a shame that he didn’t have an element of surprise. Korekiyo was always painfully early to every function they went to, and class was no exception. They were a creature of overbearing punctuality, and it gave them a wondrous and mysterious omniscience that made Gonta’s chest somersault.
Wasps, he knew, were often like that, always nesting up in lofts and alcoves where and when you least expected them.
There would be no opportunity to leave the gift on Korekiyo’s desk without risking walking in on Korekiyo themself. Gonta wondered, briefly, about the possibility of leaving the flowers outside of their dorm room, but he dismissed the idea as impractical.
So, it couldn’t be helped. The game would end with all of its playful anonymity stripped away through Gonta’s act of reciprocation, but that wasn’t so bad. All good things had to end before they spoiled.
It was a mild day when Gonta found himself in the doorway leading to the sterile familiarity of the homeroom hive, the hydrangea bouquet hidden behind his back as he watched Korekiyo glance up from their book, their eyes twinkling. “Someone is early,” they teased.
Gonta felt sweat pearl over his forehead. He tried to ignore it as he readjusted his clammy fingers around the bouquet and walked to Korekiyo’s desk. He swore he could hear the petals rustling behind his back. “Gonta has something for Korekiyo.”
“Oh?” Korekiyo closed their book and slid it aside, their beady eyes alight with usual clinical curiosity. “What’s the occasion, hm?”
They asked this in their usual amicable tone, but Gonta stiffened. He felt like he was being asked to dance a waltz without knowing the steps. With a dry throat and perspiring hands, he pulled the hydrangea bundle from the small of his back and offered it in a gesture that he hoped wasn’t as sloppy and shaky as he thought it looked. “F-For Korekiyo,” he stuttered.
Korekiyo’s eyes widened. The hydrangeas were still fresh, their woody branches knocking together underneath three massive domes of spider-sized purple blooms. They gingerly took the bouquet and held it closer. To Gonta’s utter horror, they almost looked more pensive than happy.
Without bothering to think, he babbled. “G-Gonta just thought Korekiyo should have something, too! Because Korekiyo has been so generous to him.” He grabbed a small folded-up cloth in his breast pocket and dabbed his face, risking looking sloppy to keep the sweat from running under his glasses. He couldn’t recall the last time he had been so nervous. “… Do they not like them?” His voice wobbled. “If so, Gonta is truly sorry!”
That snapped Korekiyo back to attention. “Oh, no! Gonta, darling, you’ve done nothing wrong at all. Don’t fret, please.” They put a comforting hand on Gonta’s wrist, the starched cotton resting like a featherweight on his cuff. “If anything, I apologize. Sincerely. Quite rude of me to get lost in my mind for a moment there.” Chuffing softly, they stood from their desk and gave Gonta’s wrist a firm squeeze, nodding their head towards the bouquet in their hand. “I just thought it funny.”
“Funny?” Gonta asked. He could tell that Korekiyo was smiling in that hidden way of theirs, their mask scrunching up to their nose. “What is funny?”
“Hydrangeas.” Korekiyo lifted their hand from Gonta’s cuff to run their fingers over the petals. “From a Victorian perspective, a hydrangea can signify one of two things: distrust or heartlessness. No clear idea why, though some have speculated that the flower’s low seed count, despite its large size, gives it a bit of an ostentatious air.” They spoke fervently, passionately, eyes ablaze as Gonta stared down at them, dumbfounded and incredibly embarrassed.
“Gonta was not aware any flower could have such a nasty meaning,” he said, blanching. “Bug friends are all friends, so he thought Korekiyo’s flowers were similar.” And how utterly foolish for him to think so.
Korekiyo tittered, unmistakably delighted. “Oh, if only! Sadly, no. Many flowers have had awful meanings ascribed to them. Sunflowers can convey unhappiness with a bad business partner, petunias for resentment, basil for hatred. Goodness, the possibilities are endless with flower language.”
They raised the bouquet to their face, eyes fluttering shut. “It’s all very silly, flower language. Victorians really only made the whole thing up to sell decorative books for the upper crust to decorate their parlor tables. Quite popular, too, filled up with illustrated plates by budding artists. Alas, many of the surviving books are worthless for resellers as the worth was in the plates, which were often ripped out and sold by themselves. But from an anthropological perspective, the text has its own value as a little cultural learning tool, and…” They trailed off, cleared their throat, and blushed. “My apologies for going on a tangent.”
Gonta shook his head. “No, it is interesting!” Korekiyo always spoke with such a soft assertiveness, a calm balm to his nerves. “They’re not upset?” he asked.
“Why would I be?” Korekiyo’s mask rose in a grin. “A handsome boy brings me a bouquet of stolen flowers, and he asks if I’m upset?” They snickered in a giddy and breathless little way. “May I kiss you?”
Gonta, unable to speak, nodded.
Korekiyo, with a pleased hum, pressed the mesh fabric of their mask to Gonta’s cheek. It was a chaste gesture, the purse of their lips barely noticeable under a thick layer of fabric. It didn’t matter. A kiss was a kiss, after all, and Gonta was sure he’d faint just from how Korekiyo’s nose squished against his face. They smelled like the archives in the school library, that primordial old book smell of woodworms and mothballs.
“Thank you,” Gonta murmured. He tried to keep his voice as quiet as possible, lest he break apart the undefinable tension between them. It felt fragile, gossamer thin, and apt to tear apart if he navigated through it with his usual oafishness.
Shakily, he wrapped an arm around Korekiyo’s lithe waist, his boxy palm settling at the small of their back. “Korekiyo is welcome,” he said, before slowly craning his neck to kiss Korekiyo’s forehead.
Korekiyo’s mask raised up higher on their face, eyes crinkling to what Gonta knew had to be a smile underneath their shell as they deftly kissed him once more, their lips fluttering underneath their mask and their gloved hands weaving around his arm as they whispered.
“You really are quite the gentleman.”