There's something about the smell of soil which intrigues you, pulls you in, compelling you to sink your knees to the hardened ground and feel the softness of them, slipping through your fingertips, leaving starkly contrasting stains of dirt on your rosy palms. And as a child, you weren't like other kids. Staggering, clambering on your unsteady tiny feet, you'd ask your father to buy you seeds of plants whose names you couldn't even pronounce without stammering on your own spit, nurturing them like your own offsprings—and maybe that's how you actually felt.
It's a nameless sense of consolation—something you dared not name in fear you might fail.
And even as the time passed and the number of your age grew from single digits to two mature figures, your absurd —much like your sister fancied referring to it—tendency only kept growing. And you never bothered over the effort it cost. Nor the fact that your nails would never look the same as your sister's perfectly manicured ones. That, in fact, is the least of your concerns. The outlandish bursts of colors draping your garden in spring repaid you in priceless contentment you doubt your sister ever gained from her immaculate fingernails.
But the smile this thought triggered only pales into a pained wince as you reach over to trim the last of yellowed leaves of your hydrangeas, the drooping baby blue blossoms prodding your face coyly each time you lean over for the lower stems.
You are panting, clumps of greasy hair dampened with hours of exertion under an unforgiving midday sun sticking to your red-flushed cheeks and your lime green gloves coated in a good film of soil by now. And the least you've anticipated when you set out to tend your garden this afternoon is this thick blankets of grumpy, dull clouds now obscuring the former azure blue skies above; scowling down at you as if to dare you to remain a moment longer outside.
A distant thunder rumbles through the murky dorm overhead, once glimmering horizon now blurred into a blotched glum grimace.
Expectations hurt, you darkly think as you strive to quicken your movements, the pruning shear in your hand dislodging dead leaves and dried stems with years worth of practice. But the effort somehow proves to be insufficient. You have two more flower beds to tend to—the lisianthus and oh God, the roses, the orange ones Namjoon bought for your birthday. There's no way you'll concede defeat this soon, your eyes rise up to the heavy sky, as if to let it know as much.
But persistent as it is, endless sheets of rain start to plummet from the sky the next second, drenching the parched grounds. And you are soaked to the skin, your vision sodden as shards of rain prickle into your squinted eyes. Your clothes start sticking entirely to your drenched skin in no time.
And then, it's pouring.
But your reluctant hands remain intact with their deft devotion, head ducked and ears capturing nothing apart from the howl of the downpour and the beat of the occasional wind. It's only the roses you have to finish now. And the rain seems to have no mind to die out any time soon, raindrops hammering against the muddied expanse of your garden like an onslaught of pebbles plummeting from the heavens. If the pruning can't be done on time, that'd be a lost cause. Another failed experiment. And you can't afford it—not with them.
Screwing your eyes into thin slits in a vaguest of attempt to see through the relentless sheets of rain, you scramble towards the flower bed, their stems bowing down, drooping even lower—the exuberant herd of shrubs already swamping towards the grounds.
And when you crouch over, lowering your pruning shear to the closest shrub, as diligently as possible your slick hands and the restless rain allowed, the never ending, stinging feel of thousand raindrops on your skin subsides—until it dwindles into the faint trickles of water trailing down your dampened tresses and onto your face.
