“Aren’t they beautiful?” Iris asks me with a smile. I blink once, twice, then rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

“How—” I cut myself off and look away from them and at Iris, clearly confused. “How are they doing that?” He laughs at my reaction and shrugs.

“I don’t know either,” he says. “I guess it’s just a thing they do.”

I stare back at them, setting my basket on the floor and kneeling down to get a closer look them. My knees become wet from the rain, but I could have cared less because before me was something I had thought was impossible, and it was beautiful.

When I turn around to look back at Iris, he’s gone. The rain is still pouring, the flowers are still thriving and I’m left alone with them. He probably went inside, I think, shrugging it off as I turn back to the flowers, absolutely fascinated by them.

At this point, I’m soaked in the rain, my clothes sticking to my skin and leaving me uncomfortable. I knew that it was time for me to go back downstairs and into the shop, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from the small flowers—they were just too beautiful.

I’m filled with confusion when I can’t feel the rain anymore. I can hear it, but it isn’t hitting me anymore. I look up and see Iris standing above me, holding a jacket over my head as he continues sky continues to shower him with its tears. “I couldn’t find an umbrella,” he starts, “so this is the best I can do for now. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I tell him, watching the raindrops fall from his hair to his face and then to the ground, where it then disappeared. “It doesn’t bother me. You’re still wet though.”

He turns quiet. It seemed to me he didn’t realize that it was still raining. Then, Iris laughs, smiling his bright smile—the kind one, the one where his eyes sparkled and the joy was evident; the one that I had been missing the last couple of weeks.

He’s like a child.

“It appears so,” he says, looking up at the sky as the droplets fall onto his face. He’s still smiling and suddenly, I find him more interesting than the flowers.

He was so beautiful, just like the transparent flowers under the falling rain. But even as he smiled so brightly, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before his smile disappeared.

The most beautiful flowers mourn, and he was the most beautiful of them all.