Ghost Orchid
The Ghost Orchid, Epipgoium aphyllum, is a member of the Orchidaceae family evidenced to emerge above ground only to flower. Scientifically classified as an obligate mycoheterotroph, it is solely dependent upon the absorption of nutrients from a mycorrhizal network consisting of a basidiomycete species of mushroom and the root system of several species of coniferous trees common to Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France. It is so rarely found within a natural habitat that the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the IUCN, has judged the Ghost Orchid to be critically endangered.
Cultivation of the Ghost Orchid is a strenuous labor. In addition to requirement of a specific fungal symbiont and host tree, the temperature of the environment must be maintained at a range associated to winter so as to properly simulate its natural habitat. This requires that cultivation be carried out in a facility provided with the ability to maintain a range of temperatures throughout its rooms without the interference of ongoing experiments or that the building as a whole retain one consistent temperature at all times regardless of environmental factors such as weather. Ren Shibasaki does not like the cold.
One sample occupies fifteen to twenty minutes of his attention. In a total of five samples, he is required to spend anywhere between one hour and fifteen minutes to one hour and forty minutes tending to the specimens every other day. Ideally, his observations would be increased from once every other day to every day, but his body is not capable of adapting to the temperature. When in the room, it takes less than half an hour before the numbness settles. The sensation slows the movements of his hands and makes it increasingly difficult to work with the samples.
"Ren, your hands look like they're freezing." He does not protest when his equipment is extracted from his numb fingers and set down. Gentle hands, swathed in colored wool, curl around his stiff fingers. She lifts them to her lips, kissing the pale skin, before utilizing a cycle of blowing on his hands and subsequently rubbing them between her gloved ones. Her eyebrows are furrowed as she does this. She does not understand why he refuses gloves though he has explained in multiple accounts that the material only hinders his movements and increases the level of difficulty of his work.
When his circulation has reestablished itself, he withdraws from her, but not before pressing his lips to her forehead in silent gratitude. There are few things about the human heart that Ren understands, but he does appreciate the important things such as compassion and love. His wife accompanies him when he tends to his specimens not out of interest, but concern for his wellbeing. She knows of both his incompatibility with the cold and his resilient dedication to his studies. He does not need to fully understand her actions to know that she does them out of love.
The phenomenon of human emotion is not something that he considers often. As a child, he had rarely expressed the range of feelings that others had; that was not to say that he was emotionless. He had friends that stood by his side and passions that drove him on in life. He knew the euphoria of joy, and the bitterness of failure. Ren felt emotion, but it had taken settling down with a woman near his opposite for the male to realize that love, though only a single emotion, could change in definition and expression depending upon the individual.
Sometimes he cannot understand the expressions of her affection. On more than one occasion, she has done something not because she enjoys it, but because he does. At dinner they converse about his current research though she comprehends little of it. If she has an afternoon off, she spends it with him even if he is working. These small things that she does out of the belief that it will make him happy are her expressions of love. It does make him happy, but he wishes that he could do more to express his affection for her like she does.
Kunihiko says that Ren is more cryptic than he realizes. To him, something might appear to be as clear as day, but to another person it is vague. Only those that have taken the time and effort to appreciate the man that he is can understand the meanings of his words. It makes him uncomfortable to think that she might have to decipher his apparent subtleness to know that he loves her; more so when in comparison to how her heart is laid out upon her sleeve. He has never once doubted the emotions that she holds for him.
"Do you think that the Ghost Orchids will flower soon?" Ren glances to his side, observing the wistful expression upon her face as she presses into his side. Before following him into the research facility earlier this morning she had donned more temperature appropriate clothes, but the tip of her nose is still a playfully bright red as are what little of her ears that are exposed under her knit hat. The sight brings a small smile to his lips and a swelling urge to lean down and kiss her cheek. "I'd like to see them."
Does she know that she is the reason why he is growing the Ghost Orchids?
In an attempt to understand his passions better she had once asked him about the rarest flowers in the world. Without hesitation he had spoken the name of the species once thought extinct for over twenty years before. There had been a genuine fascination in her eyes as he had explained the exoticness of the flora not only in terms of appearance but environment as well. It was rare that something so beautiful could bloom in a season that required sturdier plants; rarer yet that it lacked a dependence upon photosynthesis for its survival.
When she had compared the Ghost Orchid to love he had been quick to ask her to explain the confusing analogy. Love, she had attempted to explain, was something that bloomed under even the harshest conditions, but it was not something that could survive on its own. Despite its strength, its survival was dependent upon another life for support. Ren could not say that he had understood her view of it, but what he had seen was that to her love was a Ghost Orchid. It is an unusual thought, but it is hers.
Perhaps in a month, perhaps in a year, the Ghost Orchids would rise from beneath the soil to flower. Their petals would bloom a white as pure and untouched as freshly fallen snow, their nectar spurs a delicate stalk of green. The vibrancy of their life would be a splash of beauty in an environment that lulled all else to a deep sleep not to be seen until spring. On that day, he would take her by the hand, her gaze hidden until the last possible second, and bring her to see the flowers that she called love.
He may not understand the expressions of her love, but he will use it to convey his own all the same.