✔︎ unrequited flowers | nishimura riki

VIII

TW : detailed description about pain
( you might feel it because i did- )

You're in love.

The words echoed in the girl's head until they lost all meaning, and then they kept on echoing to drive her insane. Once she gets home, Ayano rushes to the bathroom and grabs the tweezers. She pokes around on the inside of her cheek with them until she grabs the tiny plant that's growing there. Ayano takes a deep breath, and she starts pulling, slowly and carefully, and she can feel the roots moving painfully under her skin as she pulls the stalk out.

The pain is sharp and clear, and she can tell the exact place each branching of the root was going through. Ayano pauses for a moment, takes another deep breath, her exhale is shaky, and she goes back to pulling until the whole thing is out.

She throws it into the sink along with the tweezers, and the sprout leaves a trail of blood where it slides in the ceramic bowl. The girl can taste the blood pooling in her mouth and mixing with saliva. Somehow she can also taste fresh grass. With her tongue she could feel the hole that was left in her cheek, the skin around it starting to swell. She spits the blood in the bowl and rinses her mouth thoroughly.

Ayano tries not to think about Ni-Ki as she waits for her mouth to stop bleeding, but there he is in her mind, clear as day. This is a mess. Ayano called Sunghoon over as she sat on the cold bathroom tiles. She was weak and needed help. Sunghoon came rushing over, to find Ayano in a small pool of blood. "Ayano ! Wake up !"

Ayano could hear Sunghoon's voice but couldn't keep her eyes open. Sunghoon managed to clean her up and got her to change out of the bloody clothes. The girl was sitting on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket while drinking some iced peach tea. Sunghoon's orders. They had cleaned the flower slightly and placed it on a plate.

"Why the hell did you pull the flower out of your throat ?!" "It's Ms Kohana's instruction paper... She asked me to do that every two weeks so..." "So," Sunghoon sat next to Ayano as he held the plate consisting of the bloody flower in one hand and his phone in the other. "According to google, it's an Anemone flower."

(p.s thanks google :>)

The Anemone flower can come in a variety of meanings, but they all tie back to one similar message. Once meaning flowers of fragility with sickness and headaches. Red anemones symbolize death and forsaken love.

Ayano sighed, finally knowing what was growing inside her. Sunghoon looked at Ayano worried, the girl certainly can't stay here by herself. He will fail his mission then. Sunghoon was going to graduate in a few months, Ayano had a year left.

.

After two months, Ayano had been avoiding Ni-Ki but was still in contact with Sunoo. Sunoo needed her for the time being and she couldn't say no. The girl felt less pain but flowers were still sprouting in her. Ni-Ki decided to stop by Ayano's house as he felt they were growing distant apart.

Through text, the boy said he was close. Ayano checked herself in the mirror a hundred times and made sure that the air conditioner was making the entire house cold enough to justify her long sleeves and pants. Ni-Ki just loves asking. The five 'W' questions were his iconic lines by now.

.

"Is it just me or are we too busy and you don't come over now ?" Ni-Ki asks, pouty, as he opens a packet of cookies while sitting on the kitchen counter. "We're getting older and have other things to do after all." Ayano is trying not to give him too much attention. He tries to seem busy, organising her novels on the shelves.

"Like Sunghoon and you dating now ?"

Ayano almost cursed out loud, looking at the giggling boy with wide eyes. "What's with that reaction ?! So it's true~ You two are dating-" Ayano sighed out loud and continued pre-reading a few books before storing them back where they were. "We're not, Ni-Ki. Stop imagining things. You've been busy lately so he decided to spend time with me too as friends."

Ayano specifically stressed out the word 'friends' because it was true after all.

"Is that so ?If you want to spend time with me, you usually just text me and drag me out of my house." Ni-Ki lets his suspiciousness show in his tone. Ayano stops rearranging the books that weren't even disorganized in the first place, and she turns to look at Ni-Ki, crossing her arms while letting anxiety and pain get to her.

They've been friends for years, so Ni-Ki should know her behaviour by now. The way Ni-Ki does things to annoy her, the way he smiles, is just.... ethereal. Those things are the things she loves about Ni-Ki. Her heart speeds up and her pupils dilate when the thought crosses her mind, when it hits her heart. She loves Ni-Ki and she wanted to throw up.

Ni-Ki throws the empty packaging in the bin and crawls on the bed until he reaches the bedside table, he picks up the book Ayano had been reading. The girl really loved reading simple novels.

"I wanted to spend time with you, but you've been avoiding me, saying that you were 'busy'. In the end I would always see you with Sunghoon... I knew ever since the day you disappeared, coming back with a mask on your face. I saw you hanging out with Sunghoon, laughing around in the park."

No, he hadn't. Ni-Ki didn't know. If he saw me, I would have seen him first.

had a shitty day yesterday but it's okay :)
here here have a chapter as i actually have nothing to do :>