The Twiyor Anthology - Twiyor Week 2022

Chapter 2: The last sad day of my life (Flowers)

"Agent Twilight, this is a lost cause! Retreat immediately, bomb is too far gone!"

The spy didn't think twice and ignored his superior. He already had his decision since he accepted his mission. And he wasn't going to back down.

"I'm going for it... Sorry Sylvia... but this is to make the world a better place..."

"Wait, Twilight...!"

With those last words, he cut off communication with her and continued to advance into the palace. While the party was still in progress with lots of laughter and wine, the people there didn't know they were in danger. Twilight's mission was to prevent an Ostania hostile group from exploding a bomb inside the place. Clearly, that group was trying like others to start a war with the neighboring country of Westalis.

And a good reason to start one was by assassinating Westalis politicians and VIPs. Coincidentally, there were ministers, civil servants, and even the president himself there. And in a cold war context, if some of them were killed by an Ostanian group, it was obvious that the Westalis response would be to start a war again.

That could not happen.

He had little time to defuse the bomb, but by that point in his life, he wasn't afraid of dying from an explosion.

In fact, there was something that was going to kill him faster than that.

The spy was running through the corridors of the upper floors even though his body was weaker than usual. He knew that many lives depended on him, and he wasn't going to let this incident of his be a cause of another war. As he moved forward, he felt his consciousness slipping away for a few seconds, and every so often, he would cough something unusual from his body.

Red roses, fresh and filled with blood.

What he thought was a magical tale his mother told him as a child had turned out to be a reality. The worst part was that he thought he was immune to love. But it seemed that it had passed through his filters, filling his heart with joy and sadness. He had the magical disease that affected those with one-sided love.

The spy had Hanahaki.

She always told him to be careful when falling in love, that the disease could attack anyone. He never believed her. He always considered romance as something extra; even for his work, he never gave real importance to the relationships he had with the women he used for his missions.

That was until Yor came to his life.

That woman who pretended to be his wife for a good number of years, that woman for whom he had fallen in love. He couldn't believe himself that after all that time, he was going to end up having feelings for her. He denied that every day, until one day he coughed a clover petal to the ground.

The first day of the disease was weird for him. He didn't want to raise suspicions about what was going on with him, so he did his best to hide what he had. He thought maybe he had swallowed a flower, and it had gotten into his mouth. He ignored that fact for a moment. But then it got worse, and from time to time he felt short of breath every so often he coughed up the flowers.

He came to the point of investigating the disease, and learned that the cure for Hanahaki was either to remove the branch from his chest, thereby removing his feelings of love and affection; or to reveal his feelings to Yor, causing the effects of the disease to disappear. Both had serious consequences. In one he could lose his love for his family, and in the other he could die if he ended up rejected.

The solution was simple for him. He could undergo surgery to remove the branch from his chest, and put the disease aside. But he knew that removing the branch would basically be a serious harm to his family. His lack of feelings could tear the family apart, and he would end up losing contact with the Desmonds in Eden.