TW : Blood, Possible character death
Ricky sat at his bloodied, blossom-covered desk, wondering how in the name of Bachelor Man he was going to get himself out of this one.
He knew what hanahaki disease was. He had seen people with it during his hospital visits, he'd heard the stories where lovers found one another in showers of petals and heartfelt confessions. He'd just never thought that it would happen to him.
Not to say that he didn't want to love anyone that way, but Uranium was a small town. All the girls there just didn't appeal to him, and he wasn't planning on leaving anytime soon. He had his fantasies, and that was enough for him.
Until Penny.
The day of the Cyclone, after the afterlife, she had come up to him. The way she carried herself reminded him of Jane, the girl that she'd been when all she had was a doll, and all she could remember was the last few seconds after her decapitation. Even then, something about her had intrigued him. And now, here she was, beautiful brown hair and striking green eyes shining in the sun.
She started off asking questions, until she realized that he couldn't answer, so she asked if he was alright with her just rambling, saying she just needed to adjust to having her memories and her head back.
He nodded. She started talking. Together they walked back to the school bus, Ricky's crutches clacking as he moved.
Then she asked for his number so they could have a proper conversation. So she got it. And they started texting. And she enrolled in ASL classes. And about a month later, he coughed up his first cherry blossom petal.
Every choir practice made it worse. He thought about just quitting, leaving the choir and trying to ignore her, but he doubted that'd work. He tried it anyway, taking a week-long hiatus and saying he was sick. It got worse, the petals that he coughed up now coating his mouth with blood, so he came back. He was constantly coughing now. Whenever the choir went anywhere, he'd wear dark face masks, saying that his doctor had told him to for one reason or another. Anytime he even texted her, he had to have a box of tissues and a trash can on hand. When she held his hand during the drive to the last choir showcase, he almost spat flowers onto her dress. When she whispered "Good luck!" into his ear before he went onstage, he'd started struggling to breathe.
But she'd never coughed when she was near him. She clearly didn't have hanahaki, or she was just really good at hiding it. Plus, why would she like him? What did he ever do that made him stand out from the rest of the choir? Was she even his friend? Did she just put up with him because it made her look good, like Ocean used to do?
Stop.
If he thought that, he would end up dying thinking that his friend, no, his crush, had never cared for him at all. And one thing that he knew for sure was that she did. Maybe not romantically, but she did. He wasn't going to go out believing lies.
His mom knocked on the door. He hadn't been near his parents for the whole day. He wished he could tell her to go away. He did the next best thing. Ignored her until she went away. Partly because he didn't want to talk to her and partly because he was too busy trying to get the flowers and blood out of his mouth to answer.
All this because of a girl. A beautiful, sweet, intelligent girl. A girl who had taken the time to talk to him, even when the only responses he could give were head nods and facial expressions. The one who had learned to sign just to talk to him, and who had taught the rest of the choir out of pure kindness. The one who had given him a voice when no one could hear him. The only one of the choir that understood the memes he sent. The only one that he kept updated on his Zolar stories, which he was actually writing down now. Ricky didn't believe in perfect people, but she was close.
Ricky hacked up another flower. His room was covered in blossoms, their light pink petals stained with dark red blood. He needed this to stop.
He could get the surgery, go into one of the many hospitals he had been in during his short lifetime and get the flowers removed. But that would mean having to lose a huge part of himself, having to lose his love for this near-perfect girl, and that wasn't ever going to happen.
He could just die. Let himself choke to death on blood and flowers. He'd stared down death more times than most, and this wouldn't be the worst way to go. Going out because of unrequited love was kind of appealing, in a slightly morbid way.
Or he could tell her. Tell this girl, who'd only ever been his friend, that he loved her. If she loved him back, then boom, problem solved, life saved, everything's fine. But if she didn't, then he'd have ruined their friendship and still be coughing up flowers while Penny blamed herself for it. Or she'd lie, saying that she did love him, and he didn't know what'd happen then. Maybe the flowers would know that she lied and keep spewing from his mouth. Or maybe they would stop, and he'd have to live his whole life not knowing whether or not Penny felt the same way to him as he did her.
No. If he did tell her, he wouldn't let her know he had hanahaki. He wasn't going to be lied to, even if that cost him his life.
So here he was, choking on the flowers he once loved, feeling his airways starting to block, needing to pick a solution. Wishing there was a way to have her pick for him. Wishing that she'd run in and kiss him and tell him that she felt the exact same way he did. Wishing that he just had more time. Wishing that he could just tell the choir. Wishing for everything to just stop.
He'd thought himself the sensible one. Thought that if this were to happen to anyone, that it would have been Noel, with his love for tragedy meaning that he'd sooner believe his love to be unrequited than think anyone loved him in a good, healthy way. Or Ocean, with her perfectionism leading her to believe that there was no perfect enough way to tell the person she loved how she felt. But Ricky, he thought he was the one that would just tell. The one reasonable enough to know that a friendship isn't worth dying for.
But now his time was almost up. He was going to die without his parents, without his friends, without Penny.
He laughed, the simple action making him choke, another flower falling onto his desk, the blood coating its petals staining his desk. How stupid was it that, though he had literally escaped death, he was going to be cut down by cherry blossoms and his love for someone he hadn't known until a couple months ago.
The most imaginative boy in town could never have imagined that.
His vision was blurring now, he had ten minutes at most. He needed to make a decision. Now.
So he did, knowing that it may very well be the last one he ever made.
He wasn't some cardboard cutout protagonist that was written to be projected onto by someone else. He wasn't a basic tragedy. He was his own person. A person that wasn't going to die because he was too scared to tell his crush how he felt. He was gasping for breath as clumps of bloody petals and flowers started pouring from his mouth. He didn't have much time left.
He felt for his phone to text her. It's what Bachelor Man would do.
