It's been years since Kaveh and Alhaitham have been roomates. Everyday, fights would would fill the peaceful air's atmosphere. It kept going on like that. Until.. Symptoms of Hanahaki presents itselves to Kaveh..
Kaveh was, in fact, confused with all this. He's only ever heard of Hanahaki. Who would've thought that Reverse Hanahaki existed? He looked at the others who were as confused as he is. Except for Alhaitham and Paimon? Hold on.. Why does Paimon seem to know something? He then took a glance at Traveler. She doesn't seem to know anything. So what could Paimon know about this that even traveler doesn't know about?
"Nahida sure loves gatekeeping important information.." Paimon lowly muttered.
'Paimon knew there was something fishy..! Alhaitham admitted that he likes Kaveh back. He just had to distance himself! So how could he have Hanahaki if it's not one-sided?!'
'As I thought.. It would be impossible if he had Hanahaki instead of Reverse Hanahaki.. It's not even one-sided..!'
"Paimon, you seem to know something about this.. What is Reverse Hanahaki..?" Collei, who noticed Paimon's strange reaction to the situation, mentioned, also obviously curious.
"Well its.. uhm.. Reverse Hanahaki is where the person who loves the other doesn't get the disease, but instead, the one who they love does." Paimon hesitantly answered.
"The flowers can be surgically removed but it'd be removing the person's love for the one who has it..." Alhaitham continued.
Everyone was left shocked at their answers except for of course Sucrose, Albedo and Tighnari.
"Well, since we don't know who likes Kaveh, should we just surgically remove it?" Cyno said.
Everyone basically just agreed to what he said. Except for Tighnari who seemed somewhat uneasy about the whole situation.
"Wait..! I'm having a feeling that I know who likes Kaveh.." Tighnari protested. "Really? Who?" Cyno replied.
"Raena..(Rena) She used to be the class secretary back in our Akademiya days." Tighnari slowly uttered. Despite Kaveh being her senior and only barely sees him, certain opportunities that led to unexpected meetings with him only increased her feelings for him.
"Raena..? Isn't she the short girl that's always with you guys?" Kaveh said, trying to recall his memories. Kaveh somehow has a special place for Raena in his heart when they were young. The day Alhaitham rejected him, Raena was there for him when he was having it tough. Those moments fuelled his feelings for her. But he shoved those feelings aside for he didn't believe any of it. Falling for someone who comforted him out of pity? So not him. But with the sudden mention of her name, those feelings slowly start to resurface. And Kaveh somewhat feels a little at ease for a moment. That is before Cyno interrupted to silence with his question.
"Which gives us the more reason to surgically remove it." he abruptly blurted out.
"I say we go meet up with her." Kaveh unexpectedly said. Even Kaveh himself was surprised at his sudden outburst. "I'm the one with the disease. I should be the one to decide what to do."
"And where do you think can we find her, exactly? She could be anywhere." Cyno protested, who was slowly starting to lose his patience. He's been feeling uneasy leaving his job as General Mahamatra to a rookie. As much as he wants to complain, the 'acting grand sage' is just a few meters from him, and he's too worn out to start a scene.
"Shouldn't she be with Layla? If I remember, they were at the same house." (don't come for me I forgot the names of those Akademiya houses😭😭) Alhaitham answered, trying to hide the annoyance in his expression.
"Layla? I was with her last week and it didn't seem that she knew of Raena's whereabouts." Collei wondered.
"Great. Now we have to go treasure hunting for a person that Celestia knows where. Teyvat is ginormous. She could even be in Inazuma or Snezhnaya." Cyno angrily blurted out.
"Kaveh should be the one complaining, not you, General." Alhaitham said, clearly pissed off.
"Maybe we could ask Layla. Maybe she has an idea of where she could be." Collei suggested, trying to ease the tense atmosphere.
"I'd say that's a great idea. You, Cyno and Alhaitham can head back to Sumeru and ask her." Tighnari instructed. "This is ridiculous.." Cyno grumbled under his breath. "Go on now. We don't have much time left." Tighnari said, obviously trying to get them out of his sight.
As the three left for another long heck of a journey, Tighnari went back with Albedo and Sucrose to examine and understand more of Kaveh's disease.
Kaveh is stuck with the traveler and Paimon. Kaveh and traveler both gave Paimon the glare. Paimon suspected that they were probably mad at her for having quite the knowledge about Reverse Hanahaki, that not even Cyno and Collei seem to know.
"Look.. It just so happen that Alhaitham offered Paimon a book the last few days we were visiting. It was a book about illnesses, diseases, medicines and such..! Paimom thought it was useless at first, but Paimon thought about it and maybe knowing about illnesses can help Paimon in the future when traveler falls ill. Hanahaki just happened to be in the book. And at the end of the chapter, by the final page, the writer gave some information about Reverse Hanahaki.." Paimon said. The two didn't even ask the question yet but Paimon already saw it coming.
"Since when were you so observant?" the traveler wondered. "Are you sure there isn't any other way to help cure Kaveh? Without hurting him or Raena..?" Collei worryingly asked. She's close to Kaveh so of course she'd be worried. But that doesn't mean she won't bat an eyelash at Raena. She's met her through Layla and she was one of the sweetest people you can find. She takes time off even with her busy schedule and help others. She worries about the people around her than herself. It would be easy for Kaveh to fall for her. But of course, that'd be the cause of the third party's heartbreak. Alhaitham. Living with Tighnari basically gave her access to countless stories of how their high school days went. Of course knowing Cyno, who always dropped by Tighnari's house after work, he'd never leave Kaveh and Alhaitham's story. But it's mainly from Alhaitham's perspective of things. Not really sure if what Cyno said about the two is real in Kaveh's point of view.
Back at Tighnari, Albedo and Sucrose, the three went on and examined Kaveh's current condition from the blood sample Sucrose took not too long ago. The results left them in shock. Kaveh is already at stage two Reverse Hanahaki.
Both Hanahaki and Reverse Hanahaki has three stages. The first stage is the petal stage. This stage is where the victims only feel quite less pain and the flowers they cough would only be flower petals. The flower varies depending on the love interests. In other words, the victim coughs out the favorite flower of their love interest. Same for Reverse Hanahaki-the favorite flower of the person that likes the victim. The second stage is when the victim cough out flower buds. At this stage, the roots of the flower growing in the victim's lungs would slowly enlarge. By the third stage, the victim will cough out fully bloomed flowers. As for the main flower growing in the victim's is lungs, it's roots would seal the air passages, suffocating the victim to death.
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It seems that it won't be long till Kaveh reaches the third stage of the disease. If they wanna find Raena, they better find her quick.
