stigma (n.) // Hyunlix

One

P A R T_O N E

"A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and a man cannot live without love." Max Muller

H Y U N J I N

He doesn't notice at first. Or he does notice - the little flower petal, a round, pale thing, and so small, so innocent when it lands in his hand - but he doesn't know where it came from. He's been a little under the weather for a few days now, but it's nothing serious, just some tightness in his chest, and his throat is a little sore.

The petal appears one morning when Hyunjin is hunched over his desk and sketching ideas for a new painting, an image he's seen through an illuminated window one night on his way home from schedule, of a woman bending down to pick up her child from a high chair. He doesn't notice where the petal comes from, just that it appears in his hand, and he's sure he must have carried it inside accidentally. So he puts it into the little clay dish he bought in Paris the year before, a small round dish that is the size of his palm, the pattern a blue marble. It doesn't hold his attention for too long, but he doesn't throw it away either, the little petal seeming important somehow.

When he does notice though, the realization hits him in full force, and there's no doubt what it is, what it means, no moment of blissful ignorance.

Hyunjin danced for a full hour already that day he found out, the music deep inside his muscles by now, and he's floating, on the music and the movements, and it's as if his body is only following the beats and his mind is watching, two separate beings and none of them entirely him.

One song ends and the other begins, and Hyunjin takes a deep breath, raising one arm over his head, preparing for the next flow, only then something gets caught in his throat and he coughs; once, twice, a third time, and then he's pressing his hand over his mouth, and suddenly there it is. It looks just like the one on his desk and Hyunjin remembers it instantly, the pale sibling to the dried flower petal he kept, as if it meant something, and now he realizes that it did.

Hyunjin stares at his open palm and the little thing resting against it, and he waits for the shock or the panic to set in, to overwhelm him, but his body stays completely still, empty even, so much that he starts to shiver all over.

Hanahaki.

There's a small book sitting on his bedside table in his room at the dorm. It's an old book, handed down from his grandmother to his mother and now to him, with its edges flayed and the cover that once depicted a waterlily in astonishing colors has faded to a milky gray.

It carries the tales and poems of those who crossed paths with Hanahaki. Those that loved people with the disease, the wrong love, the not-enough love. Those that conquered it. And of those who died.

Ever since Hyunjin was old enough to understand, and after the repeated pleas of a child with eyes no one could ever say no to, his grandmother had told the story of her mother's sister, of beautiful Eun-Young, who coughed out flower petals on her seventeenth birthday. She wouldn't breathe the name of the one that she loved and who didn't love her back. Beautiful Eun-Young, who died tragically not six months after the first petal had appeared. The flower in her chest had been a daisy, grown steadily until it took up all the space in her lungs and there was no room left anymore to let the air in.

That was before there were ways to remove the flower and with it, the love for the person that wouldn't love them back. It's an invasive surgery even now, with good success rates but high risks, and Hyunjin has seen the news stories about people coming out of it with permanent health issues. The story that stuck with him was about one man in his forties, a kind looking man, who lost his voice after. It's the one he remembers now. The one that almost makes him throw up.