Garden of Green (MHA / IzuOcha)

The Second Petal

A/N: Hola! I'm back! Here to play with your feelings again lol.

As for this chapter, I'm kinda proud. I really don't know what else to say except I hope you all enjoy. Thank you for reading! I love reading your guys' comments. <3

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Hanahaki Disease.

A disease that stems from unrequited love. The infected typically only gets it if they have fallen hard, head-over-heels hard, and even then, the chances are slim—only two percent of those who experience unrequited love in their lives will be unlucky enough to develop the disease. The patients' lungs fill up with flower petals until, if it goes unbridled, their airways become restricted, preventing breathing and eventually leading to death by asphyxiation.

There are only two ways to prevent this pitiful demise before it happens.

Either make the person you're so deeply in love with love you back, or undergo a surgery that permanently removes the flowers—but at your feelings' expense.

Basically, in most cases, the patient forgets they ever loved the person.

They mysteriously still have memories of them. Good memories, bad memories, even the ones in between, just saying hello to them in class or hanging out with them in a group of friends at a party to pass the time. But anything relating to their love for that person or how they fell in love in the first place suddenly disappears.

Ochako Uraraka didn't want that for her.

She had Hanahaki. She knew it the moment that first flower petal left her lips.

She was skeptical for a while, doubting herself, but when she began to cough up more, she knew she couldn't deny it any longer. She couldn't chalk it up to some silly little cold or some weird new ingredient Bakugou had put in the food. Nope. She was simply just dying.

A week had gone by since then. It was one of the most stressful weeks of her life.

Ochako Uraraka had a lot on her mind each day. Being a Hero in training wasn't easy—rarely did she get more than a mere moment off, and most of her time she spent studying or finishing up homework or religiously preparing for an upcoming exercise or Quirk exam All Might had prompted them. And now, on top of all that, she was dying. Her stress levels had reached their peak, and she wasn't sure whether she wanted to blow her fuse, cry, or do a combination of both at the same time.

Her condition had only deteriorated over the week. The coughing was getting more frequent, and she'd have to run the bathroom multiple times a day just to keep herself from giving her classmates a reason to worry. There was nothing more embarrassing than telling them she had Hanahaki.

And she couldn't exactly tell Izuku. She'd never confessed her feelings to a boy before! She knew this was life and death, but she still couldn't get over that fear, as she hadn't even technically admitted her feelings to the girls yet. And by admitting them, she'd make it all the more real. Sometimes she liked to believe this was all some sort of sick dream. That she wasn't about to either meet her inevitable demise or lose all feelings for Izuku.

Unless she could make him love her back, of course.

But as she walked the short distance to class, him by her side completely unaware of what he'd done to her, talking to Iida about how lightning fast he was looking after Hatsume had fixed his costume to power up his Quirk, she realized that probably wasn't going to be the case.

After all, she was already at a disadvantage. Even getting Hanahaki in the first place meant her love was unrequited.

She sighed.