of traffic-safety earrings and worn-out cameras • mitsukou week 2020

Day Seven: confession; unrequited love

day seven; may 24, 2020

prompt(s): confession; unrequited love

universe: canon/hanahaki au (they still ghosts tho)

summary: In this world, there is a phenomenon called "Hanahaki Disease". If your love is unrequited, or if you think it's unrequited, your lungs will slowly grow flowers. You will cough flowers and flower petals up until the roots make it so that you can no longer breath and you asphyxiate to death. There is a life-saving surgery, but doing so removes your feelings for that person. Kou is just scared because he doesn't even know who he likes.

—

He looked at his hand. A white petal lay there innocently, looking back up at him like it hadn't just come out of his mouth.

He had felt a tickle in his throat for weeks, but shrugged it off as allergies. But he had just had a terrible coughing fit, and a single petal had come out of his throat, landing on the hand he had been covering his mouth with.

Kou dropped it in the garbage and pretended like the whole encounter never happened.

—

Hanahaki disease, they called it. If you had romantic feelings for someone and it was unrequited- or if you tricked yourself into thinking it was unrequited- then flowers would grow in your lungs, where the roots would take hold until they eventually asphyxiated you. You would cough up flowers and flower petals for weeks— those flowers typically representing a major characteristic of your beloved— until you either died, had your feelings returned, or had a surgery that removed the flower roots, as well as your romantic feelings.

Kou was really just concerned because he didn't even realize he had any romantic feelings in the first place. He didn't have the slightest clue who they could be for.

Thus, because Kou is an innovative and creative boy, he made a list of all the people he knew and crossed off those he knew for certain he didn't have a crush on. His siblings, his parents, the adults, the younger children, until he had his classmates and a few senpai left. Then, all that was left to do was cross each person off one by one until he had narrowed it down to whoever it was he had a crush on! It was foolproof!

He coughed up a few more petals and put them in a spare jar. He set it on his bedside table and told his brother and sister he was collecting them for a school project. They didn't need to worry. He was okay.

Right?

—

He was not okay he was not okay he was not okay hewasnotokay—

He was currently in the boys' bathroom coughing and choking on white flower petals in front of a toilet, the stall door closed. They came tearing out of his throat like paper boats floating down a river. He flushed the petals down and watched morbidly as they swirled away, just like that.

He pretended they weren't filling up his school bag, too, when he couldn't escape to a bathroom between classes. The incidents were becoming more frequent, now— it had been a week and he had only crossed off a few people on the list. Aoi-senpai, Akane-senpai, Hanako, and two neighbor kids. There were still so many left...

He would be fine. It was fine.

He plastered a smile on his face and walked out of the bathroom, missing the mirror reflecting a concerned-looking pink haired boy who wasn't there.

—

"Hey, kid, are you alright?"

Yashiro nodded in mutual concern. "Yeah, you've been acting kind of odd lately, and you're really pale..."