I Love You (Ennotana)

Chapter 1

Flowers. Profoundly beautiful, and used to brighten up a day or room by how happy they look. But even the prettiest flower can be deadly to others.

Ennoshita felt a heavy weight in his chest, and he didn't know why. It wouldn't stop bugging him, and even caused him to take a pause during afternoon practice in the gym. The pain was somewhat bearable, but also suffocating. It felt like he wanted to cough, but there was nothing there to cough up.

Eventually, he had to end practice early, but said he would stay to help clean up, since that didn't take too much physical work. After practice, and everything was cleaned up, the second years wanted to go out and get meat buns, but Ennoshita didn't feel very good. It felt like his chest was going to burst open.

"I think I'm just going to head home, I don't feel very well," Ennoshita said to the second years as they were heading out of the club room.

"I'll walk you home then," Tanaka said.

"You don't have to do that, I can get home by myself," Ennoshita said.

Tanaka laughed. "Well, I wasn't offering, I want to make sure you get home okay."

"Oh o-okay," Ennoshita stuttered. The two said goodbye to the rest of the second years and headed off to the direction of Ennoshita's house.

There was a silence between them. It wasn't an awkward silence, it was more of a comfortable one. Ennoshita didn't mind staying in the silence with Tanaka, it was nice to him. He took a quick glance at Tanaka, who was looking up at the stars.

"Beautiful" Ennoshtia thought. He had a crush on Tanaka for a little over a year now. Except, he never got his hopes up, because he knew Tanaka had a massive crush on one of the team managers, Kiyoko. Ennoshita didn't know exactly how the crush developed, but he knew that he really likes Tanaka, but can say for certain he didn't fall in love with him.

Falling in love scared him. He heard all about the stories about a person falling in love just for the love to be unrequited. It led to suffering and brought meaning to the saying "love hurts." And you had to live with the unbearable pain, or at least until the pain killed you. And he knew that if he fell in love with Tanaka, he would probably suffer, which is why love scared him.

"Did you hear what I said?" Tanaka asked, pulling the brunette back to reality.

Ennoshita shook his head. "Sorry no, I spaced out for a minute."

"I asked, aren't the stars beautiful tonight?" Tanaka repeated.

Ennoshita smiled and looked up, "They're always beautiful."

Then Ennoshita started to cough. It made the two boys stop in their tracks. There was something in his throat, he could feel it. But it wouldn't come out.

"Bro are you okay?" Tanaka asked, getting out Ennoshita's water bottle from his bag, handing it to him.

Ennoshita's throat and chest hurt like hell, but he wasn't going to concern Tanaka with it. Instead he took the water bottle and nodded his head.

Quickly, they walked the rest of the distance to Enoshita's house, luckily without any more coughing fits.

"Thank you for walking me home," Ennoshita said. He was blushing, but Tanaka thought that was just from his friend trying to catch his breath from earlier.

"No problem, but I hope you feel better bro." He then turned away, and started on his way home.

Ennoshita started to cough again, so he quickly went inside. This time, he could feel the thing bothering him in his throat start to come up. It landed on his hand, and what he saw, made him want to scream. It was an orange carnation, Tanaka's favorite, mixed with tiny droplets of his own blood.

His hand started to shake. This is exactly what he wanted to avoid. He fell in love with Tanaka, and now he has to suffer because of it. And on top of that, he couldn't tell anyone that because of Tanaka, this stupid disease would kill him. And if Tanaka did find out, Ennoshita wasn't sure on how he should react. Telling someone "I'm dying because of you" doesn't sound very nice. Maybe he would just lie about it instead? He coughed up more petals onto the floor. Either way, tomorrow is sure going to be an adventure.