Okay, so I was inspired for this fic by another author. They write in fanfiction.net and I swear some of the content on there is really good if you just dig deep enough. Roderica Edelstein is the one who prompted this story in the first place, so if you want to see the inspiration behind this, then go and check their work. (It is a yuri on ice fanfiction, but in reality you can just learn the characters and the story is still superb) Of course, not all of these correlate exactly with their story, but the hanahaki was introduced to me through there. Also, I figured this would go along really well with the lyrics "This is home" by cavetown. To sum it up, hanahaki is when people start coughing up bloodied flower petals due to unrequited love. The person is expected to die within months if nothing changes since flowers and thorns bloom in their lungs, eventually suffocating them and causing internal bleeding. There is only four solutions: They start loving you back. The person who you love but doesn't love you back, dies. You stop loving them. Or, you get all of your emotions surgically removed from you.
"You're different from what I expected," she said softly.
"How so?" he asked, glancing at her.
"I don't know," she replied, searching for the right words. "You just... have this way of making people feel like they matter. Even here, in this... nightmare."
He was quiet for a moment before responding. "You matter, Y/n. Don't forget that."
OR
Y/n wakes up in the deadly Squid Game, surrounded by strangers and fighting to survive. What she doesn't know is that the mysterious Frontman is watching her every move through the cameras- and she's caught his attention.