Chapter Text
"Why is it the heart that everyone thinks of when love is mentioned?
While it’s true that the heart runs when emotional,
It’s the stomach that flutters when flustered,
It’s the throat that closes up when sad,
And it’s my lungs where flowers bloom when my love is not reciprocated."
Three months before Ahn Suho woke up -
Yeon Sieun had been studying in his room when the signs first started showing,
signs of the first bloom.
The room was silent, only filled by the sound of his pen scratching against paper and the occasional sound of flipping pages. Sieun had been studying, earphones in with a lecture video playing in the background,
And then it began,
The feeling of something attempting claw its way out of his throat, slightly blocking his airway, he began coughing in an attempt to breathe, hitting his fist against his chest in order to get whatever it was, out of his throat,
When he finally managed to cough it up, he looked down at his hand in which he held whatever it had been,
A single red petal,
Slightly bloody, yet so pretty.
Why had that been in his throat?
Why had he coughed that up?
Maybe he’d eaten it by accident at some point and not swallowed properly,
Surely it was just an odd occurrence,
A coincidence.
But when the next petal clawed its way out, followed by three more, it had become clear that something out of the ordinary was happening to him, something he had no knowledge of.
He’d heard about something similar to this somewhere, but where?
Right,
Juntae,
He’d talked about a manga he’d read, something about a “Hanahaki disease”, a disease caused by something odd, something unrealistic as Sieun thought at the time, but what?
Well he knew the name, so he decided to look it up,
Many articles popped up on his laptop screen, most claiming the disease to be fiction,
“A disease which causes flowers to bloom within the lungs of a victim of unrequited love..”
Sieun could feel his throat closing up, his breath shallowing, his sight dizzying,
He knew who it was, he knew who he loved, and that’s what hurt him most,
How could Suho ever love him back if he wasn’t even awake?
Even if Suho woke up from his coma, why would he ever love Sieun? It was Sieun’s fault Suho was in a coma, even if everyone told him otherwise, he could not believe that it wasn’t.
And the ‘cure’ for the disease wasn’t helping,
“A surgery that could erase the diseased person's feelings for the other, but may cause memory loss..”
It was bullshit,
Why would he want to lose his feelings for Suho? And why would he ever want to forget his beloved Suho?
This was karma, this was the world's way of getting back to him for getting Suho hurt with his mess, this is the world’s way of telling him that someone like him does not deserve to live.
And Sieun agrees,
He doesn’t deserve to live,
Not after causing so many people so much pain,
But he was also too scared to kill himself,
So maybe,
The disease was a blessing,
Something that would kill him slowly but surely without him needing to put in the effort.
Despite the fear,
A part of Yeon Sieun was glad,
Glad he’d become a victim of the Hanahaki disease.