This is a vent piece, so it’s not the happiest thing.
In any case, I’ve always wanted to write something with Hanahaki disease, just never gotten the chance because I never had any ideas. Well. Guess who just got an idea.
I won’t waste time on the details, but proceed with caution I guess. This wasn’t written to feel complete.
Edit: I uh. edited it. because the original was the unedited version. So now it’s a bit sadder. woot woot.
Word Count: 1293
The envelope was sitting on the kitchen counter when he finally got back home that afternoon. Innocuous, plain, with only his name written on the front and nothing else. He approached it warily and picked it up, flipping it over once, twice, three times. The envelope was strangely heavy, and he was almost afraid to open it just for fear of what was in it, but he couldn’t just leave it there. He took a deep breath and failed to steady himself, failed to prepare himself for whatever was in this envelope.
The envelope came open almost too easily, and immediately he was hit with the sickly scent of dying flowers, the sweet scent of vanilla perfume, and some coppery scent he couldn’t quite identify -- or maybe didn’t want to identify. He did his best to ignore it.
Blue hydrangea petals spilled forth from the envelope. He struggled to keep them contained in one spot, some of them drifting to the floor to land at his feet, some floating over to the other side of the countertop. Only a few remained in the envelope, but enough had fallen out to expose a letter.
He raised a brow and removed it, turning it over to check for any outside marks before opening it. Immediately, he recognized the handwriting -- the swirling scrawl of his oldest childhood friend. Just from the first glance, he was worried. Some of the ink was smudged with what he desperately hoped weren’t tears and the edges of the paper were spotted with what he desperately hoped wasn’t blood and the script got shakier and shakier as the letter continued. He brushed stray petals off of the paper and took another faux-steadying breath.
The thought of reading it scared him, but he couldn’t just leave it there. He owed it to his best friend, who rarely ever wrote anything by hand, who felt the need to make sure this got to him -- he owed it to his friend, so he couldn’t just leave it there.
So he read.
----
If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead. Cliche, right? But I’m serious.
You’re my best friend. That’s why you’re reading this in a letter and not hearing it from my mouth. Because you’re my best friend -- or, you were -- and I care about you way too much. Too much for just a best friend.
I’ll get to the point, I fell in love with you, most likely a while back, but I’ve only recently come to accept those feelings. I denied them because they hurt.
In a way, I’ve always loved you. Maybe not in the same sense as now, but I have. I did have a crush on you when we were younger, bet you didn’t know that. But I learned to get over it, because you clearly didn’t reciprocate those feelings. You started dating (people that weren’t me) and I started dating (people that weren’t you), and everything was fine for a while.
Well, then our breakups happened to coincide. We rebounded off of each other, up there in your room on the second floor, having to be quiet because our parents were downstairs, and they needed to remain none-the-wiser. My heart sang at the same time that it broke, because yeah, I finally got what I’d always wanted -- just some time with you in that way -- but I knew it wouldn’t last.
But hope… hope is a fickle and enduring little thing.
It happened a couple more times, and I had to keep telling myself that I was the only one getting attached, that there weren’t any real feelings behind what you were doing, and even though I knew it was true, I couldn’t stop myself from hoping. That was my downfall, apparently.
So you told me you started dating that girl. I’m pretty sure you guys are still dating. Well -- you must be, if you haven’t come back to me yet. I’m second best, I get that. At least I was the best in some way. I was okay with that. (For the most part.)
My lungs, they weren’t. They aren’t. Excuse the red spots, I’m kinda in my final moments.
I started coughing up flower petals. And like, what the hell? So I go to the doctor. It’s called Hanahaki disease. It comes from unrequited love. Just my luck, right? It’s like, these blooms take root in your lungs, and you cough up flower petals. The blooms just continue to grow until they fill your lungs to the brim and you suffocate on heartbreak. It’s fatal, if you hadn’t gotten that.
It’s also curable. There’s a whole surgery for it and everything. They can remove the blooms from your lungs, but it also takes away your ability to love that person. Removing the flowers removes the feelings permanently, indefinitely.
In my case, either way I’m screwed. My case is really severe, as it would happen. The flowers are really deep-rooted and they’re blooming entirely too fast and more are growing even faster. Leaving it alone will definitely kill me, and the surgery to get them removed also has a high chance of killing me.
Nasty hand of cards I was dealt.
But yeah, the thing about that, you didn’t know, and I didn’t ever plan on telling you. I waited until I couldn’t wait anymore, then kept waiting.
You got us alone one more time, and you’re abusing that power that you don’t even know that you have. You know I’d never tell you no, not willingly anyways. So I unofficially make you a cheater, and then you tell me that we can’t do this anymore, because your girl -- you love her (and you love me too, but not in the same way, and you never will, I know that much) and you want to marry her eventually and start a family and so on and so on.
I nodded and smiled, because… I can’t stand it. I love you so much. I would date you without question if you’d just give me the chance. But that’s not in our cards, ya know?
My little disease got exponentially worse after that little night. I went from coughing up petals to coughing up entire flowers. You know how hard it is to cover up the fact that you’re coughing up entire flowers? There was blood among the nature, too, and I could feel my lungs getting ready to burst. Breathing became so hard, and god, it hurts so much. You know, suffocation? It’s literally the worst.
But the worst part about it all? You’re still with her, and you’re still flirting with me. Why am I always the one that has to show some restraint? How can you tell me that we need to stop what we’re doing and give me an empty apology and not even a week later joke about “copping a feel” again? How am I supposed to feel about this? Did you ever think about that?
What do you
----
He flipped the paper over desperately, but that was it. The end of the letter.
Those were tear stains, and those were bloodstains, and those petals -- petals he now realized were indeed speckled with blood, just like the letter had said -- had come from his best friend’s lungs. Because his best friend was in love with him. And his best friend didn’t get to finish this letter, because the flowers--
And he didn’t want to believe it. He reread the nearly illegible parts over and over again, just in case maybe, maybe they’d say something different the fifth time around. The sixth time around. The tenth. But they didn’t.
That was it. His best friend had died of Hanahaki disease because of him. That was it.
