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Hinata's rose is colored a faded mustard, the petals turning a darker color at the edges. When he puts it in the vase for the stem to soak, the paintings hung on the walls of the gallery only laugh harder at him, their mocking sing-song almost unbearable to his ears.
The rose doesn't improve.
The boy he met not long ago leans over to look at it curiously, eyes darting between the withering flower and Hinata's face, his own red rose and its less than a handful of petals held in his loose grip.
He had looked at Hinata in that same curious way when he found him unconscious on the floor of the dark gallery.
"What do you think that means? It looks like yours is supposed to be yellow, but it doesn't heal."
And the paintings howl at that, eyes fixed on the two of them as if they were the ones on display.
A voice on the back of his head says: Yellow death, yellow jealousy.
He snaps. "I don't know what it means. Let's keep walking to the exit." Komaeda looks at him, apologetic.
Hinata thinks he sees pity there, too. Or maybe he's just imagining it, in the way that happens when you stare at a painting for far too long and its face turns cruel and sinister.
The girl they find in the bunny room has no rose.
When asked about it she blinks at them once, twice, thrice, like waking up for the first time in forever and says "I wasn't given one, I think. I was told to wait here."
When they ask her how long she's been in the room she says "I'm not sure. It feels like a lot of time."
When they ask her if she wants to come with them to find her rose and a way out she says "A quest would be nice. Yeah, sure." and she grabs the biggest, pinkest bunny in the room and follows them out.
They don't have to look for long. They find Nanami's rose in the room with the hands. She climbs solemnly up the steps where it stands like an offering (or a trap) held by a disembodied hand with red nails.
"It's not real." She announces unbothered, just loosens the grip of each finger until the pink rose is free. When it is in her hand the fingers curl again to beckon and Nanami leans to hear what it has to say.
"A gift for you: A rose that fits its owner." It says, in a sickly-sweet voice. Familiar, too familiar.
(Hinata looks down at his own rose. It's paler than it was before.)
The hand uncurls. Reaches forward, its nails like claws. It yanks Nanami by the hair and keeps laughing as sick-sweet as before.
It lets go but not without the three of them prying the fingers apart first in a panic.
Hinata doesn't know how Nanami came to the conclusion that it was a fake hand— it felt real when his fingers touched it, if only cold and stiff as if death had made it its own a long time ago.
They slump together outside the room, safe, hearts racing as one and roses held to their chests.
“Yours looks like it's covered in glycerin… Why?” Komaeda says after a while, looking closer at Nanami's rose, hand only stopping inches from it by Hinata holding it playfully back, by his muttered There you go again.
Komaeda is rueful when he searches Hinata's face and when he opens his mouth to say something a chestnut flower petal tumbles out from his mouth, lands on his lap.
“We need to get out of here.” Hinata surmises after checking they're all okay.
A brand new sign pointing to the exit on the opposite way they came through flashes over their heads.
Nanami has his hand on Komaeda's arm as they stand up. The look they both give him is not an encouraging one.
Or he's just imagining it. Like looking at a painting for far too long.
Nanami's bunny is torn apart in the bear room. The sound of fabric tearing stands out even in the loud mass of talking bears climbing on top of each other to tug and pull and mock.
In the aftermath they salvage what they can and it's with his guidance (“Where did you learn to sew so well?” “I couldn't tell you if I tried, honestly.”) that they're making it whole again.
“I have the impression that this place hates you, Nanami-san.” Komaeda chimes and Hinata grunts in disapproval.
“It's not so bad, I was just a little careless. As long as you guys are fine… I think we're making good progress.”
“Don't say that, it's not like I'd let anything happen to you.” Hinata interrupts, pausing his work to address her, his cheeks flooding with heat, his brow furrowed.
Nanami opens her mouth and a chestnut flower falls out.
Before he can react Komaeda reaches to squeeze her hand. Whatever is contained in that gesture, Hinata's not privy to.
He goes back to stitching up the bunny's arm, frowning still. He's got practice at being left out, after all.
“Regardless of how corny he is, Hinata is still pretty commendable. A knight in spiky armor, right?” Komaeda teases, resuming his own stitching work. Nanami hums.
“If you keep ribbing me I'm not saving you.”
“And what a prickly knight he is!”
“An amazing spiky knight. I'm glad he's in our party.”
When Hinata coughs and feels something silky against his tongue, he swallows it down.
Their advance becomes a strange procession.
Roses held closely, the petals on their tongues have bloomed into flowers that they leave behind wherever they walk.
Nanami speaks in heliotropes and chestnut flowers and clovers under the mocking look of the paintings and although Komaeda doesn't make any mention of discomfort, Hinata knows that his chest must feel as heavy as his own whenever he opens his mouth to laugh and full gardenias tumble out.
As for Hinata he's swallowed most of them, even when the clovers and the yellow camellias have threatened to escape through his teeth. He doesn't think the others know, and unlike them he's managed to mask his coughing fits.
The portrait room is full of mirrors.
Hinata sees—
The marque at the bottom claims his portrait is titled Idealization, or death of the self.
Something (and it's not roots or branches or thorns alone) curls and grows in his belly the more he looks and recognizes the own curve of his nose, his cheekbones, his chin.
Transplanted, smoothed over.
In their left hand the subject has a daisy and a marigold. Their rose has been dead for a long time, crushed in his other fist.
Their face is placid. Hinata closes his eyes before he can stare too long to see their expression remain unchanged and collapses in a coughing fit.
He wakes up on a carpet of red spider lilies.
(“How do you know so much about flowers?” “I couldn't tell you if I tried, honestly.”)
They're not in the portrait room anymore; he can see the impossibly high ceiling of the gallery above the heads of their companions. Nanami and Komaeda are silent as they help him up, remain silent about their own portraits and the room even as they continue their procession towards yet another exit sign.
“I think,” Komaeda surmises after a while, looking at them from a distance, lingering too long on Hinata. “we are not who we say we are.”
He wants to argue but when Nanami steps forward he's choking back on something (roots, thorns, his own words) and can't speak.
“What do you think?” She says, keeping her stare and voice level to Komaeda's. To his credit he doesn't balk, not even after his first attempt for a response results in more hibiscus at their feet.
“I think someone is lying.”
Nanami hums in thought, nods slowly, holds out her rose.
Coughs.
“Mystery solved. You win.” She says with a tiny smile, and this time there's no one stopping Komaeda from grabbing her rose, from plucking one of the petals despite Hinata's protests.
“It's fine. Sorry for lying.” She tells Hinata between coughs at the same time that Komaeda holds up the pink petal for him to see.
The voice says: Pink trust, pink happiness.
“It's made of silk.” He announces and gives the fake rose back to Nanami, seemingly satisfied.
But Hinata keeps catching her stealing glances back at his rose as they walk, a crease of worry there.
------
The Black and White Room is barren except for a podium, another red nailed hand with a lighter nested in its palm and a blank mounted canvas in a backroom protected by vines. It's too far back to read the title.
The pressure against Hinata's chest is so unbearable that he can hardly breathe and no matter how much he swallows, flowers keep blooming in his throat one after the other.
His companions have taken notice. He tells them it must be from his dying rose and over their own blooming tongues they support him against their bodies, whisper reassurances over the cheerful voice that fills the room.
“If you want to be real, it won't be easy.” The voice says. “You have to burn, burn, burn first! Pick what to burn! You could burn one rose! Preferably the forged one! Only then the path will be cleared and you can step out through the canvas! Easy as that! Hurry, hurry, make a choice! The critics are waiting!”
They hesitate before the open palm.
To be real it says. The portrait in the mirror room flashes before his eyes.
In the end it's Komaeda who reaches forward and grabs the lighter— and just like its pair, the hand comes alive. It closes against his wrist like a venus flytrap.
“But why do that when you could always stay with us instead?” It whispers, voice low.
And then it lets go.
Death of the self, the portrait was titled.
The shadow that passes Komaeda's face is gone just as fast too. He steps back from the hand, flicks the lighter on.
Hinata can feel his roots and his thorns shrinking at the light. But he can't speak, only choke back flowers.
Nanami steps towards the light. Hinata wants to reach out to her but she keeps walking further away. He can't breathe.
“Don't think so lowly of yourself.” Komaeda says to her over the flame, not without effort, not without fresh heliotropes and camellias at his feet. “And in any case, she didn't say we had to burn the forgery.”
If Hinata could speak he'd be chastising him now, but as it is he starts coughing just as Komaeda holds up his own red rose.
The voice says: Red death, red fire.
“Stop it, stop it.” Nanami, voice slightly wet, approaching Komaeda, grabbing his coat sleeve, more heliotropes, more clovers, more chestnut flowers carpeting the floor while the flame of the lighter dances above them.
Hinata doubles over. He spills his roots his thorns his blooms— and that stops them at least. They hurry to his side as each new convulsion overtakes him.
He wants to hide, he wants to make it stop, he wants for the flowers to bury him so he doesn't have to look at their faces as they sift through the blooms— the gardenias keeping a secret, the camellias lamenting it unreturned, the heliotropes declaring it undying, and nestled among them fresh clovers, rosy hibiscuses, like names.
Their names.
“Ah.” Nanami sighs, her own flowers with their names joining Hinata's.
Komaeda has covered his mouth with the hand that isn't holding the turned off lighter but Hinata can see their own names peeking through his fingers.
The relief of knowing himself loved isn't immediate, isn't all healing. The pressure in his chest eases slightly and he coughs the last of the roots and gasps and takes in fresh new air, feels Nanami and Komaeda doing the same.
But the thorns still dig at him when he breathes.
“You,” The hand interrupts, pointing at Komaeda. “are dying.”
“You,” She says, pointing at Hinata. “don't exist anymore.”
“And you,” Finger pointed at Nanami. “never existed in the first place.”
“See?” It taunts in the dead silence that follows. “Only in here you could be together, forever!”
Would it be so bad? He asks himself and Death of the self flashes again, yellow rose crushed in their first, bored unchanged expression.
The voice, a voice too much like his own, insays: Yes, yes it would.
Nanami is shaking her head over and over at his side. Only once he can focus again he hears Komaeda talking.
“…a semantic trick, so it doesn't have to be you.”
“I won't allow it, I'm sorry.” She says.
He clears his throat and they stare at him.
“She didn't say we had to burn.” And he stands up slowly, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Their own hands are shaking as they put the vines to the flame. It catches. The path clears and they walk under it.
The hand laughs, somehow content in its failure.
(“Ah, that was a little anticlimactic.”
He giggles, hysterical. “What are you talking about? We could've died, I'm just glad it worked.”
“I like it, it reminds me of a puzzle with a cobweb and a stick… ”)
The plaque under the blank canvas that is the exit reads Hope, or the future.
“I never really got modern art.” When he touches the canvas his hand goes through it.
He looks back and stops before walking through.
Nanami is standing wayside. Behind her the gallery is silently set aflame, color melting off the walls and paintings like wax.
“She was right. There's no place for me out there.” She says and she's smiling. “But for you—”
“We'll make a place for you to live.” He interrupts her, voice soft, a tremor, reaching out for her hand. “You're as real as we are.”
“Don't tell me you talked me out of the self-sacrificial role only so you could take it for yourself?” Komaeda chimes in, extending a hand of his own. “I won't allow it, sorry.”
Hinata can't tell if the others can feel the thorns of doubt as he does nor is he sure that the sensation will leave anytime soon— if ever.
He doesn't know if he'll find his portrait with it's impassive face on the other side, either, but he knows that when they wake up on the other side, they won't be alone. That's a good start for a tomorrow, in his opinion.
Nanami bites her lip, nods, and with the bunny under her arm, with both her hands in theirs, they climb into the painting together as the fake world burns and melts behind them.