Chapter Text

H Y U N J I N

He doesn’t notice at first. Or he does notice - the little flower petal, a round, pale thing, and so small, so innocent when it lands in his hand - but he doesn’t know where it came from. He’s been a little under the weather for a few days now, but it’s nothing serious, just some tightness in his chest, and his throat is a little sore.

The petal appears one morning when Hyunjin is hunched over his desk and sketching ideas for a new painting, an image he’s seen through an illuminated window one night on his way home from schedule, of a woman bending down to pick up her child from a high chair. He doesn’t notice where the petal comes from, just that it appears in his hand, and he’s sure he must have carried it inside accidentally. So he puts it into the little clay dish he bought in Paris the year before, a small round dish that is the size of his palm, the pattern a blue marble. It doesn’t hold his attention for too long, but he doesn’t throw it away either, the little petal seeming important somehow.

When he does notice though, the realization hits him in full force, and there’s no doubt what it is, what it means, no moment of blissful ignorance.

Hyunjin danced for a full hour already that day he found out, the music deep inside his muscles by now, and he’s floating, on the music and the movements, and it’s as if his body is only following the beats and his mind is watching, two separate beings and none of them entirely him.

One song ends and the other begins, and Hyunjin takes a deep breath, raising one arm over his head, preparing for the next flow, only then something gets caught in his throat and he coughs; once, twice, a third time, and then he’s pressing his hand over his mouth, and suddenly there it is. It looks just like the one on his desk and Hyunjin remembers it instantly, the pale sibling to the dried flower petal he kept, as if it meant something, and now he realizes that it did.

Hyunjin stares at his open palm and the little thing resting against it, and he waits for the shock or the panic to set in, to overwhelm him, but his body stays completely still, empty even, so much that he starts to shiver all over.

Hanahaki.

There’s a small book sitting on his bedside table in his room at the dorm. It’s an old book, handed down from his grandmother to his mother and now to him, with its edges flayed and the cover that once depicted a waterlily in astonishing colors has faded to a milky gray.

It carries the tales and poems of those who crossed paths with Hanahaki. Those that loved people with the disease, the wrong love, the not-enough love. Those that conquered it. And of those who died.

Ever since Hyunjin was old enough to understand, and after the repeated pleas of a child with eyes no one could ever say no to, his grandmother had told the story of her mother’s sister, of beautiful Eun-Young, who coughed out flower petals on her seventeenth birthday. She wouldn’t breathe the name of the one that she loved and who didn’t love her back. Beautiful Eun-Young, who died tragically not six months after the first petal had appeared. The flower in her chest had been a daisy, grown steadily until it took up all the space in her lungs and there was no room left anymore to let the air in.

That was before there were ways to remove the flower and with it, the love for the person that wouldn’t love them back. It’s an invasive surgery even now, with good success rates but high risks, and Hyunjin has seen the news stories about people coming out of it with permanent health issues. The story that stuck with him was about one man in his forties, a kind looking man, who lost his voice after. It’s the one he remembers now. The one that almost makes him throw up.

The story of his distant relative, told in his grandmother’s comforting voice, had been nothing but romantic to his own ten-year-old ears, the tragedy only making it sweeter. He’s always imagined beautiful Eun-Young almost dream-like, the same way he imagined princesses in fairytales. He’s been holding on to the book ever since, reading through it from time to time.

Hyunjin stares at the petal in his hand, the one that came out of his own throat. It’s less romantic now, with the glare of the overhead lights reflected back in the wall-to-ceiling mirrors, making it look real and devastating. Raw. He can’t tell what flower the petal comes from and doesn’t remember how much it even matters.

There’s another thought in his head, silly and mocking, and he almost wants to laugh but it gets stuck in his throat like the flower did.

Who?

His mind provides an answer immediately, or his heart does, and his mind pushes back against that thought like it wants to protect him from the realization, and Hyunjin grabs at his chest as if he could grab his heart, and he sinks to the floor, breathing heavily against the onslaught of pain.

Hyunjin likes people easily and quickly, trusts fully from the very start. But love creeps up on him ever so slowly, always has been, and it takes him a long time to realize that that is what it is. That friendship-love has turned into something altogether different.

That love has been there for some time now, the knowledge of it, sitting in the background as something Hyunjin knows he can’t have, and he realized so late, he knows that now. He remembers a slightly younger Hyunjin, sitting in the back of a parked car, and he remembers the fear in him, the doubts, and the barely hidden disappointment in the face of the one next to him. There are so few years separating him from that moment and so many regrets.

Laughter greets him at the dorm before he even sees any of the others. He walked all the way home, his mind restless, and he imagined telling them, over and over, a hundred different scenarios, but the moment he walks through the door something else slips into his chest. Shame, white-hot, and burning through his insides. The shame of loving so much that the flower started growing. The shame of not being worthy enough to be loved back. It attacks him right there at the entrance where Hyunjin is supposed to take off his shoes, but he can’t, can only stand there and listen to the others laugh. He hears Jisung, who’s always laughing the loudest, but there’s Chan too. And Felix.

It hurts more than he thought it would, and he swallows the tears down that come so suddenly at the sound of them. He slips into the bathroom without saying hello, buying time to gather his composure.

Now that he knows, he can feel the presence of the flower in his chest. It’s an odd feeling, not quite as alarming as it should be, not worse than all the times he’s had a cold.

His tears come then and they mix with the hot water from the shower, but they have dried when he towels off his body. He spends an extra twenty minutes getting through his evening routine, and by the end of it, the swelling around his eyes is barely noticeable.

“Hyunjin-ah!” Jisung shouts when Hyunjin makes his way into the kitchen, a bright smile on his face.

Chan is next to him, and so are Changbin and Felix, and Hyunjin remembers that the latter two are writing a song together, so he guesses that Felix is staying for dinner before they’re going back into Changbin’s room and puzzle over words and rhymes until Felix will eventually fall asleep on Changbin’s bed and Changbin will put a blanket over him and either climb into Chan’s bed or take the sofa in the living room. It has happened before.

Hyunjin wishes he was the one working on a song with Changbin so he wouldn’t have to face his own thoughts. At least for a little while.

“Here, sit,” Changbin pulls a chair closer to the table and hits it with his flat hand, making sure that Hyunjin understands the invitation.

“Do you want Japchae or Gimbap?” Felix asks, already placing an extra set of cutlery on the table, waiting patiently until Hyunjin chooses the Gimbap, and then he immediately places a portion of the food on one of the plates, always so ready to take care of his members.

It’s not normal in his dorm that they eat together. They’re barely home at the same time when they’re in town, and Hyunjin usually ends up eating alone when he feels hungry without waiting for anyone else. It’s only ever when one of the others is over that he gets something like this. The camaraderie he has found himself jelous of sometimes.  He’s not sure how to live through it today. How to face them now.

“You look tired, Jinni.” Changbin hand slips under Hyunjin’s chin once he sits next to him, and he tilts his head up, searching eyes flying over Hyunjin’s face.

“You okay?” Chan asks, alerted immediately by Changbin’s words, and Hyunjin pulls back, laughing weakly.

“I’m alright, god, leave me alone,” he jokes even though it doesn’t fully work. He avoids their eyes, scared that either one of them will see through him immediately and make him talk, but they seem to fall for it, both of his hyungs letting off and going back to serving the food out of plastic containers. They all order food like that, more portions than they actually need, expecting that another member will eventually be hungry too, and will be happy about the leftovers.

Soon they’re back to talking about whatever they did before Hyunjin walked in, but he isn’t listening, just letting their voices wash over him, soothing in their familiarity. Changbin stays a little closer than he usually does and Chan keeps a watchful eye, but Hyunjin likes that, feels the love in those little gestures from all of them, and he wants to cry again, over the cruelty of the disease because Hyunjin knows he’s loved so deeply, but it doesn’t count. It’s not the love Hanahaki is looking for.

Felix takes the seat on Hyunjin’s other side. His presence is a quiet one, the way it usually is between them unless they’re clowning and teasing each other when they both have too much energy to spend. Hyunjin even expects Felix’s hand on his neck, a quick, encouraging squeeze, because Felix can’t not touch whoever is closest to him, not when he’s feeling at home and comfortable.

Felix has no idea how much that touch is hurting Hyunjin today.

He turns towards Felix and manages to smile at him, getting a soft smile in return.

Felix doesn’t pull his hand away, even though Hyunjin’s counting the seconds, wants Felix’s hand gone not because he doesn’t like it, but because he’s not sure how long he can stand the touch without breaking underneath it. Instead, Felix seems to spot something on Hyunjin’s face, a hair falling out of place, and he pushes it back, combing it behind Hyunjin’s ear, and Hyunjin can only stare at him, his face suddenly new and different, familiar, yes, but there’s something more that he sees as if he was looking at a painting by Monet or Renoir, and he finally stepped back enough to see the full picture.

“Sorry,” Felix laughs, blushing a little as if Hyunjin staring at him makes him feel self-conscious about what he just did, and he bows his head, and when he pulls his hand away Hyunjin almost wants to reach for that hand and hold it. Both glad that it’s gone and yearning for it anyway.

It all falls into place then. He knew, of course, he knew, saw Felix’s face appear in the studio once he realized what was happening to him. It had been faint then, somehow. A truth so barely acknowledged that it lived only in the back of Hyunjin’s mind, a secret, wrapped in layers of paper so no one would ever take a glance at it, not even him, even though he knew it sat there, uncovered but solid. Real.

It’s different now that the secret had been dragged into the light, the paper torn to shreds, and there’s barely any surprise, his mind only catching up to what his body already knew, but his heart squeezes with the realization, surging through the pure, sweet taste of loving someone so deeply, only to sour when the thought hits him, that the flower growing in his chest and the petals making their way up his throat can only mean one thing:

He’s in love with Felix, but Felix doesn’t love him back.