Red Stained Daffodils

I have never been too fond of flowers.

But she seems to love them with everything she has.

It seems only fitting the thing she loves would be the one calling for my end.

It started when we moved into our brand-new small apartment. 

It was always a far-off dream of ours to buy a cute little apartment together for our university years. We walked into the empty space and stood in silence, looking around at the boxes waiting to be emptied out. I dropped the two boxes of her clothes I was holding with a huff. She smiled and giggled as she rushed into the kitchen and living room that made up one main room. She threw her arms out to her sides and gestured around her. 

“This is awesome!!” She called out before she jumped onto the complementary couch our landlord (A sweet old lady she is) gave us as she no longer needed it. 

I laugh. “Yeah? Well,” I bent down to grab the boxes I dropped. “Mind helping me with your stuff?” She sits up from the couch and looks over at me, her long curly ginger hair becoming frizzy with static. She shrugs.

“Maybe.” She looks behind her at the open window.

And there it was. 

There she was. Sitting on an old lady’s couch with her frizzy ginger hair. There she looked like an angel, stunning as her dark skin was bathed in sunlight that made her grey eyes stand out. She just breathed in that moment, enjoying how far we’ve gone, and in that moment I felt something prick at my lungs.

In that moment, I fell in love.

I’m snapped out of my daze as a male voice calls to her and walks up beside me. “Leilain, babe, where do you want me to put this?” She looks to him and smiles before rushing up and kissing him.

In that moment, Death whispered out an apology.

I fell in love with a girl who’s already in love…

A few weeks pass, we settle in and classes start, and that's when the issue became clear.

Our schedules differ. She has classes in the mornings on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I have classes in the afternoon on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. We spend our nights doing whatever we want unless we end up in our extracurriculars. 

Its Tuesday morning. I was woken up earlier than normal by something in my throat. I turn over in bed and cough into my hand. Soon I sit up as the coughing starts to scrape at my throat. I think to myself about how much it would suck to suddenly be sick. 

My coughing halts for a second, allowing me to take a breath and head to the washroom. As soon as I step into the washroom I feel as if I’m going to throw up. I rush to the toilet bowl and cough roughly. My throat aches as whatever is clawing at my throat manages to leave my mouth with one final cough. I take a second to breathe after my coughing fit before I look into the toilet bowl. There lay a single yellow flower petal.

Dread fills my body. 

My world collapses.

I push away from the toilet and lean onto the wall behind me as I panic. This can’t be… why me…?

A sob racks my body.

I end up skipping classes that week. 

A few weeks have passed.

Leilani and her boyfriend keep getting closer by the day. 

Yellow flower petals keep spilling from my lips more often.

Blood has begun to follow.

Death rings at my door.

Theres nothing I can do for she cannot love me back. I cannot tell her my death is near because she will cry with guilt and won’t be able to focus on herself. I can’t put that pressure onto her. I won’t.

I’ve spent days and nights coughing. My body grows weak and every cough makes me sick. Every blood drop that spills from my lips makes me sob. 

How has it come to this?

What have I done?

Months have passed with the feeling of death growing inside my lungs, replacing them almost, until now.

My throat burns with the thorns of a feeling that brings me to my knees. It stabs at my lungs as I cough and wheeze, trying to force air between the insignificantly small gaps of an object blocking my airways. 

My lips are stained a deep crimson red that runs down my chin into a small forming puddle of my own mistakes. My eyes water and mix with the blood in a sad sad dance of that which I was dying for. My mind is running every which way trying to keep me alive as I suffocate myself to death as the vines begin to wrap around my heart. 

Thorns begin to cut my body from the inside as I cough and cough and cry. The yellow petals of daffodil flowers spill from my lips, covered in self-sacrificing blood, gracefully floating down into the puddle of blood and regret. 

My whole body shakes as my last breaths are nearing. More blood spills from my lips as I can feel the thorns of daffodil flowers puncture my heart and slow its beating. The vines break through my skin from the inside and my last breath leaves me. The vines dig a hole where my heart would be and a single crimson-coloured daffodil blooms on my chest as I hit the ground. 

My hair gets soaked with blood and tears and Death greets me sadly for this was a disease. 

A disease that is next to uncurable. 

A disease from the one I love dearly.

Hanahaki Disease (花吐き病 (Japanese); 하나하키병 (Korean); 花吐病 (Chinese)) is a disease in which the victim coughs up several flower petals from a randomized flower when they suffer from one-sided love. It ends when the beloved returns their feelings (romantic love only; strong friendship is not enough) and they cough up a full bloom flower that was blocking their airways allowing them to breathe again. Or when the victim tragically dies from the randomized flower choking them to death and puncturing their skin in full bloom.