HANAKO IS IN THAT THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY MOOD.

Ambling across the streets, with her faux leather boots, Hanako enjoys watching the flowers push away the remnants of winter snow and the tree branches the color of chocolate where cute cherry colored buds begin to blossom. Cheery songs are playing in her mind and Hanako stops because she's drawing the line there. School had been eventful, but it's all over now and the barrage of assignments and seatworks have vanished like soap bubbles floating gently in the air. Momoka and Mei still aren't talking to her, but Momoka's starting to make genuine effort to send the message I'm not that mad anymore, if you apologize, we'll be friends again but Hanako is too lazy to even put a single shred of strength into that. Hanako thinks it's not worth it.

Radios are still blasting danger danger messages, lock your doors and make sure to have the police hotline number in speed dial. The sky is starless tonight. And what was an uneventful night after spending time in the convenience store where only a handful of people were found was starting to take its twist.

Hanako looks ahead.

There is a man making a beeline toward her with frightening eyes the deepest shade of burgundy and there is an axe in his hands and he is no man, he is a murderer and Hanako almost emits laughter at the luck she possesses. One second she's hearing about him in the radio where the anchors are telling them to exercise caution, the next he's no less than fifty meters away from her.

The murderer grins at her and Hanako knows that she cannot let him get close because she will be easily overpowered if it is with regards to strength so she urges the flowers to bloom in his chest. His face is portentous at first, almost as if his eyes are going to fall out of their sockets and Hanako can do that too, but Hanako won't because Hanako does not want to. She is already satisfied at the prospect of being able to do that to him in theory.

He closes the distance between them and that is where the first petal escapes his chapped lips. It is a white rose petal tainted with streaks of blood and Hanako stands still like a stone as he claws on his throat, gasping for a reprieve that only death can give him. More flower petals of different shapes and sizes continue to escape his lips and he does not even reach Hanako because he falls to his knees and then lies face first in the snow, flowers trailing around him.

Hanako watches with a placid face just like she always does, a demon that broke out from marble. Cold heart, cold skin ( some whisper that you can get frostbites by just being captured by her gaze. But then how do the flowers grow on the demons whose vessel is poisonous to the core? Easy, the flowers, dainty things, are more wicked. You don't judge a book by its cover, a flower by its beauty ).

Hanako's apartment overflows with flowers once she passes the threshold. Hanako kicks the door close and ambles to the sink where she washes her hands ( stained with the blood of a murderer, tell me what makes her different ). She isn't. More flowers, so many flowers are scattered across her bedroom and some are even falling from the windows and Hanako shuts that close too.

Poppies, bluebells, hollyhocks, honeysuckes, candytufts, forget-me-nots, dahlias, geraniums, irises and rhododendrons.

( Seven red roses stand lamely on the tin can half filled with water and watches, the unlikeable red filling in the room as Hanako claws on the blankets and her chest. )

Flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers beautiful lovely flowers flowers dainty fragile blossoming flowers flowers flowers powerful.

With different shapes, sizes and scents. With different meanings and degrees of pain.

The flowers keep on blooming.

° ° °

r h o d o d e n d r o n ;
danger, beware