You couldn't breathe. You just stood there, frozen in the middle of the day as your friends looked at you in panic. Your eyes were glued to the girl right across the street. A ticklish sensation was felt from your throat.

Her eyes were glued to her phone. Eyelids lowered to the screen. Earphones connected to her ears that separated her from reality. Her platinum blonde hair shone brightly by the sun with the silky navy blue ribbon over her hair.

Everything seemed to go in slow motion. The green pedestrian light started to blink to red. People nearby stopped. Your friends' books, papers, and coffee slipped from their hands. Other pedestrians slowly turned to you as you lurched forward. Your mouth opened, but not only did you let out a cough. Flower petals began to come out from your mouth. The ticklish sensation you felt were petals inside of you.

White rose petals flew out followed by smaller petals of daisies.

"(Y/n)!" Time went back to its normal state was you were caught by someone's arm.

You couldn't stop coughing. Minutes later of coughing, different colors of petals started to come out as well. You wrappes your hands around your throat as you coughed out more petals.

You knew what was happening to you. You knew why and how. As cliché as it sounds like, this was something major and frightening.

The Hanahaki Disease.

An illness born from a one-sided love.

You've fallen for the girl across the street.

Your mind swirled as your heart raced. You never thought that this would ever happen to you. You were called someone monotonous, someone who was very conservative. You never thought that you'd fall in love with someone that easily.... with just a simple look.

The last thing you saw was the blurry street and the girl who still had her eyes glued to her phone.

Then darkenss.

●●●●●●●●

The first thing you saw when you woke up was the glow-in-the-dark solar system you stuck on the dark blue ceiling of your room. The taste of bitterness was still in your mouth, and it was so dry. You got up slowly as the petals on your chest fell onto your lap.

"Thank god you're awake." You looked up to see a silhoutte by the hallway. You rubbed your eyes as the figure turned your lights on and entered the room.

"Kiku?" Your roommate as he sat on the edge of your bed.

Kiku lookes at you worriedly with his dark chocolate brown eyes.

"Y-You..." He sighed and held your cold hands. "You have it, don't you?"

You nodded. As hard as it was to believe, he wouldn't accept it. He knew the disease too well. He knew the stories and he knew the price.

"You know what you're supposed to do right?"

"Kiku-"

"(Y/n), please." He begged and rubbed his thumbs on the palms of your hands. "As your friend, I don't want you to go through this. Please go through the surgery."

The sorrow in his eyes was well-known to you. He has lost someone to this before and he doesn't want to lose anyone else to his stupid thing called love at first sight. It was too painful for him to watch. It felt like a bullet in the heart when he found out that his sister Mei had it. You knew thosw days were dark to him. You've seen him suffer, but that feeling in you made you think twice.

"I'll think about it Kiku." You pursed your lips and wiped a tear away from his cheek with your thumb.

Hurt was in his eyes, painfully knowing that you were willing to go through this. But he accepted your decision.

●●●●●●●

You found out that the girl had some classes with you. She was just a freshmen at your college, so she was new. Immediately, you knew you wanted to be close to her.

"Hi!" You greeted her with a smile.

She looked up from her book and stared at you.

Your heart almost stopped for a moment there as your lungs started to itch.

Her lavender doe-like eyes had you hitched your breath for a moment. The small, nearly invisible, freckles that danced like stars on her face gave color to your cheeks. Her plump pink lips made you want to kiss her right there.

"Oh hi." Her answer was inanimate. She did look like the type who isn't easily amused though. And the past comments from other seniors did call her a bitch.

"Shouldn't you be like them?" Her eyes pointed at the other seniors who were boisterously laughing and mingling amongst themselves.

"Nah, I prefer to get along with everyone." You forced down the itch and smiled. "Wanna hang out? I'm (Y/n) by the way."

She shrugged and started to pack her things.

"Name's Natalya, and sure." The smile on your face grew bigger. "Why not?"

●●●●●●●

By the time you got home, you dropped your purse by the couch and raced towards the bathroom. You barged in and kneeles in front of the toilet.

You threw up more petals.

No, not just a petal.

You threw up an entire rose.

"(Y/n)!" Kiku held your hair back and helped you pull the flower out of your throat.

Tears streamed down your face. You could feel its thorns wounding your throat and esophagus. The root, which was in your lungs, were wrapped around them tightly.

It's been months since that last meeting. Everything was going so well, even if there were a few close calls where you almost cought out flowers during your "dates" with her. Until what happened at the club earlier.

She kissed one of your friends, Toris. You knew that Toris had a crush on Natalya, but you should've known sooner.

Neither Toris nor Natalya started to cough out flowers last month.

Your eyes swelled up as more tears came down. The bloody rose that finally came out of your mouth. The stained white petals and the blood soaked thorns made your eyes widened in horror.

You could feel the pain, but it didn't syop you from crying your heart out. You screamed and yelled as Kiku hugged you from behind. The bloody rose was gripped tightly in his hands.

Your head throbbed, your heart ached, your throat stung. It felt like the whole world was ending. More petals came out from your mouth with blood and the othee thorns that got stuck early.

"God-fucking-dammit!" You cried.

Why did it hurt you so much? How did you end up like this? Why was there ever a price to pay? Why was there something like this in life? Have you been abandoned? You wanted to question to every religion, and to their god, why was there something like this?

Why should people suffer a love like this?

It pained you. More than anyone can imagine.

●●●●●●●

The thunder roared and rain fell.

Kiku sat across the room, watching you intently with a sad smile on his face.

The disease may be sickening, but there was always something crazily beautiful within it.

On the side table of the room were three jars of petals and the flowers you've thrown up. In the first was the first rose you threw up. It was stained with your blood, but it was still alive. In the second was another rose, but red. Purely red and still glowing. The passionate color seemed to lighten the mood in the room, but the colors were still in gray. And the last had a black rose. Black roses were too rare to be conjured from someone who has the disease. The only place in the world where roses like that grew naturally were all the way in Halfeti, Turkey. Black roses didn't just symbolize mysterious love though.

It also meant death or mourning.

He immediately knew that yesterday, when you threw that rose up, you'd be gone. And that's what happened today in the hospital room he sat in.

The nurses left him alone and some friends who gave their last farewell left earlier. Toris and Natalya came by at different times. Toris in the morning while Natalya came in the afternoon, two hours later after Toris since she had classes.

Kiku smiled at you one last time and looked down at the red rose petals on his lap.

"I'm sorry."