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NOW PLAYING: ALBUM SEVEN - DEADROSES, TRACK NINE - MY HEART IS LOST
one.
It is winter when Jinyoung first sees him and the tips of his toes are numb in his sneakers, wet through with icy slush. It is as if winter had decided they are all to suffer, ripping the leaves from their trees, petals from their stems until all that was left was the skeletons of what has once been. It’s the same for the humans too, Jinyoung supposes. Finals week has just finished and each and every person has been stripped to their bones and beyond, not one person visible without dark shadows under their eyes. Jinyoung, too, is exhausted. That’s why, when he sees him, he thinks he might be hallucinating a little because surely, no one can be that beautiful, that glowing when everything else surrounding him is different shades of grey and dull. His skin is bronze, shining in a dewy sort of way and the sun hits his back, exploding around his face like he was sent by heaven itself. Jinyoung swallows, throat suddenly dry. His hand tightens on the strap of his backpack because the boy looks up and across the hustle and bustle of students attempting to stay warm before the doors open, they make eye contact and Jinyoung finds himself struggling to breathe. It’s not the colour of his eyes, because they’re brown like everyone else’s but there’s just something about them, about the way they sparkle, the way they seem to hold a different universe that has Jinyoung looking away first, head lowering like he used to as a kid. It was for just a second, but there’s something about the way his eyes eyes bore into his that makes him feel naked despite the four layers he has on. There’s something about his eyes that cause something to shift in his chest, something fall open, ready for taking.
“Who’s that?” Jinyoung finds himself leaning over to Jihoon, jerking his head towards the direction of the new boy.
“Who?” Jihoon questions, eyebrows furrowing in the direction Jinyoung had indicated. When Jinyoung turns his head to point the boy out, he is gone.
Later that night, there’s a strange feeling in his chest, like his lungs are pushing against his ribcage. It’s not painful, just strange, just new. He dismisses it, turning back to his laptop, theory report open on the screen. He types for a while, fingers dancing over the keyboard like it’s some kind of fine art but his mind begins drifting. He thinks about school, about his parents about Jihoon. He thinks about the boy from earlier, illuminated from behind like the human reincarnation of an angel and then he leans over the side of his bed and coughs up a petal. It’s just one, pastel yellow and soft to the touch. Jinyoung reaches down, picks it up, turns it over in his hands. Had he swallowed it accidentally earlier? He considers calling Jihoon or the doctor’s surgery but quickly dismisses it. It was just one, and the feeling in his lungs has subsided. The image of the boy, however, stays with him.
two.
He doesn’t see the boy again for another week and a half and no other petal incidents occur. Jinyoung shrugs it off as a fluke, as an accident and forgets about it. He’s in the library, history books propped open on the wooden table in front of him when he hears him. It’s nothing more than a whisper, a few syllables murmured but the voice is smooth like honey, high and crystal clear and Jinyoung just has to look. Somehow, he’s not surprised that it’s the boy from that freezing morning a week and a half ago, fragile wrists bending under a pile of huge books. He reacts before he can even think, chair making a terrible screeching noise as he pushes it backwards. He winces, but carries on towards the boy, lifting the first few books from the pile. The boys face comes into view and he is so much more breathtaking up close. He’s surprised at first, eyes widening just a fraction before his whole face melts into a warm smile, eyes crinkling at the edges and it’s so endearing that Jinyoung has to resist the urge to coo.
“Oh!” the boy exclaims, “Thank you!”
Jinyoung shrugs awkwardly, face burning.
“It’s…it’s fine. Where are you sitting?”
The boy looks at him for a second too long before looking away, motioning to the table behind him, a few metres from Jinyoung’s. He nods, keeping his head down as he walks towards the table. They go in silence, placing their books down and Jinyoung is about to leave again but as he turns to go, the boy catches his wrist, touch hot, feverish. The feeling in his chest is back.
“What’s your name?” the boy asks and they’re looking at each other again. He can’t breathe.
“J-Jinyoung,” he manages to choke out and the lack of air must show on his face because the boys face changes from one of content to one of worry.
“Are you okay?” he asks, reaching forward to place a hand on his shoulder but Jinyoung steps backwards, out of his reach. He tries to speak, tries to ask for help but nothing comes out, just the feeling of his throat closing up like the gates of a dam. He nods, jerkily, fleeing to the bathroom.
When he reaches the toilet, he coughs up a whole flurry of petals, light pink and larger this time, more prominent. He’s sweating, hands shaking as he falls back against the cubicle door. He brushes his bangs out of his face, leaning his head back as he fumbles in his pocket for his phone. He dials Jihoon’s number.
“Hello?” Jihoon’s voice comes through the speaker, a little crackly.
“Jihoon?” Jinyoung asks, voice shaky and Jihoon can immediately tell something is wrong.
“What? Are you okay?”
“I think there’s something wrong with me.”
They go to the doctors and Jinyoung sits with his hands tucked underneath his legs because he’s worried what they’ll do if he doesn’t and Jihoon sits with his eyes on him the whole time, watchful, worried.
“You don’t think it’s-” the boy, stays unspoken sitting silent on the plastic blue chair between them
“No,” he says immediately and his breath trips itself over in his throat in haste to get it out, “I mean, it can’t be, right?”
Jihoon shrugs. Jinyoung can’t look at him, anxiety tying his stomach in a scout’s knot, double knotting it for good luck.
“I mean, you’ve only thrown them up when you’ve been around or thinking about him, right?”
Jinyoung ignores him, because if he replies, if he says anything that might acknowledge this fact, he may as well just. Just.
“It can’t be,” he says again.
They’re silent for a moment as Jinyoung watches a butterfly fly lazy circles around the room.
“I found out his name,” Jihoon says. Jinyoung just can’t help himself, the way his neck snaps towards him, eyes alight with interest.
“Daehwi,” he says and Jinyoung leans over and coughs up ten more petals right there.
three.
It only goes downhill from there, downwards like those spiral patterned, plastic-domed contraptions you’d put a coin through and watch it run dizzying circles until it’d just fall straight into the blackhole in the middle and you’d wonder just how much was at the bottom. The doctor told him he had a rare condition, hans-something disease that means you cough up flower petals when your affections aren’t returned and he can’t remember what hurt more, the fact that he was dying or the fact that Daehwi didn’t, doesn’t return his affection. He remembers Jinyoung’s hand on his knee, voice shaking like he was the one who’d just been told he’d cough up flowers till he died or had his feelings returned.
“A-and there’s nothing we can do?”
The doctor had smiled, eyes too bright, teeth too sharp and Jinyoung had lost hope the second he’d said the word ‘right’, slow and patronising.
“There is one option,” Jihoon had squeezed his knee, “We can remove the flowers from your lungs, but that means your feelings for this person will be taken away.”
Something in Jinyoung breaks, nothing big, nothing major, just there enough to feel it.
“Money?” is what he asked and the doctor nodded, skin yellow under the harsh lighting.
“We can’t do that, then.”
Jinyoung stays away from Daehwi for the next month, fleeing whenever he so much as sees him coming but it doesn’t help the fact that he throws up whenever he lays awake at night thinking of him - of Daehwi - and his roommates starting to think he’s weird because the trashcans are piling up with petals of various and he’s yet to see a stem (Jinyoung wonders how he’d react if he told him they are in his lungs, choking him up). When he wakes up every morning, he’s half expecting handprints around his neck, bruises the shape of Daehwi’s pretty fingers and here we go again. They’re blue now and his throat is constantly scratchy, voice hoarse.
“You alright?” Guanlin had asked him.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
He sees him and this time he can’t just turn tail and run because Daehwi is with someone. He has golden skin and a strong nose, warm eyes and Daehwi’s hand is resting on the crook of his elbow, familiar looking. Jinyoung’s chest tightens again but he forces himself to stay put, even as he feels the petals rising up his throat, he swallows them down as Daehwi spots him. His eyes light up in recognition and he feels some kind of sick fascination because yeah, that’s right.
“Hey!” Daehwi says and Jinyoung’s lungs are protesting because he’s wanted to hear that voice for the past month so much that he aches and he stares at his ceiling every night replaying the sound, “Jinyoung, right?”
Jinyoung nods, swallowing again.
“I- yeah. I’m sorry, about what happened in the library, I wasn’t - uh - feeling good,” he manages out, taking a deep breath at the end and his breath catches on his own damn disease.
“Yeah, I could tell, no worries, dude, just glad you’re okay now.”
Jinyoung smiles but he knows it comes out more like a grimace.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Daehwi nods, and Jinyoung knows that their conversation is already over, was over before it already started.
“You stay healthy now, okay?” he says, tugging on the boys arm as he leaves Jinyoung behind.
The petals are electric blue this time, spiked at the edges and they come out dotted with red.
Jealousy. Jinyoung isn’t ready to die yet.
Every time Jihoon sees him, Jinyoung feels his pain, feels his sadness sticking to his insides like molasses and he really wishes he didn’t have to die, didn’t have to let this kill him but there’s no way of stopping this, no way of making Daehwi fall for him when he already belongs to someone else and he starts calling his mom and dad every night to tell them he loves them because he can’t die without them knowing. He has to flush the petals, now, because there’s too many to go in the trash and Jihoon keeps looking at him out of the corner of his eye whenever they’re doing something like he’s trying to stare at him enough to memorise him, enough to remember him when he’s gone. He cries when he’s throwing up later.
four.
He’s coughing up deep burgundy when someone comes into the bathroom and he’ll regret the fact later that he hasn’t closed the door because he hears him before he sees him, that high voice and before he can even stop himself, he’s leaning over, shoulders rising as he’s heaving into the toilet bowl.
“Oh, dude,” he says. Jinyoung’s kind of relieved he’s got his back to him because maybe, he hasn’t recognised him yet, “Jinyoung-ie?” Too late.
He turns slowly and he’s probably got blood round his mouth. Daehwi’s eyes widen and he rushes forwards, falling to his knees. Jinyoung’s too weak to push him away, to back up.
“You’re bleeding,” he murmurs, eyes trained on his mouth and in any other situation, his heart would speed up and his hands would get sweaty but in this one he just feels like he’s going to throw up. For real this time. Jinyoung finds himself nodding a little, shying away from Daehwi’s fingers at the corner of his mouth. He can feel them again, crawling up his throat and Jinyoung just wants to run but there’s no way out this time, no escaping it.
“Shall I call an ambulance?” Daehwi asks worriedly and his concern pushes them into his mouth. He’s about to shake his head when he has to turn around again. They’re redder this time, floating around in the water below. Daehwi gasps.
“Are those…?”
“Flower petals,” Jinyoung tells him. He can’t do anything about how hoarse his voice is.
“…Is that…is that even possible?”
Jinyoung shrugs, reaching up to flush the chain.
“Apparently,” he says, sounding as casual as he can and it’s so weird, so ironic that the person who’s trying to help him is the one who’s killing him.
“Have you been to the hospital?” he questions, hands digging into Jinyoung’s shoulder blades.
“Yeah,” he says, “There’s nothing they can do.”
“Nothing they can…you mean you’re dying?”
Jinyoung shrugs again.
“Yeah.”
Sadness flashes across Daehwi’s angel face and Jinyoung’s seen God.
“Jinyoung I’m,” he takes deep breath, “I’m sorry.”
Jinyoung just sighs because, really, what is he supposed to say? Thank you? Apparently, though, he doesn’t have to say anything because Daehwi is pulling him in for a hug, squeezing him against him on the dirty bathroom floor of their college and Jinyoung can’t bring himself to tell him it’s his fault. It might not be, anyway. It’s Jinyoung’s fault for falling for him.
Daehwi makes a conscious effort to see him after that, to look after him, to make his last however-many-days in this world his best. In a way, it works, because some of the moments he spends with Daehwi are the happiest of his life (even though he always has to leave at least once every time to throw up). They see each other at least twice a week, and Jihoon looks at him half with pity and half happiness and Daehwi kisses him on the cheek every time he leaves because they both know it might be his last.
“See you later?” he always says and he doesn’t leave until Jinyoung replies.
“Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, I’ll see you later.”
five.
“You know I love you, right?” Daehwi tells him a week before with his head on Jinyoung’s lap. He’s half tempted to shove him off, to say no you’re not because if you were I wouldn’t be throwing up flower petals every day. If you were, i wouldn’t be dying. Instead, he just chuckles, trying to hide the pain of the tightening of his chest.
“Yeah, yeah, I love you too.”
He brings a hand to his mouth, coughs and it comes away red with blood, a single red petal in his palm. He wipes it away and excuses himself to call his mom. Something tells him it’ll be the last time.
(“I love you,” he says when she picks up and then he says it to his father and then halfway through listening to them talk about their day and then again at the end of the call).
Later, when Daehwi’s gone, his roommate walks in on him throwing up petals. Hundreds of them, blue and pink and yellow and red. Red, finally, tiny little spikes on them. It’s for roses, it’s for the end. He takes one look at the blood, one look at the sweat dotting Jinyoung’s forehead, his shaking hands and calls the ambulance. He calls Jihoon and Daehwi and gets in the ambulance himself. Jinyoung specifically requested for his parents not to be there so they didn’t have to see him like this, so he wasn’t the one that had to deal with their grief, their heartbreak (it’s hard enough for him to deal with his own). Daehwi and Jihoon arrive together, both of their faces tear streaked and Jinyoung looks at his and Daehwi’s intertwined hands and almost laughs at the ridiculousness of it. He sees Daehwi’s friend, Daehwi’s something through the plastic blinds of his room. Stockholm syndrome. Jihoon kisses his forehead, thanks him for everything and he can’t help but cry now, can’t help but hold onto him, cry because he doesn’t want to die, because Daehwi doesn’t love him back.
“I love you,” Jihoon murmurs and it doesn’t hurt like Daehwi hurts because this is true.
“Me, too.”
He and Daehwi are alone.
“I searched for it,” Daehwi says, eyes trained on their hands. There’s something in his eyes. Something dark and dangerous and Jinyoung’s gonna shipwreck any second now, just gonna blurt it out where he can’t take it back (somewhere like a hospital bed) “I searched for it and found out why you have it. You love someone who doesn’t love you back?”
Jinyoung wants to wrench the pity right out of his throat, wants to make him feel bad but he can’t. He loves him.
“Yeah,” he whispers instead, “Yeah, he doesn’t love me back.”
Daehwi doesn’t ask who. Jinyoung thinks he knows.
“Remember me?” he asks. It’s too late to ask for anything else. Daehwi makes a noise, pained and small and Jinyoung loves him so much he’d die for him.
“Always,” he murmurs, “Always.”
He reaches out a hand, brushes Jinyoung’s bangs off of his sweaty forehead. It isn’t winter anymore, but Daehwi is still as angelic as he was on that morning (gorgeous, beautiful, deadly)
“God, how could I forget you, Bae Jinyoung?”