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Let me tell you a story, it’s a story of two men that lost each other to circumstances and the story of Hanahaki, the disease that in this world is so rare, the story I wanna tell you is the story of true love between two people who never got to be together and the story of a tragic end.
It starts many years ago, when you were born we had buried the both of them, but it started even earlier than that, back in university, there were two men, 22-year-old Jackson Wang, he was in Korea on a full scholarship as a fencer, and 20-year-old Kim Namjoon. Namjoon was studying computer science, but that isn’t important as he never finished his degree, as he died before he got his masters.
Namjoon and Jackson were friends, they had been since Namjoon started university, everything was fine and well, but the Namjoon had a secret, that secret came on small flower petals that would fall from his mouth in the start of the day.
It hadn’t always been like that for Namjoon, it had started very close to his 20th birthday, Jackson had taken him out for a full light candle light dinner, as friends, of course, Jackson had a boyfriend that he loved after all. Namjoon had always had a crush on his older friend, but that night, when he got home he had to rush to the bathroom as flower petals were suddenly in his throat.
He wasn’t stupid, while Hanahaki was a very rare disease, he knew what it was since he was a romantic at heart, Hanahaki was the ultimately broken heart trope.
The flowers in Namjoon’s hand and toilet meant that he was in love with somebody who didn’t love him back, but not just love, the flowers was the symbol that he didn’t know how to live without that person. There were only three ways this could end, one he managed to get rid of the feelings before they petals and flowers killed him, he got surgery or he died. That was the only three ways Hanahaki could end. There was one other option, the person he was coughing up flowers for could love him back, but Namjoon knew that wasn’t an option for him.
The reason Hanahaki is so rare is because of the deep love needed, very few people ever experience love like that, it meant that you had to love the person to a level where living without them was not possible. Namjoon didn’t have to think about who it was those flowers were for, they were for his best friend, his best bro… They were for Jackson.
There was one problem, it wasn’t just that Jackson didn’t see him like that, the problem was that Jackson had a boyfriend, he had a boyfriend for 5 years, long before he had meet Namjoon.
And yeah, that boyfriend was me, 22 year old student Mark Tuan, I knew Namjoon had a crush on Jackson back then, but that was okay, I knew Namjoon respected our relationship and would never do anything, and it is not like I could judge him for having feelings, he didn’t decide on having them.
Did I at times worry that Jackson would fall for Namjoon instead? Yes of course I did, Namjoon was one of my friends and he was a good-looking guy, but I also trusted Jackson, I trusted that if he did fall for Namjoon he would tell me, but he had shown no interest to do so.
We were friends, I didn’t have the friendship with Namjoon that Jackson did, we didn’t have as much in common, plus we were both a little too introverted to make it work, both of us needed a Jackson in your face personality to come to us.
Namjoon didn’t know what to do, he knew that the flower roots hadn’t started to set yet, he knew that it was just the start, that it wasn’t too late yet, he knew that there was no chance of Jackson loving him back, but even if there was, he wouldn’t try it. As I said, he was bleeding heart romantic, Namjoon always was, and he had told us so many times that our relationship was a big reason why he believed in love.
So he decided that he would try and forget his feelings for Jackson, that he would get over it, the only other choice was surgery or death, and he felt that he was a little too young to die.
But things weren’t as easy as that, every morning he woke up and he would cough up flower petals into the toilet, the petals slowly turning from white to red, Namjoon wasn’t sure if it was just red flowers or blood covering them, probably a little of both.
But to us, me and Jackson, he showed nothing but a smiling face, he acted like nothing was wrong. I still to this day don’t know how he managed to, but it showed how strong he was. I do remember how he would start carrying a handkerchief everywhere and coughed more, but we never thought much about it, maybe just a cold?
But that didn’t work for Namjoon, everything slowly got worse for him, his disease… the Hanahaki progressed and slowly it wasn’t just petals anymore it full flowers, he could recognize them, Cypress flowers, the flowers of grief and remorse. People could see it many different ways, that he was feeling grief that Jackson would never love him back, but that wasn’t the kind of person that Namjoon was, he saw it as remorse over his love for Jackson, he was worried what impact his feelings would have on our relationship. That was the kind of person he was, thought about everybody else to a fault, just wanted the best for the rest of us.
He wasn’t stupid, he didn’t want to die. He decided on the surgery, he knew that the flowers were slowly setting roots inside him, he needed them out or he would die, they would slowly stop his heart from beating.
The thing was, the surgery wasn’t without any side effect, with the removal of the flowers it would also take all of Namjoon’s feelings for Jackson away, romantic and friendly, but Namjoon had to do it, he didn’t want to die.
The surgery was hard on him, it took him a week to recover in the hospital, where he constantly had to lie to Jackson about what had happened, he knew he couldn’t tell him the truth. If Namjoon had told us about the hanahaki surgery then we would have known, even if he hadn’t told us who the surgery was for we would have known it was about Jackson, it would have been easy to guess with how… emotionally detached that Namjoon was to Jackson.
He acted normal towards me, but then again it wasn’t his emotions for Jackson that had been removed, we were worried about him at first, but slowly he started acting more and more normal until everything was back to normal, we didn’t think more about it, but we should have.
The petals were back, all it took was 2 months, and the petals were back together with his love for Jackson, and they were back with revenge this time, waking him up at different times at night to force who flower heads up his throat. The roots were setting much quicker, he would sit night and day crying in his bed trying to deal with it while at the same time showing the rest of us a brave face.
He couldn’t go through the surgery again, healing from it had been so painful and the emotional scars were deep set in him, he couldn’t do it again, he accepted his faith. He hid everything away from everybody and accepted that he was gonna die, just writing this hurts so much, the fact that we didn’t know that something so tragic was going on with him, every day he would just spend as much time with us as possible, he kept talking about how he never wanted us to break up, that we should grow old together.
Jackson and I were worried about him of course, but with us graduating and not attending school with him next year we just assumed that it was what he was thinking about, he was slowly getting worse and worse, having to pull stems up his throat as well while benting over the toilet, but everybody was so busy with exams that nobody noticed how bad it was.
Namjoon didn’t know it, but we had planned on staying in the city at least until he graduated and we could move on together, for us there was no MarkSon without Namjoon he was an important part for us, I still wish that we told him more how much he meant to us. I know it wouldn’t have changed how it ended, but maybe it could have comforted him.
We never got to see him in his lasts moments before he passed, he hid it from us, not wanting to burden us with the truth, but at least his friend Yoongi was there for him, it would be Yoongi that later told me the story of what happened.
Namjoon’s funeral was a lot less depressing than I had thought it would be, both I and Jackson was a mess at it, but we all… Namjoon’s friends and family knew that he would be angry with us if we made his funeral something depressing. So we had his funeral like he lived his life, with no regrets.
Things went on, it was hard, life was hard for a while there, but I and Jackson had each other and we held on tight, Namjoon’s death had more or less proven and reminded us that everybody was mortal, that everybody was at risk.
The funeral had been an open casket, cypress flowers all around him as it was revealed to us what had really killed our friend, Yoongi the wonderful amazing person he was told us that it was his fault, that it was him who hadn’t loved Namjoon back. Of course, we would later find out that it was a lie, a lie that he had promised Namjoon to tell, to protect us from the truth.
But we weren’t protected for long.
The thing was that Namjoon loved to write, we knew that, but we didn’t know just how much until we cleaned his locket at university, there we found three different diaries, two completely full and one still working to be filled. We knew we shouldn’t have violated Namjoon’s personal space, but we couldn’t stop us self from reading it, we missed our friend.
So we sat down to read it together, and that is how I found out about this story, we were both shell-shocked, we didn’t know how to deal with or how to feel. We blamed our self for it, even if it was clear that Namjoon never did, it was the first real fight me and Jackson had in years.
You have to understand, we had lost our closest friend, and we found out that we were to blame for it, we had needed somebody to blame and all we could find was each other. We ended up crying in different beds that night, trying to find out if it was our own fault or the others fault, it was hard to face the blame.
I don’t wanna say that we grew apart it after that, but it was clear that something unsaid was growing between us, we were back to sleeping in the same bed at comforting each other when we needed it, everything was back to normal.
Or I thought it was, I thought we would grow past it, we would learn to live with Namjoon’s death, he meant the world to me, but it was clear that he hadn’t wanted us to suffer. Things weren’t back to normal tho, Jackson was struggling and he didn’t tell me. I understand why he didn’t tell me tho, somehow… Jackson had fallen for a dead person.
He still loved me of course, but Jackson’s heart was big enough to have to people in it, I have later decided that Hanahaki isn’t a disease we can reason with, it’s a stupid disease with no logic, how was Namjoon suppose to love Jackson back to free him from the flowers? Namjoon was dead!
Cause that was what happened, Jackson developed Hanahaki, and he blamed himself so much. Even if he didn’t tell me why he tried to show me every way that he loved him, we spend way to much time in bed that summer, the last summer…
Jackson didn’t know how to move on, it might be why he started getting Hanahaki after all, the petals forcing their way out of his body was lily petals, funeral flowers, flowers of grief. Oh, it fits everything so well.
The logic thing was to get the surgery right? But Jackson couldn’t go through with it, his heart was too big for that, he somehow knew that the flowers would come back, so all he could do was trying to get over them, and that was what he did he buried his entire being in our life and almost suffocated me with love. He doesn’t know how he managed to hide it from me, we were both so stressed, me from exams… Him from having a life-threatening disease and hiding it.
He hid it so well, until almost the end where he had to go to the hospital, I found him in the Hanahaki ward where people with terminal Hanahaki came to live out there last few days without to much pain, it was by the population called ‘Ward of the heartbroken’.
I wanted to beg him to get it removed, but I didn’t, cause I knew Jackson it wouldn’t have done anything. So I just accepted it, I could understand that was the worst part of it, I wasn’t sure that I could have gotten it removed if it was me. Jackson kept telling me how much he loved me, about how sorry he was.
It wasn’t just to me he was sorry, he was sorry that he hadn’t loved Namjoon in time, he was sorry that he would take both of my best friends away from me. I tried to explain to him so many times that I never blamed him and I never would blame him, it wasn’t Jackson’s fault, he couldn’t control what his heart did.
Jackson passed away with a sad smile on his face, but in peace and no pain, I kissed him on the forehead and mumbled a wish that I hoped he was with Namjoon, no matter what the afterlife was, if there was one, I hoped he was with Namjoon.
I don’t think I would have survived a year without them… if it wasn’t for you.
I am sitting next to you right now, watching you sleep while writing this, I don’t know when I will have to tell you this story baby, one day, net yet… after all, you are just 6 and you aren’t ready yet to hear about what happened to your dad.
But when you read this, I want you to know that you are the last blessing Jackson gave me, a daughter that is half me and half him.
One day I will join Namjoon and Jackson, but for now, you need me and I need you.'
A letter from Mark to his and Jackson's daughter