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Denki sat alone on the curb behind the Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall, watching the ambulance pull away from the parking lot and into the street, leaving him alone. He wasn't feeling strongly on any particular emotion, despite what the tears that slowly accumulated in his tear ducts would tell you.
He started at the brilliantly coloured yellow rose petals sat in a small mound between his legs, splattered and stained with dark dried crimson blood.
"There he is! Kaminari!" the sound of Eijirou's voice and his shoes pounding against the pavement gradually growing louder brought the blond from his trance. "We've been looking for you, man!"
Denki tried to meet his friend's eye and muster a smile, but after not even a second of weak eye contact with not even the ghost of a smile hitting his lips, his head dropped back down like bricks were attached.
"Wh-What happened?" Hanta's voice hit his ears next.
"What does it look like? I got hit by that psycho's quirk that's been in the news for forever."
"Doesn't it go away after eight minutes?"
"Supposed to," Denki let out a dry laugh.
Neither Hanta nor Eijirou said anything.
"I'm gonna go back to the dorms. I won't force you guys to deal with my mopey ass."
Eijirou put a hand on Denki's shoulder, sending him a sympathetic smile. "We'll go with you. What kinda friends would we be if we made you go home alone?"
Denki was thankful he didn't have to be alone, not after all *that* happened. On the walk back, he explained what the medics told him. How if it doesn't go away by the next day, he'd be properly suffering from Hanahaki Disease until his one-sided love is returned or he bites it. Surgery wasn't possible as doctors knew nothing about what would be the outcome of pulling the flower from his body, or if they'd even be able to. There's nothing written anywhere about how the surgery to remove the flower worked.
Eijirou and Hanta tried to coax out of their friend who his crush was like a couple of middle schoolers, but he wouldn't tell. He didn't want them meddling in his process of working up the nerve of talking about the crush he's had since the beginning of first year; he wanted to go at his own pace. If the internet's information proved credible to any degree, then he had a couple of months to work up the nerve to ask out his crush or at least tell them he likes them--or of course, come to terms with the fact it would kill him eventually.
When the trio got back on school grounds, Denki was coughing again. Yellow petals slipped through his fingers, along with small trails of red down his fingers, slowly reaching his wrist. Hanta helped him to the bathroom as Eijirou ran to find Aizawa and notify him of the situation. Mere minutes after they got into the bathroom, Eijrou burst through the main floor's bathroom door, panicked helplessness written all over his face.
"Aizawa said there's nothing to be done. Apparently, this is a 'frequenting event' as he put it and his quirk can't help. I'm sorry, dude."
"It's cool, I can handle it."
"Are you sure? Not to sound insensitive, but you looked like shit when we got to the gates."
Denki laughed, but there wasn't as much happiness in it as usual. "Yeah, that's fair. Hey, at least I'm not wearing white."
"Dude, the uniform has a white shirt," Hanta facepalmed, shaking his head.
"Oh, I'm screwed," Denki joked, half-heartedly smiling when the stall door opened. Both his friends immediately swarmed him, trying to get who he was crushing on out of him as if they weren't doing it a second ago, and the blond wasn't coughing blood and flowers every half hour.
A month and a half passed and nothing was getting better. In fact, it was getting exponentially worse. Every so often, maybe at least one coughing fit a day, whole bloomed roses would slip out, the leaves attached scratching the hell out of his throat, instead of the usual petals that came out every other time. By then, all his classmates knew about his condition, none of them pestered him about it, though, they gave him that much. They asked questions sure, but none were uttered with malicious intent.
Denki was finally working up the nerve to ask his crush out, but every time he got close, he chickened out and ran in the other direction. He thought he could take another week to collect himself after a coughing fit right when practice ended, he knew he didn't have very long before he was done in. Whole flowers frequented his lungs more and more often, serving as an awful reminder that he was suffering from a fatal disease that made it known to everyone he loved somebody that didn't know it. A cruel joke really. Punished for emotions.
Pushing himself off his bathroom floor, he flushed down the bloodied flower filled toilet water, trying to avoid making eye contact with his reflection as he washed the blood from his hands. "I'm so done with this..." he muttered, stretching out his stiff back.
Taking a deep breath, he left his room and walked over to the elevator. Still a little worn out by trying to filter the roses from his lungs, he was slower than usual. Breathing was increasingly more difficult than before, the disease obviously working way faster than it usually would. Was it because he lived in such close proximity to his crush? Was that how it worked?
Waiting for the elevator to reach the third floor, he almost fell, his knees not agreeing with all the standing. If it was from kneeling on the bathroom floor for so long or nerves? He couldn't say with any level of certainty. Inside the lift when it finally came, Denki was visibly shaking pressing the fifth-floor button.
Taking a deep breath, he knocked. Secretly he was hoping he wouldn't get an answer, but he was quickly greeted with the sound of footsteps and an opened door.
"Kaminari?" Shouto Todoroki's voice hit his ears.
"Hey."
"How are you feeling?"
"As fine as I can be," he laughed dryly. "I kinda, have to tell you something."
"Okay, what is it?" Shouto shifted his weight to one leg, head resting against the doorframe.
"Uh... ThewholereasonthehanahakiquirkstayedformewasbecauseI'mcrushingonyou." Denki took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I'll go now. Goodnight." He spun sharply on his heel and began walking away.
Getting over the stun of what he just heard, Shouto reached out and caught Denki's hand as it swung back.
"Please let go," Denki mumbled, voice wobbled by the tears that started falling against Denki's urging them not to.
"I read about Hanahaki after I found out you had it. If the one diseased confesses and they're rejected, they die, no matter how much the flower has grown. Look at you. You're not dead."
Denki tensed.
"How far along was it for you?" Shouto asked, breaking the taut silence that hung in the air like a several ton curtain.
"Whole flowers," he whispered, unable to talk louder.
"I'm glad you confessed, more so, now knowing that fact." Shouto lightly tugged on the blond's arm, silently asking for him to turn around. He did, but didn't make eye contact, eyes glued to the floor.
"Hey," Shouto hooked his first two fingers, touching them to Denki's chin, lifting his head.
"I'm sorry," Denki blurted, cutting off Shouto before he could even think about what he was going to say next. "I shouldn't have said anything."
"Were you just going to let it get worse?" Shouto dropped his hand back to his side.
"Pretty much. I was too scared to say something. But seeing the full flowers more and more often scared me more." Shouto nodded, understanding where he was coming from.
"Well, you're alive." Shouto's lips curved into the slightest of smiles. "So would you like to maybe, hang out?"
Denki flushed bright red, impulsively burying his face into the closest thing to him--which just so happened to be Shouto's chest. Startled but content with the position they found themselves in, he carefully placed his free hand on the shorter boy's head, treading his fingers through the soft blond strands of hair.