Chapter Text
“Iwa-cha—cough—”
“Oikawa, you better not be catching a cold. You shouldn’t have stayed up last night; don’t ditch me just as we have to start unpacking.”
Oikawa clears his throat, thumping his chest a few times.
“Ah, Iwa-chan, always so worried! You’re going to get wrinkles, and at this rate, you’ll never get a cute office girlfriend~” he teases, poking Iwaizumi between the eyebrows. This earns himself a scoff as they step into the apartment.
He tests his throat, tapping his neck a little. Hm, it’s somewhat past the tail end of flu season. The feeling of something caught there, small as it is, persists.
“Well, it’s just an itch! Jeez, Iwa-chan, mother hen!”
Iwaizumi turns around slowly in the entrance, his face the very picture of a hanging threat, an unfinished I swear to god, if you say that again…
“Nope, no, I take it back! Sorry!” Oikawa quickly follows up.
Oikawa watches as the death glare from Iwaizumi fades away into one of mild irritation mixed with concern.
“Right. Drink some honey tea, or something. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Iwaizumi says as he gives one final pointed look over his shoulder before shuffling into his own room at the end of the hallway.
“Bye-bye, Iwa-chan! Thanks for worrying, I feel so loved!” Oikawa sing-songs after his friend’s retreating figure. This only earns him a dismissive hand gesture as Iwaizumi disappears into a doorway.
Oikawa was transferred to the Tokyo headquarters of Seijoh Advertising a year ago. For his first year in the big city, he tried to live up the bachelor life. The freedom felt good at first... but, one can only take so many cup noodles and convenience store box lunches. As work picked up, he had to spend more and more of his day in overtime, and returning to an empty, dark apartment began to feel lonelier than ever.
When Iwaizumi suggested moving in together and splitting rent, it was a no-brainer.
Taking a peek at Iwaizumi’s room again, he sees the door ajar and hears the sound of boxes being cut open and moved around. He glances at his own room forlornly. Honestly, he doesn’t need more than a workbench for his computer and notes. And maybe the bed, too.
Suddenly, the itch rises in his throat again.
It’s possible he’s getting sick. He hadn’t exactly slept much in the last few weeks, but it was a busy time. If he catches a cold, his mom (and his fake Iwa-mom) won't be overjoyed.
He hacks into his hand and slides into the bathroom to cough into the sink. The pressure forces his eyes shut. His throat begins to feel raw with the pressure of something rising past his Adam’s apple—
Oikawa blinks his eyes open again, surprised at the dampness on his cheeks, and looks downwards to see what he spat out.
There in the sink is… a scrap of cloth? Tissue? Coated in spit are two thin, white scraps the length of his thumbnail.
He squints at them a little bit, a memory tickling the back of his mind. When had he eaten something like this? Did he swallow the paper on a meat bun? Did he even have anything white to eat recently? It’s kind of gross, so he doesn’t want to touch it, but...
Suddenly, an idea surfaces. He looks up a picture of a juice box he saw Hanamaki drinking the other day.
Chrysanthemum tea. Unlike the flower on the drink, the… things in the sink are white. But, they’re undeniably white chrysanthemum petals.
A feeling of dread begins to flow over him, and in a last, desperate effort he racks his memory over the last few days. Did he drink or eat anything with the offending ingredient? Coming up short, he takes a deep breath and bites the bullet.
He searches up “Hanahaki Disease.”
“No, yeah, it’s a hundred percent real,” Suga deadpans through the phone. It’s 1 am, and he does not sound happy about the prospect of waking up in less than six hours. He duly reminds Oikawa of this.
“Refreshing-kuun, you’re supposed to be the realistic one between us—”
“I absolutely am. I wasn’t the one with the alien phase.”
“I know you like to read those online forum horror stories!”
A groan tumbles out of the cell phone speaker. “That’s true. Alright. I can see why you might be skeptical.” A pause. “But I’m not talking about strangers shouting into the internet. Dubious personal accounts aside, you can look up larger hospitals in the city. They offer treatments for it.”
“Right. This emotion-cancelling surgery.”
“Don’t get salty with me, Oikawa, I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s very real.” Suga sighs into the phone. “Look, I know you aren’t calling me because you’re suddenly interested in your supposed fangirls’ gossip or something—”
“I got five girls’ numbers the one time I visited your studio, you saw me.”
“—so I’m going to ask straight out. Are you coughing up flowers?”
Another, longer, pause.
“Oikawa, you better not hang up.”
“Yeah, yeah—I—” Oikawa breathes before responding, “Yes? No? Maybe?”
“Okay, alright.” A surprisingly tense energy runs through Suga’s voice. “You should… you can’t go through this alone. I can help you figure it out."
“God, that’s embarrassing.”
“Shut your fragile masculinity for just a moment!”
“I object to that!”
A chuckle on the other end of the line. “Fine. So just shut your trap, then. Look, I’m glad you called me, so you’re gonna be cute for once in your life and actually listen to what I say— “
“Augh!”
“—you going to either confess to Iwaizumi-san now, or you’re going to book the surgery ASAP.”
It takes a second for the words to register.
“Wait—”
“Am I wrong?” The smug tone on the other end of the line belies any hint of doubt his friend might possibly have.
“... No,” Oikawa mutters. “Is it that urgent?”
Suga’s tone is softer as he replies. “It’s… better to seize the moment. Or, simply put, the surgery is a lot safer, and with a far smaller likelihood of complications, the earlier you get it.”
“Alright. I’ll think about it.”
“You do that. It’s late, but we should talk again soon. I know you tend to go off on your own, but… please keep in touch.”
“Wow, you’re almost as bad as Iwa-chan.”
“Good night!”
That night, as Oikawa shuts off the light and crawls into his futon, he makes the mistake of looking up images of the disease on his phone.
The x-rays look unbelievable and painful. He scrolls past some of the more graphic photos of the coughed-up flowers, but notes how varied they are. He sees messes of unmistakable rose petals, small, colourful buds, and even pieces of leaves.
Does his own flower have some sort of meaning? He pulls over his laptop, squinting through the bright backlight. He punches "white chrysanthemum" and "hanakotoba—flower language" into the search bar.
[Chrysanthemum: friendship. White chrysanthemum: truth]
Well. He didn’t need the smug, outdated blog to rub salt in his wounds.
He scrolls a little further, peeking at the clock. It was already 2:30 am, damn. He remembers the urgency in Suga’s voice earlier. Was time such a problem? He hasn’t even felt the need to cough since that first itch a few hours ago.
Oikawa pulls out his laptop, looking up Hanahaki records again. It seems like it lasts a month for most, however anecdotal the data was. Despite himself, his work calendar flashes in his mind. A month was the timeline for one of the shorter projects he was in charge of. The local mall poster campaign for that new sportswear brand? The new kid with the scallion hair, what was his name? He seemed eager to join the project. If he paired him up with Matsukawa, then wrapped up the new employee onboarding two days early—
Oikawa rubs his eyes, refocusing on the task at hand. Hanahaki, schmanahaki—it doesn’t have to be a disease: it’s just another deadline.
Actually, now that he thinks about it, it’s not actually that bad, is it? He’s not hopeless, unable to act. Like Suga said, there are options. He thinks about confessing, and is immediately brought back to a warm spring evening, years ago.
“What are you looking at, Trashykawa?”
“Iwa-chaan, so mean, and on the day of our graduation, too!”
“That’s why I’m saying it. C'mon, we were going to meet everyone at the ice cream place. You’re lagging behind.”
Oikawa turns away from gazing at the school to face Iwaizumi, then looks back to the old building.
“Are you going to miss it? High school?”
“Hell no.” Iwaizumi chuckles. “This dingy old place? There wasn’t even a proper volleyball club.”
Oikawa laughed then, a small, tight chuckle, but genuine nonetheless. “True. I’m looking forward to finally playing in a big gym. Maybe even a stadium.”
“I bet my university has a bigger gym than yours.”
“Eh? You wanna bet? I heard we beat you in the last inter-college preliminaries. Size isn’t everything, Iwa-chan!”
“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” Iwaizumi says almost fully with a straight face. His expression cracks, giving into a snort of laughter at the end.
Oikawa laughs too, and starts walking away from the gate with Iwaizumi. A moment of companionable silence passes before he softly adds,
“You should still come see it, though.”
“Hm?” Iwaizumi’s eyes flicker to Oikawa.
“The gym. See our school’s gym, and the school, and… and visit me. If you try out for the team, we might get to play each other, or something.”
“I mean, yeah. I’ll definitely try out, and I’ll definitely visit. You come visit me, too. Graduation isn’t goodbye forever.”
“It is for a lot of people.” Oikawa looks at Iwaizumi now, and stops walking. He takes a deep breath. It’s now or never, he tells himself. If he never sees Iwaizumi again, if he never gets the chance again—he needs to say it, push those words past his lips—
But they don’t come out. He bites back his sigh, pulling his mouth into a wide smile instead.
“I mean, maybe you’ll manage to get a friend or two. Without my dazzling presence around, maybe even a cute girlfriend... " Oikawa falters a little. “But… don’t forget about me, alright?”
Iwaizumi is giving him an unreadable look. A few seconds pass before he huffs a quick breath and begins walking away again.
“Shittykawa, who could forget about you.”
Oikawa is shot back out of his daydream by a text.
[2:34am] Iwa-chan: You better be asleep. We’re getting coffee tmr 9am w/ new hire, right?
He can’t help but smile as he responds.
[2:34am] Trashkawa: aren’t you being a hypocrite, iwa-chan? are you looking up dirty things this late at night?
[2:34am] Iwa-chan: I’m leaving w/o u tmr
Oikawa laughs as he snuggles into the futon. Somehow, history manages to repeat itself in the strangest ways.
Fine, confessing is hard. But Hanahaki isn’t scary. He's pined after Iwaizumi for twenty-plus years, probably; a few flowers won't scare him this late in the game! But it might get worse later, so fine. It's a push—no, a gentle nudge—to action, then. Oikawa can work with that.
He'll make a plan.
“Actually, I might be a genius after all,” Oikawa emphasizes as he unwraps the custard bread he bought.
The two men sitting opposite to him level him matching unimpressed stares.
“So… why are we here, again?” Hanamaki is the first to speak. He pops open the lid of his coffee.
“Work, of course~” Oikawa lilts, motioning towards the door of the cafe they're in, indicating the busy mall outside. Posters line the walls of Nekoma Station Mall, barely visible behind the steady stream of foot traffic. “Market research and whatnot!”
“I’m here because you’re treating us,” Matsukawa joins in, taking a big bite of his own custard dessert. His bushy eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Mmph, these are new, right? They’re delicious.”
“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” Hanamaki mutters, eyeing Matsukawa before turning back to Oikawa.
“But what I said before. I’m really good at my job, you know.”
Matsukawa and Hanamaki return to their previous deadpan expressions. This turns out to be a rather entertaining look on Matsukawa, whose cheeks are still full of pastry.
“And I’m tall, popular, good at speaking. I’m a people person!” Oikawa leans back, taking a bite of his own custard bread. It actually was delicious. “So, if anyone can win over a heart in a 4-week period, I could.”
His two friends look surprised.
“A 4-week period? Did you finally grow a pair and decide to—” Hanamaki is quickly shut up by an elbow to his stomach from Matsukawa.
“Well, what I mean is that it’s a reasonable goal with a reasonable timeframe, and I have the necessary tools at my disposal to reach it.”
Hanamaki eyes him suspiciously. “Tools?”
Oikawa grins, pulling out a folder filled with papers. The first page was a neatly printed schedule, annotated and colour-coded.
“See, here. I think it would be best to use three main pushes, with enough time for fallbacks in between.”
“Is… is this why you planned a team-bonding event for next weekend?” Matsukawa squints at the small text. “The pool? Did you just use company funding to—”
“And, I have a few trustworthy connections that could help me set up some of the more elaborate situations.”
Hanamaki and Matsukawa are remarkably synchronized today, Oikawa notes, as the same vaguely tired look of unease settles over them both.
“This one first,” Oikawa jabs at page 3, top bullet point.
Hanamaki skims over it. “Are you serious.”
Oikawa nods.
“You are… a child.”
Oikawa grins widely.
“I’m looking forward to your support.”