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Sunflowers are beautiful. A brave flower that dares to stand so tall and show itself off to the world, making a show of joyful yellow petals and providing sustenance from its seeds. How many flowers can one associate with being proud and tall? Surely, the only one to come to mind is the radiant sunflower.
So, if you were to meet someone with the spirit of a sunflower, it would only be natural to feel yourself drawn into him. To cling around the corners of the radiating warmth he gives off in hopes that maybe he’ll one day turn to you like a sunflower follows the sun. To hang off your every word like a flower hangs on another day in a drought just hoping for a drop of rain. To have him dance around you in glee like the petals that get blown in a gust of summer wind.
But when Midori wakes up one day with a metallic taste in his mouth, and yellow petals dotted with blood scattered on his pillowcase where his head once lay, he knows that isn’t the case.
Sitting in his seat before class starts and waiting with anticipation flowing through his blood is a stupid idea. The flowers sitting in his lungs, heavy with the weight of a planet orbiting the sun, tell him that this is the farthest thing from a smart idea. It can only lead to pain to remain hopeful like this and continue to grow like a weed encroaching on the cheer Hinata encompasses.
It used to be that his breath would be taken away when Hinata entered the room, all shining smiles and melodic giggling, demanding all eyes praise him. Now, his breath is still gone, but it’s choked out from the flowery vines entangling his throat in a vice grip, demanding he pay penance for these goose chase emotions.
“Good morning, Midori-kun!”
Such a candid greeting. It makes Midori’s heart flutter.
It makes a sharp pain pass through his chest.
There’s lots of time where Hinata is the center of attention, from playing a prank during class causing Kunugi to scold him, to lunchtime where Hinata sits with his crowd of friends who all whoop and laugh at his antics.
Surely the healthiest of sunflowers would burn up with such intensity lurking within their stems. Or this could be a unique species of helianthus, one that looked to the sun for so long that it itself absorbed it and became a drop of it, gracing Earth with its presence. Regardless, Midori is nothing but paralyzed by it.
It’s not when Hinata is dominating a room that Midori feels the flowers in his heart pang inside his chest itching to escape, no, it’s the small things. The moments where he’s quiet in class, spinning a pencil on his fingertips with a blank yet thoughtful look as he gives no care to the lessons of the day. Moments where he must have stayed up late, lively green eyes turned droopy, crinkling with a poorly smothered yawn. Settling his head on his desk and dozing off, a soft rise and fall of his shoulders to the rhythm of a class time dream.
Midori wants to hold onto the fluttering skip of his heartbeat. He wants to hold onto this unthinkable exception to his wallflower nature that pulls him forward to approach the sunlight. He wants to hold onto his withered self blossoming from a delicate smile and pleasant laughter.
Once benign feelings of pining are crushed and smothered under blooming flowers of hopeless affections; a full harvest of pathetic longing, an enthralled heart, and unrequited love.
He gives up on washing his pillowcase, since morning after morning he wakes up and it’s spotted with blood and yellow petals. He carries tissues with him, not daring to stain his priceless mascot handkerchiefs with his angst. He runs around even less than before at basketball practice, and if Chiaki gets mad then Midori musters up his most apathetic look while trying to hold back the flowers scratching at the bottom of his throat wanting to spill all over the hardwood floor of the gymnasium. At Ryuseitai practice, he spends more time observing the choreography and production and committing it to his memory in lieu of performing it himself, lest the pain in his chest become too much for him to move.
They’re haphazard remedies to a problem Midori has no solution for. Hinata is Hinata- a grandiose drop of the sun taking root as a sunflower. Midori is himself- an overgrown weed sprouting from barren earth, yet for as tall as Midori is, he always feels so invisible in comparison to Hinata.
He knows there are solutions. The obvious one is to tell Hinata how he feels, and hope that when he inevitably rejects Midori, that his stupid heart will take the hint and stop holding onto such a baseless dream of joy. But Midori is a coward; he could never bear to let a single word of his feelings escape into a world of sunflower fields, watching as they turn away from the sun to look at him and laugh at such a fool. Even disregarding the impossible situation where Midori, god forbid, confesses , there’s still a weak rattle in his heart that begs him to at least tell someone . The thought itself is terrifying though, so Midori lets the flowers in his chest hold his tongue if only to hold onto the ticking down happiness he feels.
It is hard at times though, because while some days he uses as many tissues your average person would blow through, other days Midori has to hide in the bathroom throwing up petals, leaves, and broken up stems into the toilet because his wad of tissues in his pocket aren’t enough.
Sunflower seeds should be tasty little treats to share with your friends, but as Midori watches them swirl around in the toilet bowl with streaks of blood, he only feels the urge to upchuck all the plants taking solace in his lungs. They come in bits and pieces, petals fluttering about with the hard-shelled seeds sound the most painful, yet it’s the thick leafy stem that grows with jagged edges that causes the most blood to trickle out. A beautiful flower must have a strong stem, and Midori can feel it’s sturdiness as it attempts to grow out of his lungs with only one place to fall out of. More than anything, it’s the stem that gives Midori the most trouble; probably some ironic reminder to how weak he is in comparison to Hinata.
The first day he misses school because the bloody weight in his lungs feels just a bit too heavy to move, Midori tries not to get his hopes up about some improbable situation where Hinata will text him and asks if he’s okay. Maybe even offer to bring him homework for the day and a little feel-better treat. That could never happen though, for more reasons than Hinata’s lack of work ethic when it comes to school. It’s that exact longing that bristles in Midori, each badump badump of his heart throbs as the blood it tries to pump spills into his lungs.
And Midori does get a message- Tetora saying he told Chiaki that he was feeling under the weather, and how he’s feeling now.
It’s not the message Midori wants.
How selfish of him to feel so bothered by a good friend checking up on him.
He doesn’t respond.
Too much of a bother.
He tries to keep a self-imposed limit of only missing at most one day of school a week, and for a while he manages to hold himself to that no matter how much his body groans to stay in bed. While being a slacker is hardly nothing new for him, he feels some sort of expectations weighing on him to do better, be better. It’s annoying that now of all times he’s trying to be a good student, that it’s a physical burden to lug his body to school.
When Midori wakes up and feels like the flowers are going to burst from his lungs and take root in his bed, he heaves his body upright and gasps as he takes his first decent breath, only to be followed with a hacking cough and a flurry of petals to dance so innocently in the air. How badly he wants to stay in bed, but two days ago he stayed home and while he’s everything but a committed person, he’s already dragging himself out of bed.
He puts multiple packs of tissues in his bag, and then for good measure, stuffs his pockets full of them as well. In the mirror he can see that he looks a rather unhealthy color and it makes the red blood spotting across his lips look worse.
God, he should just stay home.
You can see Hinata at school.
Midori splashes water on his face and scrubs away the blood. He slings the strap of his backup around his shoulders, and slips out a back door to avoid the bickering his parents will give him to tell him to go back to bed.
Passing time thinking about Hinata is the last thing he should do, each step closer to school another thought about Hinata’s silly jokes, another image of the triumphant grin Hinata always makes after a successful prank.
Another dozen petals coughed up to flower the pavement of the sidewalk.
Class 1-A is expectedly loud with chatter before class begins, and also as expected is Hinata in the center of it all, using his hands to emphasize some outrageous story he’s telling. Midori tries not to pause too long in the doorway, and he trudges to his desk to flop down and give some relief to his lungs before he begins to wheeze. The sunflower blooming inside him longs to go and join with the human one that has yet to spare a glance to Midori.
That’s okay. He shouldn’t expect too much.
He shouldn’t hope for much either, but he still does that.
It’s enough to just try and get through this day, and as the bell rings and students find their seats, Midori finds himself looking to Hinata. Midori is weird for this, he knows. They’re just classmates, Midori can’t consider them friends, not when Hinata has so many other people to pick from. People that are exciting- it’s a school of idols after all, and Midori shouldn’t even be here in this room right now.
Hinata’s hair is really nice today; it’s a lot curlier than usual and makes Midori wonder if he took a shower this morning and this is how it dries. He watches Hinata play with the ends of it, sparing no mind for the lecture on parallel lines cut by transversals. No, he knows Hinata isn’t paying attention to the congruence of angles from how he focuses so much on the end of his hair. Are there split ends? Is he going to cut it?
Midori almost isn’t fast enough pulling a tissue out of his bag to cough into. It’s an awful, strangled noise and while some classmates have gotten used to it, others still turn to the dramatic show Midori is giving.
Hide the petals. That’s the most important thing.
The blood is fine because that means sickness.
But the petals mean love and how tragic is that?
These coughing fits usually last just three, four at the most, coughs, but Midori woke up feeling fatigued, so he can’t quite catch his breath. He feels it- that damned stem- trying to work itself out of him, cutting into his lungs and a thick leaf tickling the base of Midori’s throat in the worst way possible. He’s busy coughing, but he can hear the teacher saying he should go to the infirmary, and it’s all the excuse Midori needs to peel himself away from his classmates’ prying eyes.
He stumbles out of the classroom with a tissue heavy with petals and seeds, and damp with blood. He doesn’t think he can make it to the infirmary. Chest searing like it’s about to carve itself open just so Midori’s woeful attempt at growing a sunflower can be displayed for everyone. Its throbbing goes through his whole body, and with a wheeze Midori pushes open the door to the bathroom and collapses inside.
The tile is cool, which he’s thankful for because he feels like he’s about to explode and negates any thoughts of the hygienics of the floor. He doesn’t have time to check if the room is empty because another surge of pain goes through him and makes seeds fall from his mouth and clatter against the ground. He tries to sit up against the wall but his shaking arm gives out and his face hits the ground, joining the splatters of blood.
This will pass- it has to pass. It always passes no matter how hard it gets.
There’s something in Midori’s throat.
He can’t breathe.
The flower is blooming.
It’s a scary thing- suffocating. Breathing is an autonomous action performed from even inside the womb, so to take that away, to really stop someone from taking in oxygen, it’s a certain thing that they will feel like they’re dying. And given a few precious seconds of an airway blocked by sunflower sprouting, one will know undeniably that they are going to die.
“Midori-kun!”
Midori holds his throat while his body shakes silently with his chokes and he can't get his body to move to look towards the door. Whoever is here is going to have first class seating to the death of Midori Takamine.
Then there’s hands on his and through eyes blurred with tears, Midori can see wide green eyes, and a mouth hanging open just like Midori’s but Midori suspects that Hinata is having no trouble breathing right now.
“Midori-kun, look at me. Can you breathe at all?”
Midori answers with yellow petals spilling from his mouth with a cough.
Hinata’s shoulders rise with the deep breath he takes, and it must be a taunt to Midori. He must know about all the useless yearning that occupies Midori’s mind 24 hours a day and has come to laugh in his face as he kicks the bucket.
Hands rise to Midori’s face and thumbs press into his cheekbones as Hinata leans forward with closed eyes, and Midori can’t believe it when the lips graze against his own. He’s completely frozen, even the budding flower in his throat freezes because this couldn’t be happening. This had to be his dying brain’s attempt to smoothen the transition to death.
But his body being pulled and pushed up to sit against the wall and Hinata’s body pressing closer feels all too real to be a fantasy.
Hinata’s hands move to Midori’s still grabbing his throat and pull them away, and Midori’s strength is that of a doll being toyed with, limp to all but what Hinata demands. Even when it’s Hinata’s tongue pulling Midori’s lips apart, he let’s him because if these are his final moments alive then at least he’s going out with the best departing gift he could ask for. Then Hinata pulls away and before Midori can feel his angst fester, he takes a deep breath and meets Midori’s lips again, but it’s… weird.
Midori is no expert, but he can assume that kissing doesn’t involve blowing air into the other’s mouth; that’s something that is saved for CPR isn’t it?
The realization hits him like a blinding glare from the sun, and he eagerly accepts the oxygen Hinata is pushing into him, hands finding the other’s blazer and squeezing the fabric just to feel more grounded. The flower lodged in his throat is pushed down with each breath Hinata gives him, sinking down into his lungs which feel more full of air rather than flowers for the first time in weeks. Every inch of his body buzzes with energy that’s no longer kept captive from tangled vines wrapping around him, and when the faux-CPR starts to hurt in a way that feels like a normal level of hurt, Midori pushes Hinata away with a gasp.
Hinata’s face is red and his mouth hangs open to take in deep breaths. His eyes squeeze shut with a long blink and when he opens them he presses a hand to Midori’s chest.
“Hey, Midori-kun?”
Midori doesn’t know where the courage comes from but he finds his hand brushing Hinata’s hair back. “Yeah?”
“Next time, try talking to me about your feelings instead of avoiding me for weeks on end, kay~?”
“...oh”
Hinata pats his cheek with a grin. “‘Oh’ indeed.”
“You knew.” Midori wishes the flowers had taken him.
“Duh,” Hinata snickers. “Y’know you should be so thankful that I’m super observant and noticed your petal storm, and also that I’m super familiar with sunflowers.”
“Thank you. I’m… Hinata-kun, you’re amazing. How could I ever think that you liked me?” The question leaves Midori’s mouth and with a pang of panic, Midori realizes that Hinata hadn’t even said that he liked Midori back. Saving Midori’s life could just be a favor and none of it even meant anything.
Hinata laughs, and Midori habitually reaches to cover his mouth to stop petals from spilling out, but Hinata shoos his hand away and cups Midori’s face in his hands. “Midori-kun, you’re quite the catch. Handsome face~ Cute little obsession with mascot characters~ Your despairful groans from day to day life are so cute~”
“Those last two sound like negatives.” Midori leans his head into Hinata’s hand like a child buries their face into a pillow and pouts.
For all the sunflowers in the world, Midori is certain that never could ever come within a planet’s distance to the absolute radiance of Hinata. And none would ever have a chance to exist in the same universe as the smile he shares with Midori now.
“They’ll always be positives to me.”