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Everything was fine.
They met when Namjoon came to Jin’s bistro with some of their mutual friends who wanted to introduce them. They talked for a while, exchanging small smiles and some slight touches, winding the night up with each other’s number saved on their phones. After that day, they met by themselves once again, and again and again, and it all just happened naturally. Namjoon was a smart, clumsy, adorable little nerd who made Jin laugh easily, and even if Seokjin was two years older, Namjoon was always doing his best to protect him from all the evil going around the world.
They started holding hands in comfortable silence, and then they kissed, and then they slept together and everything was just falling into place peacefully as the days went by. They had been dating for almost three years now and they were mutually and deeply in love. Everything was just fine.
Until the day Jin coughed up the first petal.
It happened out of nowhere, at some random and regular day. Jin and Namjoon were in the kitchen of Jin’s bistro, a few minutes before it opened, and Jin was trying to convince his stubborn boyfriend to try this lobster he had just prepared.
“There’s no way in hell I’m gonna eat that, Seokjin” stated Namjoon, adorably shaking his head sideways like a child. Jin tried to suppress a laugh.
“But it’s so tasty! Don’t you trust me?”
“This has nothing to do with trust, babe. I know you’re a great chef and I love eating everything you cook, but...” he glanced at the soft white diced meat on the plate before them and had to gulp down the urge to throw up, “but that’s going too far, waaay too far.”
Seokjin giggled. He reached out to touch his hair, burying the tips of his fingers there to caress his scalp lightly.
“Is it because you’re thinking of the poor little lobster when it was alive?” he asked softly. Namjoon looked at him with his brows furrowed, a pout growing on his plump lips, and Jin knew he had guessed right. “Awww, babe, don’t be sad...” he cooed, laughing a little, feeling his chest so full of love for that big baby right there he couldn’t handle it. “I’m sure it lived a very happy life before someone fished it, okay?” He pulled him closer and hugged him sideways, and Namjoon rested his head on Jin’s shoulder, with the older patting his shoulder and rubbing his arm lovely. “It’s okay if you don’t wanna eat it, I’m sorry for pushing you.”
He felt Namjoon shake his head.
“You don’t need to apologize, hyung. But thank you.” They both chuckled.
They spent a few seconds like that, with Namjoon wrapped in Jin’s warmth, breathing peacefully with his eyes closed. That was when Jin felt the sudden urge to cough, as if he was choking on air, which startled Namjoon.
“Woah, you okay?” he asked, running his hand up and down Seokjin’s broad back, watching worriedly as the other cleared his throat, frowning. Jin nodded positively, swallowing hard.
“I’m okay, sorry,” his voice was hoarse and he laughed a bit. “I think I just choked on my own spit, I don’t know.”
“Do you want some water?”
“No, I’m fine now, thanks” Jin looked at Namjoon, smiling affectionately. They stared at each other for a second, then Namjoon glanced around, checking if someone in the kitchen was paying attention to them, which no one was, then he turned back to Seokjin and gave him a peck on the lips.
“What was that for?” Jin whispered, playfully. Namjoon shrugged.
“I just felt like it.”
Jin’s smile grew bigger and he bit his lower lip.
“What am I gonna do with you, Namjoon-ah...”
Namjoon leaned in a bit closer.
“I have a few suggestions, if I may...”
Jin laughed out loud.
Their time was over, Jin had to open the restaurant, so they said their goodbyes (with one or two more stolen kisses before that) and Namjoon left. Jin watched him go, sighing dreamingly from the kitchen’s door, and when there was no more sight of the younger, he prepared to get to work. However, he felt his throat itching again, and there was something stuck in there, which Jin couldn’t seem to gulp down, so he excused himself to the bathroom.
By the time he locked the door Jin was coughing nonstop, and it felt so painful... He was holding on the sink for support, his lungs burning, his eyes tightly closed. After a minute, he felt something moving up his throat, and he coughed one last time. Jin opened his eyes and stared down at the sink, panting, drops of sweat popping up on his forehead, his mind going blank and his heart shrinking in his tired chest while he tried to believe he had just coughed out a small flower petal.
Hanahaki.
Jin had only heard rumors about it. But he knew what it meant.
And it meant Namjoon didn’t love him anymore.
***
“You okay, love?” Namjoon asked at night, when they arrived at Jin’s house, coming from the restaurant. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine, just tired,” Jin lied.
Namjoon smiled at him and it was the same smile as always, which pained Jin’s heart even more. How could that man not love him and still do everything just the same? It didn’t make sense.
They had dinner together and after doing the dishes, they watched a movie while cuddling on Jin’s bed till it was time for Namjoon to leave. He had an interview early in the next morning and the place was closer to his house, so they had decided he wouldn’t stay over that night. When the time came, they hugged and kissed passionately behind Jin’s closed door, and then Namjoon finally left, forty minutes after what they had planned. When he closed the door, Jin sighed relieved, this whole weight lifting from his chest. It was okay, everything was fine. They still loved each other as always. That one petal meant nothing.
Jin headed to his kitchen to clean the last plates they had used. He felt his throat itching, and he cleared it and drank some water, knowing all too well it was nothing to worry about. He held back a cough, mentally repeating to himself that it was just some random allergy. When he turned to the counter, though, Seokjin couldn’t hold it back anymore and started coughing really hard again. He had to hold onto the counter’s marble to keep his balance, and he just coughed painfully for a few seconds, eyes tightly shut, having difficulty breathing. It felt even worse than earlier at the bistro. When it finally stopped, Jin opened his teary eyes, his throat burning, and he stared, panting, at the numerous little purple petals of clematis splattered all over the counter, all of them stained bright red with his blood.
Jin’s shaking hands fumbled over the petals, trying to gather them all, and threw them in the sink. He turned the tap on and desperately washed them away, going back to the counter two more times until he had gotten all the petals. He then grabbed some cloth, wet it and started rubbing the marble to try to clean up the blood, his expression twisted.
Long after the blood was gone, Seokjin was still aggressively rubbing the counter, his hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead, tears running freely down his face.
***
Jin hated the place as soon as he arrived there. It was an ominous warehouse of an abandoned factory right outside the city. The whole situation reminded him of those stupid horror movies he used to make fun of, in which the characters seem to have no sense of danger and just go entering empty dark places like that, just to be chased or murdered in a few minutes, as expected.
Still, there he was. But the place wasn’t empty.
Jin hadn’t slept that night. After getting rid of the petals and blood he coughed up, he dove into his laptop, furiously searching about hanahaki disease and reading and watching everything he could find about it. There was not much, though. The disease was still a taboo and few people wrote some actual content about it, besides all the jokes and prejudice. He tried looking for medicine and ways to make it stop, also the causes of it and who it affected.
The sun was already rising on the horizon and he still hadn’t found useful information. All he learned was that those who suffered of hanahaki would had flowers growing inside their lungs when their love was unrequited. The flowers seemed to always be their beloved one’s birthday flower. It could happen more than once to the same person. If the disease weren’t stopped, the person would keep on coughing bloody flowers until they choked on either the petals or the blood. Much of what he found wasn’t clear.
But one thing was: the only condition for the development of hanahaki disease was unrequited love. Seokjin read pages and pages of sad and hopeless reports from those who claimed to suffer from hanahaki, stories of broken hearts, deceiving and abandonment, but the worst part of it (or was is the best?) was that Jin couldn’t relate to any of them.
He had just spent an amazing and calm night with the love of his life, just as they had done countless times before, and everything was the same as always. Then why the hell were Seokjin’s lungs blooming?
When Jin was about to give up, a little ad in some random website caught his attention. It was a simple light pink rectangle, with a small bouquet sided by a little note that read: Tired of hours of fruitless research about hanahaki? Come meet me anytime, we can talk, and maybe – who knows? – I can help you. It’s worth a shot. Jin clicked on it and was redirected to a simple website with nothing more than the same note and a phone number. Without thinking twice, Jin tapped the number on his phone and sent a message.
After a short conversation, with someone who didn’t even bother to introduce themselves, and not feeling sleepy at all, even after staying up all night, Jin had changed his clothes and driven to their meeting place. Now, he was entering the quiet warehouse, walking straight to the table he had just spotted, where a man was sitting, waiting for him.
“Who are you?” Jin asked quietly as soon as he could be heard. He tried not coming too close.
The other man, apparently a bit older than Jin, looked at him from his head to his toes and back, and smirked.
“You can call me Four,” he said “and that’s all you need to know.”
Jin nervously licked his lips, his hands closed into fists hanging by his body. His mind was spinning with questions and fears and mismatched information, and he had to make an actual effort to focus on something to ask first. Four waited.
“What... What can I do about this disease?”
Four leaned back on his chair.
“You have three options,” he said, and raised a finger. “First option: you can keep it a secret and endure it till the end, and choke to death on your lover’s birthday flower” Four frowned. “Poetic, isn’t it? Well, first, you’ll cough up little petals, then a whole flower, and by the end you’ll throw up a whole beautiful bouquet, stems and all. I don’t even need to tell you how painful that can be, right.”
Seokjin’s phone buzzed inside his pocket. He took it out and stared at Namjoon’s pic on the screen.
“Second” Four continued, “you can always tell your lover about it, and ask them to help you.”
Jin straightened up.
“How could they help me?”
Four shrugged.
“They would have to love you again. You could ask for it or, I don’t know, win them over again, you did it once, right?” The man laced his fingers on the table. “It’s not really reliable, though. But there’s also love potions, they’re real, you know.”
Jin stared at his phone again, still ringing.
“What’s the third option?”
“Surgery. It’s 100% effective, the disease just” he gestured as if something was popping in the air “disappears. I can do it for you.”
Seokjin’s eyes got bigger.
“Is that true?”
“Yes. We open your back and then we open your left lung, and we remove the buds, the flowers, or the bouquets, it depends on which stage you are by the time of the surgery, and that’s it. It’s easier in the earlier stages, but it’s still possible, and effective, by the end.” Four tilted his head to the side, not looking at Seokjin. “It’s still not exactly legal, so it’s not exactly cheap either. But it works.”
Jin’s phone stopped buzzing. Namjoon had given up.
“How can I believe it?”
Four smirked. He stood up and took his jacket off, yanking his shirt over his head right after. Jin was surprised and uncomfortable, but before he could even think of anything to say, the man turned his bare back to him and Jin saw four thin pink lines, drawn side by side on his skin, right over his left lung.
“You see this?” Four pointed to his back over his shoulder. “I’ve loved four people up to now, truly loved them. And they all left me. I almost died every time cause I didn’t want to believe it was happening. And happening again, and again and again.” He turned to face Jin, a very small smile on his lips that conveyed anything but happiness. “I underwent four surgeries and now” Four shrugged, “they’re all just faded memories and old photographs in a box.”
Jin kept silent for a moment. That man’s words certainly weren’t enough to convince him it was true, but he still was affected by them.
“So, after the surgery we just forget about them?”
“No, not them” Four put his shirt back on, “just the feelings you have towards them. All of it, good or bad feelings, they all go away. Your lover become just someone else.”
“And... can they come back?” Jin asked, shaky. “Those feelings.”
“No” Four shook his head, “once the flowers are removed, they’re gone for good. You can get sick again, though, if you fall in love with someone else and they don’t love you back again.” He pointed towards his own scratched back with his thumb, to emphasize his statement.
Jin’s phone buzzed again. Namjoon was still trying to reach him. Jin stared at the screen, frowning.
Even if Namjoon didn’t love him anymore, which still made no sense to Seokjin, he couldn’t just let go of all his feelings towards the younger man like that... He loved Namjoon so much, he loved feeling all that affection and caring for him with his whole heart. How could he make the choice to just forget everything?
But even if he couldn’t bring himself to do it, it seemed Namjoon was doing just that...
Suddenly, Jin resented Namjoon so much. How could he do that to him? How could he promise love forever and treat him so gently for almost three years, and now just... throw everything away as if it was nothing? How about Jin’s life? Like, literally his life. Didn’t Namjoon think about that at all? Did he even consider it would make Jin seriously ill? Because even hurt, even sorrowful, Jin still loved him. There was no way he could go through all that without suffering. Jin still loved him so much...
His grip tightened around his vibrating phone and he locked his jaw, swallowing dry. He blinked the tears away and stared at Four, who was quietly watching him.
“B-but there’s a chance the disease is wrong, right?” Jin bursted, in a desperate attempt to find the light at the end of the tunnel. “It might be a mistake, it may have started during a moment when Namj... when my lover wasn’t feeling completely happy about our relationship, but it passed and, and, and now we’re good! It could happen, right? This disease could just... fade away on its own, right?”
Four didn’t answer soon. He stared at Jin with a look that seemed too pitiable to his likes, and tilted his head a bit to the side, the little smug smile back on his lips.
“I was like that too, you know. I think the majority of those who contracts the disease tend to think like that,” he put the jacket on too, and sat down again. “Maybe it was because of an argument. Maybe it’s temporary. We’ve been married for ten years, there has to be a misunderstanding!” Four shook his head. “There’re a lot of excuses out there, kid, and lemme tell you, every single one of them is lethal. There’s no way out of it: if you’re sick, they don’t love you.” Jin’s phone stopped again, but he had forgotten about it buzzing on his hand long ago. He felt numb. His whole being felt empty and brittle. Four smirked. “The flowers never lie.”
***
“You still coughing?” Yoongi asked when he came to the living room where Namjoon was lying languidly on the sofa, buried in blankets, feeling like shit.
“Yeah...” he sniffed. “My colds are always like this.”
“I know you said it’s because of your condition, but you always have such bad colds, shouldn’t you go see your doctor again or something?”
“Mmhmm.”
“How about your medicine? Have you taken it?”
“Mmhmm.”
His friend chuckled lightly.
“Alright, big baby, I have to go now, call me if you need something.”
Namjoon nodded.
“Okay, thanks, hyung.”
Yoongi kept quiet for a moment.
“Do you ever regret it?”
Silence.
“I mean, you could’ve at least told him, right?” he insisted.
“What for?” Namjoon retorted. “So he could suffer because of me and I could suffer twice watching it?”
“Well, he suffered a lot anyway...”
“But it’s over now.”
“And you are still suffering.”
Namjoon didn’t answer right away. When he talked again, his voice was much lower and sadder. “It will be over soon too...”
Yoongi sighed.
“Namjoon-”
“Please don’t make me say it was better like this, hyung” Namjoon asked. “Shit happened and I did what I did, there’s no turning back now, so could you please don’t make me overthink this or I’ll just...” Namjoon winced and rubbed his face, exasperated.
“Ok, ok, I’m sorry, it was your choice and I promised not to meddle” Yoongi held his hands up, in surrender. “But don’t go there today, Namjoonie. I know you wanna know how he’s doing, but right now you look like shit. Try putting yourself together first.”
No answer again.
“Namjoon...”
“Okay, hyung...”
Yoongi shook his head, but he didn’t insist anymore and just said goodbye before leaving.
***
“Oh” said Seokjin, softly, when he recognized the masked man who entered the empty bistro. “You really came.”
“Were you... Were you waiting for me?” Namjoon’s voice sounded muffled because of his mask.
“Not really,” Seokjin resumed wiping a table, not looking at Namjoon. “I wondered if you would come, though, since we never talked after... you know. And here you are” he smiled at the younger, and it was so sincere it caught Namjoon off guard.
“You... You remember me?”
“Yes,” the older stopped what he was doing and straightened his back, folding the cloth on his hands. “I know we dated, I still have some photos and little notes with what I guess it’s your handwriting, and I remember your face and your name... But that’s it. I don’t remember the feelings I had for you, it’s like... it’s like remembering someone else’s relationship.”
Namjoon quietly stared and him for too long, but Jin didn’t break the contact. “I’m sorry, hyung” he finally whispered. Seokjin smiled.
“Don’t be!” He came closer so he could speak lower. “Seriously, it’s okay. It happens, people stop loving each other, feelings fade naturally. It’s not your fault.”
Naturally...
“But you got sick and you suffered and even... a surgery...”
Seokjin put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, drawing Namjoon’s attention to his beautiful face. “I’m telling you it’s okay, Namjoon-ah. I remember the facts, but since I don’t feel anything towards you anymore, nor good or bad, I have no reason to resent you or anything,” he caressed Namjoon’s shoulder slightly. “It’s okay. I’m good.”
They stared at each other for a few seconds, until Namjoon nodded and Seokjin let go of his shoulder.
“So, um... Could we, I don’t know... b-be friends?” Namjoon asked, regretting it immediately when he saw Seokjin’s eyes cloud. The older looked down, twisting the cloth in his hands.
“Um... I’m sorry, Namjoon...” he murmured slowly. “I think... it’s still a bit too early for that. The surgery has some, um, side effects? And...” Seokjin swallowed. “I’m still dealing with some... things right now, so... Could we wait a bit more for that? I’m sorry, I...”
“No, no, don’t apologize, hyung, please!” Namjoon rushed, nervously waving his hands, feeling like the stupidest worm to ever crawl this planet. “I’m the one who is sorry, I just said that without even considering you may need some time to, um, recover, I’m sorry, that was very insensitive of me...”
Seokjin chuckled.
“It’s okay, Namjoon-ah, don’t worry. It’s not like you’re supposed to know everything about the surgery and its implications, right? Even I still don’t know all of it! Every day I discover something new in me.”
He tried laughing it off, but Namjoon’s chest was way too heavy for him to share a light chuckle. He stared at the older, his brows furrowed, Yoongi’s words from earlier floating around in his mind: do you regret it?
Do I even have the right to regret it?
“Don’t worry,” Jin said, a bit louder “it will all pass and I’m sure we can be good friends then! Let’s just give it some air and later maybe I could call you?”
“Of course,” Namjoon nodded and Seokjin smiled.
They didn’t know yet, but that later would never come. Namjoon sighed.
“Okay, then, I’m glad we...” he couldn’t finish his sentence, though, because he started profusely coughing again. Seokjin was surprised.
“Are you sick? You want some water?”
Namjoon shook his head, incapable of speaking just yet. He pressed his eyes shut and tried cleaning his throat, swallowing hard. “I’m fine, it’s... it’s just a cold.”
“Oh yeah, you have really bad colds, don’t you?” Seokjin looked concerned, as he always did when Namjoon was sick (or sicker), and Namjoon’s chest clenched. He just nodded.
“I better go” he mumbled, his voice hoarse. “I don’t want you or your clients to get sick too.”
“It’s okay if you want to sit down for a bit...”
Namjoon shook his head and smiled with his eyes, since the older couldn’t see his mouth. “It’s okay, hyung, you don’t need to bother. I really have to go now.”
Seokjin still looked troubled, but he didn’t insist anymore. He accompanied Namjoon to the door and waved goodbye, wishing him well, to what Namjoon bowed and thanked before mingling with the crowd.
Namjoon’s heart was weak in his chest, but he couldn’t even pay attention to it. His head was spinning and he could barely catch his breath, feeling his temperature go higher and higher each passing minute, and when he was finally safely far from Seokjin’s bistro, Namjoon fainted.