Work Text:
It is cold
And I have always relied a little too much on warmth
(please come back)
It has been two months since he was first admitted to the hospital. Two months of lying in the grey and the white and dusty orange that was the colour of this hospital's emblem and wondering why the hell he was even in the hospital in the first place.
"We are not allowed to disclose that information to anyone," The doctor had told him in that first post-surgery check-up months ago. "You signed a document before the surgery agreeing to this, so we are not able to tell you what surgery was undertaken."
Fucking bullshit, Minho had thought to himself grumpily, persistently ignoring the dull ache in his chest of where his stitches were. What happened that I signed something to get surgery but the doctors aren't allowed to tell me what surgery they performed on me?!
But that was two months ago, and now, the curiosity has boiled down to a simmer that is just something he wants to know, not something that he needs to know. And - he's going to be discharged from the hospital this weekend. It is something he has been looking forward to since the nurses gave him a confirmed date, and he only gets more and more excited about leaving as the day comes closer.
"You were really excited about coming into the hospital," Hyunjin remarks one afternoon casually when his friends are visiting, and immediately everyone freezes up.
"... Was I?" Minho asks quietly, hands fisting in the bedsheets.
"Never mind," Hyunjin says hastily, and the conversation had moved on.
But - that was another point that he couldn't seem to answer for himself. Why couldn't he himself remember as to why he was in the hospital in the first place? It wasn't like he couldn't remember everything - he could remember most of the things. He remembered coming to the hospital, and going into the surgery, but odd scenes and dialogue were missing from his head, as if someone had reached into his brain and ripped out parts of it, leaving a puzzle which he had no pieces to.
He had voiced this to his parents before, who had come down to visit him from their hometown. Suspiciously, they avoided answering him and instead started talking about some of the local stores that had closed back at home, and Minho was left with more questions than answers. Similarly, when he tried asking his friends as to why his memory might be so vague in certain areas, for certain events, they had all deflected his questions and moved on to another topic.
They are definitely hiding something from me, Minho had concluded just a week after he had woken up from surgery. Otherwise they wouldn't be acting so weirdly.
Still, even his confusion about what landed him in the hospital in the first place and his puzzling loss of memory isn't enough to stop him from being excited about being released from the hospital.
He gets released on a weekend, so some of his friends are able to come around and help him get home, packing up the things that he has accrued in his hospital room from what seems to be weeks on end of stay that he can hardly remember.
"How do you feel?" Chan asks, as Minho gets on his feet and walks around the room, careful in his movements. "You're not hurting, are you?"
Minho shakes his head. "Nothing hurts - the stitches kind of are, but that's how it is. It's just... it feels like - my chest is light. Like something used to be there. It's strange, hyung, do you think they removed something from my chest?" He turns to look at Chan, but Chan has faced away and is opening the door of his room.
"Perhaps," Chan says, and his voice is light. "Let's get you out of here, I think you've been stuck in here for too long."
Minho nods, and takes one sweeping look around his room. "Oh! Wait - I forgot my bottle on the side table, you can go ahead. I'll just grab that and check the room again."
"Sure. I'll meet you at reception. Make sure not to overstrain yourself."
Minho shooes him off, and he walks over to grab his water bottle from beside the bed. Curiously, as he takes it, something orange catches his eye in between the bedside table and the hospital bed. Something orange. Carefully, with one knee down then the next, Minho crouches down and picks it up.
It's a petal.
The petal of an orange peony blossom, Minho recognises, but why would that be here? None of his friends or family had ever brought him flowers, and it wasn't spring, when the wind would sometimes carry petals into rooms.
Strange, Minho thinks, and runs his fingers over the dried petal. The edges are crusted red... like blood.
The dull ache of his chest sharpens.
"I don't understand why he's in the hospital."
"It's none of your business."
"It is! He had something he wanted to tell me before I left -"
"But you gave your answer when you left without meeting him!"
"What do you mean? I told him I couldn't meet him! My flight was changed, I had to get on an earlier plane - I texted him, I'm sure of it."
"..."
"Hyung?"
"So... so you love him?"
"What?!"
"Do you love Minho?"
"I... yes. I do."
"But then... Minho still got Hanahaki - fuck, shit -"
"Minho got Hanahaki?! Hyung, what do you mean that he got Hanahaki?"
"... Listen - I know it's unbelievable, but it's true. Minho - he got Hanahaki after you left. He had been complaining it was difficult for him to breath just like a week or two after you left, but he wasn't in a good state, but anyway - he started coughing really badly. Then - then one day he got a fever and... and he started coughing up flower petals."
"Flower petals? I -"
"He was coughing up orange peony petals, Jisung-ah."
"... Can I see him, hyung?"
"He's not going to remember who you are. The surgery to remove the plant in his lungs - all his memories of you are gone. That was the consequence of the surgery, since he was sure you didn't love him back."
"That's fine, it doesn't matter, I just want to -"
"And... and the doctors said that there's a possibility he's lost the capacity to feel. They don't know for sure because it varies from person to person and there isn't a determined basis for how the surgery will turn out. I - do you still want to meet him?"
There is not even a single pause before the answer comes.
"Always."
"Are you Han Jisung?"
The voice is too familiar to be asking that question. Jisung takes a deep breath before he stands up and turns around.
"I am," Jisung says, smiling. "You must be Minho, right?"
Minho smiles at him politely. "I am! Do I - do I know you? I only know Chan-hyung asked me to come here because a friend wanted to see me..."
Jisung tries not to wince. "I - well - you don't know me. I... I'm Han Jisung. Do you want to sit down? We can order something to eat."
Minho really doesn't remember anything, Jisung realises as they plod their way through lunch. Minho is quiet and reserved, polite in the way he talks and acts, and Jisung can't help but feel pain stinging at his heart.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair - that his flight had been pushed earlier, that the message he sent Minho did not go through, that Minho thought his love was unrequited, that they had missed each other, that Minho had gotten sick enough to need surgery. It was all just - not fair. It is all Jisung can think to himself when Minho smiles at him just like he always used to, but there is little affection behind it.
"Can I have your contact?" Minho asks, right before they leave.
"... Of course!" Jisung pretends to put his contact into Minho's phone; he changes the nickname of cheongsolmosung to Jisung.
"Thank you! I'll text you sometime? It was really nice meeting you," Minho says, smiling, and for a moment Jisung thinks it is two months ago and everything was normal and nothing was wrong.
"It would be really nice," Jisung finally says, and he smiles too. It feels like he's living another life with all the memories of his past life intact.
When he gets back to his own apartment, he sighs, sitting down on his bed. He opens up the chat between him and Chan, and he reads over the last message he had sent Chan.
[11:09] im gonna try and tell him everything
[11:09] thank you for arranging this
Jisung falls back onto his bed and looks up at the ceiling, staring blankly before putting an arm over his eyes. Too much. Far too much. He couldn't bring himself to tell Minho the whole past between them; that it was his fault that Minho had suffered so much; that they were so close to happiness but are now strangers again.
He goes to sleep. It's easier that way.
(when jisung wakes up, his pillow is not wet; there are tiny little orange crystals lying on his pillow, gleaming against the whiteness of the cover. his eyes are puffy.)
"What do you mean you're crying stars," Hyunjin says, a month after Jisung first met Minho. "I hope you meant that figuratively, like for your lyrics or something."
Jisung shakes his head, sighs. "No - I'm not joking. Here, look -" He reaches into his bag and pulls out a little pouch weighed heavy with crystals, dropping it into Hyunjin's palm, "- these are the crystals I cried out for the past few days or so. I had to collect them, I thought I was dreaming it all up."
There's a pause as Hyunjin examines the crystals in the pouch.
Jisung doesn't bother looking - he has seen the crystals for what must have been hundreds of times already. When they first appeared, he had freaked out, wondering if he had crushed some jewellery while he slept, but then as the days went by and he found more and more crystals when he woke up, he had started to think something was happening in his sleep.
He couldn't figure it out till the moment that he sobbed after Minho called him Jisungie for the first time, and the orange crystals made tiny little sounds as they slid down his cheeks, falling soundlessly onto the carpet of his bedroom.
No, Jisung had thought then, so shocked his tears had stopped, and the crystals came a halt, the last of it rolling off his cheeks. No - no, no, no, no -
"You have star tears?" Hyunjin murmurs, and the orange of the crystals are no longer that brightly coloured in Jisung's eyes. "I... it's something like Hanahaki, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Jisung says, sighing deeply and sitting back against his chair, not meeting Hyunjin's eyes. "I went to see a doctor. They said it's called 星涙病 ," He says, and pronounces the words carefully, "which just means star tears disease. It's caused by unrequited love... and basically you cry stars." He looks up then, glum, and Hyunjin has placed his crystals down.
"I'm sorry," Hyunjin says, and his lips are pressed thinly together, unsure where to start. "I can't imagine how painful it must be."
Jisung laughs, and it is hollow. "It's just tears. I'll get through it." He thinks maybe that this is his suffering for everything that Minho went through.
Hyunjin looks unconvinced. "Is there any way to stop this?
Jisung meets Hyunjin's gaze; knows that he already knows the answer to that question.
(there is hope, chan says to jisung three months after minho left the hospital and jisung came back from overseas. he said he thinks he has a crush on you.
what, jisung had breathed out, and felt the familiar prickling of orange behind his eyes, hyung, that means -
he also said his chest hurts, for some reason. jisung - you need to be careful. we don't know if this will put him in the hospital again, or if he'll get hanahaki again. jisung, promise me - please.
i know, jisung whispers, i will. i can't - i won't lose him again.)
The silence between them after Jisung says everything stretches far too long for his liking.
"I... I had Hanahaki?" Minho whispers, and his eyes are blown wide with shock. "Is that why - my chest - and the surgery - I don't remember anything -"
"It is," Jisung says, and he cannot bear to meet Minho's eye. "You had Hanahaki, and it got bad enough that... that you needed surgery. And when the flowers were removed, all your memories of me were removed as well."
There is another silence here, and it is even more unbearable.
"But... you are - you have that disease," Minho begins, and Jisung's head snaps up. "The star tears - Hyunjin told me."
"That little bitch," Jisung grumbles.
"Is it true?"
"I - yeah. It is. I've got the star tears disease."
"Because of me?"
"Well, yeah."
"Oh... I'm sorry, I -"
"You don't need to apologise. I'm the one that's sorry - you had really bad Hanahaki cause of me, and -"
"But it wasn't your fault, the message didn't send -"
"And you still suffered!" Jisung says, exhaling hard through his nose and feeling orange prick behind his eyes. "If you want to be fair - both of us are. There is no way around it."
"We both fucked up," Minho agrees, and his voice is flat; somehow, Jisung can hear the familiar lilt at the end of his voice that indicates his pain. It hurts so much worse to know that he still remembers Minho's little quirks and characteristics and habits and Minho... doesn't remember him at all.
"I'm really sorry," Jisung murmurs, and he runs a hard hand through his hair, feeling close to tears. He doesn't particularly feel like crying right now, not with the orange crystals that will start falling, and that if he starts crying now, he won't be able to stop for a while.
"But - everything we've done," Minho starts slowly, "it's all fixable, isn't it? My Hanahaki is gone, and - and we can get to know each other again." He looks at Jisung then, and Jisung doesn't dare to think that it could be hope in Minho's eyes.
"What do you mean?" Jisung asks carefully, sits up a little straighter.
"I mean that we can get to know each other again," Minho says, "like we used to. I - I'm sure that if I once loved you, I can... I can love you again. I'm sure of it. And then... hopefully - your star tears disease will go away too."
Jisung - feels everything, all at once.
It feels like orange.
"Maybe," Jisung agrees, because life has had too much over on him recently, "maybe we will."
Minho smiles, and Jisung thinks that maybe does have a high chance after all.
(and jisung won't ever be able to see the colour orange again. he thinks it's because he's cried out all the orange in his star tears, the little crystals misshaped and cracked and crumbling to dust, but there is a sacrifice for everything.
because now, even though he and minho have gone through so much pain in so little time; even though they have had to relearn each other and come to find each other again; even though orange became their most feared colour for one unerasable moment in their lives - they are together.
they are most undoubtedly, together.
and jisung is sure that no matter what comes next, that he will never cry orange again, and minho will never cough up orange again.
it has taken a colour for them to come back to each other.)