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At first, Nathapon thinks that he’s gotten out of shape. He gets out of breath quicker than usual, and he's having a harder time breathing deeply. So he takes advantage of the nearby Mount Kenya, and hikes to its peak and back to build his endurance back up. By the end, he feels a slight improvement, but not by much. Maybe it wasn’t strenuous enough, he wonders, or perhaps I’m allergic to something? He checks all his journals, but there’s nothing about an allergy, so he chalks it up to fatigue and moves on.
He’s in Egypt when his shortness of breath transforms to a slight stuffiness in his chest from time to time. It comes and goes, but international travel with a potential new illness isn’t wise, so Nathapon gets a check-up under one of his false identities.
At the hospital, the doctor goes through a series of questions—what’s the issue, when did it start, does he have any mucus or phlegm, does he get into fits of coughing, did he start any new medication, all of which he answers no to.
“Can you describe your cough?” she asks.
“Well,” he starts. “It feels like I’m stuffed up, but not in a congested way, more dry and fluttery, like I’m almost about to cough up phlegm. I’ve tried drinking warm water and steaming, but nothing helps. The sensation goes away on its own after a while, but it’s been happening more often.”
Nathapon hopes he’s described it correctly. He keeps an extensive note of uncommon sensations in one journal—things like how a frostbite or a fever feels, and any medical terminology related to them. Doctors love it when he makes diagnoses that much easier, but it still makes him nervous when he uses the journal for the first time after another amnesia episode. It feels like his life is a series of trust falls with his past.
She presses the stethoscope against his chest and jots down how his breath rattles against his ribcage. She goes back to his file and makes some notes, then sends him out for a quick x-ray scan. Minutes later, she calls him back into the room.
“It seems you’ve developed hanahaki.” She clicks her pen a couple times.
“Excuse me?”
“Hanahaki is usually passed down, but it’s not uncommon for people to spontaneously develop it. Since yours developed in adulthood, it could be a one-time case, although it's possible to relapse.” She shows him his x-ray and taps a strange stringy, clustered silhouette in his esophagus.
“That’s where the hanahaki seed implanted itself. Luckily, you have the most benign type. If you look here,” she traces the stringy mess that branches upwards to his throat. “Those are the hanahaki stems, bypassing your lungs entirely and headed towards your mouth. And the stems are all mature, which gives you at least two, three months before you have to worry about any new growths.”
The doctor continues, talking about when and how more advanced symptoms will show up, and different treatment options he can take. They range from the traditional method of confessing, to simple over-the-counter medicines, to surgery. (“Don’t worry,” she explains. “Surgery is only needed for the cases that can become terminal. Your flowers are forget-me-nots. They’re non-toxic and small, so there’s no risk of poisoning or blocking your airway.”)
Forget-me-nots, how appropriate. The corner of his mouth twitches in a sardonic grin before he can stop himself, and the doctor notices.
“All the talk about using flower symbolism with hanahaki flowers is hot air,” she cautions him. “There's a dozen studies that show that any correlations between hanahaki flowers and flower language meanings are coincidental, at best.”
Nathapon does his best to get through the rest of the appointment as she gives him a basic (but still quite lengthy) run-down about hanahaki. She also gives him several informational pamphlets. The biggest takeaway from them is that the disease’s gestation period is usually between three to nine months. The second biggest takeaway is that hanahaki progresses faster when it’s host’s feelings get more intense.
He picks up off-brand cough relievers and his prescription in a pharmacy. The cough relieving tablets are slightly less effective than the others for the same price, but he won’t have to worry about any liquid restrictions if he has to fly.
When he gets back to his motel room, Nathapon immediately starts to go through his journals and photos. He’s already gone through them once after he lost his memories again, but this time, he has to guess who he would have fell for within the past year. He picks up a pen and a memo pad and starts writing down character profiles of everyone he’s come into contact with.
An hour into this search, Nathapon regrets his lifestyle. Constant international travel means that he meets a dozen new people every month. His list is sixty names long, and he’s not even halfway through his target timeframe. By the end of the night, he ends up littering an entire wall with memos of persons of interest, all annotated and rearranged by the location and time he met them. He plans out the paths he’ll take to visit them all, and traces it on a map with the shoelaces from his boots.
Backing up to see his work, he feels quite silly. Paper and string covers the room’s walls, and scrapped paper litters the desk and floor. At least his shoelaces aren’t red—that’s the one saving grace that keeps him from looking like some conspiracy theorist.
For the next few weeks, his search bears no fruit. He retraces every step and several more he might not have recorded, even though he’s sure he’s trained himself out of that mistake by now. This is the first time in a long while (at least, the first recorded time) that his trust in his past selves are eroding.
His discovery happens on a frustrated evening in another motel room. He’s flipping through his older albums, ones from almost a year ago—maybe his hanahaki started when he was reminiscing about them. He turns a page, and his breath and flowers stutter in his throat as he sees auburn-haired man on the pages. There you are. Nathapon feels that thought more than he thinks it. A sense of warmth settles into his bones. The photographed man looks quite tired and has dark circles, his face is dry and his hair is more unkempt than not, and he looks like home. Arda Evren, the caption reads.
Nathapon is overcome with curiosity and longing. Who is Arda, exactly? What does he do? Who is Nathapon to him? He starts to skim through the photos, desperate to know more. There’s no doubt that this man is who his hanahaki is about, but now Nathapon has to figure out whether a confession or a surgery would be more successful.
Some of the pictures containing Arda are of monuments and historic temples. They have the exact composition and framing that Nathapon uses for his commercial work. Many more depict the plain, inconsequential moments. As he goes through the photos, Nathapon feels such intense fondness for this strange, familiar man that his hanahaki makes sense now. Despite his memory’s many failings, one of the things impressed in it is his love for Arda. Arda, Arda, Arda , his name feels like silk on his tongue. In one photo, they’re in a library, and Arda furrows his brows as he pores through a thick tome. Another one shows Arda from the back, walking down a corridor, his trenchcoat coattails flapping dramatically in the wind. There’s a series of shots where Arda tries and fails to grab his sticky ice cream from an ice cream vendor doing tricks with it, and even a few where Arda is just napping, hunched over a desk.
Nathapon is jerked back from the moment by a series of coughs. This one is different though, more painful. It feels like water went down the wrong airway, then scratched lines into his throat as it came back up. He gasps for air and wipes his mouth. A flutter of movement catches his eye, and Nathapon sees blue petals drifting down.
The next day, he books his flight to Turkey as soon as he can. The nearest airport that will take him to Arda is two countries and a week away, and the flight is almost half a day long. He sends a quick message to Arda—thank goodness his phone number was in Nathapon’s address book—saying that he’ll visit next week, that there’s something he wants to talk about but doesn’t know how to explain it over the phone. As he packs and waits in the days before the flight, he tries and only sometimes succeeds in keeping his mind off of Arda, much to his chagrin and probable physical deterioration.
He dreams of Arda, and he can’t tell if the scenarios are moments they shared that he managed to keep, or merely imagination. In one, Arda moves into his new apartment, and Nathapon brings him two cases of Crimson Ox as a housewarming present. In another, the two of them show off to each other—discoveries about ancient civilizations from Arda, new sights and field work from Nathapon; like two birds preening and presenting gifts to prove their skills and worth as mates. In yet another, a warm spring downpour takes them by surprise and traps them under a skinny tree, where they huddle under the trunk to avoid getting wet. He wakes up to a sprig of forget-me-nots growing out of his throat, and the sensation of trimming it back puts him in a sour mood for the rest of the morning.
Human curiosity sends him back to the album pages despite how he knows it’s a very bad idea. The more things he re-discovers, the faster the flowers grow. But he can’t tear himself away from looking at the proof that somewhere out there is someone he loves, and even with all his memory problems that someone (probably) loves him back.
In the airport cafetaria, Nathapon is checking the time for his flight again ( his flight to Arda Evren , his mind supplies. Arda Evren, who was intrigued by Nathapon’s photographs from all over the world, and it all started from there ). He glumly bites into the iceberg lettuce salad as he feels a few petals dislodge and start tickling his throat from that thought alone. He had hoped that eating the least nutritious foods around would keep the flowers from growing too much before he reached Arda, but that seems impossible now, with the intensity of his feelings.
When his gate calls for boarding, when the plane takes off, when it lands, when Nathapon picks up his luggage and hails the cab to Arda’s address, he can’t stop turning over their moments in his mind. He stares out the window and sees the restaurants and stores that he saw in the background of the photos, when they traipsed through the country together. (In one crappy motel, a ceiling leak decided for them that they should share a bed, and their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces.) That’s the fountain square where Nathapon tried Turkish sand coffee for the first time, and three streets away from that post office is where Nathapon got to capture Arda struggling to grab his ice cream on film. (And everyone was first bewildered, then burst out laughing when Nathapon accidentally managed to grab his cone on the first try.)
A coughing fit overtakes him, so guttural and harsh that the cab driver glances over and asks if he’s okay. Nathapon mumbles back an affirmative. He tucks the blossoms he hacked up into his jacket pocket. The barf bag he brought for this is already full, but he didn’t want to dump the flowers in such a public place as the airport trash cans. He’s not sure if the driver saw them with the rear-view mirror, but the rest of the trip passes in silence.
They reach Arda’s apartment shortly after the street lamps turn on. Nathapon staggers out of the cab. The driver gets off as well, and retrieves Nathapon’s suitcases from the trunk for him. He pats Nathapon’s shoulder twice and gruffly wishes him luck before he leaves. So he saw, after all.
Nathapon climbs the steps to Arda’s apartment complex, and rings the bell. It’s a weekend, so despite it not even being dusk yet, Arda ( Arda, who heats Crimson Ox to pour in tea cups to feel fancy and more put together ) should be in.
Minutes later, when the door opens and Nathapon sees him in the flesh, he almost stops breathing. The evening sun dapples pink and orange shadows on Arda as he’s backlit by the light from his home. His eyes are framed by dark circles (that look lighter than the ones in the pictures, Nathapon’s glad to note), and he’s in a knit sweater that hugs his shoulders.
Arda’s gorgeous, warm mouth is parted in surprise, before he exclaims, “Nathapon! I didn’t know your flight landed this early.” His voice is husky, probably more from disuse than dehydration. He hurries down the steps and takes some of the bags from Nathapon, who’s still rooted to the ground from awe and bashfulness. These feelings are old yet new, he has no idea how to handle seeing the target of what’s undoubtedly years worth of friendship and affection.
“Are you okay?” Arda’s smile fades into concern. He stops preparing to haul the bags up the steps and steps closer. Although he’s nowhere close enough for it, Nathapon can swear he feels the heat radiating from Arda. He tries to force the words out of his mouth, but all he can do is stutter silently for a few seconds.
“A-Arda,” he stammers out after several tries. “Arda, Arda, oh my god.” A bloom falls from his lips at every word, but he doesn’t notice, too preoccupied by the raging whirlwind of emotions that threatens to paralyze him again if he doesn’t do something. He stumbles forward and grabs Arda’s arms. His giddiness bubbles so fiercely inside him that for a second, Nathapon mistook it for another impending coughing fit.
He must look wild, barging his way into Arda’s arms, eyes wide and cheeks pink. For a second, he wonders if this is all a huge misunderstanding that will create a fall-out that he’ll spend the next few visits trying to fix.
But there’s no way Arda doesn’t feel something. All the uncovered memories and revisited photographs show a closing distance between them in their quiet moments together. An earnest, naked vulnerability shines through in the mundane photos. In the crappy motel bed that one night, Nathapon had tried to nonchalantly throw an arm across Arda’s chest, like a teenager, and Arda responded by pulling him closer, where they woke up entangled in the morning.
“Nathapon?” Arda holds him in return and peers into his eyes. “Is that hanahaki?”
“I, I-” He can feel blood rushing to his cheeks. He feels like a fool, confessing his love to someone whose existence he only just remembered a week ago, but if his whole life is a series of trust falls, this is the one moment where he will take the plunge over and over again. “Let’s go inside,” he suggests weakly. A street is no place for any romantic revelations. Arda picks up his other bags and steers him into the lobby and elevator, where Nathapon is beset by a coughing fit that wracks his frame. He’s still shuddering from its aftershocks when they get inside the apartment.
They settle on the couch. His heart beats like mad as he tries to wrangle his words into shape. Arda beats him to the punch.
“Your hanahaki…” Arda starts, then stops, then starts again. “If you came here after getting hanahaki...”
“I must’ve gotten it before I forgot again, almost a year ago,” Nathapon explains. The words tumble out of him like a burbling stream. “I found out last week, and- ever since then I’ve been-” His gaze flicks to and from Arda. “-thinking about you.” He wants to meet his eyes, but this is terrifying, but he’s the love of his life, but Nathapon will eventually forget this anyway, but the look in Arda’s eyes looks a lot like hope. His hand twitches in an aborted motion to grab Arda’s. Would it be too much, all at once?
Arda must have seen it, for he grabs Nathapon’s hand. It gives him the courage to soldier on. “I saw the album and knew right away that it’s you. Every dream I’ve had since is about us, the moments I remembered or want. It’s like my body remembers you even when my brain doesn’t.”
“Yes, I- I’m-” in love with you , went unsaid. He cringes inside. He shouldn’t have let his words taper off. Arda deserves far better than that. He’s not prepared for Arda to hold him tighter, and whisper, “Me too.”
He continues in a stronger voice. “I’m in love with you too.”
They fall still for a second, eyes wide, hearts in tandem with their staccato beats. Then, in unspoken understanding, they lean forward and kiss carefully, tenderly, with Arda’s arms cradling Nathapon as if he shouldn’t be held too tight. Nathapon feels his blood rushing to his face as his senses fall away to just Arda, his arms holding him tighter, his lips. Nathapon cups Arda’s jaw with his hand and kisses back with ardor, again, again, again, open-mouthed and wanting. He’s getting lightheaded, feeling like all the good in him, every kindness he’s ever known, is overflowing and offered to Arda. Nathapon would give it all to him if he could.
They break apart for breath. Nathapon gasps as Arda mouths kisses along and down his jawline and neck, each one like a searing mark that warms him to his core. As he progresses, his arms crowd Nathapon closer, coaxing him forward until he’s on Arda’s lap, pressed flush against his chest. They capture each other’s lips again. Arda’s mouth is especially warm, and his taste has an electric zing to it. He must’ve been drinking Crimson Ox before this, Nathapon notes absentmindedly.
They stop when Nathapon has to cough, much to his chagrin. Arda runs his hands soothingly up and down his back as the petals spill over onto the couch. Nathapon’s coughs turn into chuckles as he sees Arda spit out a stray forget-me-not himself, and Arda joins in.
Nathapon falls forward into Arda’s easy embrace, and they stay like that for a while, fingers laced together and breathing in tandem.
“I love you,” Nathapon repeats. His lips feel tingly. His face feels numb. He feels like a ball of light, glowing and weightless, barely tethered to the ground in Arda’s hold. Arda squeezes his hand, looking as awestruck as Nathapon feels.
“I love you too.”
They separate themselves when night starts to fall. Nathapon steps out of the shower and finds reheated pasta with fresh fried eggs on the table. He can hear Arda typing up his research report in haste so they can go to sleep together.
In bed, Nathapon stares blankly at the street light reflections on the walls, trying to gather his thoughts. Finding out he was in love, then meeting and confessing within the same month, just to find he’s loved in return. It feels surreal.
The mattress creaks as Arda settles in next to him. He shifts to face Nathapon, whose eyes droop more from jetlag and fatigue than true sleepiness.
“Hey,” Arda says.
“Hey.”
This time, they’re in one bed, Arda’s bed, it’s purposeful. There’s no leaky ceiling to conveniently leave only one bed, no blistering cold, no spring downpour that forces them to seek each other. Nathapon throws his arm across Arda’s chest, and he sees the corner of Arda’s mouth curl up as Arda drags himself closer to wrap his arm around Nathapon’s waist. He can feel the heat radiating from Arda’s shirt, and he nuzzles closer to eliminate the last couple centimeters that separate them.
“I might get up in the middle of the night,” Nathapon warns, before yawning.
“That’s fine, I’m not a light sleeper.” Arda leans forward and presses their foreheads together for a moment, before giving a quick peck to Nathapon’s nose and pulling back. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
Nathapon stirs awake at the crack of dawn, jetlag nudging him awake when even the sun still sleeps. There’s no tickle in his throat ready to erupt—flowers in his airway must have already started to wilt. There’s a solid weight around him, and a soft, prickly feeling on his nose. He opens his eyes to see his nose buried in Arda’s hair, as Arda holds him close, their legs intertwined. Arda’s face has a slight glow from reflecting the light of the street lamps from below, and his chest rises and falls in a slow, calming tempo. His breaths are so shallow, so gentle, he resembles a cherub made flesh. Nathapon could drink in the sight of this forever, immortalize it in film, if he only could tear himself out of Arda’s arms and potentially rouse him to get the camera.
At that moment, Arda shifts. His head lolls and nudges the sheets away to create an opening, and they both shiver as a wave of cold air floods in. Arda reflexively cringes away from the chill and nuzzles into him. In return, Nathapon presses his nose to Arda’s temple, and takes his first deep breath in a long while.