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The first time Eric noticed something might be wrong was after a dance practice. He was a music major at Creker University, and had been taking a dance class both to make new friends and get another thing to put on job applications. The first of those had worked out quite well; he had ten more friends than he did at the start of his school career. The second? He hadn’t had the chance to test that one yet. But back to the main problem.
His classmates and he had just finished up the practice for a new song they had been working on- Giddy Up , a demo for a producing class some of them were taking. A few beats after the song ended everyone had spread out to go recover a bit. Eric himself was more tired than normal, having a harder time breathing. His roommate (and best friend) Sunwoo noticed this too.
“Hey dude,” Sunwoo said, plopping on the floor next to him, “are you okay? You seem worse off than normal.”
Eric waved him off, finally catching his breath a bit. “Yeah, I’m fine. Must be coming down with a cold or something. Don’t worry.”
Sunwoo continued looking at him worriedly, even going as far as pressing the back of his hand to Eric’s forehead. Eric leaned back, batting at his hand.
“I said I’m fine. Lay off, please.”
“Eric, you should be nicer to your boyfriend,” came the teasing voice of Ji Changmin, one of the aforementioned friends. Eric groaned.
“We’re not dating, hyung,” he complained. Sunwoo watched him carefully.
Changmin laughed. “Yeah, I know. I’m just teasing you guys. You’re too easy to work up, Eric.”
“Changmin! Hurry up, we have class in five minutes.”
Changmin looked at his phone. “Shit, he’s right. Eric, make sure not to work yourself too hard, okay?” Before Eric had the chance to respond, Changmin was already jogging towards the door. “Coming, Chanhee!”
Sunwoo analyzed his reaction. “I don’t know why you don’t just ask him out already.”
Eric shushed him loudly, whipping his head around to make sure no one else heard. “Jeez, Sunwoo. Do you want the whole campus to know?”
Sunwoo snorted. “It’s not like everyone else doesn’t already know, what with the way you look at him.”
He went unheard. “Besides, you know why. There’s no way I would ever have a chance with him so there’s no point in ruining our friendship.”
“Eric, I don’t-”
Eric jumped up. He coughed. “Listen, I’m just gonna head back to the dorm. I must be coming down with something. I’ll see you later.”
He basically stormed out of the practice room, Sunwoo watching him with concern in his eyes.
Luckily for him, Eric had a short day today. The only other class he had left was canceled for the rest of the week because his professor was on vacation. Once back at the dorm he spent a good hour getting some assignments done before everything really hit the fan. He noticed that he had been coughing a bit every now and then but had written it off as nothing. One time, however, wasn’t just a little cough. It was a big, I-need-to-get-this-out-of-my-throat-or-I-will-die cough. He rushed to the bathroom, thinking he was about to throw up. He closed his eyes over the toilet, preparing for the burning in his throat. Instead, it felt like he simply coughed up some phlegm. He opened his eyes, expecting to see some gross-looking spit at worst. What he was not expecting to see was two flower petals. That just so happened to be exactly what he saw.
“What in the…” he muttered. His eyes widened, denial setting in. He remembered this topic being covered during one day of 8th grade health class. It was known of but extremely rare.
Hanahaki.
“No. No, no, no! No!” he said. He paced the bathroom with his hands in his hair. “This is not happening. This can not be happening.”
There was a knock on the bathroom door. “Eric, are you okay in there?”
Eric panicked. He flushed the toilet and washed his hands for show. Then he opened the door to face his roommate.
“Yeah, Sunwoo, I’m fine. A-okay. What are you doing home so early?” he asked in an extraordinarily subtle attempt to change the subject.
“Eric, are you sure you’re fine? You’re panting.”
“Oh yeah, completely good. Just have a bit of a cold.”
“Okay then… I’m skipping my last class so I can come in and check on you.”
Eric put his arm across his forehead, pretending to faint against the door frame. “Aw, Sunwoo. I didn’t know you cared.”
“Shut up,” Sunwoo grumbled. He crossed his arms and walked away. “Never should have come… ungrateful brat…”
Eric let out a sigh of relief.
He spent his free time in the next couple of days in the library researching everything he could find on Hanahaki Disease. All of the dance class was worried about him. Each had tried to get him to talk during practice, but the only ones who had come to seek him outside of dance were Sunwoo, Changmin, and Chanhee.
Eric had just finished several books saying that there was no cure for Hanahaki except the other returning your feelings. After the first one he looked at another to make sure it wasn’t true, and then supposed that both of them could have been wrong, right? He lost a little bit of hope with each book, and then website, saying the same thing. When Changmin and Chanhee found him he had his face quite literally buried in a book. Chanhee slowly poked his shoulder.
“Eric? Are you awake?”
Eric’s head jerked upwards. The two noticed his eyes were red.
“Sorry, I fell asleep.” He gave a very exaggerated yawn.
Changmin looked him up and down. “You sure that’s it? You look like you were just crying.”
Eric laughed. “I must have teared up a bit in my sleep.” He motioned to the book he was reading. “You know how biology is. Always manages to bring students to tears.” Out of nowhere, he looked at the clock on the wall. “Wait, don’t you guys have a class in like ten minutes?”
“Well, yeah, but I think we have-”
“Oh, no, you better get going now just to make sure. You never know what might happen.”
Changmin wanted to stay a bit longer but Chanhee urged him to leave.
“Eric’s right, we should go.”
Eric looked relieved. He pointed at Chanhee. “See, he gets me!”
Changmin and Chanhee walked out of the library. Changmin turned to Chanhee.
“Something’s wrong with Eric.”
“Well, duh. But what makes you so sure now?”
“He doesn’t take a biology course.”
Chanhee’s face fell.
It had grown steadily worse over the course of the next week but Eric had somehow still managed to keep anyone from finding out that he was coughing up flowers. After some more research he had deduced that he was most likely coughing up Chrysanthemum petals, which were the flower of November. Changmin’s birth month. Eric had taken a good five minute cry when he found that out.
Speaking of crying, Eric had done quite a bit of it during the first few days after he found out. You know, grappling with the fact that your demise was imminent. But after that, he reached a sense of bitter acceptance. At the rate things were currently progressing, Eric figured that he had at most another week. He would set up a will but he had pretty much nothing to pass on. He had already recorded video messages in his phone for each member of his family, each of his friends, along with anyone else important to him. Since I’m not gonna tell them that I’m dying before I’m actually dead, he thought, the least I can do is provide some sort of explanation afterwards.
Every time he went to sleep he would wake up several times throughout the night unable to get air out. He would start panicking, grasping at his throat, all sense of tiredness ripped away by his instinct to survive, start breathing goddammit. At this point he was more scared he would asphyxiate in his sleep than anything else.
Somehow he managed to keep going to dance practice, though he was worse than normal. After each song he would excuse himself into a corner and cough some petals into a kleenex, throwing it away like nothing happened. Eventually, though, Eric knew that this whole charade of being fine would have to end.
One day it got to be too much. He stayed behind after the end of one dance practice, waiting for everyone else to leave besides Juyeon, the dance captain. Juyeon always stayed the last to make sure everything got locked up correctly.
“Juyeon-hyung, I… I’m gonna need to take a break from dancing for a while.”
Juyeon looked at him, eyebrows raised in shock. “Are you quitting the team? I thought you loved dancing.”
“No, no! I’m not quitting the team, I just won’t be able to perform as well as normal until this cold is gone so I thought that I should take a break. Let myself recover fully, you know?”
Juyeon nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know. Well, I’ll let you miss the dance practices until this… cold of yours goes away, but you’ll still have some work to do, alright?”
“Alright! That’s completely fine.” Eric gave a thumbs up and started towards the door. Juyeon called him just as he was about to exit.
“Eric!” He waited for Eric to look at him. “You can talk to me about anything. Hell, you can talk to anyone on the team about anything. Let us know if something is wrong, please.”
Eric furrowed his eyebrows, pretending to not be freaking out internally. “I don’t know what brought this on but sure, if you say so.”
They looked at each other for a moment longer before Eric nodded and left. When Juyeon told everyone the next practice that Eric wouldn’t be joining them for a while, Changmin and Chanhee only took this as more confirmation that something was the matter. Changmin approached Sunwoo at the end.
“Hey, would you mind being out of your dorm later tonight? I want to talk to Eric and I don’t think he'll appreciate that many people being there.”
“I mean sure, if you think you can get him to talk. But where am I supposed to go?”
“Why don’t you go hang out with Chanhee for a bit? We both know that you two want any reason to be together.” Changmin snickered. Sunwoo turned pink and stormed off.
Eric was still able to mostly function. He had mixed feelings about that. On one hand, he got to live longer. On the other hand, it was more time to fill up, doing things that would end up being meaningless because of the fact that he won’t live long enough to see the end results. It also meant more time for him to be found out. He felt like he had avoided suspicion pretty well, though he knew that he had badly screwed up the library incident with Changmin and Chanhee. Even with tears fogging his vision, and the frantic excuses trying to work their way out of his mouth, he couldn’t help but focus on Changmin. It truly was a shame that the first person that he felt actual, not just puppy love for would be the cause of his death.
It was Eric’s second week on campus and he was… doing better than he thought he would be, honestly. His roommate turned out to not be a dick, which was one of his main concerns. They were both freshmen and so were equally scared of being here. As a plus, they were majoring in the same thing! Yeah, Eric could really see Sunwoo becoming one of his closest friends.
Still, it seemed that Sunwoo was doing better in the friend-making department than Eric was. The only person other than Sunwoo that Eric could say he had more than five one-on-one conversations with was Eric Nam, the librarian. Sunwoo had enough confidence about him that even if you weren’t friends, you two would still talk like you were.
Eric came home from the mandatory math class everyone had to take. Just as he was about to open the door to the dorm, he paused. There was very clearly another voice, along with Sunwoo’s. Eric slowly turned the knob, peeking his head in to see who was there. To his surprise, there were three people there including Sunwoo. The other voice he heard belonged to the one sitting closer to Sunwoo. The two were both very clearly enjoying the conversation. Eric saw a look in his new friend’s eyes that he hadn’t seen there before.
Eric turned his attention to the third person in the room. He was sitting on Eric’s bed on the other wall of the dorm, awkwardly glancing around the room. He watched the two others talk with a resigned look on his face. Eric would later deny it, but the first thing that stood out to him about this man was his extremely long neck.
The door creaked when Eric opened it wider to step inside. The three snapped their heads to look at him. Sunwoo smiled wider.
“Eric!” he said, sounding the happiest Eric had ever heard him the two weeks they had known each other. “This is Chanhee-” he pointed to the one he’d been talking to, “-and this is Changmin.” He pointed to the one with the long neck. “I met them today in the cafeteria. They’re both sophomores.”
Chanhee waved at Eric quickly before going back to the talk he’d been having with Sunwoo. Eric walked over and set his stuff down by his bed. Long neck guy, whose name was apparently Changmin, reached his hand out to shake Eric’s.
“Hi,” he whispered, “I’m Changmin, though you know that already. It looks like we’re gonna have to get to know each other if we’re friends with those two.” He nodded his head at Sunwoo and Chanhee.
Eric laughed quietly, covering his mouth with one hand. “Yeah, I guess so. I’m Eric. I don’t suppose Sunwoo mentioned that already, did he?”
“No, he didn’t. As soon as we got here those two were off. I’ve been sitting here for half an hour.” He smirked suddenly, tilting his head at the two. “I give them until next year before one mans up and asks the other out.” Eric noticed that he was quite fond of the mischievous look on Changmin’s face, the sparkle in his eyes.
Eric smirked too, reaching out to shake Changmin’s hand again. “I’ll take that bet.”
Eric groaned, coming out of his memory. He turned over the edge of the bed to spit up some petals into the garbage can he now kept by his side, making sure to cover them up with kleenex to avoid being spotted. He flopped back down on his pillow, wiping the spittle off of his chin. “I’m gonna have to tell Changmin that I won that bet.”
Sure enough, it was now halfway through Sunwoo and Eric’s sophomore year, and neither Sunwoo nor Chanhee had gotten their shit together. I would’ve loved to see them be together.
“What bet did you win?” came the voice that had grown to bring Eric great comfort.
Eric jumped, attempting to sit up. His arms were too weak so he just ended up resting on his elbows. “Changmin-hyung! I didn’t hear you come in. I was just talking about when we first met.”
“Oh yes, that one. I really thought one of them would’ve done it by now. They are clearly crazy about each other.” Eric nodded his agreement. “Anyway, Eric, that’s not what I came here to talk about. You’ve been really off this past week and I’m really worried. I know you don’t just have a cold. So what’s up?”
Eric grew even paler than he already was from sickness. “Nothing’s wrong, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why would I lie to you guys about something like this?”
“Exactly! I don’t know why you would lie about this, when we clearly all just want the best for you. We’re all really worried. I’m really worried about you, Eric. Please, just tell me what’s wrong. I want to help.”
“Who said I even want your help?” Eric said, volume raising with each word. The stress was finally boiling over. “Stop trying to butt into my life and just mind your own business for once !” As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to go back to when he hadn’t said them. The look Changmin gave him was heartbreaking. His eyes were wide, as though he never could’ve dreamed of Eric talking to him like that. Then those same eyes thinned, a hardness entering them.
“Fine, then. If that’s how you really feel.” He turned and left the dorm, still making sure not to let the door slam even through his emotions. For some reason this made Eric feel even worse. He tried to yell at Changmin to wait, let me apologize, I promise I didn’t mean it I could never mean something bad about you, but he couldn’t find the breath. He smiled bitterly.
Just one more thing this disease has taken from me.
No one except Sunwoo, not even professors, saw Eric for the next few days. They all assumed that it was because of what happened with Changmin, who told them about it. They were partially right. None of them even considered that it was also because he was becoming too weak to move out of the dorm.
Sunwoo came back late one night. He had gone to the campus’s dance studio because Chanhee was struggling with a move and wanted his help. The two ended up only spending an hour on the move and another two hours talking.
He opened the door slowly, not wanting to disturb Eric. He noticed that he was looking worse each day. The lack of sunlight couldn’t be helping, of course, but even then he looked worse than Sunwoo had ever seen him. Sunwoo hated to say it, but he looked similar to how his childhood friend’s grandfather looked before he passed away. Stop that, Sunwoo thought, shaking his head, Stop thinking like that. Eric isn’t going to die.
He didn’t see Eric laying on his bed, which was rare nowadays. Even so, Sunwoo wasn’t too alarmed. He walked over and knocked on the bathroom door.
“Hey, Eric. You in there, man?”
There was no response. He was about to try again when he heard a barely audible croak of a voice. And it sounded like it was saying “Help.”
“Eric? Eric! Are you okay? I’m coming in!”
He opened the door as fast as he could, accidentally fumbling the knob. He opened the door and cursed. Eric was laying on the floor, pale as the dickens. One of his arms was draped over the toilet bowl. His chin was coated in spit.
Sunwoo scrambled over, dropping to his knees at Eric’s head. He slapped Eric lightly in the face to try and get him out of his apparent daze. It didn’t work. He jumped up.
“I- I have to call an ambulance or- or the police- or something!” Just as he was about to run and get his phone out of his bag, something orange in the toilet bowl caught his eye.
“What the-” Sunwoo glanced between the petals and Eric until the pieces put themselves together. “Oh- oh shit! I need to go get Changmin!” He kneeled next to Eric again, smoothing his hair back. “Just hang in there for a few minutes, man. I’ll be right back with help.” And with that he was gone.
It was around 10 p.m. when Changmin heard the knock on his door. Chanhee looked at him from his bed across the room. “It’s your turn to get it.”
Changmin groaned and pulled himself up. He opened the door and was faced with Sunwoo. Sunwoo, who was drenched in sweat and gasping for air, arm holding himself up using the door frame.
“Sunwoo?” Chanhee’s head sprang up at the name. “What’s wrong? Why do you look like you just ran across the whole campus?”
“Because I did,” Sunwoo panted. “Eric needs help.”
Changmin’s face darkened. “Why did you come to me? We all know how Eric feels about my help.”
Sunwoo seemed to regain a lot of energy then. “Stop being so petty, goddammit! Eric has Hanahaki and is going to die if you don’t come with me right now and finally tell him how you fucking feel. ”
Changmin and Chanhee, who had joined them, gaped. “Eric- Hanahaki- what?”
Sunwoo grabbed Changmin’s wrist. “We don’t have time for this. Come on.”
Changmin barely had time to slip on a pair of flip flops before he was being pulled out the door and across campus to the sophomore dorms. He turned back once and saw Chanhee’s absolutely bewildered expression disappear from view. He looked back in front of him, more determined than ever to make it to Eric in time.
The distance between the sophomore and junior dorms had never felt so big to Changmin. When they finally reached the dorm that Sunwoo and Eric shared he felt more exhausted than he had felt since he started college. Sunwoo looked even worse than Changmin imagined he himself looked, probably from sprinting this distance for the second time in a span of under ten minutes.
Eric looked the worst Changmin had ever seen him. He never wanted to see Eric like that again, either. Please, never again.
Changmin rushed over and dropped to his knees on the tile, ignoring the pain that spread through them. He carefully moved Eric’s head onto his lap.
“Hey, hey Eric. Hey, buddy. Can you hear me?” He brushed away some of the petals that were littered on the floor around them. All he got was a groan in response. He felt himself start tearing up.
“Eric, I need you to listen real close, alright? This is the most important thing that I will ever say to you so it’s important that you listen, alright?” There was a barely-there nod. “Good.” He rotated his neck so he could look Eric in the eyes. He took a deep breath.
“I love you. I well and truly love you, more than I’ve loved anyone else before. I love your face, and your smile, and your cute little glasses, and I love all of the different colors that you dye your hair and the fact that you put up with me teasing when one doesn’t come out just right because you’ll tease me right back. I love you and everything that comes with you.”
Changmin doesn’t know what he was expecting. Maybe he was expecting Eric to immediately regain all of the color in his face, for him to open his eyes and smile that smile of his that made Changmin feel faint and say that he was completely fine, I can’t believe you were that worried, hyung. But that didn’t happen. In fact, nothing changed. Changmin bowed his head and sobbed, touching foreheads with Eric.
“I must not be the person he’s in love with,” he exclaimed through his gasps. “I’m so sorry, Eric. I’m so sorry.”
He heard Sunwoo crash to his knees as well, and heard his sobs. He heard his cries getting muffled by Chanhee’s chest, Chanhee who had started running after them a few minutes after they left, Chanhee who was also crying but trying to keep it together for Sunwoo’s sake.
And then he heard a gasp come from underneath him. A gasp from Eric’s mouth. Changmin opened his eyes and raised his head, not daring to hope. Through his glassy eyes, he saw Eric, whose eyes were open and he was crying too but it’s okay because he’s alive, he’salivehe’salive.
“Eric!” He managed to get out. Eric smiled weakly.
“Changmin-hyung.”
And this probably wasn’t the best time, but no time really would be, so Changmin leaned down and kissed Eric, who kissed right back. It was wetter than he had previously imagined it would be because of the tears running down both of their faces. Changmin couldn’t bring himself to care.
Around a month later and it was like nothing had happened. Well, except for the fact that Eric and Changmin were officially dating now. The others constantly teased them for it taking Eric almost dying to get there. Changmin yelled at someone the first few times they said that, but Eric got him to lay off eventually, insisting that it was kind of funny.
Of course, the days following the incident weren’t nearly as nice. Changmin made Eric go see a doctor, just to make sure the disease was completely gone. And then he, along with the rest of the hyungs (and Sunwoo) scolded him for not telling them. They almost blew a gasket when he told them that he had messages recorded for each of them. His family wasn’t particularly happy about that one, either.
In the end, no one really found out other than those that were told. A few, like the people who had seen Changmin and Sunwoo sprinting across the campus in the middle of the night, had asked. They were quickly told that it doesn’t concern them. Eric supposed that they must’ve come to their own conclusions because they quickly lost interest.
When talking about it with his friends, all Eric could really say was:
“Well, it’ll be quite the story to tell the grandkids.” Changmin grinned and kissed Eric’s cheek whenever he said that. (Which might’ve been some of his motivation for saying it in the first place, but that was never confirmed).
One day, in the weeks before school let out for the summer, when no one was really taking things very seriously anymore, Changmin and Eric were sitting together under one of the trees on campus, just enjoying the other’s presence. They saw Sunwoo and Chanhee walk by, bickering just like they always were. Eric recognized the look in Sunwoo’s eyes now, and he saw the same look in Chanhee’s.
Eric turned his head to kiss Changmin’s neck. “You think those two will ever figure themselves out?” he asked. Changmin sighed, a smile on his face.
“Yeah, I think they will. They both know already, they just don’t want to admit it.”
Eric hummed to the tune of a song they had been working on in dance. “I think you’re right. They’ll find their way, just like we did. Much easier than we did, hopefully.”
Changmin laughed lightly. “Yes, much easier than we did. I don’t think that will be too hard. With those two you never know, though.”
Eric closed his eyes. “Oddly enough, I don’t think I would change a single thing that’s happened this year.”
“Not even the part with you almost dying?”
“Not even the part with me almost dying,” Eric confirmed. “Because that all leads up to us. And I wouldn’t want to change us for anything.”