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MK was born with an uncurling tiger lily emblazoned above his heart.
The bud is tiny, befitting of a baby, and the dewy petals curl outward like they're reaching for something, like they're looking for something to hold onto like his tiny baby hands fist the covers of his bassinet. The longer the night stretches on, the more the Bloom burns, and MK cries into the open air until there’s suddenly light flooding down onto his face and a blurry shape silhouetted fuzzily against the warmth.
“What the- a baby?” mumbles Pigsy, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He doesn’t know what he was expecting- even if maybe he should have, based on the cries that have been keeping him awake.
But there’s nothing that can prepare him in any way for the sight of a baby, left alone, at his doorstep.
Pigsy looks around. No one else is in sight. He bends down next to the basket- the baby is wrapped up in only a single blanket to protect him from the wind. He sniffles when he sees Pigsy, and a tiny hand with an even tinier Bloom on its wrist reaches out for him.
Something in Pigsy’s heart pangs, and he comes to a decision. Standing, he takes the basket with him and retreats back to the comforting light of the noodle shop.
“Okay, kid. Let’s get you warmed up.”
And the rest from there, as they say, is history.
Demons don't get Blooms, not like humans do. MK learns this one day as he’s watching Pigsy roll out dough for noodles in the shop kitchen. Pigsy’s arms are bare. He doesn’t even wear a bracelet on his wrist. When MK asks why, Pigsy tells him it’s because he’s got nothing to cover up.
MK rubs over the tiger lily on his own wrist. He’s six now, and he doesn’t wear a band like a lot of the grownups that he sees in Pigsy’s shop, so his Blooms are out for all to see. Besides his lily, he also has a smattering of Blooms that grow up his arms in bright, pretty spots of purple. He likes looking at them sometimes when he’s bored or caught up in his thoughts.
But he doesn’t know that they even have meaning until Pigsy brings home a big book one day and spreads it over one of the shop’s tables. MK climbs up onto one of the stools beside him. “What’s that?” he asks, kicking his feet back and forth. One of his shoes clunks into the table, and Pigsy gives him a sharp look, so MK stops swinging his feet so big.
“It’s a book about Blooms,” Pigsy grunts, returning to flipping through the pages. “All the different flowers have their own meanings, and I figured it was about time you knew yours.”
MK perks up. “Blooms? The flower marks?” He crawls closer to see and ends up halfway in Pigsy’s lap. Pigsy centers him with another grunt. “They’ve got meanings? What’sit say?”
“Well if you’d let me actually read it, I could tell you, squirt.”
MK pouts. He can’t read yet, and the characters swim before his eyes when he tries to focus, so he just looks at the pictures as Pigsy skims through the book. He flips a page, and a familiar flower catches MK’s eye. He leans forward, pushing himself up on the table. “Pigsy, Pigsy, that one’s mine!”
“Heliotropes,” Pigsy says. MK mouths the unfamiliar word along with him. “Devotion. Huh.”
“What’s devotion?”
Pigsy pauses. “It’s when you care about something a lot. Like me and the noodle shop.” He looks down at MK. “You got something like that in your life, kid?”
MK giggles. Isn’t it obvious? There’s only one person in the world who took him in, who feeds him, who takes such good care of him even when he doesn’t have to.
MK is devoted to Pigsy.
He tells this to him with a big grin, tilting his head back so that he can see Pigsy’s face and that rare, special smile that he gives MK sometimes, the one that makes him light up from the inside out.
But Pigsy gets a funny look on his face. “Haha, kid.” He kind of smiles, but it’s wrong somehow. “Sure thing, funny guy.” He pushes back from the table. MK slides to the floor, ducking to avoid hitting his head. “Hey, I just realized it’s past your bedtime. Let’s go get you cleaned up and ready for bed.”
That night, a new Bloom unfolds on MK’s left shoulder, right at the place where Pigsy pats him sometimes when he’s happy. In the morning, they’ll look up the meaning together, and Pigsy will grin wide at the prosperity that the star-shaped daffodil foretells. But in the night and the now, MK traces the yellow petals he can just barely see and wonders why he feels inexplicably sad.
The first time that MK manages to mix Pigsy’s special sauce correctly, Pigsy picks him up and spins him in the air. A cluster of purple chives sprouts across the left side of MK’s ribs, bright and cheerful as his heart feels. He’s thrilled- thrilled that he can finally be useful and begin to pay Pigsy back for everything he’s done for him.
The first time that he’s going too fast and he trips and breaks a bowl and Pigsy snaps at him, a red columbine weaves its way onto his other side like a mirror. The head of it droops and shies away from his eyes, almost like it’s trying to embody the anxiety that it represents.
MK is fourteen, and he sees a boy cowering beneath a group of other, bigger boys, and he doesn’t hesitate before he’s inserting himself between them.
The bigger boys take a step back. MK isn’t very tall, but he’s not weak either. He’s an active kid, and he helps Pigsy in the shop, so he knows that he’s at least as strong as they are. They square each other up, and then the boy in the lead relaxes his posture.
“Fine,” he says, turning away, and the other boys follow him. “Leave the freak alone.”
MK helps the other kid off the ground, and that should be that.
But MK is also weird. He doesn’t have fancy, high-end clothes. He talks too much or not enough, and he can never figure out where the balance is supposed to be. He’s stupid and he’s lazy and when the other kids tease him, the teachers turn a blind eye.
Most importantly, he challenged the other boys’ authority and they can’t let that go.
“Hey, guys,” says one of the boys. It’s several days later, and they’re all gathered together in the cafeteria for lunch. His voice is loud. It carries across the room. “I was doing some research on Blooms the other night, and guess what I found out about tiger lilies?”
MK’s head jerks up without meaning to. Of course, the boy sees. His lip tugs up in a nasty smile.
“What?” asks another boy. “That they’re lame, sissy flowers?”
MK relaxes slightly. Is that it? He’s heard that particular brand of insult often enough before. “Hey,” he says. “Compassion isn’t lame! It’s actually really cool.”
The first boy tuts. “Cute, but that’s not what I was talking about.” He has his phone out now, and the light from the screen paints his face in an ominous shade of red. “MK, did you know that tiger lilies mean “love me please?””
The breath stutters in MK’s throat. On his wrist, his exposed First Bloom burns.
“Oh, MK,” coos a third boy with fake sympathy. “What’s the matter? Did your mama and baba not want you? I guess we now know why you live with the pig.”
“Probably traded him in for a bowl of noodles,” mutters a fourth. “Old miser would appreciate the free slave labor.”
“Don’t talk about Pigsy like that,” MK says automatically. His ears are ringing, and his hands flex helplessly at his sides. This is stupid- he wants to tell them all to shut up, but his mouth won’t form the words.
“Why not? It’s not like he cares what you think of him. He’s never Bloomed for you, of course.”
The other boys laugh with him. MK grits his teeth.
It's stupid. He knows it. He knows why Pigsy doesn't have any Blooms. But to his horror, there’s the crawling burn of a new Bloom down his left arm.
MK’s never had a poker face. His look of horror and the way that his hand flies to cover his arm, even though it’s hidden beneath his jacket, are deader giveaways than anything he could have said.
“Wait, did you just Bloom?” asks the first boy, an incredulous smile spreading across his face.
“No-” and because things can always get worse, he feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “Shut up.”
“He so did,” butts in another. “C’mon, MK, don’t be a wimp. What is it?”
“I-”
The bell rings. Like a bolt of lightning, MK has his tray in his hands. He returns it to the cafeteria and returns himself to the classroom, where he sticks his head in his books and manages by some miracle to avoid the boys for the rest of the day.
When he arrives home, he slips in through the back entrance. He can hear Pigsy hard at work in the front, and the cheerful chatter of customers floats up through the open front of the shop, but MK doesn’t go in to help him like he typically would. Instead, he goes up to his room and crashes down on his bed.
It’s hot upstairs from the rising heat of the kitchen, but MK doesn’t take off his jacket. He throws a pillow over his face and screams into it. It doesn’t make anything better, not really, but he musters up enough energy to sit up and take out his phone.
The book of Blooms isn’t in his room, and he doesn’t want to spend the extra energy forcing his brain to focus on the tiny characters anyway, so he opens up Baidu (where he can zoom in on the words) and searches a Bloom dictionary on there. He finds the tiger lily entry easily enough, and he scrolls through the appearance description until he finds what he’s looking for.
There. Right below mercy and compassion, the words “please love me” jump out at him from the screen.
MK’s breath stutters.
His eyes stop on the “related Blooms” link at the bottom of the page and widen at what he sees. Among the flowers with similar meanings, the daffodil leaps out at him. Return my affection, it begs, MK begs, with his sunny daffodil and purple heliotropes and fricking tiger lily, and it’s pathetic. He’s pathetic.
Staring down at his phone, MK comes to one rapid decision. He needs to cover up his First. He can’t let anyone else see it. The daffodil and heliotrope aren’t damning in and of themselves, but combined with the tiger lily- it’s too much. If Pigsy sees them and realizes how much of a clingy loser MK is, he’ll realize how much better off he’d be without him and get rid of him.
MK can’t lose Pigsy. He can’t.
He digs around in his desk for the band he knows is in there somewhere and comes face to face with the sleeve of his jacket. The jacket he still hasn’t taken off. The jacket that hides his new Bloom.
MK takes a deep breath. It’s better to get it over with, he reasons to himself. Rip it off like a nasty bandaid.
He slides his sleeve up.
Oh.
When Pigsy asks about the sudden uptick in jackets that he wears, MK stutters out something or another about fashion trends. Pigsy just grunts.
“Whatever, kid. Just don’t let it slow you down in cuttin’ the vegetables.”
“Don’t worry!” MK promises, knife flying twice as fast over the cutting board. “I won’t let you down, Pigsy!”
The spring semester ends, and by the time the fall one rolls back around, there are more interesting things to gawk over than MK and whatever purported flower he might have Bloomed.
But MK still feels eyes on him sometimes, and the insecurity that tingles down his spine echoes through the stem of his new foxglove.
Mei comes bursting into MK's life in a flurry of screaming and shouting.
MK’s still not exactly sure how it happened. One second he’s locked in the fiercest battle of his life with a green-hair-streaked girl at the arcade. The next they’re putting their numbers into each other’s phones and going out for noodles and boba like they’ve known each other from infanthood.
It’s funny how life sometimes just works that way.
And it’s not long before MK Blooms a friendship tulip for her, a bright spot of pink woven in between the heliotropes on his right wrist. Mei squeals when he shows it to her. As a dragon, she doesn't Bloom, but she produces an enormous collection of glitter pens from who knows where and brandishes them proudly.
“I draw Blooms on myself!” she explains, rolling up the sleeves of her jacket. Big, fluffy peonies and squiggly, spirally bamboo shoots decorate her arms in cheerful colors. She scribbles on his arm until she finds the exact matching shade of pink of his tulip and carefully replicates it on her own wrist. “Ahh, it’s so cute! Hey, do you want to help me pick out some new ones?”
“Pick out new what?” MK asks, but Mei’s got her phone opened before he’s even finished asking.
“New Blooms, silly. I like to shake them up a bit. Keep them from getting boring, you know?” Suddenly, Mei breaks out into laughter. “Oh my gosh, do you know what would be hilarious?” She tilts her phone to MK so he can see the screen. “Chrysanthemum here-” she points to her one arm- “and geranium over here!”
The mention of geranium has MK flinching. “Geranium? Do you, uh, do you know what that one means?”
“Duh. That’s the joke, MK- smartness and stupidity, get it?” Laughing, she starts to draw familiar pink petals above her elbow, singing “mmm, why so stupid” under her breath.
Familiar, because MK’s got the same pink petals too. The Bloom is old at this point- it Bloomed during his last midterm- but it still feels fresh sometimes, even if he knows it’s not. Now, it sends a pang of hurt down his arm. “Ha. I guess- I guess that’s pretty funny.”
“I mean, the meanings themselves are kinda bogus anyway,” Mei says, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she colors in the petals of the chrysanthemum next. “But they’re too much fun to play around with, so I don’t really care.”
That’s easy for you to say, MK thinks, giving in and rubbing his shoulder where his geranium rests. You’re a dragon. No one will think for a moment that your Blooms are real. They’ll never decide your life for you.
But he doesn’t say any of it out loud. The tulip on his wrist is too fragile, too new. And he can’t lose Mei over something stupid like cultural differences.
“So what would you give yourself for a First?” he asks instead, sending them spiraling down a rabbit hole of internet searches and obscure flowers for the rest of the evening.
One of MK’s biggest fears comes true one night on his way back from hanging out with Mei at the movies. He’s humming to himself cheerfully as he climbs the stairs and switches out his shoes, and he goes to open his bedroom door only to find it already open.
MK freezes in the doorway. Pigsy stands in the center of the room. In one of his hands, he holds a trashbag; the other clutches MK’s wastepaper bin. And at the very top of the bin, resting among his crumpled-up drawings, is his last report card.
“Kid, why didn’t you tell me you were struggling with school?”
All the cheerfulness drains from MK’s body. His ribs burn. So does his shoulder. His heart thumps aggressively in his throat.
“I’m sorry,” he stutters quickly, fists clenched in the hem of his jacket. “I didn’t know how to tell you- I didn’t know what to do- I didn’t want you to be mad. Please don’t get rid of me.”
Pigsy runs a hand down his face. “Get rid of you? Kid, be serious. How long has this been going on?”
MK hesitates long enough for it to be an answer. “I’m sorry,” he says again, when Pigsy sighs. “But I’m trying my best, I swear!”
“Of course you are,” Pigsy says. “You think I don’t know how hard of a worker you are? You don’t need to be sorry, kid. Well, except for covering it up from me. It’s my fault for not noticing. Have I been working you too hard in the shop?”
“No, no!” MK panics, because he loves working with Pigsy and it feels like the end of the world if he thinks otherwise. “It’s just me, I’m stupid and I can’t make the words stick in my brain even though I do try-”
“Hey.” Pigsy’s hand, warm on his back. MK falls silent. “You’re not stupid, MK. You’re just- different up here.” He taps MK’s forehead with one finger.
“That’s what people say to stupid people when they’re trying to be nice,” MK says miserably.
“You’re not stupid,” Pigsy says firmly. “You just need help. And actually, I’ve got a friend who might be able to help. Bit of an obnoxious guy, but he loves teaching and he’s good at it, much as I’m loathed to admit it. I’ll give him a call-up, see if he’s free this weekend, okay? How’s that sound?”
“Okay,” MK says. “Thanks, Pigsy.”
Pigsy rubs his back. MK, eyes closed, focuses on the soothing motion. “It’s okay, MK. You’ve got this.”
A week later, Mr. Tang walks through the door of the noodle shop with a wide smile and an even wider file of papers. He’s a bit intimidating at first, but he’s also kind and funny and he doesn’t talk down to MK, and MK finds that he genuinely likes him. Then he introduces MK to the legend of Monkey King, and MK really likes him.
MK not really sure how. But by some miracle, he manages to scrape through his finals. Pigsy invites everyone over to celebrate, with free food on the house, and sandwiched between Mei taking pictures of the food on his one side and Mr. Tang and Pigsy arguing over portions on the other, MK has never felt more right.
For MK’s 18th birthday, Pigsy gives him a tuk-tuk.
He drags MK out at the crack of dawn, ignoring MK’s whining at being up so early. They go downstairs, out the back door, and then Pigsy removes his hands from MK’s eyes with gruff, “All right, you can look now.”
All thoughts of sleep flee MK’s mind as soon as he sees what’s parked in the alley.
The tuk-tuk’s clearly secondhand. There are scratches in the metal and modifications to the seat. A bright pink pig’s head tops off the vehicle in a chef’s hat.
MK has never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
“It’s for delivering noodles, don’t get to overreacting,” grumbles Pigsy, when MK hugs him tight around the middle and babbles out his thanks. “I know you’ve been working hard. But I expect you to pay for whatever gas you use that’s not on company time, got it?”
“Got it!” MK beams.
A freesia blossoms on his leg as he soars down the roadway, and MK walks with a bounce that doesn’t leave his step for the rest of the week.
When Monkey King chooses him as successor, a wreath of peach blossoms wraps around his forehead like a crown.
MK doesn’t notice them at first. There’s a whole lot of other stuff going on, and he’s already pretty sure he has probable head trauma from being launched across like 47 volcanoes and crashlanding into the beach. But he finds the pale pink flowers when he takes off his headband later that night, and his frantic squawking brings Pigsy stomping down the hallway and demanding to know what the heck is going on.
“Nothing! It’s nothing!” MK squeaks, and Pigsy gives him an unconvinced glare but eventually goes back to bed with enough of MK’s pushing and prodding. He slumps against his door in relief after he’s gone, before jumping back to his feet and scrambling over to his mirror again.
The Blooms are beautiful. There are about ten of them, twisted together, and when he turns his head the right way it looks like they have a golden sheen in the light.
He brings it up to Monkey King during training one day. Monkey King doesn’t have Blooms- how would they even appear on his fur?- but his clothes are embroidered with delicate lotus blossoms and tiny peach fruits at the hems. Plus, he’s immortal. He’s got to have seen something like this before.
“So, uh, did any of your other trial successors get Blooms?”
“Huh?” asks Monkey King, popping one golden eye open. His gaze lands on MK’s wrists and the exposed petals there. “Oh, yeah, Blooms! That’s one of your human things, right?” Leaning back on his tail, he pops another one of his peach chips into his mouth and crunches down. “Nah, bud, can’t say that any of my other, uh, totally-existing trial successors did. Looks like you’re special.”
Warmth spreads through MK, and he’d be embarrassed by his reaction if he wasn’t so thrilled. He still does a little fist bump that Monkey King hopefully doesn’t see.
“So what’d you get, anyway?”
“Oh! Right!”
MK takes off his headband. He’d love to go without it and show his Blooms off to the world, but driving laws and the need to not be flicking his bangs out of his face every thirty seconds like some sort of emo teen keep him wearing it for now. “I-”
Suddenly, Monkey King is up in his face, fingers pawing at MK’s brow. “It’s on your head?”
“Yeah,” MK beams, “like a crown! Isn’t it awesome? Everyone knows that peaches are your thing, so it’s kind of like you’ve claimed me, you know?”
MK swears he sees something flash in Monkey King’s eyes, here one moment and gone the next. But it’s so quick that he can’t be sure, and Monkey King smiles his trademark smile like there was never anything else there.
“Oh, well, yeah, of course you like it! That’s really great, bud. Hey, how about we teach you some new moves that match that crown?”
MK perks up. “Oh, sweet, new moves? Heck yeah! Thanks, Monkey King!”
They spend the rest of the day training him to vault with the staff, and if Monkey King seems even more jokey than usual, MK chalks it up to him being excited too.
Training with Monkey King and fighting demons brings a whole host of new Blooms onto MK’s skin. He's always Bloomed easier than most, but the amount he gets in the span of just months is bordering on ridiculous, even for him. Tiny yellow Blooms of dill sprout at his collarbones, a mark of his newfound power. A branch of plum blossoms for endurance wraps around his right thigh. He comes away from Spider Queen’s New Year’s invasion with the fuzzy, pointed petals of edelweiss proclaiming his courage for everyone to see across the back of his hand.
The awesomeness factor of that one is kind of canceled out by the yellow zinnia that blooms shortly after on his other hand. It’s a Bloom that would be innocuous to anyone else, but one that makes his foxglove pang whenever he sees it. He’s reminded enough of absent friends without a Bloom to tell him.
He talks to Mr. Tang about them sometimes.
“Like, why do Blooms even have to exist?”
Mr. Tang’s glasses flash as he pushes them up his nose. “Some say that they were given to us at the creation of our species. Others say that we must have evolved them over time. All agree, however, that their purpose is to connect us to each other. By understanding each other at such a deep, intrinsic level, we are able to have empathy and compassion for our communities.”
“If that was the original goal, then I think we must have failed at something along the way.” MK thinks back to that early summer day all those years ago, when he stepped in to protect the boy who was being bullied over his First. “Nowadays, people just use their Blooms to justify why someone should be treated a certain way.”
Mr. Tang hums. “That may be true. Perhaps we have lost the empathy connection along the way. But Blooms are still an essential part of maintaining our communities. They’re the best indicator of who you are and the ways you belong. For example, when people see my orchid, they know they can count on me to know things.”
As the only other human in their group, Mr. Tang’s got Blooms too- a beautiful pink lotus for a First Bloom, a vibrant red orchid for scholarly pursuits across the back of his left hand, the delicate purple petals of sage that he tells MK about and are barely visible as they trail down into his collar.
Compared to him, MK feels messy and complicated. Like that sometimes, it feels like he just doesn’t belong He has no friends except for Mei, who’s great! But she’s also from a completely different class and world than him. Pigsy only took him in out of pity, Sandy’s only here because he’s Pigsy’s friend, Monkey King doesn’t want him- his own parents didn’t want him -
And Mr. Tang might be someone he could connect to, except that he’s Pigsy’s friend too and his Blooms are all perfect and MK’s are not- MK’s got geranium for stupidity on his shoulder for crying out loud.
“Yeah, you are the info guy,” he says instead, and Mr. Tang hums satisfactorily around his mouthful of noodles until Pigsy yells at them both to stop leeching off of his food.
When MK stumbles upon a young girl, crying and alone in Spider Queen’s lair, his First Bloom aches against his wrist in what he instinctively assumes is sympathy.
“It’s okay,” he tells her. “I get it. It’s scary being alone. But you’re not alone now. You’ve got me.”
It’s only later that he realizes the flaring for what it is. A warning.
“I helped you. I thought you were-”
“A helpless girl?” The girl- the demon - tilts her head, an amused lilt to the corner of her smile. “Yes. My disguises have fooled many.” Her eyes glint white. MK grits his teeth.
“I’ll tell Monkey King.”
“Monkey King?”
An amused giggle. The world flashes white. He screams, collapsing to the ground. “Do you really think he doesn’t already know all about me? Curious that he is not with you now, is it not?”
She leans in close, white eyes piercing through the cloud that is MK’s vision. “Ah. I see. You have begun to suspect what he already knows. That he made the wrong choice. Picked the wrong successor.”
She touches his forehead, and MK’s crown burns.
Everything afterward passes in a pain-dazed, dizzy stupor. Spider Queen crashes through the wall. MK shrinks and squeezes and squirms his way free. As he careens blindly to the surface, the image of the demon’s eyes sears into his mind until all he can see is white.
(Later, he will discover the sickly-yellow carnations that have bloomed within his wreath. But for now, he just stumbles back to Pigsy’s Noodles and tries to pretend that everything is all right.)
It’s not all right.
Nothing is all right.
The staff is heavy in his hands, and Lady Bone Demon stands over him, all poised confidence and dismissal in the twitch of her mouth.
Something- is that bone - creeps over his arms. He grits his teeth. He tastes salt in his mouth. He won’t let go of the staff- can’t let it go even if he wanted to, but he doesn’t want to-
An explosion of light. Shards of bone go flying. MK smacks into the back of the mech cockpit, blinking dumbly against the light and the figure he can barely see shrouded in it. Is it- could it be-?
It is. Monkey King hunches over in front of him, clothes tattered and armor hanging in pieces from his body. He glances back at MK, saying something that MK can’t hear. There’s a roar in his ears that drowns out everything else. Monkey King is back. Everything will be okay now. Monkey King can save the day.
Except that he doesn’t. He scoops MK up like a child, abandoning the staff like it’s no more than a stick he found in the woods one day and whisks him on a cloud to the dronecopter where the rest of them are all waiting. They tumble onto the deck. MK’s body lights up in one hundred different places with one hundred different bruises.
He opens his eyes. Monkey King sits across from him in all his scuffed-up glory. Somehow, he has the audacity to grin and wave when he sees MK looking.
“Hey, bud. Miss me?”
“Where were you?”
The words burst out of MK’s mouth unbidden. But in his exhausted state, he can’t bring himself to regret them. His torn headband slips over his eyes. He rips it off and clenches it tight. “You could have stopped this. We could have-”
Someone gasps behind him. MK’s head whips around. Mr. Tang has one of his hands over his mouth, eyes wide. It’s the face he makes when he realizes something, and normally MK would be glad to listen to him, but now’s just not the time.
He looks back in time to catch Monkey King staring at MK. His eyes dart away when MK sees him, but it’s enough for MK to know where he exactly was looking. His wreath. The wreath of golden peach blossoms around his forehead, the one that announces him as Monkey King’s disappointment with the fluffy carnations that spill between the gaps.
MK reaches up to cover his head. He shivers at the frozen wind that bites into his arms. This high up, it’s colder than it had been on ground level, and the rushing air currents around the dronecopter only add to the chill.
Wait.
His arms are cold.
In what feels like slow motion, MK looks down at his arms.
The blast ripped away the sleeves of his jacket. His skin is exposed.
Suddenly, he realizes what caused Mr. Tang to gasp.
“Don’t look at them!” MK snaps instantly, and all of them freeze in place. It would be hilarious under different circumstances, but these are the circumstances they’ve got and there’s nothing hilarious about them.
“Bud,” starts Monkey King. There’s clear recognition in his eyes, and MK doesn’t know when he’s had the time to look up Bloom meanings, but he doesn’t care.
“No,” he says, cutting Monkey King off. Furiously, he wipes tears from the corners of his eyes. “You don’t get to just- to just look at me and act like you know everything about anything when you just disappeared and left me alone like that.” He pushes himself to his feet and gives in to the urge to wrap his arms around his waist. He can feel them all looking. If he still had the staff, he would shrink down and run away. But now he can’t even do that.
"Stop looking!” he demands; he pleads. “It's not fair. It's not fair that I have to wear all of my feelings and failures on my skin and you guys just- don't! Do you know what that feels like?” He exhales hard. “You don’t. Because you’ve never had to.”
They all stare at him in silence. Mei’s mouth is half-parted. Sandy’s face is creased with concern. Pigsy’s looking somewhere at the ground, fist clenched at his side, and beside him, Mr. Tang looks taken aback and contemplative at the same time.
MK can’t look over at Monkey King. It feels like if he were to look at him, he might shatter, and he’s not strong enough right now to put himself back together. Already the rush of adrenaline is fading from his body, and now he just feels exhausted. He just wants to curl up in his room on the dronecopter and cry.
“I’m going to go,” he says, vapidly, swiping at his eyes again. “Uh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to say all that. I am glad that you’re back, Monkey King. I just- sorry.”
He takes off down the hallway before anyone can stop him.
There’s a knock at his door.
MK lifts his head from his pillow. It’s been half an hour, he thinks, not that he’s got the greatest sense of time though. He blinks up at the ceiling and considers not responding. But Pigsy’s voice floats in through the crack beneath the door.
“Hey, kid. You in here?”
MK groans softly. He can’t ignore Pigsy. He swings up into a sitting position. “Yeah, I’m here.”
The door cracks open gently. Pigsy stands in the hallway, his silhouette soft around the edges from the light outside, arms crossed loosely across his chest. MK knows he must look a mess right now: hair messy, tear tracks down his face, cheeks swollen. He’s found one of his hoodies he left here the last time and it’s wrapped around his frame.
Pigsy’s face tightens.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
A moment of silence, and then both of them start talking at the same time. MK trails off first, but Pigsy holds up his hand. “No, you first.”
MK leans back on his hands. He exhales. “I’m sorry for blowing up like that out there.”
“You already apologized, kid,” Pigsy says. He crosses his arms. “You don’t need to keep doing it. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to handle your feelings, but honestly? You probably needed it.” He uncrosses his arms again. If MK didn’t know any better, he might even say that Pigsy was fidgeting. “Do you feel up to coming with me? I’ve got something to show you.”
“Okay?” MK says, more of a question than anything, but he gets up and follows Pigsy deeper into the ship, down into the cargo bay. Miraculously, they don’t run into anyone on the way there.
(The dronecopter is big, but not that big. MK suspects that Pigsy cleared everyone else out beforehand, and even as subdued as he feels, the realization makes something flicker warmly inside.)
They round the corner and come face-to-face with a vehicle MK never expected to see.
“The tuk-tuk?” MK says stupidly. “What’s it doing here? How’d you save it? Why?”
“One question at a time,” Pigsy grumbles. “I had Sandy help me bring it up here last week because you were complaining about the steering and we were working on it together. But that’s not what I wanted to show you. Not exactly.”
He bends down, and confused, MK copies him. “Look here,” Pigsy says, pointing to the column of the steering handle.
“The scratches?”
“Scratches?” says Pigsy. “I mean, yeah, I etched it in, but they’re not just scratches. I can’t believe that you didn’t notice it before.”
“Well, I mean I saw it, but I thought it was just some random scratches.”
“You think I would invest my hard-earned money on some dinged-up little vehicle?”
Well, kind of, actually. Pigsy’s always trying to scrimp and save on things, so MK just assumed- but that’s not right. Pigsy cares about quality, especially for important things.
“So what is it?” MK asks.
Pigsy hangs his head. “Come over here,” he says, directing MK’s position until he’s at eye-level with the scratches. They reshape for him until the image of a flower appears: long, oblong petals that connect at a central point.
It’s a Bloom. That much is for sure. But it’s not until Pigsy rubs the back of his neck and says a gruff, “It’s supposed to be jasmine,” under his breath that it clicks for MK. He thinks he gasps a little. Pigsy laughs roughly.
“Kid,” he says, turning his head to look MK in the eye. His eyes are intense, but his expression is softer. “I know I don’t say it enough. I have trouble with-” a pause- “with expressing how I feel sometimes. But that’s no excuse for making you feel like I don’t love you. MK, I love you so much. You don’t get it, kid, what I’d do for you, give for you, without a second thought.”
Crouched down beside a Bloom half-hidden from view, MK realizes. Well, “realizes” is a strong word for something he’s always known, intuitively. This is the way that Pigsy loves: quietly and demonstratively. His love is in the way he complains about MK eating free food but always puts more out, in the way he stays up late even after a long day of work to teach MK how to balance a budget. In the way that he carves unconditional love into MK’s items for him to notice later.
“Oh,” says MK. “Pigsy.”
There’s only one thing he can do after a speech like that. MK leans forward, falling into Pigsy’s hug like he belongs there. He squeezes tight; Pigsy squeezes tight back.
“I love you too,” MK says. He can see the jasmine carved onto the tuk-tuk over Pigsy’s shoulder, and it feels like his soul is being hugged too.
Over the next couple of days, things go back to normal. That night, MK makes up with the rest of them. Mei cries out when he enters the dining area of the copter, flinging herself over the table to grab onto him. “MK!” she says, dragging him into the seat beside her. “I never got the chance to tell you earlier, but I’m so glad you’re alive!”
“Don’t overwhelm the kid,” Pigsy grumbles, sitting across from them.
MK catches Monkey King’s gaze across the table. “I’m glad that I’m back too, bud,” he says, eyes warm in a way that makes MK warm too.
“Let’s catch MK up on the plan,” says Sandy, and the rest of the evening passes in devotion to outlining their new journey to the west.
So it’s a day or two later that Mr. Tang approaches MK.
“MK,” says Mr. Tang. MK, sitting on his bed, slips his headphones off.
“Huh? What’s up, Mr. Tang? Is there something wrong? Danger?”
“No, no, nothing’s wrong,” Mr. Tang says, laughing. “And if there was, I’m sure that Monkey King could handle it.” He sits down at the edge of MK’s bed. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something. I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day, out on the deck.”
MK groans loudly and tries to suffocate himself with his pillow. “Please, can’t we just forget about that moment of weakness? Put it in the past?”
Mr. Tang laughs again. “I’m afraid not,” he says, voice kind. “But there’s something that I think you should see. Don’t worry; it’s nothing bad- nothing bad for you, at least.”
Before MK can question what that means, Mr. Tang is already unwrapping his scarf. He sets it to the side and pulls down the collar of his shirt.
In the hollow of his throat is a golden columbine.
MK’s complaints die in his own throat.
Mr. Tang keeps holding down his collar. “Not everyone believed that devoting my intelligence to the research of the Monkey King legends was a smart decision,” he says, with a small ha attached to the end. “Foolishness was one of the nicer words they used, but there’s a reason I always wear high collars.”
MK fights the urge to touch his shoulder where his geranium rests. “Mr. Tang, wow. Thank you for showing me it and trusting me.”
“Of course, MK. I should have shown it to you a long time ago.” Mr. Tang sighs. “I’ve been hiding it for so long that I gloss over it automatically now, but that hasn’t been fair to you.”
He pauses. “I know I’ve said before that your Blooms are an indicator of who you are,” he says, clearly thinking back to their conversations from before. “But I wasn’t completely right in saying that. Some of them are who you are, and some of them of who you think you are because of what other people have told you, correct or incorrect as those opinions may have been.
“I’m not a worse person because of this Bloom. And even if my studies had turned up worthless, that doesn’t make me worthless or foolish.” He reaches over and gently taps MK’s shoulder. “Your Blooms don’t determine your worth, MK. Think about them as- as the strokes that make up Hanzi characters. Maybe some of them are a little lopsided or misshapen. But that doesn’t change the overall meaning of the work- or in this case, you.”
Standing back up, he rewraps his scarf around his neck. “I just wanted you to know that you’re not alone in the “bad Blooms” club. And if you want to hide them or protect them, it’s up to you. I’m sorry that the choice got taken out of your hands, but I would never treat you any differently because of them. I have a strong feeling that the others feel the same way.”
Mei has been going around Bloomless.
Normally, MK wouldn’t be too concerned about it. Mei has a tendency to switch her Blooms out from time to time, especially when she gets bored of them or wants to shake up the way she presents herself.
Normally, he wouldn’t be too concerned. But his tulip, the one that she drew for him, is gone too. And in all the time they’ve been friends, that’s one Bloom that’s remained on her skin through everything.
MK has half a mind to just step around it. Then the other half of his mind reminds him that side-stepping stuff is part of what led to his little breakdown on the deck before. So he squares his shoulders like a man and tracks her down when he knows she’ll be alone so they can have an emotionally-vulnerable conversation about it.
“So, uh, Mei,” he starts, and probably deserves it when she immediately gives him a suspicious look. “I noticed that you didn’t have any Blooms anymore. And that’s totes cool! But, uh, you took my tulip off too, and I was wondering why?”
His nonchalant attitude falls faster than a house made out of cards. “‘Cause if you don’t want to be friends anymore-”
Mei’s hand lands on his, mercifully cutting off his stream of consciousness before it can really get started. “What?” she says, eyes wide. “No! I thought you wouldn’t want to be my friend! I took them off because I didn’t realize how insensitive I was being. I’m so sorry, MK.”
MK rubs the back of his neck. “Hey, it’s my bad too. I should have told you that it bothered me right up front.” He grins, small. “So, uh, friends?”
Mei squeezes his hand in hers. “Friends.”
“Ow, ow, you’re crushing my hand!” MK complains, but his heart feels warm and squished (like his hand) and Mei just grins brightly back.
“Well, in that case!” She leans over the side of her bed. MK is in no way surprised at the pencil case of glitter pens that she digs out. “I’ve got a Bloom to re-Bloom.”
“I don’t think that’s a real thing.”
“I don’t think you’re a real thing.”
“Please no,” MK moans, “it’s way too early for the existential questioning.”
Mei laughs. She caps her pen with a click. A pink tulip glitters pink on her wrist again, and MK feels like something settles back into place inside him.
“Now you,” she says.
“Huh?” But he’s already offering her his arm before he’s even finished speaking.
“I’ve got something to add to you, too.”
She leans over his arm. Her tongue pokes out the corner of her mouth as she draws something with utmost care. The ink trickles like a new Bloom, just without the burning, and when she draws back, that’s exactly what he sees. A clump of star-like flowers decorates his skin, drawn in sparkly purple and woven around the daffodil near his elbow. At first he thinks she’s drawn more heliotrope, but then he realizes the petals are too pointy.
“What are they?”
Mei grins. “Chinese Bellflower,” she says proudly. “I did my research this time! They mean endless love and friendship.”
MK doesn’t tear up. It’s just emotions in his eyes. “That’s so dope,” he croaks. Mei laughs brightly. He fumbles for a glitter pen and reaches out for her arm. “Come here. Let me do you too.”
Sandy tracks MK down during one of the rare afternoons when he’s not piloting the ship. MK’s practicing his focus, and he doesn’t notice him crouching down beside MK until MK turns his head and finds him right there.
Once he’s done screaming, he covers his heart with his chest. “Geez, Sandy, warn a guy before you sneak up on him!”
“Sorry, MK,” Sandy says. He looks genuinely apologetic, and MK feels bad going off on him.
“No, no, it’s okay,” he says, uncrossing his legs. “What’s up? Is it time to continue the mechanic lessons? Because I’ve been practicing like you taught me, and I can turn the wrench the right way like 87 percent of the time-”
“No!” says Sandy, and then in a softer voice, “well, I mean, yes. I’d love to continue the lessons when you are ready! But that’s not what I came over here for.” He scratches the back of his neck, a gesture so at odds with his intimidating build but at the same time so Sandy that it makes MK smile.
“I’m sorry you were feeling so bad, little fella. So I thought I’d make a little something for you, to cheer you up. They took me a bit longer than I expected, but I hope you still like them anyway.”
Intrigued, MK sits up straighter. He gasps at the bunch of silvery flowers that Sandy produces from behind his back. “Oh my gosh, Sandy, you made these? Holy cow!”
There are about seven flowers in the bouquet: six honeysuckles, with their drooping tendrils painstakingly curled out of metal and wire, and one more in the middle of them. A single flower with wavy, pointed petals that takes MK a while to place, but when he does, his eyes go wide.
“That’s a crimson jimsonweed,” Sandy says, confirming his realization. “I’m not exactly sure if it has a Bloom meaning like the honeysuckle, but I thought it was still special.”
“It is,” MK says. He runs a gentle finger down the jimsonweed’s petal. Even the edges have been blunted so that he can’t accidentally cut himself on them. “Thank you, Sandy.”
“You’re welcome, buddy. There’s six of them, so there’s one for each of us- oh, and mine has a second bud for Mo. He wanted to be part of the bond too.” Over Sandy’s shoulder, Mo meows his agreement. Both of them laugh, and Sandy climbs to his feet.
“I wanted to let you know that there’s a lot of people who love you,” he says, smiling down at MK. “Even when you’re maybe not aware of it. That’s all. Would you like to come and work on the engine with me now?”
“Would I,” says MK, jumping up too. “I’ll be there in just a second! Don’t get started without me!”
First, he’s got to put these flowers in a vase in his room.
MK walks out onto the deck of the dronecopter early in the morning. The sky is just lightening, and he can already hear Pigsy hard at work in the belly of the ship, but there’s just one figure standing at the railing at the edge of the deck and all of MK’s focus is on him.
Monkey King gives no indication that he notices MK approaching, but once he’s beside him, he lets out a small chuckle.
“Bet you never seen the sunrise from this view before, huh, bud?”
“Can’t say that I have,” MK says around an enormous yawn. “Whatd’ya get me up so early for, anyway? Didn’t Mei say that if we woke her from her beauty sleep by thumping around on the deck again, she’d subject us to unspeakable horrors? And that wasn’t even at sunrise!”
“Relax, we’re not training now. Though I would like to see that girl try to land an attack on me.” A moment later, he’s grinning again. “Nah, I just thought you might enjoy seeing the sun. It’s good for you to wake up with it, you know.”
“It’s red,” MK says, in lieu of anything else to say. “Cold.”
Monkey King laughs. “Kid, you’re a riot.” He fidgets with something out of MK’s vision. “Oh, by the way. I picked these up for you earlier.”
He holds out a bouquet of gentle pink flowers, still wet with morning dew.
It would be nonchalant, except for the fact that there’s no way to give someone a bouquet of flowers nonchalantly.
“Yeah, I’ve built enough of my powers up again, so I decided to go out for a joy ride. Grabbed those on my way back.”
“Rainflowers,” MK says quietly. Of course he recognizes them. During one period of his life, they were among the Blooms he wished desperately to have. He takes them gingerly from Monkey King, as if one wrong move will cause them to disappear.
Monkey King’s tail swishes behind him. “Yeah. And I got you something else, too.” He reaches into his belt and draws something out. It’s a red strip of fabric, the right width for a headband. In the center, the same flower has been carefully stitched.
“I know that your last one got destroyed. So I thought, hey, you could probably use with a new one! If you want it, of course.”
He hands the headband off to MK, and MK’s eyes land on the hem of his sleeve. Nestled between the lotuses and the peach fruits, small rainflowers Bloom. Like the other flowers, they’re stitched in the same color as his clothes as not to be noticeable from a distance.
But MK sees them and knows.
Rainflowers have several strong meanings, but the most prominent of them is I love you back. I love you back and I will never forget you.
“You’re pretty unforgettable, bud,” Monkey King says, almost like he can read MK’s thoughts. He smiles gently and nudges MK with his elbow. “I couldn’t ask for a better successor. My only successor.”
MK wipes at his face with his sleeve. “Yeah, well, so are you. Thanks, Monkey King.”
He ties the new headband onto his head, and as he does so, his sleeve slips down a little. MK stares at the tiger lily on his wrist. Its colors are vibrant. It’s the healthiest it’s looked in ages, and he feels its warmth echoed in its partner over his heart.
He smiles and finishes adjusting his headband. He knows that he is loved.