Work Text:
It was like cancer, only that it was beautiful as it was fatal.
Coughing up flowers. Coughing up beautiful white flowers.
How beautiful.
Coughing up beautiful white flowers, because the one you love does not reciprocate.
How tragic.
She had known people with this...disease. Sometimes a young girl would cough out petals in the library and Nayeon would politely offer her a napkin to cover her mouth and to wrap the flowers with. Sometimes there would be an elderly man coughing on the sidewalk and Nayeon would pass him quietly. The floors of bars during Valentines day always had a layer of vomit and flowers. Hadn’t love always been that way, a layer of something so disgusting and another layer of something so lovely?
Ever since this disease began, people began to think of love a disease. Half beautiful, half a chronic illness.
It had always been a half-half game. A lottery. How being loved back is a game of chance.
She’s had friends who suffered this illness, and Nayeon had been at their sides, collecting the flowers and gingerly placing them in the trash bin as they’ve instructed. They didn’t want anything to do with the flowers that came from their lungs. They didn’t want to see it as if it were any other disgusting bodily excretes and maybe, that’s what it really was.
It had been a nameless disease until a few years ago. No one wanted to name a disease that seemed straight out of a romance novel. It just was. It just is. If you had it, you had it. Matters of the heart had been incurable by anything but time, only now there is a physical manifestation of that unrequited love.
The disease was incurable until a few years back, a Japanese medical institute presented a major breakthrough cardiac and lung surgical procedure that removes the disease completely from an individual. An incision in the middle of the chest must be created to carefully pull a vine, that constricts the heart, out of its ventricles and the flowers and residue petals are sucked out of the lungs.
After this procedure, it is guaranteed that a victim is free from the disease. There will no longer be flowers excreted through mouths because of an unrequited love that had made their hearts suffer.
With those flowers, however, went the love for the one that could not love them back - the love that had caused the flowers in the first place.
They called the procedure Hanahaki. Hana, for flower. Haki, for annulment.
And the illness—the Hanahaki disease.
///
Mina had told her it was a bad idea from the beginning.
She’s pretty occupied right now, Mina had told her when Nayeon said, hey, maybe Chaeyoung was kind of cute.
Nayeon frowned and replied, hey, I just said she was pretty cute.
Her best friend only watched her while she texts Chaeyoung back, and Nayeon pretended not to see, though she knew Mina is worried—knew Mina had a knack for telling the future, for knowing what’s best for Nayeon, because all of the times Nayeon didn’t listen to Mina, things had gone to shit.
Mina is too kind to point that out. Nayeon is an asshole and they both knew it, but Mina is so kind, so gentle, and lets Nayeon make her own mistakes.
A kind soul, never the type to say I told you so, but somehow Nayeon wished she would have.
///
Nayeon had read it in books - novels with the protagonists falling in love, but with one particular character who had been robbed of their happy ending, who have been cursed with a love that cannot be reciprocated. Flowers, coughing up, mouths tasting like petals in the most pleasant way but with the most unpleasant reason.
She didn’t want to say so, but it had always been romantic to her. It had always been more beautiful than it had been a disease. The flowers more than the love that could not be returned.
Others find it disgustingly tragic. Nayeon? Nayeon thinks it a lovely tragedy, because she’s a romantic, because flowers were beautiful, because Chaeyoung looks so beautiful holding a bouquet of flowers—just like that.
Hanahaki. What a beautiful word, Nayeon thinks, like the beautiful girl that does not love me back.
///
“Going out tonight?” Jihyo asks from the doorway of the bathroom.
Nayeon spits her the minty foam of her toothpaste out before another round of brushing. “Yeah. With Chaeyoung.”
Jihyo’s expression turns grim with obvious displeasure and worry. Years of being roommates, she learns to pick up on these things. Nayeon expects a long monologue, about her hanging out with Chaeyoung too much when Nayeon is sure with her feelings, but doesn’t know exactly where she stands with the girl.
Nayeon expects it, prepares herself for it, but it never falls on her ears.
Jihyo only looks at Nayeon in the sombre way Mina does when Chaeyoung is the subject of the conversation and says, “take care of yourself, Nayeon.”
///
The moment she knew she loved Chaeyoung, she knew she was fucked for good.
It was none of those big bang moments, realizing a blooming love.
It was quiet, subtle, crawling deep into Nayeon’s heart and seeping through each chamber. She feels it the most when Chaeyoung ties a small canvas bracelet around her wrist and it’s beautiful, wonderful, and Chaeyoung grins. “You can’t remove it unless you cut it and if you do, it means you don’t ever want to see me again. Ever.”
“Why would I do that?” Nayeon laughs.
Chaeyoung hums. “No reason. Maybe you’ll think you’re too ugly to be my friend anymore.”
“Yah, you brat. Come over here and help me with this plate.”
///
She doesn’t tell Chaeyoung.
She thinks, maybe if she doesn’t acknowledge it, it will go away.
Maybe if she pretends it isn’t there, it’ll fade.
It’s a problem, though. Chaeyoung is everywhere. Chaeyoung is so tiny and ingrained into Nayeon’s life it’s impossible not to see her everyday. Chaeyoung is so tiny, Nayeon can put her in her pocket and keep her there. Chaeyoung helping Nayeon carry her stuff.
And even when Chaeyoung isn’t there, she thinks of Chaeyoung—Nayeon sees her in all the smallest things.
Nayeon embraces her pillow just as she’d imagine Chaeyoung liked to be held. Nayeon sees fruits and strawberries and thinks, hey, she’d like these. Nayeon selects a book, one that she imagines Chaeyoung reading to her.
Nayeon feels the space between her fingers, just above her knuckle and thinks, this is where she would curl her fingers when she holds my hand.
///
Someone is shaking her by the shoulders and her eyes open to see a wide-eyed Mina, red around the rims of her eyes. Unnie, wake up—please, Mina cries, and Nayeon’s heart sinks. What could have happened now?
Nayeon sits up and feels a very light weight fall from her chest to her pajama-clad thighs and she sees it.
She is surrounded by flowers; her lap, covered in white petals.
And Nayeon isn’t the least bit surprised.
///
Nayeon became the girl she offered tissue to wrap her flowers. Nayeon became that man coughing pink petals onto the pavement.
She gathers pitying looks, and it should be wrong she feels no pity for herself at all. Does not find any fault in loving Son Chaeyoung, even if it will make her cough up the world’s weight in flowers.
///
Jeongyeon recommends a doctor when Nayeon tells her that she has Hanahaki. She’s worried for Nayeon, obviously, because she’d seen her mother suffer Hanahaki before the procedure came and her doctor had been an excellent one, a proclaimed surgeon all the way from Japan, named Minatozaki Sana and now she’s based in Korea. Just Nayeon’s luck.
Dr. Minatozaki Sana’s office is on the top floor of a high rise building, with high windows covered by sleek blinds and it’s very nice, comfortable, warm. Just like Dr. Sana’s company, and Nayeon can tell that Dr. Sana (“Please, just call me Sana.”) knows exactly what to do.
Nayeon is sat at one of those chair-desks with cushions in a doctor’s office while Sana makes polite small talk, shrugging on a coat and disinfecting her hands. She rolls to Nayeon in a chair, holding a metal bowl and a stethoscope, a clipboard on her lap.
She makes Nayeon inhale and exhale, pressing the metal against her chest and her back, then scribbles some more.
There’s a lull, before Sana looks up from her clipboard. “Do you think you can give me a sample of hana right now?”
Her throat has been itching for the past minute, so Nayeon nods, takes the bowl and coughs.
Coughing up flowers had not been as painful and disgusting as Nayeon had imagined it to be. It came slowly—petals, at first, then the stalk, then it was an entire flower coming out of her mouth when her lungs push out a cough.
Sana takes the bowl, holds up the white, nameless flower to her eyes. “Narcissus,” she says absently. “It’s a daffodil,” Sana tells her with a smile that had so much pity Nayeon wanted to puke. “Uncertainty. Unrequited love.”
Nayeon can’t say anything except, “yeah, that’s exactly what it is.”
Sana asks no further, but she scribbles it down. Something tells Nayeon she will have to tell her about Chaeyoung sooner or later.
Once Sana finishes writing, she sets the clipboard beside Nayeon, her expression still kind, but clinical. Nayeon’s been around enough doctors enough to know that that’s the doctor face. “It’s still in the early stage. We can have it removed as soon as tomorrow—”
“No,” Nayeon answers, not even a beat late.
Sana appears only slightly surprised, but it’s evident she’s seen her Hanahaki patients decline at the first thought of removing the plants and the feelings, both at once. “Alright. Whenever you’re ready.”
Later Sana gives Nayeon a strawberry-flavored lollipop and she feels tears prick her eyes.
///
Chaeyoung finds out about the flowers anyway. No one can ever hide anything from her even if they wanted to.
She doesn’t tell Chaeyoung that it’s her, because she is sure Chaeyoung’s going to beat herself up for it if she finds out.
Kind Chaeyoung, gentle Chaeyoung, brave Chaeyoung—thinks of others first, puts others first before herself. Lets herself be a doormat and is too good to let others know she knows she’s being used.
Her eyes widen when they’re sitting across each other and Nayeon can no longer keep in the cough she’s been holding in for the past ten minutes. She can only stand and go to the washroom so much before Chaeyoung suspects something.
She coughs, half a daffodil comes out of her mouth and Chaeyoung’s eyes are as wide as saucers, almost comically so, that Nayeon’s heart constricts at the sight of her being extremely worried.
“Oh, God, Nayeon,” Chaeyoung says, dropping her pencil. Nayeon feels the back of her neck heating up from having a small coughing fit in front of Chaeyoung when she thought she could drag this out just a little bit longer. Chaeyoung takes a few tissues in her bag to wrap the daffodils delicately and for Nayeon to wipe at her dry lips, with residue petals just hanging from her bottom lip.
“Sorry,” Nayeon meekly says, because it’s all she can say.
“Christ, and I thought we were friends,” Chaeyoung jibes but Nayeon knows she’s hurt. “How long has it been?”
“Three weeks.”
It’s not polite to ask who it is—it’s a social stigma but Chaeyoung asks who, and Nayeon isn’t the least bit offended by it.
And Nayeon doesn’t tell her.
Chaeyoung respects that. Doesn’t push it. Only watches Nayeon with furrowed brows and a frown that can be spotted a mile away.
///
“What does it feel like?” Chaeyoung asks, the soft, white flower in hands that are just as soft as hers.
Nayeon ponders. Thinks of ways to thread together everything she feels and everything she doesn’t feel about Son Chaeyoung. Thinks about the way Chaeyoung pulls away her hand when it’s a bit awkward. Thinks about the slope of Chaeyoung’s nose and the curve of her lips and the mole that makes Nayeon want to kiss her every damn time.
And Nayeon thinks, she can’t. She won't. Not ever.
“It feels like waiting for a train that’ll never arrive.” She smiles. Laughs. Because otherwise she would have cried at the image of Son Chaeyoung holding a white daffodil in her hands.
///
Sana is patient. Sana is kind.
Every session she asks if Nayeon will have her procedure anytime soon.
Nayeon answers no faster than anything she has ever done her entire life. She grips the bracelet Chaeyoung for the life of her and shakes her head.
Not today.
Maybe next month.
How about next year?
It’s a cycle; it goes on for the next seven months.
Sana always smiles sadly, always clicks her pen. The room always falls silent except for the whirring of the air conditioning unit, a pen tip scribbling on a board, and Nayeon’s coughing that only gets worse each session.
///
Nayeon arranges the flowers that come out her mouth.
It’s a personal thing, how she allows people to touch the flowers that come out of her mouth. First Jihyo, then Mina, then Jeongyeon and of course, Sana.
But now, she sees Chaeyoung holding wilted daffodils from her lungs, from her mouth, from the tragic tale that is Im Nayeon’s love for the girl—
She cries. And cries. And cries some more and never forgets the blood red daffodils in Son Chaeyoung’s pale hands.
///
Oh, the irony of Chaeyoung accompanying her, that Fortunato’s death in a den underneath a carnival pales in comparison. Maybe this exact moment should be her semestral paper instead. Maybe she should just write about the one she loves, who does not reciprocate, accompanies Nayeon to the doctor who is supposed to heal her love for the girl.
“Will you tell me who it is now?” Chaeyoung asks quietly. Nayeon only shakes her head and tells her no one knows but in truth, Mina and Jihyo and Jeongyeon and Sana knew full well it’s Chaeyoung.
Sana should be given an award for concealing her initial surprise and suspicious perfectly when Nayeon introduces Chaeyoung and the books on Sana’s shelf tell Nayeon that she knows this irony should be written into books and should transcend through time. A classic.
A tragedy.
///
The thing about Hanahaki is that you never know you’re dying until the once white petals turn blood red, and it’s rare, because ever since the Hanahaki procedure happened, no one ever really holds on to a love that does not love them back—not anymore.
Nayeon’s flowers turn a deep shade of red.
Nayeon holds on to Chaeyoung even if loving her felt like hanging off a cliff with a hand gripping the blade of the knife.
A masochist, she’s called by her friends. Sana doesn’t say it out loud, but Nayeon knows she thinks Nayeon is one, too.
Nayeon is too in love with being in love with Chaeyoung, even if her heart is slowly being constricted by a vine, even if her lungs are full of blood-colored petals, even if her room is overflowing with these daffodils she waters daily—even if these daffodils remind her that Chaeyoung is never going to love her back.
///
She’s dying and she knows it.
It’s a physical manifestation of what her heart feels like—a constriction, eating her inside. But she keeps it, keeps the sickness. She misses two sessions with Sana in a row. Sana only frowns once at Nayeon when her coughing fits get worse.
Sana gives Nayeon a bowl to deposit her daffodils.
“Inhale, exhale,” Sana repeats with a soft voice. She presses the stethoscope to Nayeon’s back. “Your lungs tremble halfway. Are you sure you don’t want to proceed with the procedure?”
The weight on her wrist tell her, “No.”
Sana nods. Writes. The usual things.
Being a Hanahaki specialist means you have to be a certified psychiatrist, pulmonologist and a surgeon and Sana is all three, so Nayeon finds herself telling Sana everything about Chaeyoung—everything that happened in the month with Chaeyoung.
Sana nods. Writes. The usual things. Omly that she gives her input on things, helps Nayeon get over herself and for once, Nayeon had met another person never gets tired of listening to her, other than Mina.
“It hurts but I like how it hurts.” Nayeon says. “If that makes sense.”
Sana smiles sadly. “You do, Nayeon. You do.”
///
It’s not like she didn’t try telling her.
Chaeyoung can be dense sometimes, painfully so, that the amount of times Nayeon wants to knock some sense into her exceeds the definition of real numbers.
It’s in the small coffee cups in the morning. The flowers that don’t come out of her mouth. She offers Chaeyoung her sweater in exchange for having her scent around just a little longer.
It’s in the poetry they read each other at a milkshake shop at two in the morning. Nayeon opts for Richard Siken. Dirty Valentine.
There’s a part in the movie where you can see right through the acting, where you can tell I’m about to burst into tears, right before I burst into tears, and flee to the slimy moonlit riverbed canopied with devastated clouds.
I swallow your heart and make you spit it up again. I swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth. You swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. I want it back.
Chaeyoung sips her strawberry milkshake when Nayeon recites and her eyes never leave hers and a small part of her thinks, yeah, maybe I have a shot but then she only recites another Rumi poem as if Nayeon hadn’t poured out her heart right there, on the table and thinks, yeah, maybe not.
///
I’m sorry. The world is no longer mysterious.
///
Sana is patient. Sana is kind.
“Are you ready to have the procedure tomorrow,” she asks and it ridiculously feels like the first time she asked. Nayeon almost feels embarrassed that they have to go through this every month.
Only Nayeon hesitates for half a second. She still grips Chaeyoung’s bracelet, but it’s half a finger looser than all the times she sought the roughness of its cloth.
“No,” Nayeon replies. The calluses from her forefingers feel wrong against the cloth of the bracelet.
Sana doesn’t say anything. She only smiles in that warm, doctor-like way but Nayeon feels that she’s impressed that things are starting to finally move forward after being hopelessly stuck on square one.
Her doctor gestures to the high seat. “Okay. Let’s check your vital signs.”
///
It keeps her up at night, too, when it’s the break of dawn and her bed is full of dark red daffodils and she coughs and coughs and coughs that her throat is scratchy enough to rob her of her voice the next day, and the days after that.
She touches her bed and wants Chaeyoung’s hand to be there.
But it isn’t.
Nayeon doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
///
“It’s a thing, you know.”
Nayeon clears her throat after another fit. It happened more often than she likes and the daffodils are nearly black with how dark the red pigment is. “What is?”
“The Hanahaki procedure,” Chaeyoung doesn’t look up from her paper. “It exists.”
“I don’t want to,” Nayeon replies stubbornly. “I’m not ready. I can’t.” She coughs halfway, another deep red flower and Chaeyoung winces at the firecrackers happening in Nayeon’s throat.
“Please, Nayeon,” Chaeyoung gets down from her chair and she’s kneeling, kneeling, holding Nayeon’s hands with a red nose and glossy eyes.
Chaeyoung doesn’t cry but when she does, Nayeon cries too.
“Please. Do it for yourself,” pleads Chaeyoung, and Nayeon almost scoffs until, “If that’s not enough, do it for me. Do it for Jihyo. Mina. Jeongyeon.”
Her mind’s a mess but Nayeon thinks, do it for you. Something about that rings inside her debilitating body.
Do it for you.
Because she had wanted to live a life doing everything for Chaeyoung.
///
It hits her, after a half empty bottle of hard liquor. It hits her harder than anything else in this world that she finds herself crying nonstop, coughing up more daffodils, more black now than red. It hits her that—that—
Chaeyoung loves her, just not in the way Nayeon wants her to.
And Nayeon? She is completely fine with that.
Son Chaeyoung deserved the world and if Im Nayeon wasn’t enough for her to see that, then Nayeon will be fine.
She’s in Mina’s apartment with Jihyo and they’re cradling her head, softly rocking her, collecting the daffodils that come from the her lungs hacking them out. They can’t say anything; can only shed tears with her because they’re never the type to say I told you so.
She takes a pair of scissor, cuts off the bracelet Chaeyoung made for her, watches it fall to the ground with a daffodil from her mouth.
It’s painful, even a few hours later when she’s sober enough to know she’ll be nursing a hangover tomorrow. Mina and Jihyo watch her carefully, never lets her out of their sight. And Nayeon loves them, loves them so much that it’s the only thing keeping her together and tethered to the earth.
What’s it like?
Waiting for a train that’ll never arrive.
The wrist that used to have Chaeyoung’s bracelet is painfully empty, a phantom pain, but it still feels like it’s there.
So takes her phone and texts Sana.
Can I schedule a procedure tomorrow?
The reply is instant.
MS: Of course. Come to the clinic first thing in the morning.
///
To say she is scared is the understatement of the century.
The anaesthetist tells her she can have a few moments before she puts her to a deep sleep, and that Dr. Sana is currently scrubbing up.
She must have looked extremely nervous, because the anaesthetist laughs slightly through her mask, placing a comforting hand on Nayeon’s blue-clad shoulder. “There’s nothing to worry about. Not anymore.”
Nayeon thinks of Chaeyoung’s smile, of Chaeyoung’s hands, of Chaeyoung’s voice lulling her to sleep when they’re studying. She thinks of the cut bracelet, of the small pieces of bread she hands to Nayeon from her salad and Nayeon thinks of every single thing she loves about Son Chaeyoung because there’s no turning back now.
She thinks about all of that again, every single image racing through her mind three times and the Nayeon calls the anaesthetic, tells her she’s ready, with tears in her eyes, spilling into the operating bed.
I’m sorry. The world is no longer mysterious.
Nayeon drifts off easily and prays to a God she doesn’t always believe in.
///
The first thing she feels is thirsty and Mina is immediately at her side when she stirs awake, downing the cup of water in record time.
“You’re going to feel bad for a few hours; the anaesthesia going to make you feel weird.” Mina tells her but she’s smiling and crying and touching Nayeon’s face gingerly.
“It already is,” Nayeon groans, a numb pain her chest making it difficult to move. “I’m fine, though, stop crying, Mina.”
Mina laughs, and wipes at her eyes. Jihyo and Jeongyeon enter the room with packs of food that they deposit on the hospital chair. They fuss over Nayeon, Mina taking her exit after mumbling, “I’ll tell Dr. Sana you’re awake.”
She falls asleep while Jeongyeon’s talking but she feels good, even if half of her body is on fire and the other cold as ice.
Sana is checking her blood pressure when she opens her eyes, the dim light of the tv can only tell her so much. Jeongyeon is snoring on the couch.
“You’re recovering quite fast, Nayeon. I’m impressed. How’re you feeling?”
“Better. I don’t cough anymore. It’s nice.”
Sana smiles. “That’s good. I’m glad. It must be nice to not wake up on a bed full of daffodils.”
Nayeon’s about to protest that because even if she coughs all through the night and sees her bed
“Speaking of that, your lovely friends left these for you,” there’s a rustle of plastic and a bouquet of different flowers instead of the white to pink to dark red variations that she had seen everyday for the past year. Sana takes the note in her hand and reads, “We know you’re a romantic and you’ll miss your flower bed. They know you too well.”
Nayeon admires the flowers, touches the petals, and it’s beautiful, just as how the daffodils from her mouth were.
Nayeon’s tears spill before she knows it but she’s smiling, and Sana bows. “I’ll leave you with this. Get some rest, Nayeon. I will see you in the morning.” And with that, Sana takes her leave, makes sure to close the door gently as to not wake Jeongyeon up.
She stares at the flowers. Stares and stares until she’s sure when she closes her eyes again it’ll be the only thing she’ll see.
It’s a beautiful arrangement. Familiar. She knows this.
Then she takes the note, recognizes the handwriting and that’s Chaeyoung’s.
She half expects her heart to flutter, or for her lungs to cough up dark red daffodils, but it never comes.
She thinks of Chaeyoung’s face. Pretty. She thinks of Chaeyoung’s lips. Pretty. She thinks of Chaeyoung’s hands. Pretty.
It ends there.
Nayeon vaguely recalls Sana saying, “the operation was a success,” to her friends, with the nightly news as background noise
An emptiness but also a new brand of fulfillment fills her at the same time.
Two years, nine months, twenty eight days, nine hours and fifteen seconds.
She thinks about Chaeyoung. Doesn’t feel anything.
Nayeon exhales, smiles, and is in remission.