Archive of Our Own

Flowers, Airi had told her, were supposed to mark the happiest occasions of her life. To be on the receiving end of them was to be seen; to be loved. It was to be cherished so thoroughly that words alone couldn’t hope to convey the feeling, and likewise, to love somebody with such fervor - enough to gift them flowers - was to offer the parts of yourself yet to be seen and entrust them in the hands of another.

Ena had laughed at her words, back then. The sound was a breathless, wispy thing, laced in obvious disbelief, but一

There was something about the way Airi spoke, as she quietly continued weaving the stems of the gardenias from her mother’s garden into the silken strands of Ena’s hair. Something resolute in her conviction that left Ena with little option but to believe her wholeheartedly. Relentlessly, until that hope had stained every part of her being, and she was hastily shoving a bouquet into Mafuyu’s hands, leaving her to stare back at her with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth.

“Serves you right,” Ena almost wanted to gloat, and一 maybe she would have, if not for the way her voice was drowned out by the hammering of her own heart. She’s finally looking at you, it seemed to thrum in equal parts awe and disbelief, and as quickly as they’d come, any feelings of victory were completely squashed by the underlying terror. 

It didn’t feel like she’d won at all, anymore, even as Mafuyu continued to stand there with that stupid, dumbstruck expression on her face. In fact, it almost seemed that she knew something Ena did not. It was as if she was staring straight through her, seeing something beyond the snarky reply that tangled in her throat and the scowl marring her features.

But一

That was okay, too.

It was okay, because Mafuyu was reacting almost exactly how Ena had expected her to. She wasn’t sure if Mafuyu was even capable of looking as adoring as she had in her dreams, nor was she certain if her feelings could really be defined as love. If she wanted them to be.

Most of the time, the aching sensation surrounding her heart felt little more than a tangle of virulent thoughts and needless obsession, and yet一 

Whatever it was had settled contentedly between the gaps of her ribs and filled the space so slowly, so steadily, that she hardly noticed, now, how the tiniest acts of indulgence stole the breath from her lungs. 

Every carefully orchestrated brush of their fingers had stems twisting around her heart, just as the heat of Mafuyu’s breath against her skin whenever she leaned too close for comfort imprinted onto her skin like a promise. She sought Mafuyu’s attention - the fragile moments where she would meet her gaze from the corner of her eye - desperately, almost compulsively, and by the time she’d noticed, it was too late to uproot what had blossomed.

Now, she almost couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live without the ever-present feeling of being suffocated, and when she finally managed to speak, her voice sounded nothing like her own. Maybe because of the flowers that had nestled against her vocal cords like they were there to stay.

“Do you know what they mean?” she asked, no louder than a whisper. She only hoped that Mafuyu wouldn’t question the hoarseness of her voice, and when she shook her head after several terse seconds, Ena decided that Airi was wrong.

These flowers could only mark the absolute displeasure of knowing Mafuyu Asahina, and as roots coiled around her chest a little more insistently, she could only think that it served her right, for refusing to elaborate on the meaning any further as she settled with a simple answer of: “Hatred.”

The first few flowers weren’t anything more than a beautiful distraction from the smile on Mafuyu’s face when she returned home; an alluring mixture of yellow carnations and meadowsweet tucked under her arm.

Ena hardly noticed the other flowers that poked between them or even the giant ribbon that held them together. How could she, when Mafuyu strode towards her with a twinkle in her eyes that hadn’t been there the day prior? How could anything else possibly matter when Mafuyu presented them to her - almost proudly - and Ena had to try her best to feign ignorance, even though she knew.

She knew exactly what those flowers meant. 

She had given Mafuyu a bouquet just like it, after all. So, she knew - all too intimately, perhaps - the meaning behind every blossom, down to the way the petals overlapped. What those flowers' union implied was understood long before Mafuyu opened her mouth to explain, and yet一

Ena couldn’t find it within herself to care. 

Not when the shades of orange and gold seemed to match the colour of the sun reflecting off of Mafuyu’s eyes so perfectly. Nor when Mafuyu spoke so softly - almost adoringly - in the following moments, like she was thanking her instead of telling her “You’re annoying, too.”

She cradled the bouquet close to her chest and hummed in appreciation. Her fingers crept along the stems in place of tracing along Mafuyu’s arms and up towards her neck to tug her into a kiss. And when she plucked one from the arrangement and twirled it between her fingers, she thought of how desperately she wanted to admit that they were beautiful.

That Mafuyu was beautiful, even more than the flowers.

“You’re the worst,” she said instead, pushing away the thought of reaching across to tuck the bud behind Mafuyu’s ear. Of letting herself be open and honest enough to say that the flowers would complement her eyes. “I hope you thanked your florist profusely for these.”

For a moment, Mafuyu appeared stunned into silence. “My florist?” she wondered, and the slight tilt of her head was almost enough for Ena to break into a laugh. 

“Well, who else?” she huffed, rolling her eyes. She didn’t understand what Mafuyu had found so strange about her words. “It’s not like you went and plucked every one of these yourself, right?”

Mafuyu shook her head instantly as if to deny whatever thought had entered her mind. “No, I just一” she angled her head, then repeated herself, firmer this time, “No. Never mind, it’s nothing.”

Despite her words, Ena couldn’t have disagreed more. The look in Mafuyu’s eyes一 the familiar flicker of disappointment that suggested something about their conversation had interested her enough to leave her longing. That wasn’t nothing. 

“Is that so?” she mused. For a moment longer, she let the flowers tickle her nose before shifting them under her arm and balancing them on her hip. “Something happened while you were there, though, didn’t it? You’re acting a little一” wrinkling her nose, Ena used her spare hand to gesture vaguely. “Off? Even for you.”

Mafuyu stayed quiet. 

The only noise to pass her lips was a single sigh, and her whole body seemed to heave in time with its escape. It was as if it had been made heavy with the weight of Ena’s curiosity, and when she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth - deeply lost in the maze of her own thoughts - Ena almost thought to apologize.

If not for prying, then for thinking that Mafuyu’s expression reaffirmed what she’d already known to be true.

Because Mafuyu was stunning, and there should never have been any doubt in her mind. She was everything. A goddess; one just out of her reach - an ideal she didn’t dare to stain or touch with her own two hands. 

It made her feel silly for believing that some orange lilies tied together with a bow would be befitting of her. That they would’ve complemented her eyes or ever been enough.

Anyone with common sense would’ve noticed that it was the other way around. 

Mafuyu’s florist certainly had - Mafuyu said that she’d told her as much - and Ena thought herself a fool to not have seen it before.

It was Mafuyu herself who complemented the flowers with her unspeakable beauty, and now, it almost seemed too late to tell her so.

The tangle of emotions in her chest made it difficult to breathe, and her heart felt so still that Ena almost thought it had stopped beating entirely. It was as if something had coiled around it to hold it in place; an offering ready for Mafuyu to take and to shred with the piercing nature of her gaze. 

Her throat felt dry - almost too much for her to force herself to speak, but she did. “What?” she rasped. “Mafuyu一 What did you just say?”

She asked, no一 begged Mafuyu to repeat herself. To assure her that she’d misheard. That it wasn’t too late.

“She called me beautiful,” Mafuyu repeated, and her voice was so subdued that Ena had to strain to hear her. Then, “I bought her flowers.” 

Ena could only stand and stare. She watched as Mafuyu’s hands clasped together in front of her and as her gaze shifted to the floor. It did nothing to hide how her cheeks had turned the sublest shade of pink or the way her lips had tilted just so at the corners. It couldn’t. Not in front of Ena, who knew her like the back of her hand. 

When she looked at her again - really looked at her, - she tried to recall if she had ever seen Mafuyu this bashful; this quietly enraptured before.

She decided that she hadn’t, and when she smiled, swallowed down the swell of emotions and turned to cough into her fist to dislodge whatever had caught in her throat - all in quick succession - she also decided that it didn’t hurt.

She wasn’t going to let it.

“Are you going to see her again?” she asked gently. 

For the second time that afternoon, Mafuyu appeared astonished. Like the thought truly hadn’t occurred to her. “I wouldn’t have a reason to,” she protested, but Ena was watching carefully enough to notice the hopeful glimmer that snuck into her eyes. It was something she’d caught in the reflection of her own more than once.

“Does it matter?” she challenged. The flowers on her hip suddenly felt ten times heavier, and Ena shifted to hold them close again, cherishing them as if it might be the last time. She let the petals brush against her mouth for only a fraction of a second before stepping forward and setting them aside on the counter.

The same one she would watch Mafuyu make their dinner from sometimes, her smile hidden behind the palm of her hand.

“She’s a florist, isn’t she?” she continued, gesturing towards the arrangement. “What reason do you need, other than that?”

Mafuyu blinked as if to consider her. Then she nodded slowly. “Right,” she murmured, and her eyes seemed to follow Ena as she moved. There was an obvious, unspoken question written into her stare - one that Ena wished she would hurry up and say - and when her brow furrowed, something stopped Ena from laughing the way she normally would.

“But what if一” frustrated, Mafuyu let her sentence break to take a step towards her. Ena matched it with one of her own in the opposite direction. “Wouldn’t it be a bother to一?”

Mafuyu took another step forward, and Ena took another step backward.

Her gaze seemed to implore her to understand, but Ena wasn’t in the mood to let her finish whatever uncanny thought had flitted through her mind. When she raised an eyebrow at her, Mafuyu stayed silent, and Ena bobbed her head in satisfaction. “Good,” she declared, smiling as wide as she could. “That settles it then.”

As soon as she spoke, she turned on her heel to address the flowers instead. Somehow, they seemed far easier to talk to. “I’m going to find somewhere else for these to sit,” she said, and she knew a part of herself was merely looking for an excuse. She was unwilling to hear the rest of what Mafuyu had to say, because she was sure it would only hurt her more. “I’m sure your florist would be sad to hear if they wilted within a week.”

She stared at her pointedly, her fingers grazing the soft petals. “Like the ones I gave you did.”

“My florist一 Why do you keep saying that?” Mafuyu paused. From behind where she stood, she heard Mafuyu sigh, and Ena wondered if turning to see her would’ve made the weight in her arms any lighter. She doubted it. Especially when Mafuyu cleared her throat and tried to ask her again, “But what about…?” 

“You’ll see her again,” Ena murmured. Soft but sharp. It wasn’t an instruction, but the simple truth. The wonder etched into the creases of Mafuyu’s mouth and the way she lit up like the sun told her she would, and一 it didn’t hurt.

It didn’t.

It didn’t hurt at all when she excused herself, or when she finally made it to her room, a hushed question of “What am I going to do with you?” on her lips that was only heard by the flowers. She didn’t know who it was addressed to or whether she cared to think about it long enough to find out, but she cradled them nonetheless.

Because even if those blooms spoke of nothing but their disdain for one another, the care that had gone into each and every one was obvious. Their brightness spoke volumes - more than she ever dared to, at least - and for the second time, Ena remembered Airi’s words. 

It made her laugh.

What kind of person gave flowers to somebody they did not love or find even half as captivating as the carnations in full bloom? Ena could only think of one, and in that moment, she thought there wasn’t anyone quite as unfortunate.

The bouquet she had given had meant to tell Mafuyu that she loved her, and the one she received in return said just the opposite. 

Though the arrangements were almost identical, their meaning was worlds apart, and Ena carefully traced her fingers over the edges of those contradictory petals. It was as if she were afraid of disturbing them or the intended meaning, and she sighed softly; a little sadly. 

She set them aside on her vanity - away from the curious light of the sun - in the hopes that they would be given even a few more days to thrive. 

She tried not to think too hard about how their end was inevitable.

When she curled into herself on the bathroom floor, later in the evening - fingers digging into her chest as if she could’ve uprooted the source of her discomfort - she tried to remind herself again that it didn’t hurt.

It didn’t.

It couldn’t. 

She repeated those words like a prayer; like she could simply will them to be true. Like doing so might’ve made her think it was impressive, instead of unpleasant, that in the span of just twenty-four hours, Mafuyu had managed to evolve from a thorn in her side to an irremovable infestation of orange lilies blooming beneath her ribs. 

Prideful and pretty and painful as they ripped themselves from her throat, as delicate and as well-hidden as a love for somebody that did not love her back.

That night, Ena hardly slept at all. 

(She didn’t think she could’ve, even if she’d tried. And oh, she’d tried.) 

She spent it instead holding the orange lily she’d vomited in the palm of her hand, marvelling over the smallness of it. It was nowhere near as brilliant or as large as the one in Mafuyu’s bouquet, and the petals still curled slightly inward - as if they hadn’t been given enough time or care to properly form.

It was slightly strange, she thought, when it felt like something that had been festering for a while.

She wondered what that meant for her (for Mafuyu), or if it had to mean anything at all. All of a sudden, love seemed like such an arbitrary thing, and that一 Well, that got her thinking about other things.

The fact that Mafuyu had given her florist flowers: that didn’t have to mean anything either, did it?

The very idea of it brought a sharp pain to Ena’s temple - one much more staggering than the one sprouting in her chest - and she groaned. Using her free hand to rub at the skin did little to ease the ache, and she shifted onto her side - still careful so as not to crush the flower within her fist - to try and get more comfortable.

Unsurprisingly, that didn’t help either.

All it did was let her turn away from Mafuyu’s bouquet and illuminate her face with the dim light from the moon. The clear view of the skies and all its stars made her appreciate that she’d forgotten to draw her curtains before lying down, and it left her with the faintest regret that she had to let her eyes close every time that she blinked.

On nights like these, after all (though she’d always found them to be so), they seemed especially beautiful. So much so that it seemed like a waste not to stare for as long as she could.

It wasn’t dissimilar to how her eyes would compass towards Mafuyu the moment she entered the room, and the similarities didn’t end there. The splatter of stars was beautiful in all the same ways. Heavenly in their unattainability; their intangibility.

Their only difference was that stars were something for her to wish upon, while Mafuyu was what made her want to do so in the first place. 

And by now, she’d lost count of the number of times she’d stood at her window and stared. Wishing on stars (oh, so many stars) and hoping that one day, Mafuyu would notice them reflected in her eyes, too; in the corners of her smile. Wishing hopelessly, endlessly.

Over and over and over again.

With her free hand, she reached for them again now, and she hoped it would be the final time. She wondered why it almost seemed that they were mourning for her as they twinkled so brightly; so far away from her. She tried to convince herself that it was only a figment of her imagination, the way that Airi had surely imagined the blush on her cheeks when she’d first teased her for it all those months ago.

But— 

Reluctant as she was to admit it, Ena knew that the heat on her cheeks wasn’t something Airi had conjured up. Her words were as real as the stems twisting around her lungs to suffocate her.

After all, it had always been Airi who caught her in those fragile moments where she let her guard down long enough to smile when she stared— Airi, who had been by her side long enough to know what that meant, and Airi, who stood by her through it all. 

She knew she would never, ever, lie to her. Not about something of this nature, and even though the times she chose to point it out to her were sparing, they were enough to let Ena know that her affection was obvious. 

“You know,” she’d commented once, and the teasing intonation to her voice was enough to leave Ena’s skin prickling uncomfortably hot. “It’s written all over your face.”

And一 Ena remembered her mouth opening, and that she hadn’t known what to say. “What are you talking about?” she replied, slightly breathless and her pulse skipping along to an invisible beat. Maybe the one that she subconsciously drummed into Airi’s skin as they walked side by side, their elbows intertwined like two stems creeping up the same grapevine.

The look Airi gave her made it seem as though she was stupid for asking. “You know,” she insisted, and Ena supposed that she did - only she didn’t want to admit it. “I’m talking about Mafuyu. You get all starry-eyed whenever she’s near. It’s adorable, honestly. It’s like一” humming, Airi took the chance to bump her hip to Ena’s, knocking her gently to the side. “Like一 your eyes always want to reflect her. Like you think she deserves to be right up there in the sky alongside them. She incarnates them.”

Ena could only stare ahead. She tried to focus on forcing one foot after the other, but she felt aimless in her direction. It was like there weren’t any words left for her to say, now that Airi had stolen them away: long before they’d ever crossed her mind. The smile on her face as she’d said it hadn’t been unkind or even remotely derisive, but一

The fact that Airi hadn’t needed a single word in response to know that she was right was startling.

In the same way, Ena didn’t like how she had her doubts that she was wrong about this, too.

She squeezed her eyes shut to force herself away from their enchanting light, and made a wish. She assured herself that this would be the last one, and she only hoped the stars would forgive her for not opening her eyes - for only shutting them tighter - as she made her plea. 

Then, she breathed.

It felt a little easier than the one that had come before it, and she counted every breath after that in her head to try to help lull her body into a state of calm. It was an easy thing, to let her body recall the motion, but even so一

As she drifted off to sleep, she couldn’t help but wonder at what point did she stop counting every sigh that left her lips to start counting, instead, the number of times she wished she’d told Mafuyu she loved her.

She wondered, too, if things would’ve turned out any differently if she had.

When Ena did eventually fall asleep, she dreamed of her. Of Mafuyu, and her fingers threading slowly - deliberately - through the night sky in Ena’s hair; pressing stars into her smile before leaning in and causing something in her chest to burst like a supernova.

She found an odd sort of tranquility in the aftermath, if only for a fleeting moment in time until she woke with the taste of flowers heavy on her tongue. 

Just as Airi would never lie to her, Ena couldn’t hide a single thing from her inquisitive gaze. 

It was only a handful of days later when they next met, at a cafe that had opened just down the street from her and Mafuyu’s shared home. Ena slid comfortably - cozily, settling close enough that their shoulders touched, the way they both liked - into the booth where Airi had been waiting for her, and when she did一

Airi stared at her, long and hard.

It left Ena feeling一 not unnerved, exactly. Not flustered, either, but something in between, and her heart rabbitted gently beneath her ribs as Airi inspected everything from the scrunch of her brow to the amused but curious curve of her lips. She seemed so sombre that it was almost surreal, and Ena wondered if she could see right through her to the flowers that bristled against her chest like a warning.

After a few more seconds, when she leaned back, it seemed like she’d arrived at an answer.

“You’re not telling me something,” Airi announced, and一 The way she spoke it wasn’t a question. Merely a fact: one that Ena was resigned to admit even as she couldn’t help but want to ask what had given it away.

Instead, she simply let her smile drop and reached to pull the flower from her pocket. The petals were slightly shriveled, now. More brittle and far duller - closer in colour to the inside of an apricot than the brilliant, bright sunset it once was. Her thumb curled into it protectively as she held it in her palm, almost like she was instinctively afraid of Airi stealing it away as her fingers crept forward to overlap with Ena’s.

(As always, Airi seemed to know exactly what she needed.)

The pressure against her hand as she held them there was light, and the smallness of her show of support made Ena appreciate it ten times more. Any heavier, and she felt like she might break or cough up flowers again.

“Ena, is it一? Does that mean that she一” she started, quiet as her fingers dared to reach for something more solid; something more tangible to hold onto and wrap around the crook of her elbow. She sounded so, so sincere. So candid and true that Ena couldn’t blame her for asking, even as it hurt and as it felt like shears against the dying flower in her hands.

Still, Ena surged backward to clutch it closer to her chest. 

There were some things that she wasn’t ready to let go of, just yet.

And when she looked up at Airi again, an apology at the edge of her lips, she found that the words had died somewhere along the way, swallowed up by the flowers wrapping around each other in her throat.

“Sorry, sorry!” Airi laughed - slightly feebly - and retracted her hand, though not before giving hers a final, reassuring squeeze that was reminiscent of the first.  “The answer’s obvious, huh? Otherwise you wouldn’t be… I mean, I didn’t need一 I shouldn’t have asked.”

Ena nodded stiffly. It was the only movement her body allowed. “It’s fine,” she murmured, even though they both knew that the smile on her lips didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m fine,” she insisted again anyway. She didn’t know if she was saying it for Airi’s sake or her own. “I’m handling it.”

Airi nodded. Once, and then again一 like she was assuring herself. “Mafuyu, huh,” she concluded, and the low hum of her voice, though usually reassuring, did not carry the same comfort it once did. 

Ena didn’t know whether it was the mention of her or because she couldn’t help but hate how easily Airi understood; how she knew how bothered Ena was by the way her feelings had taken root and what it meant when they blossomed.

To answer her, she met Airi’s hum with one of her own. She let her gaze fall towards her lap, and she stared silently; almost expectantly, like she was waiting for the prickling feeling in her throat to return and replace the flower in her hand with another. 

“Mhm. Mafuyu,” she echoed, and she couldn’t help but notice how the mere mention of her sent a flurry of petals to beat against her ribs, begging to be set free.

Just like she noticed the way that Airi’s eyes softened remarkably to turn something gentle from the corner of her eye. “Are you going to tell her?” she asked, and at that一

Ena paused to consider the thought. It would certainly be the easiest way to alleviate her symptoms, if her hanahaki had been born from repressing how she felt. That, she knew, but一 was it the thought of loving Mafuyu that was really so scary? Was the notion of admitting that she did that terrifying? Or was it what telling her entailed that she found far, far scarier?

When she thought about it, she couldn’t say that she knew the answer. Regardless of it or her ailment, she’d continue wanting to keep those flowers close to her chest.

It was a sentiment that even the flowers echoed, and her heart pumped achingly, longingly, within her chest, pleading with her for just another day. Another week. Another month. Even a second more, if fostering these feelings would allow for the garden growing alongside them to bloom bigger and brighter. Enough that Mafuyu would be helpless but to notice them, instead of whichever ones her florist had pressed into her willing hands.

“Hell if I know,” she mumbled. Maybe one day, she wanted to say, only she didn’t think that she could. She didn’t think that the flowers would allow her to, occupying so much space in her lungs; in her throat and in her mouth to let even a single word regarding the matter slip past. 

Ena cleared her throat and raised a hand to rub at the skin there, like it could’ve erased the nagging feeling that seemed to want to persist. When it did nothing, and she only felt her throat bob, she tried to turn her attention to something new and smile. 

“But一 actually, Airi, there is something I wanted to ask.” 

Airi’s eyes brightened considerably. As always, she seemed happy to oblige. “Yeah?”

Ena took a moment to tap against the flower in her hand, and she winced when one of the petals fell away. “Do you have time to accompany me to the flower shop again, after this?” she questioned, and the words came a little easier; as effortlessly as the next breath she took, now that she wasn’t distracted with unnecessary things.

“I want to pick a few things up from Minori’s shop, you know一” she rambled, gesturing vaguely to indicate. “For the bouquet at home. To help it last a little longer.”

Airi nodded almost as soon as the words tumbled past her lips. “Yeah, of course,” she replied warmly, and like the many times before, it seemed that there wasn’t anything left for either of them to say. Not when their understanding of what had been left unsaid was as intimate as the embrace of the stems tangling together inside of her.

The glimpses of sympathy she caught in Airi’s eyes - the ones she was sure were a response to something in her own - weren’t something that needed to be addressed.

Just like how, as she glanced at the lily one more time before tucking it neatly back into her pocket, she didn’t need to address the thoughts that crept toward the forefront of her mind. The very ones that told her that the flowers she was caring for so ardently formed a secret garden Mafuyu would never dare to step foot in.

Ena returned home at dusk, when the final offerings of light for the day were receding from the sky to make way for the moon and the stars that she loved so dearly.

This time, she didn’t dare to face either one. She kept her eyes firmly to the floor as she stepped past the entrance and into her home - a small box of flower food tucked under her arm - and when she finally braved a single glance upward, she found that it hadn’t mattered in the end. She was confronted with them all the same when, even in the dark, all she could see was her.

Her beautiful, brilliant Mafuyu. 

She glowed far brighter than any star; pulled Ena further into her orbit without even trying - so effortlessly that it almost left her jealous - and currently, seemed to be sulking on their shared couch. She curled into herself even further when Ena switched on the light, hugging her knees to her chest, and for a moment, Ena thought she seemed smaller than the stars above.

That she seemed almost human.

Now more than ever, it made Ena want to believe that there were things regarding Mafuyu seen only by her eyes, and it was with that thought in mind that she tried to laugh. “What has you looking so forlorn?” she teased, and when Mafuyu looked back at her, it caused something in her chest to swell. “The shop wasn’t closed, was it?”

Ena hated the hopeful inflection that crept into her voice.

She hated even more how, when Mafuyu shook her head to say, “No, I triple checked,” and “She seemed pretty busy, regardless,” the flowers inching toward the tip of her tongue seemed desperate to tell her all the things she wasn’t ready to. She forced herself to swallow them back down, even as they expanded and stuck in her throat, and she leaned forward to pinch Mafuyu’s cheek briefly.

As soon as she did, Mafuyu’s eyes clamped shut. Something close to a whine trailed from her throat, and Ena laughed at the scrunch of her brow before letting go.

“Is that so,” she hummed, settling beside her. When Mafuyu nodded, she took it as an indication to shift closer. Close enough for the inches between them to become none, and for Mafuyu’s body heat to entangle with Ena’s when she leaned into her and pressed their shoulders together. 

Close enough for Mafuyu to flinch slightly as Ena’s breath tickled the side of her neck when she turned her head sideways to face her.

And when Mafuyu turned to rest her cheek upon her arms - to look at her, too - Ena instantly felt dazed. Drunk, almost, on Mafuyu’s attention; intoxicated enough that she almost thought to reach out and tuck one of the fallen strands back behind her ears.

The only thing that stopped her, really, was the persistent worry in Mafuyu’s eyes.

Almost instantly, she regretted being so greedy that she had indulged in her presence at all. Much more important than the flowers and the words she wished to say was the immense want for Mafuyu to be happy. How could she have ever thought for even a second about anything else - even her own? 

She opened her mouth to speak and amend her prior misstep; to erase that pitiful expression, and yet一

Between them, Mafuyu was the first to speak. “I’m going to try again in a few days,” she told her, and she sounded so sure of herself, more than Ena had ever heard her be before. 

It made the flowers in her throat prickle uncomfortably, and Ena forced herself to ignore every tiny needle; every thorn that threatened to break through the skin. “This florist must really be something,” she tried to tease, but her voice came out as barely a whisper. “If she’s got you this tightly wound around her finger.”

So, so tightly. Tighter than any stem or daisy chain could ever bind you to me; if garnering your undying attention was this easy for her.

In response, Mafuyu only hummed. Her gaze seemed to stare straight through her, like she wasn’t even there, and Ena wondered if there was anything she could do to bring her back from wandering down the endless roads of her mind. To bring her back to her. Only one thing came to mind, and she pleaded. “Can you tell me about her, then?” she begged, and when Mafuyu asked her why一

She didn’t have an answer. She could only shrug and say, “Surely there’s more to it than what you’ve told me. Her calling you pretty can’t be all it took.”

“Beautiful,” Mafuyu corrected. 

Ena’s nose wrinkled. “That’s not the point,” she protested, and instead of reaching for the locks of hair on Mafuyu’s cheeks that bothered her, she settled for poking her arm with the tip of her finger—a small act of defiance and a flimsy excuse to feel the warmth of her skin. “I know there’s more to it than that, okay? I’m一 I’m just curious.”

Curious, and perhaps the tiniest bit jealous, if the golden hyacinth flowers scratching against her throat to try and bloom had anything to say.

She was well aware of how each word sounded more feeble than the last, and she was thankful that Mafuyu chose not to address it. Either that or she hadn’t been watching her closely enough to realise as she nodded, slowly. Gradually enough that the flower budding on Ena’s tongue had time to unfurl. 

“Maybe,” she murmured, and the tenderness of her gaze made Ena wonder what she was seeing when she looked at her. Was it her? Or her beloved florist? “Do I really need a reason, though? Maybe I just like how she looked, surrounded by the flowers, or the way she promised to give me a bouquet just like yours. I don’t一 I don’t know, I don’t have a reason exactly, but一”

With an emphatic sigh, Mafuyu buried her head into her arms to recollect herself. She seemed genuinely frustrated with her inability to find the right words, and Ena almost wanted to turn her head to the side to see what expression she was making.

“I like her a lot,” she mumbled, the words muffled by the sleeve of her cardigan. “I don’t know why. I liked the sound of her voice and the way she talked about the flowers so endlessly, like there wasn’t enough words in the world to convey what she wanted to say. I liked everything about her, down to the expression on her face when I pressed that tiny white flower into her hand.”

Ena blinked and sat upright suddenly. “Huh?” she blurted stupidly. 

At that, Mafuyu tilted her head ever so slightly. Just enough for Ena to sneak a glimpse of her eyes and the unending warmth that now resided in them. “I told you, didn’t I?” she queried. “I bought her flowers一 Well. One flower.”

Uneasy laughter trailed from Ena’s throat and almost encouraged the flowers to join it. “I must’ve forgotten,” she lied, and she was almost surprised how easily it slipped from her tongue. How it didn’t hurt nearly as much as petals pressing against her lips. 

Mafuyu simply hummed and nodded her head. The movement was stunted by the way she continued to hold her head in her arms, and Ena watched as a smile drifted onto her lips unbidden. “I hope she understood what I was trying to say with it,” she mused. 

Ena couldn’t help but laugh. “She’s a florist, Mafuyu,” she replied dryly. “I’m sure she’d know better than anyone what those flowers mean.”

“I suppose,” Mafuyu acquiesced, shrugging. “The way she spoke about them, though, it just一 it just seemed like a lot. Fortune, faith, a request to be thought of一 there’s so many different interpretations of clovers that I had no idea about.”  Pausing, Mafuyu stopped to chew on the inside of her lip. “Did you know that orange lilies are the same?” she asked her.

Ena’s heart stopped cold in her chest, if only for a moment. 

A single, ridiculously, torturously slow moment where she wished for one of the very first times in her life that she was anywhere but Mafuyu’s side. No longer did it feel like it was blanketed or surrounded by the comfort of laying in a field full of flowers, and they tore from her lungs and up toward her mouth.

They almost seemed unwilling to wait for the coughs that would usually allay them from her body, and it took everything in her not to spill and not to flinch or make even a single sound. Not in front of Mafuyu, at the very least.

She shook her head, quietly, and the second lie came as easily as the first, as easily as the petals free-falling from her lips. She covered her mouth with her hand, and she wished - not on a star, but on her very life - that Mafuyu was distracted enough not to notice the yellow peeking between her fingers as she pulled them away.

“Mm,” Mafuyu hummed, utterly oblivious even as Ena made several attempts to clear her throat. “Apparently, they can also represent pride and passion. It made me think of you, actually, when she told me that. I never realised the meaning of a bouquet was something that could so easily be changed, until then. Until her. Maybe there’s a lot more that I haven’t realised, too. Maybe一” Mafuyu stumbled over her own words, drunk on the remnants of affection and longing left behind, “Maybe一”

Whatever thought had staggered into Mafuyu’s mind left just as fast, and mid-sentence, her mouth formed around a yawn. If she’d been able to speak, Ena might’ve thought to call it adorable, the way that she frowned immediately after, and turned her gaze towards the clock一 almost as if to accuse it.

Ena’s, as always, followed without question. 

“Is it that late already?” Mafuyu murmured, and Ena suspected she wasn’t asking anyone in particular. Not when the numbers blinking back at the two of them already seemed to suggest that it was.  

It made Ena wonder just when time had snuck away from them both. When they had grown so comfortable in each other’s company that even hours were reduced to mere minutes. “It isn’t even midnight yet, you big baby,” she complained, but there wasn’t any bite to her tone.

There never really was, with Mafuyu.

Even as she shrugged, and even as the smile dropped from her lips, the minute Mafuyu turned back to face her. Ena could never truly find it in herself to hate her. “I should sleep, still,” Mafuyu mused, and一 just like that, in a single heartbeat muffled by the flowers that blanketed it, she shifted away. 

Far, far away.

Farther than the stars and farther than Ena thought she would ever be able to bear. There was so much distance between them; between her, the florist, and Mafuyu herself一 so much that it was almost incomprehensible, in its endless expansion. It was similar to how the mess of flowers in her chest found contentment in growing cramped and overgrown: in leaving her wondering which of her feelings was the most prominent as they bloomed.

It was so much more painful than expelling them from her body to think that when she stood, Mafuyu didn’t spare even a single glance over her shoulder. To know that she was on her mind, but not nearly as much, when her only offering was a single second where she let her palm rest flat against the wall to murmur a quiet, “Goodnight.”

She couldn’t even be bothered to say her name.

An incredibly cruel reminder, Ena thought, that she did not matter to Mafuyu in any of the ways that she mattered to her.

It made me think of you.

Had Ena ever heard such beautiful, haunting words from Mafuyu’s lips before? She’d spoken them only in passing, in a way that let Ena know she hadn’t meant a single thing by them, and yet they were all she could seem to think about.

Over and over and over again.

The words repeated. They echoed and bounced off the sides of her skull until it felt as though nothing remained; that nothing else mattered, and her fingers curled into her calves as she brought them closer to her chest. The nails left tiny crescent moons that indented onto her skin, and it almost made her want to laugh at the irony.

Or cry.

No matter how badly she wanted to be, Ena would never be Mafuyu’s moon in this life. For all the countless stars in the sky, there was only one moon: one person who could occupy that space, and as much as she wished it wasn’t true一 it wasn’t一 it couldn’t ever be一

Ena felt her entire body heave when she hiccupped. She felt her bottom lip wobble, and she pulled it between her teeth to hold it still. Tears budded like flowers beneath her eyelids when she breathed in, and they rolled down her cheeks with every ragged exhale that managed to escape in the moments after. Each one left her increasingly desperate for more, even as the air felt like poison to swallow, and she wondered if it was because her lungs simply no longer held the room.

If they were too occupied with lilies and daffodils and the collections of cyclamens that gathered there to contain it.

They bristled knowingly - taunting her - as she thought of them, and though she couldn’t be certain, Ena could’ve sworn that in the quiet, she heard the gentle rustle of their petals as they fell away to make space. All of a sudden, it felt as though they were rotting away inside her, and she held the crumpled petals from before even tighter in her fist. 

(Did it matter, she wondered, that she was so reluctant to let them go? That she was being so stubborn about this? Would it amount to anything at all when she knew that soon enough, more would be tugged from her throat like they were weeds, to join them?)

One minute seemed to lose itself in the next as she stared into nothing, willing the flowers to remain as they were. She stayed so still - on their shared couch, alone - that she had to remind herself to blink, so afraid of even her feelings leaving her behind.

Minutes soon turned into an hour, and one hour quickly became two.

Then three.

Then four.

It made me think of you.

It made me think of you.

It made me think of you.

It should’ve been enough that she’d said those words at all. 

Why couldn’t it have been enough?

The very idea that Mafuyu cared, but not like that, was enough for Ena to start to hyperventilate and finally dispel what caused her so much pain. They pulled from her lips one after the other, like how a river flowed without end; like how the waterfall from her eyes never seemed to stop.

No matter how badly she wanted to tell them “No, please,” or “Not yet,” those buds seemed determined to wrench themselves from the garden they’d formed all too soon, and she cried. 

She cried, heavily and silently, with her hands covering her mouth. She cried until it became even harder to breathe, and the sobs wracked her body so thoroughly that she could no longer tell if she was still vomiting up flowers, even as they fell through her fingers like sand. The only thing she knew for sure was that everything hurt so, so much.

Why couldn’t she have told Mafuyu sooner? Why was she foolish enough to presume that she was the only one who would?

Ena’s vision danced. When she looked to her lap, she saw through blurry eyes a collection of small but bright, white tulips. Their stems tangled together with the yellow hyacinth she’d regurgitated in front of Mafuyu, and their petals mixed to form the same creamy colour as the stars. She only had to ignore the way that they were speckled in red.

Now do you see? they seemed to croon as she stared. This is what it means to be requited. 

Ena whimpered at the sight of them. “Why?” she asked, and when the flowers did not answer her, she tried again - slightly more delirious. “Why? Hey, answer me, I thought一 I thought that I一” 

The words left her so suddenly that she coughed, and gagged out another tulip: one that was more red in colour than those that preceded it. It fell to join the many that already littered her lap, and she tried to reclaim it and the thought that now escaped her.

I thought? I thought一 what, exactly? 

That I had more time? That everybody else would wait to pick a flower already in full bloom, while I stood idly by? That Mafuyu would ever feel the same?

Ena laughed bitterly. A little hysterically. 

Somehow, every thought that entered her mind made it seem that she deserved every bit of the pain Mafuyu unknowingly inflicted.

Thankfully, Ena woke early enough to clear the mess of petals and tangled stems on the couch where she slept and throw them into the bin.

She couldn’t recall the exact moment when her eyes had fallen shut or when sleep had finally claimed her tired body. All she knew was that the sun was painting her cheeks in its inviting warmth to encourage her to rise. It felt surprisingly pleasant, even as sunlight continued poking through the curtains to shine directly in her eyes, and Ena let herself get carried away by her own senseless wonderings.

Like, when was the last time that she’d managed to crawl out of bed (or up from the couch, in this case) before noon? When had the flowers in her chest ever felt so dormant and still?

She found that she couldn’t remember that, either.

Maybe she didn’t need to, though. Maybe it didn’t matter all that much, when she felt much better than she had the night before. 

She couldn’t quite place her finger on why she did, however. Especially when the telltale tickle of a flower pressed somewhere against her organs to indicate that they were still there, still present and blossoming brilliantly, despite the newfound lightness that she couldn’t decide whether or not to appreciate.

It was as if they wanted to tell her - however unnecessarily - that they weren’t so impermanent; that she wouldn’t be so easily rid of them or her love.

It made her want to tell them just as stubbornly that she wouldn’t ever want that, even as the sweet relief that came alongside their presence became disconcerting.

Ena scrunched her nose, and looked towards the window again.

A part of her wanted to turn her head towards Mafuyu’s room instead and demand some sort of answer: the kind that she knew Mafuyu couldn’t give. An even bigger part knew that doing so was pointless - at least without offering a few of her own - and so she settled for stretching her arms over her head to rid the last of the exhaustion from her body.

After all, it was becoming increasingly obvious that sleep was going to evade her for at least several hours more, even when she wouldn’t have expected it to. The few hours of rest she’d managed would normally have kept her confined to her bundle of blankets. Normally, she’d have felt fatigued beyond belief; she’d have grumbled to herself and pulled the covers back over her head with a yawn, but一

For one reason or another, she didn’t feel like returning to her room and catching up on the sleep she’d missed out on. For an even less obvious reason, she didn’t feel like staying indoors at all.  

So, Ena walked over to the window her gaze had been fixed upon, and almost wondered out loud why she hadn’t done so sooner. 

In spite of the season (or perhaps because of it), the sun shone so, so beautifully. So much so that it made her open the curtains a little wider, and it felt like a waste that she wasn’t already taking advantage of the day ahead.

There was an obvious kind of beauty in its endless, unwavering affection for everything that gathered beneath it. One that didn’t need to be said or couldn’t possibly be compared to the subtlety of the moon or stars, though Ena thought they were equally as wonderful.  

Without a second thought, Ena turned swiftly on her heel to make her way back to her bedroom. She forced one foot after the other, even as they pleaded with her to stay where she was; to plant firmly into the floor and enjoy the sun. One step after the next, even as her legs itched - practically begged - for her to turn back around and guide her outdoors. 

As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t listen to her body’s unreasonable demands. 

Not yet, at least. 

Not when she felt a desire to do something she hadn’t done in a long, long time. 

It almost seemed inconsequential, the way the minutes dragged on as she rummaged through her room. The notion that Mafuyu had been right when she’d told her that being left alone in such an untidy room would leave anyone restless - not just her - hardly even crossed her mind. 

Despite her own impatience, she knew it would all be worth it if she could just remember where she’d fucking left it, and一

Only a moment later, Ena couldn’t help but feel that she was proven right.

“A-ha!” she declared, and she wished - if only for a second - that Mafuyu was there to see the wideness of her smile, and maybe grin along with her. Even if Mafuyu’s version of a smile was all but indistinct to those who couldn’t care to look closely at it.

(Ena had never一 would never find herself among them. Not now, nor ever.)

Ena pulled the box from her closet without further hesitation and pulled off the lid. She winced at the thin layer of dust that covered it - promising herself that she’d clean it properly later - and marvelled at the contents within. It felt like a lifetime ago - even if her memory told her it was only a handful of months - that she’d thought to reach for them. 

Her collection of sketchbooks, and along with them, the fragments of a dream not fully realized. 

Ena grabbed one from the pile - the last one she remembered using and the one she knew to have at least a few blank pages, and held it close to her chest. With the pages tucked under her chin, she could’ve sworn she could smell the graphite on the pages, even amidst the faint scents of something floral that always seemed to linger near her, lately.

She indulged it for a second longer before standing again and grabbing a pencil, letting her body finally take the direction it so desperately wanted. 

And一 Maybe it was because she was feeling a little bit petty, or maybe she knew that Mafuyu would’ve told her that she hadn’t needed to, like the times before, but she didn’t offer a single word to the silence of their home when she left. 

She only hummed, and when she stepped outside to feel the sunshine upon her skin, Ena found its warmth comparable to the love in her heart. Abundant and eternal and real. It seemed to nurture the flowers in her chest as she walked (or at least she hoped it did), and Ena hummed a little louder; she stepped forward with more of a skip in her step. 

Happier than she’d been in weeks, when she thought of how Mafuyu didn’t一

Ena shook her head to rid herself of the thought. Not now, she scolded herself, strolling forward even more determinedly, and continuing that way for longer than she could count. Mindlessly, aimlessly wandering, until the sun had crept closer toward the centre of the sky, and she eventually caught the glimpses of an empty park from the corner of her eye.

She blinked once in consideration. 

Then again, and all of a sudden一

Everywhere Ena looked, all she could see were flowers. A vast sea of them in her lungs, around her heart and lining the cobbled pathways that led through the park: primroses and peonies and bright yellow sunflowers. When she looked between them, she noticed daisies, too, and carnations, among others, that swayed gently in the breeze and reminded her just as sweetly of Mafuyu.

With so many here, the wind seemed to whisper as it swept past her and brushed her hair into her eyes, maybe you’d be able to pick out a few more that’d have her thinking of you, too. 

Ena took a startled step backward. She clutched her sketchbook even closer to her chest like a shield, and her flowers beneath rustled like they might carry with the breeze. “Stupid,” she muttered. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” 

The discomforting feeling in her chest was back tenfold, and Ena had no one to blame but herself. She shifted her sketchbook and rubbed a hand over the area instantly, as if to settle the flowers back into place or diminish the unease she felt as much as she could.

It hardly made a difference, but it allowed for her to force herself to continue forward, her fingers curled protectively over her chest. One step after the other, each matching its rhythm to her heart’s gentle beat. 

It was all she could do to continue searching for a break in the flowers that harboured a place for her to sit and admire. She let her eyes dart back and forth as she moved, and it didn’t take her long - barely five minutes more into her walk - to find a bench nestled amongst them all. 

It took even less time to let the dull scratch of her pencil against the page distract her from the persistent itchiness of her throat. 

It was easy to lose herself in the blank pages of her sketchbook as they steadily filled, and in every gentle curve of a petal that she tried to recreate even half as devotedly. She let every rendition occupy the tiny gaps in her heart left between the flowers, and as she drew一

She only had to try a little not to think about who had brought them about in the first place. 

(The same girl who was etched eternally on the last completed page in her sketchbook: her eyes not even focused. Not even on her.)

Ena tried to keep herself busy after that. 

Inundating her mind with even the smallest of tasks seemed to pacify the flowers taking root in her body. Though it was vastly different from her usual routine of waking in the middle of the day before stealing whatever sparing moments of her time; of her affection that Mafuyu’s busy life allowed, Ena appreciated the time to herself.

The few hours where she was allowed to breathe, instead of retching roses - even if it also left her feeling slightly guilty.

Seconds spent memorizing the details of Mafuyu’s smile and listening to the quiet hum of her replies as Ena rambled about anything that came to mind were replaced with quiet hours in the park and endless walks around the city. Her fingers would reach not to brush with Mafuyu’s, but up towards the winter sky to block the fragile light of the sun.

Her sketchbook was almost always tucked firmly under her arm, and the pages were so full, now - Mafuyu’s sketch so buried - that Ena had begun to contemplate when her next trip to the art store should be.

It was only a temporary escape, but it was enough, at least, to not have her chained to her room and a casket full of sunshine-coloured carnations, like that night on the couch. 

It was enough to keep those flowers confined to her body.

Even if nothing stopped her from knowing - from being all too aware - that they were there. Inching closer to her mouth every time that she saw her face; her starlit eyes, her smile. 

Sometimes, when she lay in her bed late into the evening - her body turned from the window to keep her from watching the stars, and instead facing Mafuyu’s bouquet to see the slightly discoloured petals - she could feel them. Warm in their weight and pulsing, almost, against her flesh. The way she’d imagine her heart to pump if Mafuyu were there, fiddling with the strands of her hair as she fell asleep and the heat of her breath against her neck as she nestled against her pulse.

They were always, always there to accompany her. 

They had been for as long as she’d felt this intensely for Mafuyu; bristling, however slightly, inside her lungs. 

It served as a reminder as much as it felt comforting, like a hand stroking along the back of her head - through her hair, the way she wished Mafuyu would - to coax her to a dreamless sleep.

And when she woke, they felt like the gentlest of fingers caressing her cheek; ghosting along her jaw to encourage her to open her mouth and spill, already.

She never did, though, no matter how insistently her flowers bloomed in the mornings. 

Not when she would catch glimpses of Mafuyu lingering near, just outside her door. That same persistent worry in her eyes as that night. Her fingers curling around the doorframe at the same time Ena’s flowers twisted inside her throat, an unspoken question on each of their lips.

Why? and,

What’s wrong?

It took all of Ena’s strength to meet Mafuyu’s eyes in those moments. She would determinedly hold Mafuyu’s gaze until the assortment of flowers became suffocating and overwhelming; until they would dispel - each time heavier and harder than the last - when Mafuyu eventually turned away.

Ena expected the same now, but一

Mafuyu didn’t turn away, this time.

She simply held her gaze. Patient and expectant with a small furrow to her brow. “Ena?” she asked gently. “I’m sorry if I woke you, I just一” her brow pinched a little more, and Ena almost laughed at how adorable she seemed. “Just… you haven’t been home as much lately and一”

Mafuyu sighed. She seemed so small. “It’s been quiet. I missed you,” she said, at the same time that Ena thought, I know.

It’s because of you.

(I miss you too.)

Mafuyu came to her room first thing in the morning to wake her, the day after that.

And the next.

And the next.

Each morning, she would venture a little further into Ena’s personal bubble of space and linger longer, like she was reluctant to leave. She would talk about anything and everything - even the most mundane of topics; even the weather that Ena could’ve turned over to see from her window - as an excuse to stay or pry into the reason for her distance. 

(“Ena? Are you bothered by something I’ve been doing, lately?”

Ena swallowed around the suspiciously daffodil-shaped lump in her throat. “Can I一” she pulled the inside of her cheek between her teeth and chewed on it, trying to think of what could’ve given her away. “Can I ask what made you think so?” she settled on saying. Her heartbeat was frustratingly loud.

Mafuyu blinked at her. Owlishly; slowly, almost as if to imply it was obvious. She pointed at the bouquet of flowers across the room. “Those,” she said. “You’ve been looking like you’ve seen a ghost, ever since I bought them. So一” Mafuyu inhaled sharply, and steeled herself. “Are you angry with me for not looking after the ones you gave me?”

“What? A ghost?” Ena parrotted dumbly. She wished she could’ve assured Mafuyu more instead of simply sighing in relief.

Especially when, to Mafuyu’s credit, she appeared genuinely apologetic.  “A ghost,” she repeated, and一 when Ena denied her hypothesis - telling her it would take more than some silly flowers to bother her - Ena couldn’t figure out why she looked so disappointed that she’d been wrong.)

The apprehensive, troubled expression on her face - the one that reminded Ena of a kicked puppy - never once made way for something happier or lighter, and eventually, she closed the distance to press the back of her hand against Ena’s forehead.

“Ena?” she asked. Almost accused, as she ignored the way that Ena flinched away from her touch and shivered with the soft rumble of her voice. “Are you sick? Is that why you’re acting so一” she squinted, then leaned forward to inspect Ena further.  “Off, still?”

(Funny, how Ena had once asked her the exact same thing.)

Ena could feel the way that she flushed the same bright shade of red that coated the flowers she vomited. She could almost see it reflected back at her in Mafuyu’s concerned eyes, and she opened her mouth to speak, but一

The words didn’t come.

She felt more lovesick than ever.

Mafuyu’s hand was still pressed against her forehead. 

She wasn’t sure why.

(Wasn’t this what she’d always wanted?)

“Ena,” Mafuyu repeated, softer this time. It was as if she could’ve coaxed the weight of the world from Ena’s shoulders or even the flowers from her throat with the way her name fell from her lips. “Do you really find me that unbearable? That much of a thorn in your side that you’d refuse to let me know what’s wrong, even now?”

Ena snorted.

Oh, she had no idea. 

She almost wanted to tell her, then and there. Tell her that she hated her so much and so deeply that it had manifested bouquets of orange lilies and tansies and foxglove in her lungs. That she’d marked her so permanently that she wasn’t sure she would ever recover.

Instead, she reached up to guide Mafuyu’s hand towards her cheek and nuzzled into it. It was a small comfort against the flowers, and she hummed. “Mhm. You’re the worst,” she stressed, and she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as if it could’ve emphasized her disdain. “The actual worst.”

“Is that why you’re avoiding me, then?”

Ena blinked. Truthfully, she hadn’t expected Mafuyu to notice her absence, let alone bring it up with her. The fact that she had brought her a sick kind of satisfaction, until she was reminded of a certain florist’s desire to give Mafuyu flowers. A desire that Mafuyu had reciprocated; that made her smile, and want to see her again and again and again, until一 Ena frowned. 

She didn’t really want to know what else Mafuyu would be getting up to when she wasn’t around. Not in regards to her florist. Not when her flowers strained so uneasily against her ribcage at the thought.

“What does it matter?” she huffed, and she hated how Mafuyu’s hand finally fell away from her cheek. “You have a florist to visit, don’t you?”

Mafuyu frowned, disquieted by her slight outburst. “So you have been ignoring me,” she concluded, and before Ena could protest that she hadn’t; that it wasn’t like that, she spoke again. “But as for my florist, I haven’t been back to her shop yet,” she explained. “I was planning on visiting her tomorrow if she had the time but一 it didn’t feel right to go without asking if you were alright. Not when it felt like something was wrong. Not when I care about you, too.”

Mafuyu’s words felt like a punch to the gut.

All Ena could do was laugh. She sighed wistfully in the moments after, and let her gaze roam behind Mafuyu, to her bouquet. No matter how much the flowers had attempted to convey her hatred, she couldn’t have ever meant a single word.

“I know you do,” she said, and even as she let her eyes narrow to annoyed slits, she couldn’t quite stop herself from reaching forward to take Mafuyu’s hand; fingers curling in the spaces between hers almost possessively.

Selfishly, before apologizing quietly.

Both for her outburst, and for still being greedy enough to take. 

(Through it all, the flowers in her chest were eerily still.)

Ena all but pushed Mafuyu out of their home the next morning with a smile. 

Reassurances bloomed as easily on her tongue as flowers into the coming spring, and she nearly lost count of the number of times she told her - like she had the day before - that she hadn’t been avoiding her. That yes, she really had just been busy and that yes, she would still be there when Mafuyu returned home. 

It wasn’t necessarily a lie, or so Ena told herself.

She was just… avoiding the smaller details. Like the real reason she had such an aversion to Mafuyu’s presence and their home: that if she spent any longer around her, she’d be reminded of everything that made her fall in love in the first place. Things she didn’t particularly want to recall, when they encouraged flowers toward the tip of her tongue. 

And at the very least, she planned on keeping the promise she’d made. Mafuyu’s insistence on sealing their vow with a brief squeeze of their pinky fingers ensured it - so what did it matter?

If she maintained a certain distance from the truth, it was nobody’s business but her own, and maybe the flowers. Her flowers. The same ones that were currently stirring in her chest to entangle her even more helplessly to Mafuyu, and were whispering to her uncanny things like, “Why?” and “You should tell her. You know it matters more than you say.

Why else would it hurt so much?”

Ena laughed - maybe a little too loudly in response to what Mafuyu had to say - to drown out the noise of her own thoughts. When Mafuyu frowned and tilted her head, she only giggled more. 

“What?” Mafuyu stressed. “I mean it. I want to talk with you. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

(Leave it to Mafuyu to address what was remarkably obvious; what Ena wished she could remain blind to.)

“I know,” Ena assured, and either to mute her own laughter or to ease the paranoia that Mafuyu would spot the petals poking up from her throat, she covered her mouth with her hand. “You’ve never made me believe otherwise. It’s just一 funny, that’s all.”

Mafuyu tilted her head a little more to the left, and Ena laughed even harder. She had to remind herself which of them was the one pledging their loyalty to always wait like a faithful dog, and which of them was almost commanding the other to stay.

“How serious you’re being,” Ena elaborated, wiping a stray tear from the corner of her eye. She was grateful that it didn’t appear to be one of sorrow, but she could never be too sure, these days. “Now seriously, stop pouting and go already before it’s too late.”

“I’m not pouting,” Mafuyu mumbled, despite how one foot remained firmly planted in their doorway.

Ena gently pushed her to encourage her the rest of the way out. “Maybe not,” she acquiesced. “But you will be if you miss your chance to talk with her again. So go. I’ll be waiting right here.” Like always.

Mafuyu nodded silently. If she noticed how the words came out a little ruefully, she didn’t address it, and she adjusted the bag on her shoulder before finally turning on her heel to leave and allow Ena to breathe. 

Ena watched her take one determined step after the other. She stared after her intently as Mafuyu made it as far as the end of the pathway leading out from their home, before seemingly sensing Ena’s eyes on her; her longing and turning back.

It made the flowers in Ena’s throat catch.

They lingered near the base of her throat as persistently as Mafuyu’s stare, and Ena wondered why it was that Mafuyu couldn’t stop herself from casting that one last look over her shoulders. From seeking an assurance she only seemed to find in Ena’s passive smile and the pink peonies at the edge of her lips when she waved.

“Go,” she mouthed to her again, and when Mafuyu nodded, and this time listened, the relief that bloomed was almost sweeter than the flowers when she turned to spit them into an enclosed fist. Her next inhale felt like the first easy breath in hours, instead of minutes, and she drank in air like it was water to compensate. 

It took several seconds more for her to catch her breath, and even when she was no longer gasping, she held her throat. Gently, like at any minute she could’ve expected to want to claw at it and rip out flowers again. 

When it finally seemed that no others would rise to join the ones in her hand, she sighed. Whether in relief or disappointment, she wasn’t sure.

Ena quickly made her way toward the kitchen to discard them into the bin, and when she’d done that, she turned to her room. Because even though she’d made a promise she’d sworn to keep, it was hardly the only reason for her wanting to stay.

And when she pressed open the door, her fingers curling around the frame to peer in - the way Mafuyu’s had - right in front of her sat Mafuyu’s bouquet in all its glory. 

Still kept on her vanity, still almost as beautiful as the day she’d received it, only一most of the petals from it had begun to fall off in clumps. No matter how much flower food or water she offered to them, or how she kept them away from the prying light of the sun, they seemed incredibly determined to decay. 

She’d noticed it that same morning, when Mafuyu had woken her for the fourth day in a row, but hadn’t had the opportunity to inspect it any further. Not until now, and she stepped forward to graze her fingers against the petals. They were brittle to the touch, and when she pinched one of the wilting geraniums between her forefinger and thumb, she was quick to give attention to the way an impression was left on the petals.

It made her frown even deeper.

It wasn’t uncommon, per se, for bouquets to only last a week or two. 

Anything close to that was already a blessing. She knew that, along with all of the other pointless facts Minori had rattled off to her when she’d asked how to properly care for her beloved bouquet. Not a single one of her suggestions had done anything, in the end, to stop the flowers within it from wilting. All of them shared the same sad, limp fate.

All of them, except for the awful yellow carnations that she was beginning to hate the sight of. 

The way they beamed back at her was almost mocking. Like they knew and still had the audacity to be so blatantly cheerful in their rejection. It almost made Ena wonder if the flowers whispered to one another late at night - the way she and Mafuyu used to - to discuss her fate. Maybe that was why all the others had curled in on themselves and turned their heads away in shame.

She released a quiet sigh at the thought, and she pressed her nose to them again now, like the first time she’d held them. Their fading warmth almost made her wish that she could’ve preserved them. That she could’ve trapped them in that moment in time, before everything fell apart.

Then, she blinked.

She looked over to her sketchbook, and made a quiet, desperate wish: one that asked for the flowers in her chest to be a little more stubborn than the ones set aside on her vanity.

(When Mafuyu arrived home later that day, Ena was greeted by a smile so radiant it was comparable to the cheeriness of her thriving yellow carnations. She let herself believe, if only for a second, that its presence was solely because of her: an illusion quickly shattered as Mafuyu told her all about the pink roses she’d tucked behind her florist's ear.)

Ena really was beginning to hate the sight of yellow carnations: almost as much as how Mafuyu found the littlest of reasons to visit her florist.

The way her name - Mizuki - fell so easily, so happily, from her lips made something dark and ugly bloom inside of her and burn, like how a fire might consume a forest. Viciously and without end: until nothing remained, until the petals spilling from her lips were just as charred and as wilted.

She could always tell they were carnations, though.

No matter how mangled their appearance was, she knew from the shape and the way that specks of yellow peeked through the darkened petals like glimmering stars against the night sky. She knew, because they were the first thing to greet her each and every morning when she turned onto her side.

Everyday, everywhere she looked, they were there: scattered across her pillow, her vanity, and in every nook and cranny of the streets she walked. Even in the places she wouldn’t have expected to find them lay reminders of their presence, and she could hardly stand to look at them.

She could hardly stand to look away.

From the sun, from Mafuyu’s smile, and from the joyful laughter of couples that pushed past her on the streets, like she wasn’t even there. 

Ena had become so familiar with them that she could see them blossoming beneath her eyelids when she slept. They were burned into her retinas, and even more than the carnations, or how much more in love Mafuyu appeared by the day, what Ena hated the most was how unhappy the sight of things she once loved made her. 

It seemed unfair that she couldn’t quite stop herself from feeling that way. That her heart seemed determined to cast blame for its agony, even when she couldn’t believe for even a second that she’d one day regret falling in love and fostering such lovely blooms.

As jealous as it made her, after all - as unbelievably painful as it was - seeing Mafuyu so happy and quietly content only made Ena love her more. 

There was sorrow in her heart, yes, along with the tiniest slivers of guilt and envy, but what she couldn’t find no matter how hard she looked was regret. Just as the sun would rise and fall in the same pattern every morning, she would continue to love her. 

She’d rather have died than live a lifetime without knowing the way Mafuyu made her feel. No matter how many chances she was given to do it all over again, she would’ve never taken the opportunity to walk a different path with only half as many thorns.

That didn’t stop her from wishing that things had turned out a little differently, though.

Ena was only human, after all, and immensely selfish. Her craving for more than what she already had was as natural to her as breathing, and she didn’t think it was too presumptuous of her to hope that in their next life, Mafuyu might carry feelings for her even half as heavy as the flowers weighing her down.

In spite of her growing hatred, Ena couldn’t find it in herself to do anything but care for her dying flowers.

She’d briefly considered simply buying some of her own to replace the ones that had wilted. A moment of weakness, she’d called it, when she couldn’t bear to see her bouquet crumple into itself even more with every day that passed. Ena couldn’t follow through with it, though, and一 

She couldn’t quite fathom why. She only knew it would be a disservice to the love that she felt.

So, it became routine to tenderly separate the carnations from the rest as she tended to them, carefully holding the stems between her fingers to ensure they’d live to see another beautiful day with Mafuyu in it. She swept the fallen petals of its wilting companions into her hand before discarding them, and she sighed.

The irony of loving the same flowers that left her unable to breathe easily in Mafuyu’s presence wasn’t lost on her, but she didn’t mind.

And as she sat in front of her vanity, now, she pressed her nose to the petals and let her eyes fall shut. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d done so over the past week, and she mumbled into them drunkenly just to feel them brush against her mouth. They weren’t nearly as soft as they once were一 as soft as she thought Mafuyu’s lips would be.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked them.

When they only stared back at her, she had to restrain her laughter. Perhaps she was only imagining it, but her intuition said they were telling her there weren’t any secrets between them. Not any that couldn’t eventually be coaxed from her lips in the form of beautiful flowers, at least.

“I love you,” she told them anyway.

Words she’d always intended to say, and had hoped the carnations included in the bouquet she’d given Mafuyu would convey. In spite of her fear of rejection, she’d prayed that they would be happy: that she might remind Mafuyu of the warmth she dyed her life in with every passing day.

Unlike every other time in her life, Ena heard Mafuyu’s voice before she saw her: the faintest flash of purple caught in the corner of her eye.

It made her stop dead in her tracks.

Her fingers curled defensively around the handle of her umbrella, and despite how badly she wanted to, she didn’t look. She refused to. Instead, she stubbornly cast her gaze toward the overcast sky and the way that the season had seemingly caught up with her. The rain hammering down on her umbrella was a welcome distraction, but not nearly enough to prevent the sound of Mafuyu’s laughter from creeping through the cracks and open window of the shop she stood beside. 

And as much as she wanted to deny or doubt that it was true, she knew it was her. She knew from the depths of her heart. She knew from the way the flowers in her chest rustled in appreciation and in the overwhelming fondness she felt for the sound. Ena could’ve picked Mafuyu out from a crowd of thousands. Even when its melody was nothing like anything she’d heard before: gentle and unabashed, like how stars would sound if their twinkling could be heard by mere mortals.

Slowly, steadily: Ena turned her head to stare through the large open windows that displayed the bouquets within. 

Rows of bluebells and forget-me-nots and carnations (though thankfully not the yellow kind) waved cheerfully at her, and yet Ena couldn’t pay attention to any of them. Not when the person they surrounded was ten一 no, at least a hundred times more beautiful than they could ever be.

Roots seemed to rise from the cracks in the sidewalk to plant her feet firmly in place as she stared, and she felt her heart leap toward her throat. She felt her mouth open: maybe to speak, or maybe to throw up flowers, but nothing escaped. She held a hand to her throat as she stared, expecting it to hurt, but一 

It didn’t.

It couldn’t.

Ena had made her bed of flowers, and she was going to lay in it. Even if the sight of Mafuyu reaching forward to delicately card her fingers through her florist’s hair made her suck in a breath. Even if the way that Mafuyu’s fingers shifted to ghost along Mizuki’s jaw before stopping made her wish that she was the one standing in front of her and smiling bashfully.

She watched the movement of Mafuyu’s lips as she murmured something to her and then as she leaned in so close that their foreheads almost bumped together. When Mizuki said something in return - something secret and unheard - Mafuyu’s thumb swiped over her cheek and she smiled, and suddenly一 

Ena became painfully aware of how enamoured they were with each other’s attention.

The two of them were in their own little bubble away from the rest of the world, and their fondness for one another was as palpable as the asphodel flowers rising to the tip of her tongue. It made Ena wonder if they’d really only known each other for a couple of weeks. She hoped they recognized how lucky they were to share what they did: a blossoming kind of affection that was only emphasized by the flowers around them.

It was the kind of love that would span across eons. Something as apparent and unmoving in its devotion as the sun. The kind Ena had found within her own heart, but hadn’t dared to address, until now. Until一 this.

Ena blinked, and a wobbly smile made its home on her lips. 

She was happy for them. For Mafuyu. Truly. 

Her heart stuttered and ached, but she refused to do anything about it. If she did, she might keel over in the middle of the footpath to cough and hack until she produced flowerbuds that sprouted on the ground beneath. She watched them for only a second longer - as Mizuki leant into Mafuyu’s touch and nuzzled against her hand, coaxing even more laughter from her lips - before finally forcing herself to turn. 

Somehow, she got the sense that this wasn’t a sight meant for anyone else’s eyes, let alone hers. Intruding any more than she already had was unnecessary; unforgivable. This was a private moment meant to be kept between lovers who would tuck the memory away and keep it safe, and a puppetshow of the life Ena wished she had.

Wishing was as pointless as letting herself wonder about the ‘what if’s’, though, and as Ena ran, she told herself that there wasn’t any way that the drops of water rolling down her cheeks could be anything but rain. 

Ena vomited cyclamen flowers in her bedroom, and her lungs felt hollow. 

Somehow, it felt like a goodbye.

“I really think you should tell her,” Airi said, kicking her legs back and forth against the seat they’d curled into. A small white dog whined at her side, and she reached down to croon to it softly before rubbing behind its ears.

(“Aren’t you adorable?” she cooed. “You look just like Samo-chan, only you’re half the size.”)

Ena similarly let out a whine of her own. With Airi’s body slightly twisted in her seat to address the dog - now wagging its tail happily with her attention - she took the opportunity to drape herself across her back. “I know that,” she grumbled, and with every word she nestled further into the crook of Airi’s neck. It was as if the closer she got to her, the further she could distance herself from the embarrassment of having to admit it. “You’ve told me that a thousand times. But一”

As soon as she attempted to speak, bile rose to the back of her throat. Accompanying it were the flowers that Ena was so intimately familiar with, and as quickly as she’d settled there, she pressed herself away from Airi’s back to try and clear her throat. 

(Not to rid herself of them, she reminded herself. Only the discomfort that came alongside them. She’d woken that morning with her lungs feeling full of life again, and she’d been so, so relieved - she’d never do anything to stop them from flowering.)

It only made her want to cough harder, and she hammered her fist against her ribs as she curled into herself. Even with her eyes turned away, she could sense the concern lingering on her form, and she angled her head to meet Airi’s gaze. “I’m okay,” she wheezed, despite how overwhelmingly obvious the opposite was becoming. “I just一 Something went down the wrong pipe? Maybe the cake?”

Her excuse sounded flimsy, even to her own ears.

Especially with how her plate sat practically untouched from the last time she’d taken a bite nearly ten minutes ago. 

And if Ena were to judge by the look Airi gave her, she didn’t believe her either. “Uh… Right,” she murmured. “You were saying, though?”

Ena forced herself to inhale. Then exhale, before inhaling again, greedily. She was thankful that there wasn’t a hint of judgement in Airi’s tone - that she was merely asking her - but she still wished they’d gone somewhere a little more private than a dog cafe to have this conversation.

“I’ll tell her eventually,” she mumbled, though no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find an answer to the question at the forefront of her mind.

When? 

Ena didn’t know. She couldn’t even begin to think, when the notion of saying how she felt made the sharpness in her chest become staggering again. The tangled mass of stems inside of her were beginning to feel more like chains, but even so, she couldn’t bring herself to disentangle herself from them. “Just… not right now. It wouldn’t be fair to stomp all over her happiness.”

Or mine.

She knew she couldn’t have forever, after all. Because for every flower that bloomed, they were all tied to the same tragic fate that scattered their petals with the wind. So what did it matter if she asked for just a little bit more time? 

Just a little longer to hold those flowers close. 

One measly day. 

Or two.

Or more.

She would never ask for anything else. Not if she could continue feeling the warmth and affection she associated with loving Mafuyu every morning when the sun rose. 

Ena blinked and shook her head to rid herself of the thought. When she looked at Airi again, she felt dizzy.

“Ena?” Airi asked, and Ena suspected it wasn’t the first time that she’d called her name. Her brow was furrowed deeply in concern, and Ena let her eyes roam over her face with blurred vision to see that even her lips had been pulled into a frown.

She nodded, slightly disoriented, to encourage her to repeat whatever she’d said.

“I was asking if that’s really the only reason.”

Ena’s jaw locked shut. 

The small dog that had previously been pressing its face into Airi’s hand wandered over to press against her legs, and it stared up at her with what Ena could only assume was sympathy. It seemed to know as much as she did that she didn’t want to answer, and she groaned loudly.

She let herself crumple into Airi’s shoulder again. Ena tucked her head against her neck as if it belonged, and tried to find comfort in the way that it felt so natural to do so. It was almost as easy as breathing used to be for her, and she only hoped that Airi wouldn’t point out the heat radiating from her cheeks in constant waves. “I love her,” she mumbled pathetically. 

And一 Airi began to reply. Maybe to tell her that she knew that, or to simply say that she understood, but Ena couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth like a magician’s scarf.

“I love her so, so much,” she emphasized. Even saying it so blatantly didn’t seem like it was enough. Not when it came to expressing the depths of her devotion. (When it came to Mafuyu, would anything ever be?) “I just一 I don’t want that feeling to go away. Please. I don’t want it to go away.”

This time, she didn’t bother to tilt her head to glimpse at the pity in her best friend’s eyes. She didn’t need to, when she felt Airi silently nod against her and shift. Not to look at her and judge, but simply to hold her and rub her back. 

Ena took the time to even her breathing, and she held a hand to her chest as she reminded the flowers once again: Ena Shinonome could not— No, would not turn a blind eye to the way that Mafuyu Asahina made her feel. No matter how many clumps of petals fell from her bouquet or from her lips; or how they were all destined to wither and decay all the same. 

Just as the sun could not abandon its duty to everything beneath it, she couldn’t simply abandon the days spent loving her. 

She wouldn’t.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Mafuyu marvelled, turning a small cluster of pink camellias gathered together in a pot in her hands. “I bought them from Mizuki - do you think we can add them to our balcony?”

Ena took a step forward to inspect them, and wrinkled her nose. She almost wanted to protest that she could’ve given Mafuyu a camellia ten times as beautiful as the collection in her hands as she fawned over it. She would’ve vomited up a hundred, if it meant she’d look her way.

Mafuyu looked so unbelievably happy, though, that she didn’t dare to voice either of those thoughts out loud. She could only nod and hum her approval, and when Mafuyu smiled even wider, she knew she had made the right choice.

Even if it hurt.

“Apparently these are fairly easy to care for,” Mafuyu mused. “Mizuki’s given me some instructions to make sure they don’t— well.” She waved her hand about to indicate what she meant, and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, frowning. 

It was adorable, Ena thought, how reluctant she seemed to admit the fate of the first bouquet that had ever entered their home. And so incredibly unlike her to not say what was on her mind with ease.

“Uhh一 Die?” Ena suggested. It surprised her how easily her mouth tilted into a smile, when there weren’t any flowers to poke between the spaces of her lips. 

Mafuyu nodded. “Right,” she agreed. “I promised I’d buy more from her, too, if these are able to thrive. I haven’t decided which, though.”

Ena considered what she’d said for only a second. That was all it took for her to remember the flowers that had surrounded her so beautifully on that rainy day, when she’d held Mizuki close enough to kiss her. “Bluebells,” she decided.

Mafuyu stared at her quizzically. 

“You should buy bluebells. They’d match the colour of your eyes,” she explained, and she raised a hand to rub at the back of her neck. The skin was hot to the touch. “And, you know. They represent— things.”

“Things?”

Ena threw her hands in the air. “You know! They mean— they’re supposed to mean, at least— everlasting love,” she finished quietly. Every word had felt more difficult to spit out than the last. “I think Mizuki would like that. If you gave, or— bought those kinds of flowers from her, I mean.”

Mafuyu seemed to think it over, and when a gentle smile - unspeakably fond - was coaxed onto her lips, Ena’s chest felt lighter than it had all week. “I think you’re right,” she said. 

While applying her makeup at her vanity, Ena watched as one of the last remaining petals from her orange lilies fell onto the back of her hand.

It made her think of the first flower she’d vomited several weeks ago, and she picked the flower it had fallen from to gaze at it. She twirled the stem between her fingers, and she sighed. The edges of it were much darker than they had been before - almost like the night sky - and it felt much more brittle to the touch than a handful of days ago.

She pressed her lips against its petals in a quiet apology for not being able to do more for it before letting it go.

Mafuyu’s gaze felt almost as heavy as the flowers in her chest.

Ena wondered why. Surely there had to be some sort of reason behind it - for the way her eyes had settled so resolutely on the side of her face - just as there was a reason for every pink tulip she’d discarded into a trash can earlier that morning. 

Love, perhaps.

It seemed like the only obvious answer, and Ena let the soft sizzle of the pan distract her enough to ease the flowers away from her throat. “Mafuyu?” she started, swallowing heavily to ensure any stray petals wouldn’t slip past her lips. She was grateful for the way her reflexes seemed to take over. It allowed her hands to remain steady, and she gently patted the pancake she’d been making for breakfast with a spatula, focusing hard on the small, bubbling holes on its surface. “Uh, is there a reason you’re staring? I didn’t burn them, did I?”

Almost instantly, Mafuyu’s stare shifted away.

“Sorry,” she apologized, and before Ena could say that she hadn’t needed to, or that that wasn’t what she’d meant; that she rather liked Mafuyu staring at her so openly, Mafuyu spoke again. “And— No. Though I wouldn’t be able to taste it much even if you did. I was just… remembering something.”

Ena tilted her head in quiet interest. She pressed the spatula against the pancake again. “Nothing bad, I hope,” she joked, and though she didn’t angle her head to see; though she couldn’t be sure, she could’ve sworn she knew Mafuyu well enough to know that she was frowning.

“No,” Mafuyu repeated, and from the corner of her eye, Ena watched as she coupled her reply with a shake of her head. Almost as if to confirm that it was true. “I was just thinking about all the times you cooked for me like this.” Mafuyu wrinkled her nose. Then stabbed her fork into the stack of pancakes in front of her, before distractedly moving the pieces of food around her plate. “Like the time when I was too sick to myself. Actually— Wasn’t that the first time you let me taste your food?”

Ena whipped towards her before she could stop herself. She pointed the spatula at her accusingly. “Hah? You’re the one who refused to even try my food, you know! Everytime I offered, you were all, ‘Don’t bother,’ and ‘I won’t be able to taste much of it anyway,’ did you seriously think I was that bad in the kitchen?”

The blank stare Mafuyu sent her was almost more infuriating than her accusation. “…I don’t remember that.”

“Of course you don’t, you’re so—”

“I never thought you were a bad cook, though,” Mafuyu interrupted. “And now that I have tried your food, I wanted to thank you for it. I just wasn’t sure how.”

At that, Ena blinked. The sincerity of Mafuyu’s claim made her smile the tiniest bit wider. She lowered the spatula she was wielding like a weapon, and— Maybe she was imagining it, but the smell of the pancakes in the air seemed that much sweeter.

She thought of all the months they’d spent together, and how many of those she’d spent pining after her - watching Mafuyu from across the kitchen and holding her breath whenever it was her turn to cook. 

It wasn’t that she’d needed her approval, exactly. 

Ena knew she was at least decently adept in the kitchen, but nothing stopped her from craving Mafuyu’s validation as desperately as a person in the desert without water. 

Even aside from that, Ena simply wanted to see Mafuyu happy. She wanted her to know just how much she adored her, how her heart flipped in her chest like the pancakes in front of her when she saw her, and how she would’ve done just about anything to see her smile. 

She wanted her to know how she loved her more than anything in the world.

So, the way that Mafuyu’s expression never seemed to falter around her - no matter if she was biting into something sour, spicy, or sweet - was disheartening. Her neutral expression made Ena want to deflate and to storm up to her and grab her by the collar. To yell and stomp her foot and demand to know what she wanted and— maybe to kiss her, too, while she was at it. 

At one point in time or another, though, Ena had stopped minding it as much.

She’d grown accustomed to the more subtle curve of Mafuyu’s lips and the shortness of her replies; the affection that she reserved for those sparing moments she felt it was deserved. 

Or— had reserved, at least. Ena wasn’t so sure anymore, now that Mizuki had come into her life like a flower into spring, and the love in Mafuyu’s heart appeared to have become abundant: an unending reservoir made up of camellias and soft but obvious smiles. 

“Stupid,” Ena answered, though her smile wobbled slightly. “You don’t have to thank me for that, you know?”

“I do,” Mafuyu protested, sitting further up in her seat. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, lately. I wanted to do something similar for Mizuki, now that she’s fallen ill— or at least, I think she has, she won’t exactly tell me, and— I don’t think I appreciated it enough before.”

Ena let out a small laugh. Of course Mafuyu’s lingering stare had something to do with Mizuki. The scent in the air didn’t smell half as sweet, anymore, and it didn’t take long for her to realise the reason why. 

“Oh, fuck.”

Ena scrambled for the pan she’d abandoned in favour of staring at her, only to find that one side of her pancake had been burnt to a crisp. Its colour vaguely reminded her of the wilted carnations she’d vomited only a few days ago - small spots of golden brown peeking through black - and she just barely restrained the urge to stamp her foot or release an unhappy whine.

The sight made her feel sick to her stomach.

“…Are you okay?”

Ena swivelled back to find Mafuyu peering at her with concern. “Just annoyed,” she answered quickly, pulling the pan from the stovetop and setting it aside. Then, she scraped the pancake from it and threw it into the bin. She decided that she’d deal with cleaning the rest of the pan later, when she was in a better mood.

“You can have some of mine, if you’d like,” Mafuyu offered, pushing her plate towards her slightly.

Ena scrunched her nose. “No, it’s— it’s fine. Don’t offer me your half-eaten food. I'm not that hungry anyway.” 

Not anymore, at least, her mind unhelpfully supplied, and Ena batted the thought away. Similarly, she chose to ignore the way that Mafuyu grumbled to herself (“You always make me eat the food you leave on your plate, though.”) and set about adding a small handful of strawberries and some syrup to her much smaller stack of pancakes. 

“I’m gonna eat these in my room,” she murmured, pivoting on her foot as quickly as she could. When she caught Mafuyu following her steps with her eyes, her stomach flipped. Just not in the same way as before. “I’ll do the dishes later, so don’t touch them.”

Mafuyu frowned, but otherwise said nothing about her sudden change in mood. “Don’t get crumbs on the bed again.”

Ena sighed and rolled her eyes. “I won’t,” she promised. Her words sounded much more aggravated than she’d intended.  “That only happened once.”

“Yet you complained about it for a week straight, even after you made me help you clean it up.”

To that, Ena only huffed. She continued to walk from the kitchen, and she made it as far as the other end of the room before pausing to turn her head over her shoulder. Surprisingly, Mafuyu was still staring straight at her. 

She called her name regardless. Just to be sure she was paying attention to what she had to say.

It was important, after all.

“Hey, Mafuyu?” 

Mafuyu tilted her head, and Ena took that as enough encouragement to continue her train of thought. “I meant what I said before. You don’t need to thank me,” she reiterated. “For that, or for anything else.” 

Before Mafuyu could reply— Ena turned back to the direction she’d been intending to go. She refused to say another word or let out even a single sound, lest the prickling feeling in her throat become overwhelming again and make her say something she didn’t mean. She sighed in relief only when the door to her room was closed behind her, and she set her plate next to Mafuyu’s bouquet so that she could drag her hands down her face. 

Though she doubted it, she hoped that Mafuyu had understood what she’d meant.

Loving her had always been something impulsive, yet something so natural to her, after all. She hadn’t thought twice about any of the things she’d done up until now. She didn’t want to ever believe that she’d done any of those things with the intention of receiving something in return. Mafuyu’s love included: as much as she’d hoped or craved for it.

She sighed again, and let her eyes fall to the flowers Mafuyu had given her.  Somehow, the broken bouquet felt calming to look at, and when she thought of how Mafuyu had smiled so fondly in the face of Mizuki’s camellias, she wondered if she’d made a similar expression.

Would she make the same face now?

Ena frowned. She shook her head to dispel the thought, and made a mental note to help Mafuyu prepare something for her florist, later. If she couldn’t tell her how she felt, she at least wanted to thank her in the ways that she could.

She at least wanted to ensure Mafuyu’s happiness, if not her own.

(How curious it was, she thought, the things she and Mafuyu both did out of their love for another.)

Ena vomited一 Nothing. Not even a single petal of a carnation or tulip fell from her lips as she retched and curled her fingers into her throat to try and dig them out. It was like the flowers in her chest had curled up and died, not unlike the bouquet that sat across from her when she ate her pancakes alone.

She couldn’t explain why, when she could still feel the prickle of a flower stuck against her throat.

Ena never expected that the one to bring the three of them together would be Mizuki herself, or that they’d be traipsing through a nearby mall for most of the day. 

Despite her reservations, Mizuki treated her with nothing but kindness, and when Ena told her how it was nice to finally meet her, she looked upon her with the familiarity of an old friend. One she’d made in another lifetime, perhaps.

They were like two peas in a pod, and it didn’t take long for Ena to fall into the casual banter she usually reserved for her friends. Their conversations flowed as easily as the raindrops rolling down her window on a rainy morning, and she declared that Mafuyu should hold her bags so that she could devote her attention fully to her florist. 

“…Is there a reason I have to carry all of them, though?” Mafuyu asked, raising her arms slightly to reference the several that lined her arms, up to the elbow. 

Ena waved off her concerns with a brief motion of her hand. “You’ll live,” she replied, and she held her hand - the one not holding Mizuki’s - to her chin in thought. “You can think of it as practice for all the times you’ll have to carry around heavy bags of soil for your wife in the future. Besides, you should be honoured you’re carrying the bags of a girl as cute as myself.”

Mizuki stammered out an uncertain, “H-huh? Wife?” the very same moment that Mafuyu scrunched her nose in unhappiness to insist, “I’d rather carry Mizuki’s bags.”

Ena watched, then, as Mizuki blushed. As pink spread all the way down from the tips of her ears to her shoulders, and she let out a startled squeak. It warmed her heart - filling it with a certain kind of happiness - to know that Mafuyu’s feelings were reciprocated so obviously, even if Mizuki hadn’t spoken a single word.

It was easy to see how Mafuyu had fallen for her.

“No way!” she squeaked, and she tried to raise her hand to hide herself behind it, only— her bags weighed down her arm significantly. “M-Mafuyu, you don’t need to carry mine or anything, you know?”

“I want to, though,” she insisted stubbornly. She took a step towards her that almost seemed threatening, with how Mizuki began to shake her head so rapidly. It almost made Ena worry that it’d make the room begin to spin for her. 

“Really, it’s fine!” Mizuki insisted. “You’ve already done so much for me, I couldn’t possibly—” she frowned, and tugged her bottom lip between her teeth. For a moment, it seemed she’d become lost in her own thoughts. So deep in the trenches of her own mind that neither Ena nor Mafuyu could possibly disturb her, and when she finally arrived at an answer, her smile seemed much brighter than it had been the moment prior.

At least on the surface.

Ena recognised it instantly as a desperate attempt to hide something. Her smile was familiar. Strained at the corners and distant: the way a beautiful painting looked from afar, only to begin showing signs of wear when you stepped closer to stare at the details.

“You don’t need to,” Mizuki repeated, and she held her pinky out as an offering. A truce. “You’ve got all of Ena’s, and my bags aren’t that heavy, anyway! Pinky promise!”

Mafuyu frowned. She hesitated for only a moment, before reaching to tangle their pinkies together like the stems of the flowers Ena vomited. “Next time, then,” she offered, and Ena quietly noticed that when Mizuki nodded, her hand was significantly more sweaty than it had been before.

And一 

It didn’t hurt.

It didn’t feel like a lie to believe that it didn’t hurt, either.

Ena giggled softly, partly in amusement and partly in relief. When Mafuyu turned to look at her, she only smiled wider. “You two are adorable together,” she mused, and when she heard Mizuki’s breathing hitch from beside her, she squeezed her hand. Almost as if to assure her.

Somehow, it felt like the right thing to do.

"You're annoying," Mafuyu mumbled back and, like always— her words held no bite. They didn't hold anything for her at all; none of the softness and warmth she'd heard Mafuyu address Mizuki with only minutes ago. Her tone was so vacant of it, in fact, that Ena almost found it hard to believe love had ever made its home on her lips - and she wondered quietly if it had been a figment of her imagination. 

She knew it wasn't, though, and— somehow, it didn't pain her in the way that she thought it would. It almost didn’t pain her at all; a barely there prickle of discomfort that was reminiscent of how flowers had once pressed their thorns to her throat.

And when she cleared her throat to speak, she was glad to find there wasn’t a single flower creeping towards her lips. In their place was more laughter: happy and genuine. 

“You already told her that with the flowers,” Mizuki joked, and when she nudged Ena in the side with her elbow, she was just as happy to find that the reminder didn’t sting.

Not even a little.

When Mizuki hugged her tightly to tell her goodbye later that afternoon - making Ena promise that she’d show her one of the sketchbooks she’d mentioned in passing - Ena could’ve sworn the scent of flowers lingered in the air.

It was fairly odd, she thought, because when she lifted a hand to hold it to her chest - to check if any were still there, just tucked away - they didn’t rustle the way they normally did. Not even when Mizuki skipped over to Mafuyu and pressed a soft, brief kiss against her cheek before thanking her for the wonderful day they’d spent.

(And when Ena arrived home, she hardly noticed how the yellow carnations in Mafuyu’s bouquet had begun to rot and fall away in clumps like all the rest.)

A handful of days later, Mafuyu returned home with flushed cheeks and a smile that made Ena’s heart thump softly against her ribs. She looked utterly radiant. Ethereal, yet— grounded, somehow, by the weight of her love and the bouquet tucked under her arm.

With the copious amounts of roses and feathery stalks of astilbe, it almost reminded Ena of an arrangement she might see at a wedding, and she wondered if that had been the intention behind it. She almost wanted to ask if they had kissed, if Mafuyu was happy,— but she found that she didn’t need to. 

The evidence was right in front of her: written into the corners of Mafuyu’s smile and tucked into every blossom that promised unwavering dedication and affection. 

“They look beautiful,” she eventually said, and yet— much more than the flowers, her eyes were drawn to Mafuyu herself.

Ena hummed quietly to herself as she swept away a collection of petals on her vanity that belonged to the once much livelier-looking carnations. They were so discoloured that if Ena hadn’t known them so intimately, she might’ve found them unrecognizable, and she frowned as she considered that there weren't many flowers left in Mafuyu’s bouquet, now.

In fact, all but one had curled into itself and died.

Likewise, the flowers in her chest were so subdued that it was as if they’d never taken root around her heart in the first place.

Ena held the flower against her hand and looked wistfully toward her window. It was almost as if she wanted to encourage it to try and look, too, and when she saw how sunny it was outside, her grimace quickly blossomed into a smile. She wondered what Mafuyu might’ve been doing on such a beautiful day. 

That only made her smile wider.

Surely, she would’ve been spending it with the girl she found at least a hundred times more beautiful than life itself.

The birds chirped their agreement as they flew overhead, and Ena took a moment to envision the smallness of Mafuyu’s smile and how it would grow bigger and brighter in Mizuki’s presence. Just like the size of the flowers in her chest once grew and bloomed more intensely when Mafuyu turned to look at her. 

Ena thought of how many had been expelled from her body, and how none of them could’ve ever been enough. Not when it came to Mafuyu, who she loved much more than any of the flowers that had scattered from her lips. Mafuyu, who she loved now more than ever.

The absence of love couldn’t possibly be the reason for her garden’s sudden stagnancy. No, there had to be more to it than that, only— Ena didn’t have the chance to think about the cause, when Mafuyu appeared behind her to answer a prayer not yet fallen from her lips.

“Ena?”

Ena blinked. She pivoted on her heel so quickly that she nearly toppled over in her hurry to face her, and she grasped onto the first thing she could to steady herself - Mafuyu’s forearm. She held onto her sleeves like they were a lifeline, and when Mafuyu used her other hand to support her back, she felt the garden filling her chest expand in time with her inhale.

It was the most movement she’d felt from them in days, and it wasn’t nearly as painful as it once was.

“Are you okay?” Mafuyu asked, gently helping her to stand up straight, “Did I scare you?”

Ena’s heart thumped against her chest, achingly soft. “Uh— Yes? No? No, you didn’t, I was just— lost in my own thoughts, or something.”

Mafuyu nodded. “Or something,” she echoed, and when Ena tried to look up at her; to stare into her eyes and maybe assure her or apologize for clinging onto her still, she had to look away from their brightness.

Now, more than ever, Ena was certain. 

If her tears and her suffering of an unrequited love was what watered her flowers, then Mafuyu was the light that allowed the garden in her chest to truly thrive. It was why she couldn’t fathom the reason they were suddenly still in her presence, and she frowned when Mafuyu peered around her to the wilting bouquet.

“What’re you doing?”

Ena answered her question with one of her own. “What are you doing?” she fired back, more insistently. “I thought you’d be with Mizuki.”

Mafuyu only shrugged her shoulders in response. “I was,” she replied, the words slipping easily from her tongue. “But her shop became surprisingly busy, so I didn’t want to distract her any further. Your turn.”

If Ena wasn’t so reluctant to admit the truth, she might’ve laughed at the firm press of Mafuyu’s lips. If she’d caught sight of it even the littlest while ago, she might’ve thought about lifting her hand to trace her fingers over its shape and committing it to memory. She was as reluctant as they came, though, and it was far too late to consider what could’ve been, so she instead chose to press Mafuyu for more. “I thought you said she closed the flower shop whenever you were there.”

“Not all the time. That would be bad for business,” Mafuyu replied honestly. “She only closes it an hour early in the afternoons. Now answer the question.”

“Hah? Why should I?”

“It’s only fair.”

“Seriously, does it even matter—”

Before she could finish her sentence, Mafuyu stepped around her to inspect the bouquet. She held a hand to it the way Ena had done only minutes prior, and she frowned. “They’re dying,” she commented.

Ena rolled her eyes lightheartedly. “Duh? They tend to do that once their stems are cut,” she muttered, and swivelled to continue picking petals. One by one: a game of she loves me, she loves me not where she could predict the ending. She’d played it so many times in her head that she’d committed it to heart.

“You’re still looking after them,” Mafuyu continued to point out.

Ena paused. Her hand hovered over one of the last remaining petals, and she allowed it to lay there - withdrawing her hand to look Mafuyu directly in the eyes. Now that she couldn’t feel the warmth of her skin through the fabric, it seemed a little easier to manage. “I am,” she said softly.

Mafuyu tilted her head. She looked like she couldn’t understand why, and frankly— Ena couldn’t either. “Why?” she vocalized. “They look like they’re already dead.”

“You think so? Look at this one, though—” Ena lifted the single survivor of the bunch to hold it gently in the palm of her hand. “See? They have a bit more life in them, yet.”

Mafuyu’s protest was instantaneous. “But the rest of them—”

Ena could feel her face tighten with anger. Too sudden and strong to stop it from bursting out. “Why does it even matter to you?” she snapped. Her fingers curled into her palm tightly enough that her nails left an impression on the skin. “Who the hell cares if I spend my time changing water in a vase and trimming some goddamn stems?”

Mafuyu blinked. If Ena hadn’t known any better, she’d have thought that she’d flinched, and she let the flower in her other hand fall, feeling her anger dissipate like morning dew. 

“I know they’re important to you,” Mafuyu said. She spoke slowly and carefully. Ena wished she wasn’t the reason why she felt like she had to act that way. “I wanted to know why. I’m sorry if I—”

Ena felt her face crumple. “No, no— Shut up, don’t say sorry. I should be the one saying— I just, I got defensive and I snapped, and— ugh.” She dragged her hands down her face until they covered her eyes, and groaned. None of her words were coming out right. “The point is, you didn’t deserve that.” 

Mafuyu only stared silently. When Ena peeked at her from behind her closed fingers, she almost looked amused. “Did you just tell me to shut up while apologizing?”

“Shut up,” she grumbled. “You know what I mean.”

Mafuyu’s small smile let her know that she did. 

Ena sighed - perhaps a little too fondly - at the sight, and she let her fingers trace against the edge of the vase. “I just… want to continue looking after them. Is that such a bad thing?”

Mafuyu shook her head. “Not bad,” she answered, and Ena couldn’t help but notice how she was keeping her tone neutral. “Not bad, but— inessential, perhaps.”

This time, Ena was the one to angle her head. When she did, Mafuyu spoke again. Quietly, like she was afraid of disturbing something between them. Maybe the flowers. “Maybe it’s Mizuki’s influence,” she started. “But it doesn’t seem healthy to keep the bouquet as it is. Surely you know that withering flowers only cause more to rot in the end. If you leave it as it is - it’s going to destroy your entire garden.” She frowned, then corrected, “Or bouquet, in this case.”

Ena frowned. She tried not to think too hard about Mafuyu’s odd choice of words. It was probably something she’d parroted after hearing it from Mizuki. “You don’t know that for sure.”

“I do,” Mafuyu insisted. “Haven’t you heard of ethylene gas? Dying flowers release it, and it encourages even the healthiest of flowers to think it’s their time to decay. The more that wilt, the more that will produce it, and the faster the process.”

The quiet that extended outward in the wake of her words was almost as deadly as the things Mafuyu spoke of. The air surrounding them suddenly felt tense. Like a toxin, almost, and Ena struggled to swallow it and to speak. “I never thought to ask about what happened when they eventually died,” she admitted. “I only thought about preserving them for as long as I could.”

Mafuyu smiled. Small and sad. “Because you’re kind-hearted,” she murmured, and without elaborating further, she silently turned on her heel to leave. “I’m going to start making lunch for us. Is there anything you feel like having?”

“Nothing in particular.”

Mafuyu nodded. She took one step forward, then another. She stopped to linger in Ena’s doorframe, just like she had before. 

“Ena?”

“What?”

“Think about what I said,” Mafuyu encouraged. “There’s a certain kind of love in knowing when to let go of something. Sometimes, holding onto it is what hurts us more. That’s what I think, at least.”

Ena wondered if Mafuyu was talking about the flowers, or something else entirely.

Ena had been strolling through the city with Mizuki for the better part of an hour. 

She’d all but begged her for company when she’d heard that Airi would be busy for the day: her hand clasped together in desperation and eyes sparkling with the promise of learning more about the florist that had captured Mafuyu’s heart. (“Really,” she’d insisted. “I’ve heard from a friend that their cheesecake is to die for. You’ll join me, won’t you?”)

Now, their arms swung between them as they walked, and every individual finger was entangled so tightly that there was no hope for Mizuki to escape when Ena turned the conversation to the girl they both loved. 

“So,” Ena started, and she waggled her eyebrows teasingly. “You and Mafuyu, huh?”

Mizuki hummed lightly. She tilted her head and brought a finger to her lips. The way that she averted her eyes only made Ena that much more certain that she was attempting to feign ignorance, and she wondered一 Why? 

“Hm? What about her?”

With a huff that vaguely resembled laughter, Ena let her head tilt back towards the sky. “Oh, come on, not you too!” she groaned, and dragged her hands down her face, almost as to emphasize her annoyance. Only一 she wasn’t annoyed. Not really. She was only curious. “You know what I’m talking about! The way she looks at you, it’s一 it’s like一”

It’s like the way I look at her. 

Ena threw her hands into the air. She almost wanted to protest about how easily the thought had entered her mind, and she felt her face crumple in quiet frustration.

“You know! It’s the kind of look that says she’d do anything to be with you. Like一 give you flowers or, make you home-cooked meals or, just… make up an excuse, just to stay with you a little longer.” 

Ena paused. She hadn’t exactly intended on listing all of the things she’d done herself. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and tugged, and she watched Mizuki’s expression shift from realisation, to happiness, to something akin to dread.

“You get the same look on your face, too, actually,” she commented as an afterthought.

Mizuki spluttered. “I一 what? I have a look?”

And一 Ena would’ve been positively delighted at her outburst if she wasn’t so surprised. She felt her brows pinch together, and she sent Mizuki what she hoped was an apologetic smile. “Um, yes?” she said hesitantly. Suddenly, she couldn’t seem to vouch for her own memory, when she tried to recall the way she was sure Mizuki had looked at Mafuyu, too. “I’m sorry, did I misread something here?”

Mizuki only shook her head. She squeezed Ena’s hand, and the question from before echoed in her mind. Why was she so nervous? “It’s not that,” Mizuki assured - almost as if to read her mind. “I just… somehow didn’t realise it was so obvious, is all.”

Ena blinked, and her lips parted.

Was that really all it was?

“Oh.”

Ena chewed on her bottom lip again to seal her mouth shut, and remained quiet for a few moments longer. When she turned to face Mizuki fully, she asked, “Do you mind it? Being in love to the degree that everybody around you can tell, I mean.”

Mizuki angled her head. It didn’t take her very long to answer. “Not as much, anymore,” she replied, and Ena could’ve sworn she felt a stir of petals in her chest fall away with the breeze. 

Ena dipped her head in satisfaction. “Good,” she murmured. “I’m glad then.” 

She inhaled deeply, then. It felt like a weight had somehow been shifted, and she rolled her shoulders experimentally as if to rid herself of it entirely. “I’m glad,” she repeated, this time with more conviction, and she hoped it didn’t sound too much like she was trying to convince herself of the fact. “I know Mafuyu isn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with, but she deserves to be happy. Even if…”

Ena didn’t allow herself to finish the thought. She shook her head, and she smiled. “No, never mind that. I’m just glad she found someone.”

Mizuki blinked slowly. Ena could feel the weight of her stare as she studied every detail of her expression, and it almost seemed that she could sense there was more that needed to be said. She didn’t press any further, though, and for that, Ena was relieved.

“Oh?” Mizuki asked. As she spoke, she nudged Ena gently with her elbow, and that in combination with the teasing tilt of her voice was enough to encourage Ena to smile again. “What terrible things do you have to share about our dear, wonderful Mafuyu for you to say that?”

Ena paused in consideration.

Wonderful.

Mafuyu was, wasn’t she? 

Ena wrinkled her nose, and forced the neutral smile on her lips to stay in place. She tested the word on her lips. “Wonderful, huh. I can’t say that’s a word I’d ever use, if I’m being completely honest.”

It wasn’t a complete lie, at least. A single word couldn’t even begin to describe her or the way she made her feel.

She didn’t miss the way that Mizuki’s eyes lit with interest. “Oh? You have to tell me, now,” she insisted. “You can’t just say that and leave me hanging!”

Ena couldn’t help the incredulous look that crept onto her face. “Seriously, where do I even begin,” she complained. There were too many memories of Mafuyu occupying her mind and her heart to count. Many of them were accompanied by a certain degree of lovesickness, and she recounted the first that came to mind.

“Do you have any idea what she did the first time she went into my room?” she babbled mindlessly. “She started cleaning and had the nerve to say it was because she felt restless! I mean, seriously, was my room that untidy that she couldn’t sit still for five minutes?”

Ena left out the part where she found it incredibly charming that she’d returned from getting Mafuyu tea to find her folding her clothes in a neat pile beside Ena’s bed.

That was something meant only for her ears, and she distracted herself with the way that laughter trailed from Mizuki’s throat in an instant. It was so sudden that she nearly choked on the air itself, and Ena almost thought to reach out to thump on her back, or to ask if she was fine, but一

Mizuki appeared so genuinely happy that she didn’t dare to disturb her.

Ena simply smiled, and when Mizuki collected herself again, humming joyfully, she brought a finger to her lips. Almost as if she was pretending to think incredibly seriously about the answer she gave. “Oh, I don’t know,” she mused, dragging out the final word in a way that told Ena she wasn’t being entirely serious. “I think I might be on Mafuyu’s side here.”

The scathing look that Ena managed to summon beckoned a second round of laughter from her, then a third as she pointed an accusatory finger towards her. “Dead to me,” she deadpanned. “I take back what I said before, you aren’t cute at all. You and Mafuyu are perfect for each other.”

Mizuki positively preened at her words.

“You know you love me!” she chirped, and the smile on her face was so wide that it almost hurt to look at. “Now, let me treat you to that cheesecake to make it up to you.”

(It was only in the late hours of the night that Ena realised just how much she’d meant every word.)

Ena’s conversation with Mizuki reinforced what she had already known, and though not for the first time, she considered telling Mafuyu how she felt.

Unlike before, however, it felt like it was something within her reach, rather than a dream so distant that her flowers would sooner wither and scatter with the midwinter wind. 

In fact, Mafuyu herself seemed reachable. 

She’d always seemed so unattainable, before: as beautifully intangible as the stars. Like heaven on earth, until Mafuyu had strolled into Mizuki’s tiny shop and proved that she was as human as they came. She was as susceptible to the whims of love as everybody else. 

She weighed the pros and cons in her mind, balancing the scales until the negatives began to sound more like excuses than an actual reason. She thought of Mafuyu amidst the flowers, of days spent entangled with one another’s company and of fingers tangled as tightly as the stems around her heart before Mafuyu pulled away.

She thought of the bouquet Mafuyu had given to her: the love that she wished she had let blossom and accepted with open arms. She thought of the beautiful garden that had sunken its roots into her very bones. Their mark was so permanent, so entangled in her soul that she thought she’d have wanted to nurture the orange lilies and yellow carnations poking through the cracks between her ribs for the rest of her life.

Ena used to think that anything else would’ve been an insult to the love that she felt. Now, she wasn’t so sure, but regardless, she hoped that she would be given one last chance to pluck them from her throat in offering to the girl she loved.

Ena watched Mafuyu make their dinner from behind the countertop, her smile hidden behind the palm of her hand. 

Just as she had so, so many times before.

She watched as Mafuyu stirred some vegetables around in a pan, and as she chewed on her bottom lip in concentration. Her eyes lingered, making themselves at home on the side of her face and taking note of all the tiny details. Like the crinkle at the corner of her eyes and that fond, faraway expression that often accompanied it when she thought of Mizuki. 

And her smile.

Oh, how Ena loved Mafuyu’s smile.

Small but brilliant and there, like a star against the endless expansion of night. It was easily one of her favourite things about her. How could it not be, when it suited her so well? It suited her so very much when she smiled; when she was utterly in love. 

The way the feeling looked on her was so much more befitting of her than some stupid orange lilies tied together with a bow. 

Gratitude blossomed in her chest like flowers that she’d had the opportunity to know someone so wonderful, and quietly, as Ena sat and stared, she wondered if Mafuyu could feel her eyes on her. She wondered if Mafuyu minded it. She doubted it, when it was something that she’d hardly noticed before.

So一 why would she start now?

Why should she?

Some things between them Ena was sure would never change.

Others had to. 

She let her eyes flutter to a close and sucked in a breath. “Mafuyu?” she called, testing the melody of her name on her lips. Or一 She tried to, at least. It didn’t feel like there were any flowers blocking her throat, this time. No thorns pressing painfully to her larynx to lock away the sound, but一 nothing came out.

Still, nothing came out, even when she tried again. 

And again. 

And again.

In her frustration, Ena collapsed into the makeshift pillow her arms had formed in front of her and groaned. It came out as more of a faint whine, and she entertained the thought of a god looking down and sneering at her misfortune. Her chin dug into her forearms, and she huffed again in annoyance. 

She tried to say something again, and the only noise that escaped her was choked. It didn’t bear any resemblance to a single word Ena knew. Instead, it was like something had been strangled from her throat and up towards her lips. Not quite a sob, but close, as tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. 

“I一 I…”

Ena could feel Mafuyu peering at her curiously. She didn’t have to look up to know that she was staring, she’d always been able to tell. “Ena?” she started to say, in that god-awful tone of hers that was gentle and soft and not nearly as fond when it was addressed to her, and一 Ena choked out a laugh.

She let it drown out the sound as Mafuyu turned the heat down and pulled the pan off the stove to pay attention to her fully.  

Her laughter made way for coughing, and spluttering, and a prickling feeling at the back of her throat. Then, as she sat up straight to pound onto her chest with a fist, ignoring the hand that Mafuyu had placed upon her back and the way that she called her name again, a little more urgently一

Then, there was the inexplicable sound of silence.

Silence, and a singular orange lily. 

Ena almost wanted to laugh again, but now she seemed incapable of making even the smallest noise. She simply sat and stared at the flower laid proudly in front of her. It was larger than any of the ones in Mafuyu’s bouquet, and bolder, and this time, the petals were completely open. Open and一 Affectionate, almost. No longer curled into themselves or ashamed of the intensity of her love.

“Ena,” Mafuyu repeated. The hand she held on Ena’s back was steady, now. Almost clenching into her shirt, and desperate. “Why are you…”

Ena angled her head over her shoulder to look at her. At Mafuyu, the girl she loved, and she smiled. Isn’t it obvious? she wanted to reply, only一 there were much more important things that she had to say. Like, “I loved you,” and “That’s why.” 

Her admission was as soft as the adoration she felt for her and not nearly as sweet. 

Even before the words had left her lips, Ena had known that it wasn’t quite right. That it had come out all wrong, and she frowned. 

She didn’t think there was a single person in the world who could talk about their affection so easily or conversationally, like they were talking about the weather instead of the obvious. In the same way, one couldn’t pretend to unlove somebody and all their little habits; nor act as if the flowers unfurling in their throat had ceased to exist.

Especially not when the evidence lay right in front of her. It’d be as impossible as turning back in time to say all of the things she wished she could’ve.

(Ena didn’t think she’d want to, even if she could.)

Ena shook her head. "No, I love you," she corrected, and this time - for one reason or another - the words weren’t a struggle to get out. This time, they didn’t hurt her to say even the slightest bit.

The fondness she felt in place of the terror she once had was overwhelming, almost. Enough to leave her staggering, and in that moment - it was Mafuyu who grounded her. Beautiful, brilliant Mafuyu, who wasn’t hers, but left her breathless all the same.

Long-forgotten was the fear and the assumed consequences of telling her how she felt. She was happy, and the rush of affection blossoming through her chest was nothing short of exhilarating.

“Maybe a part of me always will,” she added on. 

Just to be sure that Mafuyu knew how deep her feelings ran, like roots beneath the earth.

And when she looked at her again; at Mafuyu’s eyes and how impossibly wide they seemed, she knew, too, that her confession hadn’t been misunderstood. 

“How long?” Mafuyu asked her quietly. Something in her tone sounded sorrowful. Like she was mourning the loss of something, and Ena wondered what. “How long have you felt this way?”

Ena blinked in surprise. That was easy enough to answer, at least. “Months,” she told her simply. “Almost a year.” 

Long enough for lilies to bloom and reemerge in my lungs.

“Why?” Mafuyu asked. Nearly demanded, and Ena didn’t know whether she was asking about the reason for her flowers, or the source.

She chose to answer the latter. “How could I not?”

Mafuyu’s protest was as instant as it was loud. “But一 Ena.” There was a certain kind of desperation in her eyes and in her tone as she spoke, so vast and profound that it almost hurt Ena to hear. It hurt more than any of the flowers had to cough up, at least. “Months,” Mafuyu repeated. “That’s一 it’s too一”

Too much, she seemed to want to say, but hesitated. Too long, maybe, but Ena disagreed. The months she’d spent longing after her weren’t nearly enough to fit the entirety of her love. She didn’t know what amount of time would be enough.

Ena smiled to herself. She reached forward with one hand to hold the lily in front of her, and she was quick to notice the way that Mafuyu’s eyes widened impossibly further. How she shied away from it, almost. “It looks like the one in your bouquet,” Mafuyu mumbled. “The one you gave me.”

Ena nodded. 

She’d noticed, then. The fact that she’d specified which of their identical bouquets implied she now understood the difference between the one she’d received, and the one she’d given away. 

She laughed wistfully; a little sombrely, and hummed. “You know,” Ena started, and her voice broke clean in two. “Every time you were with me一 every time you leaned in a little close, or when you held my hand, every time you一 god, I don’t know, every time you were so fucking endearingly you, I wanted to lean forward and throw up flowers. I wanted it so badly, to tell you how I felt, but you made me so happy that I couldn’t bear to part with them. The flowers, or…” 

In the midst of her rambling, Ena fell short of breath. She forced herself to inhale, and the air she swallowed didn’t seem nearly enough to occupy the space left behind by the flowers and tangled stems. Her lungs almost felt empty without them. 

To distract herself from it, the fingers of her other hand reached down to curl into her skirt, and dug in deep and hard. “Or… or一 you know,” she muttered. When she thought about it, she couldn’t remember the last time her voice had sounded so meek; when she had last felt so tiny and small, but so thoroughly seen in Mafuyu’s eyes. It made her cheeks red, and her voice even smaller when she tried to say一

“You.”

That singular word caught in her throat. Her voice wobbled and wavered with the weight of it as it sat on her tongue, but she refused to cry. 

“I couldn’t stand the thought of letting go of you,” she repeated with emphasis. Clearer, this time, though her voice was still thick with emotion. “I wanted it to be you. I wanted you.”

The look Mafuyu gave her was piteous. “Ena,” she begged, and she held onto her that much tighter. “Ena, I’m sorry, I…”

Ena felt her heart shudder beneath her ribs. There were no flowers pulsing against it or stems entangling it to Mafuyu, this time, but it beat for her all the same. “You don’t have to tell me,” she told her gently. “I know.”

I’ve always known.

And一 if the look Mafuyu had given her one second prior was wretched - anguished - then she looked downright horrified in the second after.

“I’m sorry,” Mafuyu repeated. Like a broken record that didn’t quite know what else to say. 

Was there anything else she could say, in a moment like this one?

Ena sighed, softly. “I know,” she said again and she tilted her head up toward the ceiling. The brightness of the overhead lights made her wince, and she looked back to the orange lily in her hand: capricious but a declaration of love nonetheless. Her fingers uncurled from her skirt to tenderly brush over its petals again, and she smiled. “I just didn’t want to admit it. Even though it hurt, and even though every time I threw up flowers, I thought about you and the way you must’ve felt about me.”

“What? Ena, no一 no, that’s not一 you don’t know.” Mafuyu sounded desperate as she stumbled over her words, her eyes wet and glistening like stars with tears that had yet to be shed. “You don’t know,” she repeated, and she begged. 

For what, though? For Ena to understand, or something else? 

“That’s not what I’m apologizing for,” she tried to say, but her words came out a warbled mess. Her other hand came to clutch at Ena’s shoulders, and her fingers curled at the same time twin droplets rolled down her cheeks. Then another. Then more. Then一

Ena frowned. Without thinking, her hands quickly reached to swipe away her tears. She hardly noticed how the flower slipped from her fingers to fall in the space between them: the distance that didn’t seem to bother her as much, now. 

“What for, then?” she asked. 

Then一 Nothing. 

Ena watched as Mafuyu swallowed and as her throat bobbed with the movement. She watched as her lower lip wobbled and her eyes shimmered some more - Ena’s thumb still pressed just beneath her eye to catch any falling tears. She wondered if it was any comfort to her when she lowered its position a little to stroke her thumb soothingly across her cheek.

Maybe it was, with the way Mafuyu seemed to find her voice then and there. Maybe it wasn’t, with how her voice still sounded so painfully tight when she asked, “It hurt, didn’t it?” 

(Ena knew which she was hoping for, at least.)

Ena’s frown only deepened. Her thumb stilled its back and forth motion on Mafuyu’s cheek, then retracted back to her side. “Huh?”

“I hurt you,” Mafuyu elaborated.

Ah.

So that’s what she’d been meaning to say.

Ena tilted her head in consideration. She considered telling her that she hadn’t一 that it hadn’t hurt her at all to force flowers from her throat or that she’d loved every bloom as much as Mafuyu herself. She wanted to assure her that it had been her decision to make, but she somehow doubted that saying so would make her feel any better. Anything but the truth might only hurt them more.

“Only a little,” she murmured, and she pinched her fingers together to indicate, leaving the tiniest gap between them. Barely a centimetre. 

“But一”

Ena reduced the distance between her finger and thumb to about a half. “Don’t get too full of yourself,” she scoffed. She was still smiling, though. 

And一 Mafuyu sighed. 

Either in acceptance, or because she’d grown weary with the promise of a relentless back-and-forth. She leaned forward to rest her cheek on the top of Ena’s head, and let the heat - the unending warmth - of her breath fan from her lips and across her scalp; seeping into Ena’s cheeks. “I love you,” Mafuyu mumbled into her hair, angling her head to nuzzle against it.

Not quite a kiss, or a confession, or anything else Ena had once hoped for, but almost. 

And that was all that she needed. 

She was satisfied with that. 

Ena breathed in easily against Mafuyu’s neck, her heart pounding heavily in her chest without the weight of flowers holding it down. She nuzzled Mafuyu back, drinking in her scent and indulging in her warmth for what she knew would be the last time. “I love you too,” she told her honestly. 

Mafuyu’s reply was instantaneous, and she almost sounded hurt. “It’s not the same,” she protested.

Ena hummed. She supposed that Mafuyu was right. Like the flowers - though they were identical in their sound and in their shape - their meaning was worlds apart. That was okay, though. It was okay, so Ena told her so.

“I know. That’s okay.”

“Is it?”

Ena sputtered against Mafuyu’s neck, and she hoped Mafuyu didn’t notice how it sent small droplets of spit flying against the side of her throat. She dared to think that Mafuyu deserved it, after everything she’d put her through. Not that she’d minded, really. “Do you have to question everyth一 God. Fine. If it’s not, then you should make it up to me, stupid.”

Mafuyu sighed again. This time, she sounded defeated, and Ena wondered if she’d even recognised that she’d only been teasing. “How could I possibly…?”

“Hmm… you can buy me pancakes whenever I want.”

“Okay.”

“Let me steal all of those fancy artbooks your parents gave you. You know, the ones you never use.”

“Okay.”

Ena paused. A small smile crept onto her lips. “Actually agree to visit all those cafes you hate with me?”

“Okay.”

“I was joking. Don’t just agree to whatever I一 Oh, whatever.”

There was a moment of silence, then. One where they simply held each other through the quiet. Mafuyu grumbled something into her hair - something that remained muffled and misunderstood - and Ena tilted her head to look at her properly.

From this angle, she could only really see the slant of her jaw, but she imagined bluebells in her eyes and carnations lining the edge of her lips: rejection in the place of the usual camellia’s she thought were tucked into the corners of a smile not meant for her.

“Mafuyu?” Ena murmured.

“Mm?”

“Just一 one other thing. Can you promise me that?”

Mafuyu nodded, mutely. 

“Be happy.”

(If you are, then I will be too.)

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Airi stressed. As she spoke, her fingers knitted with Ena’s and squeezed like it was her own personal stressball. She did it hard enough that Ena squeaked, and she gently bumped their shoulders together in silent warning. “Really, really sure?”

Ena hummed happily. Airi’s hand felt warm against her own - like sunshine, almost, but sweeter - and the tight tangle of their fingers was reminiscent of the matted stems that had once made their home inside her. They were gone, now, along with the flowers themselves but一 the foundations of the garden remained, and Ena didn’t think it would take long for it to blossom healthily again.

Certainly not forever.

“Of course I am,” Ena said. She tilted her head and smiled at her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Airi frowned slightly. She squeezed Ena’s hand a little tighter - though not as much as before - and let her thumb stroke over the knuckles. Almost as if she was trying to distract herself. “Well, after everything…”

Ena dismissed her with a brief wave of her hand. Though Airi’s voice had trailed off, she understood perfectly what she meant. “I’m happy for them,” she told her, because it was the honest-to-god truth. A fact: one that she hoped would be enough of an assurance. 

“And honestly? It was about time that Mafuyu moved out.” Using her free hand - the one not linked with Airi’s - Ena began to count on her fingers. “This way, she gets to be closer to Mizuki, and her classes, too, and一 oh, now that I think about it, it is gonna be a pain in the ass to find someone to pay the other half of the costs of the apartment. Mafuyu and I always used to split it halfway.” 

Airi laughter almost seemed to carry with the wind. “I’ll keep an eye out for anyone who needs a roommate," she said breezily. “You’re serious, though? That’s the only thing you’re worried about?”

“Uh一 yes? Why?”

Airi turned to smile at her. Only, it seemed much more wry than it did genuinely happy. “Sorry, sorry. I’m not trying to doubt you, I’m just…” shrugging helplessly, Airi sighed. “Worried for you, you know? I mean… I know how much you love her. Don’t you miss her?”

Love.

Present tense.

Ena tilted her head to consider her confession. It only took her a moment. “I do,” she admitted. Of course she did. Her heart was a portrait of everyone that she had ever loved, and Mafuyu was no different. She would always have a space carved out for her there: the memory of her pressed into every orange lily she saw from that point on. 

“I do,” she repeated, with more conviction. There was no wistfulness or regret to be found in her tone, only fondness. “But… not as much as I expected to. Some days are worse than others.”

Airi nodded quietly. “Right,” she murmured, and that was all that needed to be said. 

For as much as they both knew that time healed, Ena also knew there were days that reminded her so much of Mafuyu that it almost brought the emotions rushing back to her twice as intense as they once had been. It never lasted for long, though, and through it all: the flowers in her chest never once thought to bloom again.

Ena didn’t need to ask why.

Because while Mafuyu had taught her how to love, now she was beginning to learn to let go.