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Ever since childhood, Kalim had always had it. He doesn’t know when he got such an illness, but it’s been with him ever since he can remember.
“Jamil, my throat doesn’t feel good,” He rasped out to his friend one day.
“Do you need some water?” The servant had asked.
“Yeah-” He started coughing. It hurt. There was something in his throat, and he was trying his best to cough it out.
“Kalim!” Jamil immediately started firmly hitting his back, attempting to help. Kalim hacked a little longer before finally coughing out a flower petal.
“A flower petal?”
<=>
When his mother and father found out, they frantically searched for a cure. After all, their heir had an illness they’ve never seen, and although it didn’t seem deadly, they didn’t want to take the chance.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve never seen this type of illness,” Every doctor had told his parents. No one in Twisted Wonderland knew what it was.
“Your son might be the only person in the world who has it.”
<=>
It wasn't hard to live with. He’d only cough once in a while, and it never escalated into something dire. Sometimes it was just one petal- the most he had coughed was five. There wasn't any blood that came with them, so his parents reluctantly stopped the constant search for a cure.
As he grew older, he figured out that every time a servant or family member he trusted tried to kill him, he'd cough up petals.
The worst was when Jamil had gotten poisoned by the curry. He hadn't stopped coughing up petals and eventually blood when he found out– only when Jamil woke up did the petals die down.
Kalim thought that perhaps the petals were connected to his relationships.
<=>
When he got into NRC, he believed that his illness had mostly disappeared. Maybe it was going away. He’d still cough up petals, but it happened rarely now.
During his second year, just before winter break, it got worse. Now, he was coughing at least ten petals a day. To be honest, it scared him a little. He was used to facing death, but this one felt different. It felt… lonely… sad…
It got even worse when he found out Jamil truly resented him with his whole being. The flower petals turned into flower bulbs.
After Jamil’s overblot, his illness intensity increased tenfold. Some thorns started scratching his throat as he coughed out flowers. It’s gotten even worse. It was bulbs, but now they have bloomed into full flowers from the inside.
His mouth tasted of the flower’s scent as well as blood. His throat felt raw from the intense coughing, and his eyes felt raw from the amount of tears that formed from the coughs.
Although Jamil didn’t like him, Kalim could see at least a hint of concern in the servant’s eyes. Afterall, this was something Kalim had since he was a child. It also wouldn’t do well for Jamil to have the heir of the Al-Asim family become so ill.
<=>
No one knew anything about his illness, and Kalim already accepted that fact since childhood. Well, until the Prefect from another world caught wind of what Kalim had.
It was during lunch when Kalim sat with the Prefect and the Octavinelle trio.
“I'm hungry, but I can't even imagine eating the cafeteria food. It was my mistake for leaving late this morning. Didn't have time to make my lunch last night, and I didn't get to check the fridge to see if Jamil made me something…” Kalim thought. Trying to do things on his own was hard, but that wasn’t going to stop him. He’d just have to keep trying.
“Kalim, here, lunch,” Jamil came up to the table and deposited a lunch box in front of his housewarden.
“Oh! Thank you, Jamil!” Kalim smiled at the other boy. Jamil clicked his tongue in slight annoyance.
Kalim coughed. Then, he coughed more until he started coughing wildly. He felt the now familiar sensation of thorns and flowers rising to his mouth. It was a futile attempt to stop them from surfacing and spilling from his mouth onto the table.
“Kalim!” Jamil shouted and quickly went to his master’s side.
The Prefect looked at Kalim with bewilderment.
“You have Hanahaki?!” Yuu had exclaimed. “It’s real here?!”
Jamil and Kalim, as well as the Octavinelle trio, looked at the Prefect in surprise.
“You-you know what he has?!” Jamil exclaimed in surprise.
“You know what I have?” Kalim stared wide-eyed. Blood was flowing down his lips.
“Yeah, it’s called the Hanahaki disease from where I’m from. Well, in my world, it’s not a real disease. It’s fictional,” Yuu explained.
“Then you know the cure, right?” Kalim asked.
“Well, I don’t know how it is here, but from my world, the cause is from unrequited love. It’s usually romantic love, but it can also be unrequited platonic love. If the person’s love is unrequited, they start growing flowers in their lungs until they die.” Yuu explained even more.
“Unrequited love…” Kalim muttered. It finally made sense, he thought.
No wonder he has had it since he was young. Even if his family didn't necessarily hate him, it wasn't much of a loving one either. The constant touch at death's door from countless assassination attempts from those he thought he could trust definitely sparked the feelings of never truly being loved.
And during Jamil's overblot, it only got worse after finding out the one he thought he could trust his whole being to was a lie.
No wonder the flowers had evolved so quickly. After his servant’s overblot, there was no one here he could trust- let alone love Kalim and not as the Al-Asim heir. Sure, he had friends here, but he still couldn’t fully trust anyone.
The life of an Al-Asim heir… He was destined to never be loved, huh?