Archive of Our Own

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

"P’Est! Wait— Phi, wait for me!"

William’s lungs were already burning, but it wasn't the jagged, floral heat of the disease— not yet. It was the simple, honest burn of a seventeen-year-old boy trying to keep up with someone who always seemed to be one step closer to the horizon. 

The dirt road leading back from the parish was a ribbon of grey in the twilight. On the other side, the tall grass of the province bowed under the weight of the evening humidity, smelling of damp earth and coming rain. Est was several yards ahead, his white church shirt unbuttoned at the collar, flapping in the breeze.

He’d started it, of course. A stray comment about William being "too stiff" during the evening inventory, followed by a playful shove and a sudden, sprinting getaway.

"Hurry up, Liam!" Est’s voice drifted back, bright and jagged with laughter. "The mosquitoes will carry you away before you reach the gate!"

William pushed off his back foot, his slippers scuffing against the dry gravel. He had lived for seventeen years, but his real life had only begun the night he met Est.

He still remembered the weight of nine years ago— how the darkness in his eight-year-old head had become a physical burden, heavy and cold as the rain that had drenched him on the bridge. He had been a boy hollowed out by losses he didn't have the words to name, standing where the water met the sky, until a hand had reached out. It was Est. Est, who had simply taken his hand, guided him into the warmth of the sanctuary and told him there was a place for him here.

Since then, Est had become his family, a special someone. It was Est who had shown him the secret passages to the lake where the dust danced in the light. It was Est who had taught him how to polish the brass until it shone like a mirror, and how to scrub the scent of metal from his skin afterward.

Est skidded to a halt near the old stone archway that marked the edge of the church grounds, the very place that had become William's home. He turned back, his chest heaving under his thin shirt, a triumphant grin splitting his face. The dying sun caught the sweat on his forehead, turning it to gold, and for a second, he looked less like a boy and more like the answer to the prayer William was too afraid to pray.

William slowed to a halt a few feet away, doubled over with his hands on his knees, gasping for air. But he couldn't keep his eyes on the ground for long. He looked up, and for a moment, the world simply stopped moving.

The evening breeze caught Est’s hair, blowing the dark strands away from his eyes. He looked... celestial. Not like the cold, marble saints in the nave, but something living. Something warm. There was a tiny mole just above his lip that William had memorized years ago, and in this light, with the purple sky bruising behind him, Est looked like the only thing in the world that made sense.

"You're... you're too fast," William panted, his voice a ghost of a sound.

"And you're too slow," Est countered, stepping closer. He reached out— a gesture so practiced it was practically an instinct, and ruffled William’s messy hair. His palm was warm, the skin slightly rough from a day of moving hymnals and scrubbing pews.

William flinched internally, though he forced his feet to stay rooted to the gravel. The touch was his home and his cage. Every time Est’s fingers lingered like this, William felt a terrifying, magnetic pull in his chest— a desperate yearning to lean into that warmth and never move again.

But that yearning was exactly what kept him awake at night, staring at the crucifix on his wall until the wood blurred into shadows.

He was eighteen in a matter of hours, and the confusion that had been a dull hum for years was now a deafening roar. He told himself it was just gratitude— that he loved Est because Est had pulled him off that bridge when the world was too loud. It was brotherly. It was "pious." That’s what he told himself when he scrubbed the floors until his knuckles bled.

Yet, a "brother" didn't memorize the way the light caught the tiny mole above Est’s lip. A "brother" didn't feel his pulse jump like a trapped bird just because their shoulders brushed in the narrow hallway of the dorm.

The sermons he had listened to since he was a kid echoed in his mind, cold and accusatory. 

The heart is deceitful above all things. 

He looked up at Est, who was still grinning, oblivious and bright. To Est, this was just a normal day. But William felt like he was standing on the edge of a different kind of bridge now, one where the fall wouldn't be into water, but into a truth that would change everything.

"You’re doing it again," Est murmured, his voice softening. "You’re overthinking, Liam. Are you okay?"

"I'm just tired, P'Est," William lied.

"Then let's get you inside to rest. You’ve been scrubbing pews as if they owe you money all day."

William forced a small, tired smile. "Yeah. Let’s go."

They walked the final stretch toward the church-provided house as the sky turned dark. The air inside the house smelled of floor wax and the lingering scent of fried fish from the kitchen. It was a familiar, grounding smell.

When they pushed open the door to their shared room, the space felt smaller than usual. Two wooden bunk beds dominated the cramped quarters, separated by a narrow aisle that barely allowed two people to pass. William and Nut shared the bunk on the left, with William claiming the bottom for easy escapes into the night. Directly across from him, separated by only a few feet of linoleum, was Est’s bottom bunk, which he shared with Hong.

Nut was currently sprawled across William’s thin mattress, his face buried in a worn-out textbook, his legs dangling off the edge.

"P'Nut, mooovvee," William whined, though there was no real bite in it. He reached out and nudged Nut’s shoulder. "Go back to your own bed. I need to lie down."

Nut let out a dry, barking laugh, not even looking up from his page. "Your bed is closer to the fan, Will. Don't be stingy."

"Move," William insisted, actually shoving Nut’s hip this time. "I’m the birthday boy in three hours. I get priority seating."

"Fine, fine!" Nut teased, finally rolling off the bed. He scrambled up the ladder to his top bunk, looking down at the two of them with a raised eyebrow. "Why are you two panting anyway? Did Father Reyes catch you stealing the sacramental wine or something?"

"William's legs are made of lead," Est joked, sitting down. The springs of Est's mattress gave a familiar, rhythmic squeak— a sound William heard every single night, a sound he had associated with safety for years. "He couldn't even keep up with me on the gravel road."

“P’Est—“

The bathroom door creaked open, and Hong stepped out, a cloud of steam and the scent of harsh, unscented soap trailing behind him. He was toweling his damp hair, his eyes turning into playful crescents as he spotted William sitting stiffly on the edge of the bed.

"Will, our birthday boy." Hong teased, snapping his towel toward William’s feet. "Are we ready for midnight? Scared the clock is going to turn you into a rose?"

William managed a weak huff of a laugh, but the humor didn't reach his chest. In this world, eighteen wasn't just a milestone of adulthood; it was a love test. He thought of the Hanahaki— that "spiritual trial" the elders whispered about in low, somber tones during the midday heat. They spoke of it as if the body, in its divine and terrible wisdom, would physically reject a love that remained unrequited. If the heart harbored a devotion that wasn't mirrored by the other, the lungs would begin to bloom. 

The cruelest part was the timing; the disease remained dormant, refusing to manifest until the body reached the maturity of its eighteenth year. It was as if the universe waited until you were finally old enough to bear the weight of your own heart before it decided whether to turn it into a sanctuary or a grave.

"He’s just dramatic," Nut chimed in from the top bunk, leaning over the wooden rail. "He’s probably worried he’ll wake up tomorrow and suddenly have the urge to buy a girl a bouquet."

"Or cough one up," Hong added, his voice dropping into a mock-ghostly whisper.

The air in the room suddenly felt like it had been sucked out of a vacuum. The mention of the Bloom always did that— it turned a room of boisterous boys into a silent congregation. They all knew the stakes. The beautiful, suffocating death where you drowned in a garden of your own making.

There was the surgery, of course— the "Extraction" but everyone knew the price. To pull the flowers was to bleach the heart. The medical procedure didn't just target the physical roots; it took the memories, too. It was a clean, clinical erasure of the person who had unknowingly planted the seeds in the first place.

If William ever took the cure, the person he cherished most would become a stranger. He would look at a face he had spent years memorizing and see nothing but a blank page. He would forget everything, the way that voice sounded like a promise. To live without the pain was to live without the person. And to William, that was the true death. 

William’s gaze instinctively flickered to Est, who was sitting just three feet away.

For a split second, their eyes met. Est wasn't smiling anymore. His expression was uncharacteristically somber, his jaw tight as if he were fighting back a memory of his own. William felt a jolt of pure, electric terror and averted his gaze almost immediately, staring intensely at a loose thread on his blanket.

"Oh," Hong said, his teasing tone shifting into something more perceptive. He stopped toweling his hair and leaned against the wall, his eyes were on William's flushed face and quiet profile. "Wait a minute. You went totally quiet, Will. Are you…?"

"I'm not," William snapped, his voice cracking.

"You are!" Hong laughed, pointing a finger. "You love someone! There’s a girl, isn't there? Someone at the parish? Someone you think won't love you back?"

William felt the itch in the back of his throat— the faint, phantom tickle of a root sensing the approach of midnight. He gripped the bedpost until his knuckles were white as bone.

"I don't love anyone," William said quickly, the words feeling like a jagged stone he was being forced to swallow.

"Oh, come on, Liam!" Hong laughed, falling back onto his own bunk. "But seriously, don't sweat it. Most of the time it’s just... a congestion. You’re overthinking it because of the rumors."

Nut shifted on the top bunk, the springs groaning in the sudden lull. He looked down at William, his expression softening into something uncharacteristically gentle. "Hong’s right, Will. No one actually dies from Hanahaki these days. I knew a guy from the next parish over who had it. He just took some suppressors, waited for the feeling to pass, and he’s fine now—"

"You can die from it..."

The voice came from Est’s bed. It wasn't the jolly, booming tone William was used to. It was quiet, jagged, and cold like a blade being drawn across silk.

Est sat up slowly, his eyes fixed on a knot in the floorboards, his jaw tight. The playful P’Est who had been teasing William minutes ago was gone. "People die from it, or they lose themselves. It’s real, and it’s devastating."

The room went deathly silent. William felt a shiver crawl up his spine from the raw, hollow sound of Est’s words. There was a history in that tone— a weight that William had never sensed in Est before. For a second, he wondered whose name Est had forgotten to stay alive, or whose death he had witnessed in a spray of petals.

William looked at Est, searching his face, but Est refused to meet his eyes. The sudden distance was more painful than the itch in his throat. Was this why Est had gone quiet the moment the disease was mentioned? Was there a ghost standing between them that William didn't know about?

The silence stretched thin, vibrating with a tension that made William’s skin crawl. But just as the air became unbearable, Est shifted.

The heavy, jagged shadow vanished from his face as quickly as a snuffed candle. He let out a sudden, boisterous huff of a laugh and sat up, his eyes bright and crinkling into that familiar, heart-shaped expression.

"Oh my, look at me acting like an old monk!" Est teased, his voice bouncing back to its usual jolly frequency. He reached across the narrow gap between their beds and shoved William’s shoulder playfully. "Ignore me, Liam. I’m just tired from the heat. Nut is right— it’s a spiritual trial, and you’ve got the cleanest soul in this parish. You’re going to wake up tomorrow exactly the same, just with more chores."

Est leaned over, hooking an arm around William’s neck and pulling him into a messy, lopsided headlock. "Besides, if any flowers try to grow in there, I’ll just make you eat more of that bitter melon from the cafeteria. That’ll kill anything, right?"

"P'Est! Get— get off!" William wheezed, his face flushing a deep, shameful crimson.

The sudden proximity was a sensory assault. He could smell the faint scent of Est’s soap— the one they shared but that always seemed to smell better on Est. He felt the rough friction of Est’s sleeve against his ear and the solid, radiating heat of Est's chest pressed against his shoulder.

It was meant to be brotherly. It was the way Est had always treated him— like a ward, a project, a younger sibling to be ruffled and teased. But for William, the touch was a lightning strike.

His chest felt impossibly heavy, as if the roots were reacting to Est’s touch, drinking in the warmth and stretching toward the surface. Every laugh from Est's throat was like water to a parched garden.

"Alright. This is enough! Let’s sleep," Est chuckled, finally releasing him and ruffling his hair one last time before settling back onto his own pillow. "Goodnight, birthday boy."

William tumbled back onto his thin mattress, his heart hammering a frantic, guilty rhythm against his ribs. He turned away, facing the cold concrete wall, his hands clutched over his chest as if he could physically hold the secret down.

It didn’t take long for the room to fall into a quiet hum of breathing and the distant whir of the electric fan. William lay perfectly still, his eyes wide in the dark, feeling the weight in his lungs grow heavier with every second that brought him closer to midnight.

He wasn't just seventeen anymore. He was a countdown.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

William lay paralyzed on his bed, his eyes wide and burning. He hadn’t slept a wink. Every time he closed his eyelids, he saw the face of the clock in the parish hall, the flowers and vibes creeping toward his demise. His heart was sinking, a heavy stone dropping into the pit of his stomach.

He was terrified, but it wasn't the agony of the roots tearing through the pleura that kept him trembling. It wasn't even the hollow ache of the possibility that Est didn’t love him back— though that thought was a constant, dull thrum in his marrow.

The true, bone-deep fear was the confirmation.

If he coughed up a petal today, it meant that this— this frantic pounding in his chest, this desperate need to exist in Est’s orbit, this magnetic pull that made him feel more alive in a dusty church basement than anywhere else— was actually love.

A sin.

It wouldn't be a "phase" or "brotherly admiration" anymore. It would be physical, biological proof of his sin. The very thing the priests warned them about from the pulpit— the unnatural lusts and the misalignment of the soul would be blooming inside him, visible and undeniable. The flowers would be the evidence that he had failed the test of purity, that he was the very abomination the sermons whispered about.

He shifted his head just an inch, looking across the narrow aisle. In the dim light, Est was a silhouette of peace. He looked so steady, so sure of his place in the world and in the eyes of the Lord. William remembered the way Est’s hair had fallen over his forehead earlier that day, and how William’s own hand had twitched with a forbidden, instinctive urge to reach out and brush it back.

The digital clock on the wall was a glowing, red taunt.

11:50 pm.

William couldn't take it anymore. The air in the dormitory was too used, too full of the peaceful, rhythmic breathing of boys who had nothing to hide from the heavens. He slipped from beneath his thin sheet, his movements fluid and frantic like a startled animal. He didn't grab his slippers; his bare feet hit the cold floor with a silent, damp slap. He moved past Est’s bed, pausing for a heartbeat. Est looked like a masterpiece of unbothered grace. William felt a sudden, violent surge of love so sharp it felt like a physical puncture to his lung. He turned and bolted.

William’s bare feet brought him, by sheer muscle memory, toward the great, arched doors of the parish. The sanctuary was dark, illuminated only by the flickering red glow of the lamp.

William collapsed onto the front pew, his knees hitting the wood with a dull thud. He looked up, his neck straining, at the Great Cross hanging above the altar. Jesus hung there, His wooden eyes cast downward, His arms stretched wide in an eternal, agonizing invitation. In the flickering red light, the painted droplets of blood on the Savior's brow looked wet, as if He were still sweating under the weight of the world's sins.

"Please," William whispered, his voice a jagged, broken thread in the vastness of the nave. "Please, just let it be a mistake. Let it be a fever. Let me wake up tomorrow and just be... a brother."

He gripped the back of the pew in front of him, his knuckles white. He tried to feel the shame he was supposed to feel. He tried to summon the image of the "fire of Gehenna" that Father Reyes spoke of— the place for those whose hearts were misaligned. But every time he tried to visualize a sin, all he saw was Est.

He saw Est reaching out his hand on the bridge. He saw Est teaching him how to swim on the lake. He saw the heart-shaped curve of a smile that had been his only reason to stay alive for nine years.

How could the most beautiful thing in his life be the thing that sent him to hell?

11:55 pm.

He began to pray, the Latin phrases he’d learned as a child tumbling out in a frantic, desperate stream. He was begging for a retroactive heart-cleansing. He pleaded with the silent statues to take every thump of his heart when Est laughed, every flare of heat when their skin brushed, and rebrand it. 

Make it brotherly. Make it admiration. Make it the devotion of a student to a teacher— anything but this.

He tried to convince himself of the two possibilities— the two ways he could walk out of here with no disease at 12:01 am.

The first was that he simply wasn't in love. That this was all a trick of a lonely, grieving mind, a confusion of gratitude for the man who had pulled him off a bridge. It wasn’t romantic in any way.

That was what he wanted, what he preferred.

The second was that the love was reciprocated. But as soon as the thought formed, it died. William had spent months orbiting Est, dropping subtle, shaking questions into their late-night conversations. “Do you ever think about marriage, P’Est?” “Is there anyone at the market you like?”

And Est, with that maddening, saint-like, jolly smile, would always say the same thing: “I love everyone, Liam. My heart is for the parish, for the work. I don’t think I’m built for that romantic kind of love. It seems so small compared to everything else.”

To Est, love was a wide, sunlit ocean for everyone to swim in. To William, it was a drowning lake built for two.

11:58 pm.

A sharp, silver pain lanced through his left lung. He gasped, his hands flying to his chest, clutching at the white fabric of his shirt. It felt like a thorn— thin, cold, and searching.

"No… not yet," he wheezed, his eyes wide as he stared at the altar. "It’s not time yet. Please."

The clock in the loft let out a heavy, metallic clunk, the gears shifting as they prepared to strike the hour.

11:59 pm.

William doubled over, his forehead hitting the floor of the church. He was no longer a student, a teen, or a friend. He was a boy waiting for the universe to tell him who he was. He squeezed his eyes shut, his entire body trembling so hard his teeth rattled.

10... 9... 8...

He thought of Est’s eyes turning crescent when he smiles.

7... 6... 5...

He thought of the way Est’s wrists had felt under his hands.

4... 3... 2...

"I'm sorry," he whispered to the silent God. "I'm so sorry."

12:00 am.

The first bell of the midnight chime rang out, a deep, mournful bronze toll that vibrated through the stone floor and into William's very bones.

And then, the world exploded into blue.

It wasn't a soft blooming explosion. It was a violent, jagged invasion.

A sudden, hot pressure surged up from the base of his lungs, a sensation so sharp it felt as if someone had shoved a handful of broken glass and wet earth down his throat. William’s eyes flew open, wide and bloodshot, fixed on the feet of the crucified Christ above him. He tried to draw a breath, but the air caught on something thick and velvety.

He lunged forward, his hands slamming into the cold stone floor to brace himself, and then he coughed.

It was a wet, racking sound that tore through the silence of the nave— a sound of something living being uprooted. He felt a long, thin stem drag against the sensitive lining of his esophagus, the thorns catching on his soft tissue with agonizing precision. He choked, a desperate, gurgling sob breaking from his lips, and then… he saw it.

Spilled across the white marble floor, slick with saliva and a terrifying streak of bright, fresh blood, were the first of them.

Cobalt blue rose petals. Deep, midnight blue, the exact shade of the shadows in Est’s room.

And tucked between them, small and cruel, were the white-and-yellow heads of daisies.

William stared at them, his breath hitching in a series of broken, shallow gasps. Daisies. Innocence. Loyal love. The very thing he had tried to convince himself he felt for Est— the brotherly affection he had prayed for was now lying on the church floor, vomited up and stained with his own blood. The universe was mocking his prayers. It was telling him that even his innocence was part of the sickness.

"No," he wheezed, the word tasting of copper and flora. "Please, no."

Another spasm hit him, more violent than the last. He felt a daisy bud lodge itself in the back of his throat, blocking his airway. He clawed at his own neck, his face turning a bruised purple as he struggled to swallow, to breathe, to exist. He wanted to scream, he wanted to howl until the stained glass shattered, but he shoved his fist into his mouth, biting down on his own knuckles until he tasted skin.

He couldn't let them hear. He couldn't let the priest in the rectory or the boys in the dorm know that the Bloom had returned a verdict of filth.

He collapsed onto his side, curling into a ball against the communion rail. Tears tracked hot lines through the dust on his cheeks, dripping onto the blue petals. He didn't know which pain was worse: the physical sensation of the roots knitting themselves around his ribs, or the crushing, hollow realization that Est’s heart was truly, devastatingly empty of him, or the fact that he’s indeed a sinner.

He looked up at the altar, his vision blurring. He felt like a wounded animal, bleeding out in the house of the God who had supposedly made him this way. He was eighteen for exactly three minutes, and he was already a walking grave.

"I’m a sinner," he whispered into the cold stone, his voice a ghost of itself. "I’m a sinner, and he doesn't love me. He doesn't love me."

He reached out a trembling hand and touched a blue petal. It was soft, beautiful, and vibrant— the most vibrant thing in this grey, judgmental church. Another cough rattled his frame, and a flurry of white and blue spilled out, a silent, floral confession on the sacred floor. William closed his eyes and sobbed, the sound muffled by his own sleeve, alone in the dark with the evidence of a love that was never meant to bloom.

William stayed lying there for some long, shuddering minutes, the copper tang of blood and the cloying, sweet scent of crushed flora filling his senses. Every breath was a gamble, every twitch of his diaphragm threatened to uproot another cluster of the blue and white death growing inside him.

But he couldn't stay here. The sun would rise in a few hours, and someone he knew would come to prepare for the dawn mass. 

With a strength fueled by pure, survivalist terror, William forced himself upright. His ribs felt like they had been re-knit with barbed wire.

He didn't have a cloth, so he used the hem of his white sleeping shirt to scrub the floor. He moved with a frantic, rhythmic desperation, wiping away the slick streaks of blood and the bruised petals until the marble shone with a cold, dishonest purity. He gathered the evidence into a ball, clutching the damp, floral-stained fabric against his chest.

There was no trace left. No proof that a miracle— or a curse— had just occurred.

Before he turned to flee, William looked up at the Great Cross one last time. 

"You gave me the heart," William whispered, his voice a jagged rasp that tore at the fresh wounds in his throat. "Why did You give me the heart if the love was a death sentence?"

He received no answer but the hollow echo of his own breath. He turned and bolted into the night, his bare feet hitting the dirt path as he raced back to the dormitory, a ghost running from his own shadow.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

The dorm bathroom was a cramped, humid cage of concrete and peeling paint. William didn't turn on the light because he didn't want to see himself. He quickly stepped into the shower stall and twisted the rusted dial until the water came out in a cold, violent spray.

He didn't even flinch. He simply welcomed the shock.

He collapsed against the damp wall, the water drumming against his skull, and the realization finally hit him with the force of a landslide.

He had the disease. It wasn't a nightmare. It wasn't a fever. The blue roses in his hand— now swirling down the drain in a chaotic dance of cobalt and white– were the physical manifestation of a truth he had tried to pray away. 

"Est doesn't love me," he choked out, the words lost in the roar of the shower.

Saying it out loud made it real. The smiles, the headlocks, the "I love everyone, Liam". Est’s heart was a vast, open cathedral where everyone was welcome, but no one was special. William was just another brick in the wall, another ward to be saved. He was the boy from the bridge, not the man in the heart.

He grabbed the bar of harsh, unscented soap and began to scrub.

He scrubbed his chest until the skin was raw and weeping. He dug his nails into his shoulders, trying to scour away the memory of Est’s touch, the heat of his warmth, the weight of the hand on his hair. He wanted to peel the skin off his bones if it meant removing the part of him that reacted to Est’s proximity.

"Sinner," he hissed, his teeth chattering. "Abomination. Filth."

He scrubbed until his knuckles bled, matching the red streaks on the floor of the parish. He wanted to be empty. He wanted to be the hollow, marble saint he was supposed to be. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw the heart-shaped grin. He felt the ghostly pressure of Est’s wrists under his hands.

He had survived the night on the bridge nine years ago, but as he watched the last blue petal vanish into the dark drain, William realized that this time, there was no hand reaching out to save him.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

William’s morning broke with the sound of a song.

His eyes flickered open to a chorus of voices, out of tune and echoing off the cramped walls of the dorm. It was the kind of noise that usually made him groan and bury his face in the pillow, but today, it pulled him upward from the heavy, dark silt of his dreams.

"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!"

He sat up, rubbing the crust from his eyes, his heart performing a sudden, disorienting leap. Clustered around the foot of his bed were the faces that had become his world over the last nine years. There was Nut, grinning from the top bunk; Hong, still in his undershirt; and even Tui and Lego from the room next door, leaning against the doorframe and clapping along.

And then there was Est.

Est was standing right in the center, his large, warm presence anchored at the edge of William’s mattress. He was holding a small, simple brownie on a chipped ceramic plate. A single, flickering candle stood in the center, and around the edges, "Happy Birthday, Liam" was written in careful, slightly shaky chocolate syrup. For one beautiful, fragile second, the memory of the cold church floor vanished. The metallic taste of blood and the blue stain on his fingers felt like a nightmare from a different life. William looked at the brownie— at the effort Est had clearly put into the presentation, and felt a genuine, wide smile break across his face.

This was his tenth birthday since he’d come to the parish. His tenth-ish year of being under Est’s wing. He felt the familiar, comfortable heat of the room, the camaraderie of the boys, and the sheer, simple joy of being wanted. He clapped along with them, his laughter light and airy, as the final notes of the song rang out.

"Speech! Speech!" Lego barked, shoving William’s shoulder playfully.

But as the singing stopped and the echoes died away, the silence of the room rushed back in— and with it, the weight of the previous night.

William looked up at Est, who was beaming down at him with a pride so pure. Est’s eyes were bright, his heart-shaped lips stretched into a grin that said I’m so glad you’re here. It was the look of a big brother watching his friend finally reach manhood. It was the look of a senior who had successfully guided a younger boy through every test.

The smile, the brownie, the careful writing on the plate— it wasn't love. Not the kind that grew roses. It was the same jolly, universal kindness Est gave to everyone. It was a care that didn't know the depth of the person it was caring for.

"Don't just stare at it, Liam," Est teased, his voice dropping into that warm, private register. He leaned in closer, the scent of the chocolate and the faint smell of the morning mist on his skin swirling together. He held the plate out further, the candle flame dancing between them. "You have to make a wish before you blow it out. Make it a good one. You’re eighteen now— the Lord is listening closer than ever today."

William stared at the flame, his reflection dancing in Est's dark, hopeful pupils. He felt the faint, terrifying tickle of a daisy stem in the back of his throat, a silent reminder of the secret he was now forced to carry.

He closed his eyes. He didn't wish for health. He didn't wish for a long life or for the church to change.

Instead, he let his mind drift to the image of Est’s hands— the way they scrubbed the altar, the way they held the hymnal, the way they were currently holding a plate just for him. He thought of the heavy, dark silence Est had fallen into when they talked about the disease. He didn't want Est to ever look that way again.

If I have to drown in these roses, William pleaded silently, let him never find out. Don't let my sin become his burden. Let him stay exactly this happy, even if it's because he never loved me back.

It was a devastating, quiet suicide of the soul. He wasn't wishing to be saved, no, never that, he was wishing to be erased so that Est could remain pure. And if the Lord is truly listening... let the flowers grow fast. Don't let this linger. Let the blue roses and daisies kill me quickly.

William opened his eyes, a small, fragile smile gracing his lips. He leaned forward and blew out the candle.

The room erupted.

"Yeah! Our little brother is a man!" Est cheered, the plate barely hitting the bedside table before he lunged forward.

With a joyful, boisterous shout, Est threw his arms around William’s neck, his momentum sending them both crashing back into the thin mattress. William let out a startled, breathless groan as his back hit the frame, but before he could even recover, the others were on them.

"Dog pile!" Lego yelled, diving onto the bed.

"Happy birthday, you kid!" Nut laughed, pinning William’s legs down.

Hong and Tui piled on next, a chaotic, warm tangle of limbs, laughter, and the scent of laundry soap. William was buried at the bottom of the heap, the air being squeezed out of his lungs by the weight of the people who had become his only family.

For a few golden seconds, the physical pressure of his brothers was louder than the pressure of the roots. He was laughing, genuinely, breathlessly laughing with his ribs aching from the force of it. He could feel Est’s heart beating against his shoulder, hear the vibration of Est’s joyous shout right against his ear.

In this moment, he wasn't a sinner. He wasn't a walking garden. He was just a boy being loved by his brothers in the only way they knew how. He closed his eyes and let the sound of their happiness wash over him, memorizing the weight of them, the warmth of the room, and the way Est’s arm felt draped across his chest.

It was the happiest he had ever been. And it was the most heartbreaking, because he knew that every second of this warmth was borrowed time.

"Okay, okay! Get off him!" Est finally laughed, pushing Lego’s head away. "You’re going to kill the birthday boy before he even gets a bite of his brownie!"

One by one, they peeled themselves off the bed, breathless and grinning. William stayed down for a moment longer, staring up at the ceiling, his chest heaving. His lungs felt raw, and there was a familiar, sharp tickle beginning to stir in the back of his throat, but he kept the smile pinned to his face.

Est leaned back over him, reaching out a hand to help him sit up. "You okay, Liam? You look like you've seen a ghost."

William took his hand, his fingers trembling just slightly as they disappeared into Est’s larger, warmer palm.

"I'm okay, P'Est," William said, and for the first time in a week, his voice didn't crack. "I'm just really happy."

"Alright, enough of the wrestling! Up you get, Liam," Est laughed, his hands firm and warm as he pulled William into a sitting position. His thumb brushed against William’s wrist in a way that made the younger boy’s pulse skip a beat. "C’mon, Father Reyes prepared a feast for everyone."

Est leaned in, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "He cooked your favorite grilled pork jowl. If we don’t get out there soon, Lego is going to eat your portion and mine."

"Hey! I heard that!" Lego shouted from the hallway, already halfway to the smell of smoke and charcoal.

The mention of his favorite food and the normalcy of Est’s teasing sent a surge of genuine excitement through William. He scrambled out of bed, shoving his feet into his slippers, and followed the rowdy trail of boys out of the room.

The breakfast was loud, chaotic, and perfect.

They sat at the long, weathered wooden table in the communal dining area, the morning sun streaming through the screen door in dusty shafts of light. Father Reyes was there, his apron stained with soot, piling charred, glistening pieces of pork jowl onto a large platter. The air was thick with the savory, caramelized scent of soy sauce, mixed with the steam of freshly scooped garlic rice.

William felt a strange, beautiful sense of peace settle over him as he piled his plate high.

Everything felt normal.

There were no heavy silences. No one leaned over the table to ask if he’d woken up with clear lungs. No one whispered the word Hanahaki or looked at him with the clinical suspicion he had feared. Nut was too busy arguing with Hong over the last piece of crackling skin, and Tui was retelling a story about a choir rehearsal mishap that had everyone doubling over.

Est sat right next to him, his shoulder occasionally bumping against William’s as he reached for the vinegar dipping sauce. He kept sliding the best, fattiest pieces of the pork onto William’s plate without a word, just a quick, private wink whenever William looked up.

"Eat up, Birthday Boy," Est murmured, his voice lost in the general roar of the table.

William chewed, the salty, smoky flavor of the meat grounding him to the present. He laughed until his sides ached, he teased Nut back, and he let himself bask in the warmth of Est’s constant, protective presence.

He almost managed to convince himself that the blue petals in the trash bin were a hallucination. He almost believed that the Lord had seen his prayers and decided to let him keep this life, this simplicity, this love.

But as the meal wound down and the boys began to clear the plates, William felt it— a tiny, sharp prickle against his collarbone, right where his lung met his throat. It was the same sensation of a rose thorn stretching, reminding him that the sun might be out, but the roots were still drinking.

It kept hurting until the greasy, salty sweetness of the pork suddenly felt like lead in William’s stomach. He couldn't do this anymore— he couldn't sit here and pretend his throat wasn't a garden of thorns; he wanted to puke.

"I'm full," William blurted out, his voice a bit too loud, a bit too frantic. He shoved the last of the rice into his mouth, his jaw working quickly as he stood up. "I'll... I'll go ahead and wash my plate. I want to get a head start today."

"Whoa, slow down, Birthday Boy! The sink isn't going anywhere," Est laughed, reaching out to playfully swat at William’s arm, but William flinched away just enough to miss the contact.

"I'm just— I'm good, P'Est. See you in a bit."

He didn't wait for a reply and practically sprinted toward the kitchen, the heavy ceramic plate rattling in his trembling hands. The second he crossed the threshold into the dim, steam-filled kitchen, the dam broke.

He didn't even make it to the basin before he was doubling over, a silent, racking spasm seizing his chest. He slammed the plate into the sink and gripped the cold metal edges of the basin until his knuckles threatened to pierce through his skin.

Please, not here. Not now.

He choked, a dry, jagged sound, and then they came. Six velvet-soft, cobalt blue petals fluttered out of his mouth, landing silently against the white porcelain. There was no blood this time, just the raw, scraping ache of the stems retracting into his lungs.

William’s breath came in ragged, terrified hitches. He stared at the blue stains on the white sink— the physical proof of his disease. With a panicked lunge, he flicked the faucet on high, the roar of the water drowning out the sound of his sobbing breath. He watched, mesmerized by the horror, as the water swirled the petals toward the drain, sucking his secret down into the dark pipes of the parish.

He splashed cold water onto his face, scrubbing at his mouth until it felt numb. He needed to be steady. He then took a deep, shaky breath, wiped his face with his sleeve, and turned around to head back to the table.

He froze.

Lego was standing in the narrow entryway, a stack of dirty bowls in his hands. He wasn't moving. His face, usually so full of mischief and loud jokes, was a mask of pure, unadulterated shock. His eyes were fixed on the sink, then slowly, they traveled up to William’s pale, trembling lips.

The air in the kitchen turned to ice. William felt the blood drain from his head, a dizzying wave of nausea washing over him. The sounds of the laughter from the dining room felt miles away, muffled and distorted.

"L-Lego," William breathed, his voice barely a thread.

Lego’s grip on the bowls tightened. He looked scared— not of William, but for him. 

"Will..." Lego whispered, his voice cracking. "Those were... those were roses."

Shit.

He had seen the blue. He had seen the way the purity of the eighteen-year-old birthday boy had just been vomited into the grey water. William’s knees shook. He felt like he was back on that bridge, the wind howling in his ears. The secret was out. The garden was no longer private.

"Don't," William pleaded, his hands coming up in a desperate, warding gesture. "Lego, please. Don't tell anyone. Please, I'm begging you."

The air in the kitchen was stagnant, vibrating with the silent scream of William’s secret.

Lego was more than just a churchmate; as the two youngest in the group, they were the babies of the parish family. While Est was the sun everyone orbited, Lego was the one William whispered with late at night when the dorm was dark. They had shared textbooks, snuck out for midnight snacks, and leaned on each other through the grueling exams of their youth. Seeing that raw, jagged terror on Lego’s face felt like watching his own reflection shatter.

Lego’s hands shook so violently that the stack of glass cups in his grip began to chatter like teeth. His eyes darted from the drain— where the last trace of cobalt blue had vanished, back to William’s pale, waxy face.

"Will..." Lego’s voice was a high, thin thread of disbelief. "You... you have Hanahaki? But—"

"Lego, please," William hissed, his voice a frantic, jagged whisper. "Please, it’s not what it looks like. I'm okay. I’m fine."

But it was a confirmation. The word Hanahaki hung in the air like a death sentence. The realization that his best friend was walking toward a floral grave was too much; Lego’s fingers went limp.

Crack.

A glass cup slipped from the pile and exploded against the concrete floor, the shards spraying outward. The sound was deafening in the small kitchen, a violent punctuation mark to their secret conversation.

"Shit," Lego gasped, his instinct kicking in even as his mind reeled. He dropped to his knees, his movements frantic and clumsy. "I’m sorry, I— I'll get it—"

"Lego, don't! You'll cut yourself!" William lunged forward, reaching out to stop him, but it was too late.

In his panic, Lego’s palm swiped across a jagged shard. He hissed in pain, a bright line of crimson blooming across his skin.

"What happened? Is everyone okay?"

The heavy tread of footsteps thundered toward the kitchen. Est was the first through the entryway, his brow furrowed in immediate, protective concern, with Nut, Tui, and Hong crowding in behind him.

Lego froze on the floor, his injured hand trembling in William’s grasp. William’s heart was a riot. He felt the cold sweat on his neck, the lingering itch of the roses in his throat, and the sheer, paralyzing weight of the moment. He gripped Lego’s wrist— harder than he intended, his eyes wide and pleading.

Don't tell them, William’s eyes screamed. If you love me, Lego, don't say a word.

He could feel the heat of Est’s presence just inches away, the man already kneeling down to check on them. "Lego? Liam? Are you two okay? What happened?"

Lego looked up. He saw Est’s genuine, worried face, and then he felt the firm, desperate pressure of William’s fingers digging into his skin. It was a silent pact. A plea for mercy the church wouldn't give.

Lego swallowed hard, his face pale, but he forced his lips into a shaky, familiar lopsided grin— the one he used whenever he’d stayed out past curfew.

"I’m just clumsy, P’Est," Lego said, his voice wobbling before he steadied it. He pulled his hand back, hiding the cut against his shirt. "I was trying to show off with the cups and they just... slipped. I’m so sorry. I’m such a mess today."

He laughed, a short, breathless sound that sounded almost real. He only looked at the floor, his eyes glassy with a secret that felt like it was burning a hole in his chest.

Est let out a long, relieved sigh, his tension visibly leaving his shoulders. "Kid, you scared us. Go wash that cut properly. Liam, please help him out? I'll clean up the glass."

"I've got it, P'Est," William croaked, his voice thick with a gratitude that felt like ash. "I'll take care of him."

Before anyone could reply, William kept his grip firm on Lego’s wrist, pulling the younger boy toward the small bathroom near the back of the house where the first-aid kit was kept. Every step felt like walking on a tightrope over an abyss. Behind them, he could hear the mundane, cheerful clatter of Est picking up the broken glass— the sound of a world that was still whole, oblivious to the fact that it had already shattered.

The moment the bathroom door clicked shut, the silence became a suffocating weight.

William reached for the antiseptic, his hands trembling so violently he could barely hold the bottle. But before he could even unscrew the cap, he felt a sudden, desperate pull.

Lego lunged forward, throwing his arms around William’s neck in a crushing, terrified hug. He didn’t care about the blood from his palm staining William’s white birthday shirt; he didn't care about the mess. He just held on as if William were a ghost already beginning to fade.

"Will... oh God, P’William," Lego sobbed into his shoulder, his body racking with a tremor that wouldn't stop.

William stood frozen for a second before his knees finally gave out. He leaned into the embrace, burying his face in the crook of Lego’s neck. The scent of the kitchen— garlic and smoke clung to them both, a cruel reminder of the breakfast they had just shared as "normal" boys.

"I’m okay, Lego... I’m going to be fine," William murmured, his voice muffled and broken. He repeated it like a mantra, a lie he hoped the walls would believe. "It’s going to be fine. Don't cry. Please, don't cry."

But Lego pulled back, his face a map of grief, his eyes red and searching. He gripped William’s shoulders, his bloodied thumb leaving a smear on William’s collar.

"Who is it?" Lego demanded, his voice a jagged whisper. "Who did this to you? Who is it that doesn't love you back? Tell me, Will. Maybe if I talk to her... maybe if she knew—"

"No," William gasped, a fresh, sharp tickle rising in his throat. He swallowed hard, forcing the petals back down. "Don't. It doesn't matter who it is. It won't change anything."

"It does matter!" Lego’s voice rose in a frantic, desperate pitch. He shook William slightly, his eyes wide. "We can fix this. My cousin... she had it, Will. She had the disease. She went to the city, had the surgery, and in two weeks, was back to normal. She’s happy now. She’s okay. We’ll get the money. I’ll help you. We’ll go to the City, and they’ll take the roots out, and you’ll be—"

"No."

The word was quiet, but it was the firmest thing William had ever said. He shook his head slowly, his eyes fixed on a crack in the bathroom tile.

"Will, listen to me—"

"I said no, Lego," William repeated, finally looking up. His eyes were hollow, filled with a resigned, ancient kind of pain. "The surgery... it takes the flowers. But it takes the love, too. It takes the memories. It takes everything they ever gave me."

"So let it!" Lego cried, a single tear falling onto his own bloodied hand. "Let it take them! I’d rather you forget everything than watch you suffocate! I’d rather you look at them and not know who they are than watch you die for a love that isn't yours!"

William reached out, his fingers gently brushing the hair back from Lego’s forehead. A sad, devastatingly beautiful smile touched his lips.

"I can't," William whispered. "If I forget... then the version of me that they saved dies anyway. I’d rather die with my heart full of them than live with a heart that's empty of everything that made me human."

Lego stared at him, the horror of the realization sinking in. "You... you'd choose death over forgetting that person?"

William didn't answer. He didn't have to. The cobalt blue stain on his lips, the scent of roses beginning to fill the small room, and the way he looked toward the door— toward where Est was still laughing— was answer enough.

He reached for the bandage, his movements slow and rhythmic. "Let's clean your hand, Lego. P'Est is waiting. We can't stay in here too long."

Lego’s breath hitched, a jagged, wet sound that filled the small bathroom. He looked at William as if he were already seeing a ghost, his eyes brimming with a helpless, suffocating anger.

"So that's it?" Lego whispered, his voice cracking. "You’re just going to... you're going to let me watch you die? You’re going to sit at that table and eat with us every morning while your lungs turn into a graveyard?"

William’s hand, which had been gently dabbing the antiseptic onto Lego’s cut, went still. The cold liquid stung Lego’s skin, but the silence between them stung worse. William couldn't look at the younger male. He focused on the crimson line on Lego’s palm, the way the blood mixed with the clear medicine— two things that shouldn't be together, just like the roses in his chest.

"I’m not dying, Lego," William said softly. He finally looked up, forcing a small, fragile smile that didn't reach his hollow eyes. It was a practiced mask, the same one he wore for the priests and the parishioners. "I’m not. The Hanahaki... it takes time. And I’m going to make that person love me back. I’ll be the one who beats the odds. You’ll see."

It was the most beautiful lie he had ever told.

He knew there was no beating the odds. He knew that for Est, love was a wide, platonic umbrella that shielded everyone but sheltered no one in the way William needed. He couldn't even bring himself to say Est’s name out loud. He trusted Lego with his life, but could he trust him with his sin? They had sat in the same pews for nine years. They had heard the same sermons about the corrupt fire of two men or two women loving each other. He was terrified that if he said the name, the pity in Lego’s eyes would turn into the same cold judgment he saw in the statues.

"You're lying," Lego breathed, but his voice lacked conviction. He looked at William’s pale face, at the way his shirt collar was slightly dampened by sweat, and he saw the iron-clad resolve there.

Lego knew this version of William. He knew the William who stayed up all night to finish a project, the William who would walk five miles in the rain to deliver a message if he thought it was right. Once William set his heart on a path, he would walk it until his feet bled.

"I'll... I'll help you wash the floor," Lego muttered, finally dropping his gaze. He went quiet, the kind of heavy, defeated silence that felt like a surrender. He knew he couldn't change William’s mind. He knew he was now an unwilling witness to a slow-motion tragedy.

William finished bandaging the hand, his movements clinical and steady. "Thank you, Lego. For staying quiet. For being my brother."

"Don't thank me for that," Lego whispered, his voice thick with a fresh wave of grief. "Just... don't leave me alone with them, okay? If you start to... if it gets bad, you tell me. Promise me."

"I promise," William lied again.

He opened the bathroom door, the sounds of the house rushing back in— the clink of silverware, the distant sound of Father Reyes humming a hymn, and Est’s bright, booming laugh coming from the porch.

The sound of that laugh hit William, a fresh thorn dragging across his heart. He took a deep breath, tasted the ghost of a daisy on his tongue, and stepped back into the world of the living.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

The blue light of the phone screen was the only thing illuminating the dark corner of the room, casting a ghostly, pale glow over William’s face. Around him, the rhythmic breathing of his brothers— of Nut, of Hong, and of Est– felt like a choir of the living, a sound he was slowly losing the right to join.

His thumb hovered over the search bar, trembling. For three days, he had lived in a state of frantic denial. He had swallowed the petals, scrubbed the blood from the sinks, and smiled until his face ached. He had avoided the internet as if it were a confession he wasn't ready to make. But tonight, the itch in his lungs felt like a swarm of bees, a thick, floral congestion that made every breath a conscious effort.

He typed it in, the words feeling like a betrayal of his own survival.

> hanahaki disease symptoms timeline

> can you live with hanahaki without surgery

> hanahaki disease stages of bloom

He didn't want to click the links. He wanted to throw the phone across the room and pretend he was just a normal eighteen-year-old with a common cold. But the reality was rooted in his chest, and the silence of the night was making the truth too loud to ignore.

He tapped the first article. The text was clinical, cold, and devastatingly indifferent to his heart.

Hanahaki Disease: A Clinical Overview

Pre-stage: The Seed 

• Hour 0
• The most violent phase of the affliction. Upon the "Activation" (typically the moment of adulthood or the realization of the depth of unrequited love), the body undergoes a massive, traumatic systemic shock. The primary root system anchors itself into the lung tissue within seconds.

Stage 1: The Sprout

• Days 1–7
• Initial coughing of petals. The body begins to reject the oxygen supply as the root system anchors to the bronchial tubes. Pain is sharp but intermittent.

Stage 2: The Thicket 

• Weeks 2–8
• Increased floral discharge. Flowers begin to bloom in clusters. Potential for lung collapse or internal hemorrhaging as thorns pierce the pleura.

Stage 3: The Full Bloom 

• Month 3
• The respiratory system is overtaken. The "host" typically reaches total respiratory failure within 90 days of the first petal if the love remains unrequited and the surgery is not performed.
• Death. 

William’s breath hitched. Three months.

Ninety days to watch Est's heart-shaped smile from across the church. Ninety days to feel the warmth of Est’s hand on his shoulder and know it was the very thing watering the garden in his lungs. It felt like a lifetime and a heartbeat all at once.

He scrolled further, his eyes blurring. There were forum posts from "survivors"— people who had taken the surgery. They described looking at their former loves and feeling nothing but a vague, distant confusion, like trying to remember a dream they’d had years ago.

“It’s better to be empty than to be a grave,” one user had written.

William clutched his chest, a single, silent tear sliding down his cheek and hitting the screen. He looked over at Est’s sleeping form. He looked like a masterpiece, his features soft and untroubled.

To take the surgery meant to look at that face without feeling the world shift. It meant forgetting the only person who had ever truly seen him.

He closed the browser, the darkness of the room rushing back in to swallow him. Three months. He had ninety days to decide if he wanted to live as a hollow shell or die as a blooming testament to a sin the world would never forgive.

A sudden, sharp spasm racked his frame. He shoved his face into his pillow, stifling the sound, as two perfectly formed blue rose petals and a crushed daisy head spilled onto the white pillowcase. He stared at them in the dark. Three months wasn't a long time, but as he looked at the flowers, he knew he didn't want to be cured. He just wanted to be loved without calling it a sin.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

Day 7

A week had passed since the bells of the sanctuary had sounded like a funeral toll in William’s ears on his birthday. Days of hiding petals in the sleeves of his cassock, days of catching Lego’s frantic, haunted eyes across the dinner table.

Lego was a shadow now, always hovering, always whispering, "How is it, Will? Is it tight? Are you breathing?" whenever no one’s around.  William would only offer that small, fragile smile— the one that felt like a porcelain mask ready to crack and tell him it was manageable. But the truth was a persistent, floral ache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He had roughly eighty-three days left, and he was spending them walking through a minefield of his own devotion.

"Almost there, Liam! I can smell the water," Est shouted, his voice bright and cutting through the humid evening air.

They were deep in the thicket of trees behind the parish grounds, following a path that didn't exist to anyone else. It led to the lake— a hidden, mirror-still expanse of water that Est had stumbled upon years ago. It was a place of deep greens and forgotten silences, a sanctuary Est had once kept entirely for himself until a rainy afternoon nine years ago.

William had been inconsolable that day. Est did not hesitate; he had taken William’s hand and led him here, sharing his only true secret, his only place of peace. “It’s ours now,” Est had whispered then. It was the most selfless thing anyone had ever done for him— and the moment the first seed of the rose had likely taken root.

"You're awfully quiet today," Est said, slowing his pace so their shoulders brushed. He looked sideways at William, his brow furrowing with that localized, intense concern. "Are you tired? You’ve been looking a bit... translucent lately."

"Just thinking, P'Est," William lied, his throat itching with the ghost of a daisy. 

They broke through the final line of trees, and the lake opened up before them, glowing with the orange-pink embers of the setting sun. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and for a moment, the heavy congestion in William’s lungs seemed to ease.

Est didn't waste a second. He was already pulling his shirt over his head, his back muscles rippling in the fading light. He looked so full of life, so vibrant and unburdened, that it made William’s chest tighten with a fresh, sharp pang. Est loved to swim— he moved through the water like he belonged there, escaping the rigid expectations of the church for a few hours of weightlessness.

"Well? You coming in, or are you just going to stand there and look like a statue?" Est teased, standing at the water's edge in just his shorts. He looked back at William, his heart-shaped smile wide and inviting. "The water’s perfect today, Liam. Come on. Forget the chores for once."

William stood on the bank, clutching the hem of his own shirt. He wanted to go in. He wanted to feel the cold water numb the burning in his chest. But he was terrified— terrified that if he submerged himself, the pressure of the water would force the blue truth out of his lungs right in front of the only person he couldn't let see it.

"I'll just watch for a bit," William said, his voice a little tight. "I'll hold the towels."

But Est was never one for spectators. He let out a mischievous, booming laugh that echoed off the surface of the water. Before William could even take a step back, Est surged out of the shallows, his skin glistening with droplets like liquid diamonds.

"Oh no, you don't!"

With a strength that always seemed to catch William off guard, Est swooped down and scooped him up. One arm hooked under William's knees, the other firm against his back, hoisting him into a princess carry as if he weighed nothing at all.

William let out a genuine, high-pitched shriek, his hands instinctively flying up to lock around Est’s neck. "P’Est! Phi! No! No, put me down!"

He was kicking his legs, chanting a frantic string of protests, but Est was just laughing— that deep, belly-shaking laugh that William felt vibrating through his own chest. Est didn’t stop. He turned and marched straight back into the deeper water, his stride confident and relentless.

"Enjoy the water, Liam!" Est shouted, and with a sudden, forceful heave, he threw himself backward, taking William down with him.

The world turned into a silent, bubbling roar of cold blue. They submerged together, the water rushing into William’s ears and soaking into every fiber of his shirt. For a split second under the surface, William saw Est through the distorted lens of the lake— hair floating like seaweed, eyes crinkled in joy.

When they broke the surface, William was gasping, his hair plastered to his forehead. He immediately swung his hand, giving Est a stinging slap on the bicep. "I'm still in my shirt! Phi, it’s all soaked now!"

Est just wiped the water from his face, his chest heaving as he laughed. "So? It’s a lake, Liam. If it's soaked, then just take it off. It’s dragging you down anyway."

The words were casual, but the air between them suddenly felt thicker than the water.

William went to retort, but the words died in his throat. His gaze involuntarily dropped. He saw the way the lake water trailed down the column of Est’s throat, disappearing into the hollow of his collarbone. Est was fit— years of heavy lifting in the parish and swimming in this very lake had carved a lean, powerful physique. His chest was broad, the muscles taut and defined under the golden hue of his skin, glistening with a sheen that made William’s mouth go dry.

A wave of heat that had nothing to do with the sun rushed to William's cheeks. He felt exposed, not because of his clothes, but because of the way his heart was currently trying to batter its way out of his ribs.

"I... I'm going back to the land," William muttered, his voice small and shaky. He turned to wade away, his soaked shirt clinging to his skin like a second, suffocating layer.

"Hey, where are you going?"

Before William could take a second step, a large, wet hand clamped onto the hem of his shirt. With a sudden, playful force, Est yanked the fabric upward. William stumbled back, his arms flailing, but Est was quicker— he pulled the soaked cotton over William’s head in one swift, decisive motion, leaving the younger boy standing chest-deep in the water, bare and shivering.

Est tossed the wet shirt toward the shore, a triumphant grin on his face. "There. Much better. Now you can actually swim."

William stood there, his arms instinctively crossing over his chest, his skin prickling from the sudden contact with the air. He looked at Est, who was watching him with a look of pure, uncomplicated companionship.

Est saw a brother. Est saw a friend.

William felt the familiar, sharp prickle in the depths of his lungs. He wanted to scream at the sky. He wanted to tell Est that every time he smiled like that, a blue rose grew another inch. But all he could do was stand in the cold water, his heart-shaped secret blooming in the dark, and hope that the lake was deep enough to hide the way his hands were trembling.

William didn’t let the embarrassment linger; instead, he cupped his hands and sent a massive wall of lake water straight into Est’s laughing face.

“Take this!”

"Hey!" Est sputtered, blinking away the droplets, but his grin only widened. "So that's how we're playing?"

For the next twenty minutes, the lake was a battlefield of splashes and frantic paddling. William was shrieking, his giggles echoing off the trees as he tried to scramble away from Est’s relentless pursuit. Every time Est got close, he’d lunge like a predatory fish, sending William into a fit of splashing defense.

"Unfair!" William whined, breathless and red-faced, as Est effortlessly glided several meters away with a single, powerful kick. "You know I can't swim that well, Phi! You’re basically a shark!"

"Excuses, Liam! Just move your arms faster!" Est taunted, his head bobbing above the surface, his wet hair slicked back to reveal the sharp, handsome lines of his face.

They played until their limbs felt like lead and the water began to lose its afternoon warmth. It was a reprieve— a pocket of time where the thorns in William’s chest felt dormant, lulled to sleep by the sheer, exhausting joy of being near the person who made his world spin.

Now, the two boys sat on the damp grass at the water's edge, their feet still dipping into the cool, dark mirror of the lake. The air had turned crisp, smelling of wet earth and night-blooming jasmine. William’s hair was a messy, half-dry mop, and his skin felt tight from the lake salt, but he didn't care.

He sat a few inches beside Est, leaning back on his palms. Est was sitting upright, his damp, bare back a landscape of soft shadows and moonlight. He was looking up, his gaze fixed on the vast, glittering tapestry of stars that had begun to pierce through the velvet sky.

"Look at that one, Liam," Est whispered, his voice dropping into that quiet, reverent tone he saved for the heavens. He pointed toward a particularly bright cluster. "Father Reyes says the stars are the windows of heaven. If that's true, it’s pretty bright up there tonight."

William didn't look at the stars. He couldn't.

His view was occupied by something far more celestial. He watched the way the moonlight caught the curve of Est’s shoulder, the way his Adam's apple moved when he spoke, and the peaceful, untroubled expression on his face. Est looked so infinite in the dark— so steady and unreachable.

The ache in William’s chest returned, but it wasn't the sharp sting of a thorn this time. It was a heavy, dull throb of longing. He watched Est and realized that even if he had a thousand years instead of eighty-some days, it would never be enough.

"Liam?" Est asked, turning his head slightly, his profile silhouetted against the lake. "You seeing them? The stars?"

William swallowed hard, the familiar, velvet tickle of a petal brushing against his throat. He forced a soft, shaky breath out of his lungs.

"Yeah, P'Est," William lied, his eyes never leaving the side of Est’s face. "I'm looking. They're beautiful."

The silence that followed was thick with the sound of crickets and the rhythmic lap of the water against the shore. Est didn't move for a long moment, his gaze still fixed on the horizon, but then he shifted, his hand diving into the pocket of his shorts. He fumbled for a second, his brow furrowing in concentration as if he were searching for something precious and small.

Before William could ask what he was doing, Est reached out and took William’s hand. His skin was still cool from the lake, but his grip was warm and certain.

"Here," Est murmured.

He pulled a small object from his pocket. It was a handmade bracelet, woven together with a rugged, careful precision from thin cords of red and blue hemp. Tucked into the center of the weave was a tiny carved pendant— a miniature red guitar, smooth and polished.

William stared at it, his breath hitching. "P’Est? What... what is this?"

"Your birthday gift," Est said, his voice dropping into a shy, almost sheepish register. He began to tie the cords around William’s wrist, his fingers brushing against the sensitive skin of William’s pulse point. "I’m sorry it’s a week late. I didn't realize making a simple bracelet was this hard. I must have undone the knots twenty times because they didn't look right."

He finished the knot and pulled back, looking at the red and blue threads against William's skin. The red for the fire William had in his heart; the blue... no one said it, but the blue matched the very roses currently suffocating William’s lungs.

"It's just for now, Liam," Est added, looking back up at the stars, a hopeful, expansive smile stretching across his face. "A little something to remind you. Next time... maybe not this year, but definitely the next, or the year after that... I want to take you to the sea. Real salt water, not just this lake. And the city, too. We'll see the lights, we'll go to the galleries, movies, and concerts. I’ll make sure of it."

The words hit William like a physical blow. Next year. Next few years.

He looked down at the little red guitar resting against his wrist. Est was planning a future. He was building a bridge to a time when William’s body was already dismantling. Every word of "next time" felt like a jagged shard of glass cutting into William's soul. He wanted to go to the sea. He wanted to see the city lights reflected in Est’s eyes while he still knew exactly who Est was— while he still felt this devastating, beautiful ache.

But life was a cruel comedian. How could he tell him? How could he say that in ninety days, the "Liam" Est knew would either be a hollow shell without a memory of this night, or a body buried beneath the parish floor?

"P'Est..." William’s voice was a broken whisper. His heart felt like it was literally cracking, the roots tightening around the valves as if trying to squeeze the blood out of him.

"You like it?" Est asked, turning to him, his eyes searching William’s face in the moonlight. "You’re so quiet. If you hate the color, I can—"

"I love it," William said, the words catching in a throat that felt like it was lined with velvet and glass. He felt the stinging heat behind his eyes, a sob threatening to rip through his chest, but he forced it down. He couldn't break now. Not here, where the moonlight made everything look so fragile. Instead, he just stared at the red and blue cords, his thumb ghosting over the tiny guitar. "I love it so much, Phi. Thank you."

He leaned his head against Est’s shoulder, just for a brief, stolen second. He let himself feel the solid, living warmth of the man who was unknowingly marking the days of his death. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could freeze the clock, wishing he could tell the stars to stop moving.

How can I even tell you, William cried in his head, his fingers clutching the pendant so hard the edges bit into his skin. I wish to see the sea, to see the city lights with you, too, Phi. But I am a dying sinner…

The silence stretched between them, comfortable for Est, but agonizing for William. After a moment, Est shifted, nudging William’s shoulder with his own.

"Hey, Liam," Est started, his voice a low hum in the dark. "I've been meaning to ask... what did you actually wish for during your birthday? You looked so serious."

William’s heart performed a slow, painful somersault. He remembered the wish— the devastating plea to be erased, to die quickly so he wouldn't become Est’s burden. The irony of sitting here, wearing a gift intended for a long future while his lungs were full of his own funeral flowers, was almost too much to bear.

He forced a small, playful huff and shoved Est’s shoulder, trying to keep his voice light. "You know the rules, P'Est. If I tell you, it won't come true. Do you want me to waste a wish?"

Est laughed, the sound bright and pure, but as the laughter died down, he didn't look away. He looked at William with a soft, quiet adoration— the kind of look a gardener gives a flower they’ve raised from a seed.

"Fair enough," Est whispered. He leaned back on his elbows, the moonlight catching the sincerity in his eyes. "Do you want to know what I wished for you? When I watched you blow out that candle?"

William went still. A cold shiver that had nothing to do with the lake water ran down his spine. He didn't want to know. Every hope Est had for him was a debt William knew he couldn't pay. But he couldn't look away, either.

"You're not supposed to tell me yours either," William breathed.

"I don't care about the rules," Est said. He reached out, his hand resting briefly on the grass near William’s. "I wished for you to have a long, happy life, Liam. A healthy body, a healthy mind... just a life where you never have to feel as lost as you did that night on the bridge."

He paused, his gaze softening even more, becoming heavy with a gratitude that felt like a weight on William’s chest.

"I’m so grateful I found you that night," Est continued, his voice thick with emotion. "Every single day since then, watching you get better, watching you grow into the man you are now... it’s been the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I just want you to keep going. I want to see you old and gray, still singing, still being... you. That’s my wish. That you stay."

William felt a sharp, serrated pain deep in his lungs— a thicket of thorns reacting to the sheer, unintended cruelty of Est’s hope. Est was wishing for a lifetime, and William was counting down ninety days.

He looked at Est’s smiling face— the face he loved so much it was literally killing him, and he realized that the long life Est wanted was already over. William was already a ghost; he just hadn't stopped breathing yet.

"Thank you, Phi," William whispered, his voice disappearing into the sound of the wind.

He looked back at the stars, the red-and-blue bracelet feeling like a shackle. He was being loved by a man who wished for a future that didn't exist, and William had to sit there and smile, knowing he was the one who would break Est's heart by simply ceasing to be.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

Day 35

He has roughly 53 days left.

It was Sunday— the day the community gathered to offer their souls, and the day William felt most like a thief in the House of God.

He was squeezed into the third pew, his shoulder pressed against Est’s. On his other side sat Lego, whose knee hadn't stopped bouncing for the last twenty minutes. The six of them were a solid row of white shirts and neatly combed hair, the pride of the parish.

Father Reyes stood at the pulpit, his voice echoing off the high, vaulted ceiling. He was speaking of The Harvest.

"A seed does not choose where it is planted," the priest’s voice droned, steady and rhythmic. "It simply obeys the nature of the soil. If the soil is bitter, the fruit will be bitter. If the heart harbors a secret growth, it will eventually break the surface. You cannot hide what is rooted in the deep."

William felt a cold, sharp twitch in his left lung. It felt like a thin, serrated leaf was slowly unfurling against his ribcage. He stared straight ahead at the large, wooden crucifix, his fingers white-knuckled as he gripped the edge of the pew.

If the heart harbors a secret growth... Every word of the sermon felt like a targeted strike. He could feel the "growth" now— a dense, tangled thicket of blue roses and daisies that had begun to crowd out his breath. It was a physical occupation.

"Let us stand," Father Reyes commanded.

The rustle of a hundred bodies rose in unison. William stood, his head spinning. Beside him, Est stood tall, his chest expanded with a clean, easy breath. He looked so holy in the filtered light of the stained glass— so unburdened.

"Together," Father Reyes led, "Our Father."

The congregation began the rhythmic chant, a low, droning murmur of a hundred voices speaking as one.

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name..."

William tried to join in. He opened his mouth, but instead of words, a hot, metallic surge rose in his throat. He swallowed hard, his eyes watering.

"...thy kingdom come, thy will be done..."

The vibration of the collective chanting seemed to shake the very roots in William's chest. A jagged, floral bud wedged itself at the base of his windpipe. He couldn't breathe. The air was being replaced by the scent of a funeral parlor.

Stop, he pleaded silently, looking at the Christ on the cross. Please, stop.

"...our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who..."

At the word trespasses, William broke.

A wet, muffled sound escaped his lips— a cough he couldn't swallow. He didn't wait for the next line. He pivoted, his shoulder shoving past Lego, and stumbled into the aisle. The sound of his dress shoes hitting the marble was like thunder in the middle of the prayer.

Est’s chanting faltered. He reached out a hand, his fingers grazing William’s arm. "Liam?" he whispered, his brow furrowing with a sudden, sharp alarm.

William didn't look back. He covered his mouth with his hand, feeling the first damp petal hit his palm, and sprinted toward the back of the church.

Est made a move to follow, his body half-turning out of the pew, but Lego was faster. Lego’s hand clamped onto Est’s shoulder, holding him back with a surprising, desperate strength.

"I've got him, P'Est," Lego hissed, his voice trembling but firm. "Stay. You’re the lector— you have to give the response in two minutes. Everyone is looking."

Est hesitated, his eyes fixed on the heavy oak doors where William had disappeared. He looked torn, his protective instinct warring with his duty to the altar. He looked like he wanted to scream William’s name, but the silence of the Mass held him hostage.

"Go," Est breathed to Lego, his voice tight, his eyes never leaving the back of William’s retreating head. "Just... make sure he is okay."

Lego nodded once, his face set in a mask of grim determination, and slipped out of the pew. He moved with a quiet urgency, disappearing through the heavy oak doors just as the congregation’s voices rose in a final, haunting swell.

Inside the small, cramped comfort room behind the sacristy, the air was cool and smelled of industrial bleach, a sharp contrast to the suffocating incense of the sanctuary. William collapsed against the sink, his chest heaving as he gripped the cold porcelain to keep from sliding to the floor.

Then, the pain hit.

It was more violent than anything he had felt before— a racking, jagged eruption that felt as if a thousand needles were being pulled upward through his throat. He doubled over, a choked, wet sound escaping his lips.

It wasn't just a few countable petals anymore.

A flood of cobalt blue and frayed white spilled into the basin— dozens of them, some crushed and mangled, others perfectly formed but slick with a bright, terrifying crimson. The daisies were longer now, their stems beginning to fray at the ends where they had been torn from his lungs. The blood speckled the white porcelain like macabre art, a vivid, pulsing reminder that his time was no longer his own.

The pain was a living thing, a searing heat that bloomed in his chest and radiated through his ribs. He stared at the mess in the sink, his breath coming in shallow, whistling gasps that sounded like wind through dead leaves. He reached out a trembling hand to turn on the faucet, desperate to wash the evidence away, but the door creaked open.

Lego stood there. He didn't say a word. His face was a ghostly pale, his eyes wide and glassy with a grief that looked like its own kind of sickness. He stepped inside, the click of the lock echoing in the small space like a gavel.

The sound of the congregation’s chanting still filtered through the vents— distanced, holy, and hollow.

"...deliver us from evil. Amen."

"It's more than last week, Will," Lego whispered, his voice cracking as he looked at the sheer volume of the flowers clogging the drain. "They’re taking up all the space. You can barely breathe, can you?"

William reached for the faucet with a hand that wouldn't stop shaking. He watched the water swirl, a whirlpool of dilute pink and crumpled blue, until the last of the petals vanished down the drain. He stayed there for a moment, head bowed, before he finally straightened his spine and forced his face to rearrange itself into something resembling peace.

He turned to Lego, a small, fragile smile flickering onto his pale lips.

"I'm okay, Lego," he rasped, the words sounding like dry paper rubbing together. "It was just a bad one. I’m fine now. Really."

Lego didn't move. He stood by the locked door, his shadow long and jagged against the tiled floor. "No, you are not," he whispered, his voice cracking with a frustrated, helpless anger. "Don’t do that. Don’t smile at me like you’re just having a headache. You’re literally bleeding out onto the church floor, Will."

Lego’s hand dove into his trouser pocket, fumbling frantically until he pulled out a small, amber plastic bottle. He stepped forward and pressed it into William’s palm, his fingers cold and trembling.

"Take these," Lego urged. "They’re from my cousin. The one who had the disease."

William looked down at the unlabelled bottle. "Lego, I told you, I’m not doing the surgery—"

"It’s not for the surgery.” Lego hissed, his eyes wide and pleading. "It’s... it’s a suppressor. It’s not a cure, okay? It won’t stop it, but it’s supposed to slow the growth. It relaxes the lungs so the roots don't move as much. She took these for a month before she finally went to the city. Please, Will. If you won't get the operation and won't tell me who it is so I can help you... at least take these. I’m begging."

William stared at the pills, the weight of the bottle feeling like a heavy stone. Through the small, high vent of the bathroom, he could still hear the distant, muffled cadence of the Mass. He thought of the crucifix in the sanctuary— the way the wooden eyes of Christ had seemed to track him as he fled. To William, those eyes didn't look like they were offering mercy. They looked like they were judging the "sin" that was currently strangling him.

If he told Lego it was Est, the judgment wouldn't just be from the cross anymore. It would be in Lego’s eyes. It would be in the way the other boys looked at him. He couldn't bear the thought of his love being called a stain or a corruption by the people he called brothers.

"I can't tell you, Lego," William whispered, his grip tightening on the pill bottle. "I just can't."

"Why?" Lego’s voice was a jagged sob. "Is it someone's girlfriend? Is it a teacher? Will, I don't care! I just want you to live… Please.”

William looked at the locked door, knowing Est was on the other side of it, probably doing his lecture in front of everyone with his heart-shaped smile and his clean, holy lungs. He thought of the red and blue bracelet hidden under his sleeve, the one Est had made with his own hands.

"I'm not going to die today," William said, dodging the question with a hollow steadiness. He popped the cap of the bottle and swallowed one of the bitter, white tablets dry, the pill scraping against his raw throat. "See? I'm taking them. I'll be okay."

Lego looked at him, unconvinced, his heart breaking in the silence of the bathroom. He knew William was choosing a secret over a life, but as he watched his friend wipe the last smudge of blood from the corner of his mouth, he knew he couldn't force the truth out of a heart that was already being guarded by thorns.

The heavy oak doors of the church creaked quietly as William and Lego slipped back inside. The air was cooler now, the Mass moving toward its conclusion, the drone of the final prayers hanging in the high rafters like a lingering fog.

William kept his head down, his hand instinctively adjusting the sleeve of his shirt to hide the red and blue bracelet— and the small, amber bottle of suppressors now tucked into his pocket. His throat felt like it had been scrubbed with salt, but the pill was beginning to cast a strange, numb chill through his chest, a hollow quiet that felt artificial and fragile.

As they approached the third pew, Est shifted. He pivoted his entire body, his eyes searching the dim aisle until they landed on William. He looked frazzled— his speech notes were crumpled in his lap, and the usual pristine set of his shoulders was gone, replaced by a tense, leaning posture that screamed of a man who had been counting the seconds.

William felt the weight of that gaze. It wasn't the look of a friend, or even a brother. It was the look of someone who felt a phantom ache in their own side when the other was hurt. And it was exactly what William couldn't handle. 

Don't look at me like I'm breaking, he pleaded silently. Don't make me the tragedy in your story.

They slid back into their seats. The wood felt cold against William's legs.

Almost instantly, Est leaned over. The scent of him— clean soap and the faint, outdoorsy smell of the lake– cut through the cloying incense, making the roots in William’s lungs twitch in recognition.

"Liam," Est whispered, his voice a jagged, low vibration that only William could hear. He reached out, his hand hovering just inches from William’s knee before he pulled it back, gripping the edge of the pew instead. "What happened? You two were gone so long. Your face... you're white as a sheet."

William kept his eyes fixed on the altar, on the flickering candles that were slowly burning down to nothing. He forced his lips to curve, a small, rehearsed smile that felt like it might shatter if he breathed too hard.

"I'm okay, P'Est," William murmured, his voice a raspy thread. "It was just a little cold. The incense... it just got to me today. My chest felt a bit tight."

He turned his head then, just enough to meet Est’s eyes. He saw the doubt there— the sharp, piercing worry that made Est’s heart-shaped mouth pull into a thin line. Est wanted to reach out. He wanted to check for a fever. He wanted to carry William back to the dorm and make him tea, oblivious to the fact that every act of care was another drop of water for the blue roses.

"Just a cold?" Est pressed, his brow furrowed, his hand finally settling on William’s forearm, his thumb pressing right against the pulse point above the bracelet. "You're trembling, Liam. If you're sick, you should have told me. We could have stayed home."

"I'm fine now, Phi. I promise," William lied, the taste of the bitter pill still lingering on his tongue.

He stayed perfectly still, letting Est’s hand remain on his arm, even though the touch felt like a beautiful, searing brand. He sat there in the silence of the church, a boy dying of love in the house of a God who called it a sin, listening to the man he loved plan a tomorrow that William would never see.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

Day 54

It was Holy Week, the most solemn stretch of the year in the province, where the air itself seemed to hold its breath in reverence. The village had gathered for the annual Pagbasa ng Pasyon— a marathon chanting of the life and suffering of Christ that had lasted since early morning.

Multiple different voices had risen and fallen in a rhythmic, hypnotic drone, a collective mourning that echoed through the humid air. Now, as the final chapters were being read, the exhaustion was visible on the faces of the children sitting on woven mats and the elders clutching their rosaries.

"And he bowed his head," the lead chanter’s voice rasped over the makeshift speakers, "and gave up the ghost."

A heavy, profound silence fell over the field. It was the moment of symbolic death, the point where the chanting ceased and the gravity of the sacrifice settled over the crowd.

"It’s over for today," Est whispered, his voice low and solemn as he stood up from the grass, brushing the dry blades from his trousers. He looked around at the sea of tired but peaceful faces. "We should start cleaning up."

William sat still for a moment longer, his fingers dug into the earth. The "Passion" had been a grueling experience this year. Every description of a thorn, every mention of a wound, had felt like a direct commentary on the garden currently suffocating him. With the suppression pills Lego had given him, the violent coughing had subsided into a dull, constant ache— a heavy, leaden feeling in his chest that made every breath feel like he was inhaling soil.

As the crowd began to disperse, a girl named Grace wove through the moving bodies, her eyes locked on Est. She was the picture of provincial grace— wearing a pale, prim Sunday dress with delicate lace at the collar that made her look neat, untouchable, and profoundly correct. Her hair was pinned back with a simple pearl clip, and as she reached Est, a soft, unmistakable blush bloomed across her cheeks.

"Est," she murmured, her voice sweet and clear, "Father Reyes asked if you could help with the candle processions for tomorrow. I told him I’d be happy to coordinate with you."

Anyone watching them would see the obvious.

The way she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, the way she leaned into his space… Grace clearly liked Est. To the world, they looked like the beginning of a beautiful, holy story. Two pillars of the community, a boy and a girl, destined for a life the church would celebrate with bells and white flowers.

William felt a pang of pain that was sharper than any thorn. They looked good together. Almost perfect.

A girl and a boy.

He watched Est offer her that easy, radiant smile— the same one he gave everyone. William was fairly certain Est was oblivious to the weight of her gaze, but that didn't stop the poison from seeping into William’s heart.

This is how it’s supposed to be, William thought, his fingers clenching into the dirt until the soil went under his nails. A girl like Grace— a life like theirs.

The internalized shame flared up, a hot, suffocating heat that rivaled the tropical evening. He looked at his own thin, trembling hands and felt a wave of profound self-loathing. He was a seed planted in the wrong soil. He was a mistake in the middle of a sacred field.

He imagined Est at the altar, but not as a lector— as a groom. He saw Grace in white, and he saw himself in the pews, his lungs finally full of the blue roses that were his only true inheritance. It was a future the world wanted, a future that God seemingly demanded.

"Liam? You coming?" Est called out, finally turning away from Grace, though she stayed close to his side, her eyes still lingering on him. William looked up, his face a pale, static mask. He felt the suppressor pill fighting the urge to cough, but it couldn't stop the ache. 

"Umm…. Actually, P’Est," William started, his voice suddenly jumping an octave, sounding brittle and almost too jolly. He forced a wide, toothy grin that didn't reach his tired eyes. "I totally forgot! P’Nut already asked me to help him move the heavy hymnals back to the choir loft. He’s probably waiting and getting grumpy about it. You and Grace go ahead— don't let me keep you!"

Est blinked, his brow furrowing. "Nut did? I thought he was—"

"Yeah, yeah! Big hurry!" William interrupted, already backpedaling toward the stone stairs of the rectory. He gave a frantic, cheerful wave, his heart hammering against his floral-choked ribs. "See you at dinner!"

He turned and practically ran, not stopping until the sight of Est and Grace, standing together like a holy portrait, was swallowed by the shadows of the corridor.

He found Nut in the sacristy, quietly folding the linen altar cloths. Nut was the second oldest, the most observant, and the one who carried the silence of the church in his very bones. William didn't pick up a hymnal; instead, he sat on a low wooden stool, his hands tucked between his knees to hide their trembling.

"You're late for helping," Nut said without looking up, his voice steady and calm. "But then again, I don't remember asking for help."

William let out a weak, shaky laugh. "Busted."

They sat in silence for a long time, the only sound being the crisp snap of the linens being folded. William watched a dust mote dance in a stray beam of light, his chest feeling like it was filled with lead and thorns.

"P'Nut?" William asked softly, his voice barely a rasp. "In the stories... the ones Father Reyes tells... he always talks about the garden of the heart. About how some things are planted by God, and some are... weeds."

Nut paused, a white cloth draped over his arm. He looked at William, his gaze piercing but not unkind. "Everything that grows needs a reason, Will."

William swallowed hard, the bitter tang of the suppressor pill coating his tongue. "But what if... what if something grows that isn't in the book? What if a tree grows toward a light it isn't supposed to see? Does the gardener hate the tree for it? Or does He just... let it burn?"

He wasn't looking at Nut anymore. He was looking at the floor, his voice trembling with a devastating, quiet terror.

"If someone’s heart is full of something they can’t change," William whispered, "something that makes them feel... heavy, even when they’re trying to be good... do they still get to see the sea? Do they still get to go to the place where there’s no more pain? Or is the door locked because they didn't grow the right way?"

Nut didn't answer immediately. He set the linen down and walked over, placing a heavy, grounding hand on William’s head. He didn't know about the blue roses. He didn't know about William’s bloom, the Hanahaki. But he knew the sound of a soul breaking under the weight of its own existence.

"I think," Nut said slowly, "that the Architect knows the heart better than the people who read the blueprints. If a flower is beautiful, Will, it's hard to call it a sin. Even if it's growing in the dark."

William closed his eyes, he almost teared up there. It wasn't the answer he needed, but it was the only one he could afford to hear. He sat there in the dim light of the sacristy, clutching the red and blue bracelet under his sleeve, wondering if God would forgive him for blooming for a man instead of a girl— or if the blue roses in his lungs were just the smoke before the fire.

Nut paused, his hand still resting heavily on William’s head. The silence in the sacristy stretched. Nut wasn't easily fooled; he had seen too many boys grow up under the shadow of the steeple to not recognize the sound of a soul looking for a trapdoor.

"That’s a heavy kind of curiosity for a Sunday evening, Will," Nut said, his voice dropping an octave, searching William’s downcast face. "Why are you asking about locked doors and burnt trees? Did someone say something to you?"

William flinched internally, the suppressor pill suddenly feeling like a cold lump of lead in his stomach. He forced his muscles to relax, forcing that same brittle, "jolly" mask back into place, though it felt heavier than before.

"Nothing, Phi," William said, quickly standing up and brushing invisible dust off his trousers. He offered a quick, jerky shrug, his eyes skittering toward the stacks of hymnals to avoid Nut’s perceptive gaze. "Just curious, that’s all. You know how the brain gets after hours of chanting. Everything starts sounding like a riddle."

He grabbed a stack of the heavy books, his arms trembling slightly from the effort, and gave a small, forced puff of a laugh.

"I guess I just wondered if the Garden of Eden had any blue roses and daisies in it," William added, his voice trailing off into a whisper that he hoped Nut wouldn't catch.

Nut watched him for a long beat, his expression unreadable, before he slowly picked up the last linen cloth. "The Garden had everything that was beautiful, Will. Remember that. Don't let the sermons make you think the Architect is a tyrant."

"Right. Of course," William said, already backing toward the door. "I'll... I'll go put these in the loft. See you at dinner, Phi."

He practically bolted from the room, the weight of the hymnals pressing against his chest, mimicking the literal weight of the roots around his heart. He climbed the narrow, creaking stairs to the choir loft, every step a struggle for oxygen.

When he reached the top, he leaned against the wooden railing, gasping for air that felt like it was being filtered through silk and thorns. He looked down at the empty nave of the church. In the dimming light, the pews looked like ribcages, and the altar looked like a tomb.

He reached down and touched the red-and-blue bracelet under his cuff. 

If a flower is beautiful, it’s hard to call it a sin.

Nut’s words were a mercy, but William knew the truth of his own body. He was roughly 36 days into a 90-day sentence. He was a boy who had asked about heaven because he was starting to realize he might be seeing it much sooner than Est.

He sat on the floor of the loft, hidden from view, and let out a single, jagged breath. He didn't cough, but he could feel the blue roses shifting, settling deeper into his lungs, waiting for the next time he dared to look at Est and hope for a sea that would never come.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

Day 68

22 days remaining.

The rhythmic, frantic shuck-shuck of wet fabric against a plastic basin was the only sound in the suffocating silence of the communal laundry area. It was 2:14 am. The air was thick with the scent of cheap detergent and the cloying, metallic sweetness of a florist’s dumpster.

William was doubled over the tub, his knuckles raw and bleeding from the friction. He was scrubbing with a violent, feral desperation, trying to erase the evidence of his own internal collapse.

The second month had been a descent into a beautiful, floral hell. The Hanahaki in him had become a forest, a dense, thorny architecture that had claimed nearly two-thirds of his lung capacity. Every breath was a conscious negotiation with the roots. 

Tonight, the negotiation had failed.

He had woken up in the dark, clutching his throat, his eyes bulging as his body underwent a traumatic, wet convulsion. It wasn't just petals anymore. A cluster of three heavy, near-bloomed blue rosebuds— thick-stemmed and jagged with thorns– had forced their way up his esophagus. They had brought with them a terrifying amount of dark, venous blood, soaking into his white bedsheets in a multiple blot of his own approaching end.

"Get out... please just get out," William hissed, his voice nothing more than a wet, broken whistle.

He stopped scrubbing for a second, his body racking with a silent, dry heave. He gripped the edges of the tub, his thin arms trembling. In the harsh, flickering fluorescent light of the laundry room, William looked like a ghost. His skin was a translucent, sickly grey, and the dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises.

During the day, he was a masterpiece of deception. He had doubled down on his annoying persona— cracking jokes at the breakfast table, trailing after Nut with endless questions, and being the loud, energetic younger brother the parish expected him to be. He was so jolly it was almost exhausting to watch, a manic performance designed to keep anyone from looking too closely at the way he leaned against walls to catch his breath.

But the isolation was the real weapon. He had mastered the art of being present while remaining untouchable. He stayed two paces behind Est at all times. He stopped sharing snacks. He made sure there was always a table, a chair, or a person between them. He couldn't risk Est smelling the blood or the flowers. He couldn't risk Est feeling the heat of the fever that now lived in William's marrow.

A sudden, sharp spasm hit his diaphragm. William shoved a wad of the wet sheet into his mouth to stifle the sound, his eyes watering as he felt a fresh, jagged stem scrape against his vocal cords.

He spat into the soapy water.

A single, perfect blue rosebud, its petals slightly unfurled and tipped with crimson, floated to the surface. It bobbed mockingly in the suds, a silent testament to a love that was growing more beautiful even as it killed the host.

William stared at it, his chest whistling with a shallow, labored rhythm. He was 22 days away from the Full Bloom… the point of no return. The suppressor pills Lego gave him were almost gone, and they were doing nothing now but making his head swim.

"Twenty-two days," he whispered, his thumb ghosting over the red and blue bracelet on his wrist. It was frayed now, the colors fading from the constant washing, but it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

He looked at the bloodstain on the sheet, which was stubborn and brown against the white fabric. It looked like a shadow.

He began to scrub again, the motion robotic and frantic. He had to be clean by 5:00 am. He had to make sure that when Est looked at him, all he saw was a brother, and not the garden of a dying boy.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

Day 76

The air at the hidden lake was cooler than it had been two months ago, carrying the sharp, crisp scent of the coming rainy season. There was no splashing tonight, no playful shrieks echoing off the water’s surface. The silence was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic chirping of cicadas and the labored, shallow whistling of William’s breath.

Est had practically dragged him here. He hadn't asked, and he had simply grabbed William’s wrist and led him into the woods. He hadn't said a word the entire walk, his jaw set in a hard line that William hadn't seen since the night on the bridge.

Now, they were lying side-by-side on the long, cool grass. The stars were brilliant overhead, a sprawling map of light that seemed to mock the fading spark in William’s own chest.

William’s collarbones were sharp enough to cut, his skin was the color of parched parchment, and the jolly mask he wore during the day had finally cracked under the weight of the evening. He lay perfectly still, his hands folded over his stomach, trying to suppress the rhythmic tremors that shook his frame. The suppressor pills were almost gone. Every breath felt like inhaling a bouquet of thorns.

Est was lying on his side, his head propped up on his hand, watching the way William’s chest struggled to rise and fall. The worry in Est’s eyes had evolved into a quiet, simmering terror. He knew. He didn't know the name of the disease, and he didn't know the cause, but he knew that the boy he had pulled from the ledge was slipping through his fingers again— this time from the inside out.

"You're not even trying to hide it anymore, are you?" Est’s voice was a low, jagged murmur, cutting through the dark.

"Hide what, P'Est? I'm just tired. It’s been a long week."

"Don't," Est snapped, the sound sharp and pained. "You’re pretending to be okay. You’re more than sick, William. I can see it. You’re thinner every time I look at you, and you’ve been sick with this cold for months. You’re pale."

William’s heart stuttered, a sharp, invisible petal catching in the back of his throat. He swallowed hard and kept his eyes locked on the stars, terrified that if he looked at Est, the truth would spill out of his eyes before it spilled out of his lungs.

Est shifted on the grass, his shadow looming over William. "I know you’re still in there. Behind the jokes and the smiles. But you’re withdrawing. You’re isolating yourself from me... from everyone. Why? Are you planning to leave the church?"

"I'm not leaving," William whispered, the lie feeling like lead.

"Then tell me what’s happening," Est pleaded, his voice breaking. "Is it your head? Or is it something... something you think you can't tell the Church? Because I’m not the Church, Liam. I’m just your Phi. And I’m scared for you."

Est let out a long, shaky breath, his gaze dropping to the dark surface of the lake. The anger seemed to drain out of him, replaced by a raw, heavy vulnerability.

"You know," Est started, his voice dropping into a confessional tone, "everyone thinks I’m the one who saved you that night on the bridge. They think I’m the hero of that story because I was the one who reached out first."

He let out a dry, hollow laugh, his fingers absentmindedly plucking at a blade of grass.

"But there’s something I never told you about that night. Something I’ve been too scared to say because I didn't want you to think I was just as broken as you were…. I wasn't just there by accident, Liam."

Nine years ago.

The rain didn’t fall so much as it drowned.

Twelve-year-old Est stood on the rusted railing of the bridge, his small fingers gripping the cold iron until his knuckles turned as white as the foam churning in the river below. The wind tore at his oversized shirt, but he didn't feel the cold. He didn't feel much of anything anymore. The world had become a grey, suffocating blur, and the roar of the water beneath him sounded less like a threat and more like a lullaby.

He was officially nothing. At twelve, the math of his life had finally added up to zero.

He thought of the small, cramped room they had called home. He thought of his mother— the only person who had ever looked at him like he was a miracle. She had raised him alone, a fierce, beautiful woman who had survived everything the world threw at her, until she met him.

The man hadn't stayed. He had been a whirlwind of sweet promises and hollow laughter, a "forever" that lasted exactly five months. And when he walked away, he didn't just leave a hole in her heart; he planted a garden in her lungs.

Hanahaki. 

Est had learned the word in whispers from the neighbors. A disease of the unrequited, where the body decides that if it cannot have love, it will simply become a vase for it.

"Mama, please," Est had begged, kneeling by her bed as she coughed up the first delicate white petals. "The doctor in the city... they can take them out. They can perform the surgery. You won't hurt anymore."

But she had looked at him with eyes that were already glassy. "And forget him, Est? Forget the only time I felt like I wasn't just a servant to this world?"

The desperation had turned into a war. He had screamed, he had thrown the flower-stained basins across the room, he had pleaded until his voice was raw. And then, the breaking point came. In a fit of oxygen-deprived rage, his mother had lunged forward, her hand connecting with his cheek in a stinging slap that echoed louder than his cries.

"You're the reason!" she had shrieked, her voice wet with phlegm and floral rot. "If I didn't have you, he would have stayed! You're the weight around my neck, Est! You're the curse!"

He had run. He had spent the day hiding in the tall grass by the lake, waiting for the sun to go down, waiting for her to come find him and tell him she didn't mean it.

But when he finally crept back into the house, the silence was absolute.

His mother was lying on the floor in the center of the room, her hair fanned out like a dark halo. She looked peaceful, almost beautiful, except for the cluster of pristine, white-petaled daisies growing out of her open mouth, their stems rooted deep in her throat. There was no blood, only the terrifying, silent purity of the flowers that had traded her life for their bloom.

She had chosen a memory of a man who didn't love her over the son who did.

Now, standing on the bridge, Est looked down at the dark water. If love were a garden that eventually became a grave, he didn't want any part of it. He leaned forward, the gravity of the river pulling at his chest, ready to let the current take the curse away.

He closed his eyes.

And that was when he heard it. A hitching, broken breath from the other side of the railing. A sound so similar to the one he had been making all day that it forced his eyes open.

Just a few feet away, another shadow was perched on the edge. A boy, so much younger than him, looking just as lost, just as ready to vanish.

In that moment, the boy who wanted to die saw someone else about to fall, and the hero he was destined to become flickered into life. Est didn't jump. Instead, he reached out his hand.

Est’s voice trembled as the flashback faded from his eyes, his gaze returning to William’s pale face in the moonlight.

"I wasn't there to save you, Liam," Est whispered, his hand finally closing over William’s trembling fingers. "I was there to jump, too. But then I saw you. And I realized that if I couldn't save her... maybe I could save you. In fact, you did save me, too.”

He squeezed William’s hand, a desperate, crushing grip. "So don't you dare leave me now. Don't let me be the one who fails twice."

William kept quiet. He lay there, his body paralyzed, his face as pale as the daisies Est had just described. The reveal didn't just change the story of that night on the bridge— it shattered the very foundation of William’s reality. He had spent months thinking of Est as his savior, the golden, untouchable hero who had pulled him from the dark. He hadn't known he was holding onto a boy who was drowning just as fast as he was.

But the horror went deeper.

Daisies. His mother had died of daisies.

William’s lungs burned, the blue roses and white daisies inside him twisting in a violent, agonizing sympathy. He felt the cold, jagged truth piercing his throat. He wasn't just dying of a secret; worse, he was dying of the exact same poison that had orphaned the man he loved. He was becoming the very trauma Est had spent years trying to outrun.

A single, hot tear escaped William’s eye, tracking a slow, silver path down his temple and into the grass. Then another.

"Liam?" Est’s voice was a frantic whisper. He shifted closer, his hand hovering over William’s face. "Hey, don't... don't cry. I didn't tell you to make you sad. I just wanted you to know that you're not alone in being broken. I just wanted you to see why I can't let anything happen to you."

But that was the problem. That was the crushing, devastating irony of it all.

William finally turned his head. His eyes were bloodshot, swimming in a sea of grief so profound it seemed to pull the light out of the air. He looked at Est and saw the twelve-year-old boy standing on that bridge. He saw the child who had watched his mother choose a ghost over him. He saw the boy who had survived only because he decided to become a shield for someone else.

And William was about to shatter that shield.

"P'Est..." William’s voice was a broken, wet rasp.

He didn't think. He couldn't afford to think anymore. With a strength born of pure, desperate agony, William threw himself forward, his thin arms wrapping around Est’s neck as he collapsed against his chest.

He sobbed. It was a violent, racking release of months of terror, guilt, and suppressed love. He buried his face in the crook of Est’s neck, his fingers clutching at the fabric of Est’s shirt as if it were the only thing keeping him from drifting into the dark.

"I'm sorry," William wailed into Est’s skin, the words muffled by his tears. "I'm so sorry, Phi. I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."

Every sob felt like a serrated blade in his lungs. He was crying because he realized that even when Est couldn’t reciprocate his love, his Phi loved him as a second chance. He had made William his family. He had poured all the love he couldn't give his mother into this "annoying little brother" who had stayed by his side.

And William was the cause of the very thing that would destroy Est again.

He could feel the flowers rattling in his chest with every gasp, a garden of blue roses that was fueled by the very heart he was currently leaning against. He was the disease. He was the slap on the cheek. He was the silence in the room after the breath stopped.

"I'm so sorry," William choked out again, his body trembling so hard Est had to wrap both arms around him just to keep him from falling apart.

Est held him tight, his chin resting on William’s head, his own tears finally beginning to fall. "It's okay, Liam. I'm here. You're okay. Just breathe... please, just breathe for me."

But William couldn't tell him. He couldn't tell him that every breath he took was an act of war against a body that wanted to bloom. He just clung to him, weeping for the sea they would never see, and for the man who was going to have to find another boy on a bridge when William was gone.

He clutched the back of Est’s shirt, his knuckles white, his forehead pressed so hard into Est's shoulder that it hurt. The flowers in his chest seemed to pulse in time with his sobbing, the thorns dragging against his lungs as if trying to remind him of his place.

"P'Est..." William choked out, the sound hitching in a way that made his entire frame shudder.

Est held him tighter, his large hands splayed across William’s back, a steady, grounding presence in the middle of the storm. "I'm right here, Liam. I've got you. Just let it out. You don't have to be the jolly one tonight."

William pulled back just an inch, just enough to look up at Est through eyes that were swollen and brimming with a devastating clarity. He looked at the man who had traded his own leap into the dark to give William a light.

"I love you," William whispered.

The words didn't come out as a joke. They didn't come out with the easy, lighthearted tone the other boys used when they were teasing each other in the cafeteria. It was a raw, jagged confession that bled from a place deep beneath the ribs, a place currently being claimed by blue roses.

It was a declaration of the very sin that was killing him.

Est’s expression softened instantly, a wave of profound, protective tenderness washing over his features. He didn't see the romantic longing in the depths of William’s pupils; he didn't hear the way the words were weighted with a lifetime of "what-ifs." To Est, this was the sound of a broken younger brother finally admitting he needed his family.

"I know, Liam," Est murmured, his voice thick with his own unshed tears. He reached up, his thumb brushing a stray tear from William’s hollow cheek. "I love you too. More than you know."

He pulled William back into the embrace, tucking William’s head under his chin. "You’re my brother, okay? You're the family I got to choose. I’m never going to let you go through anything alone again. We're going to get you better. We're going to find out why you’re so tired, and we're going to fix it."

Fix it. William closed his eyes, his heart cracking at the unintentional cruelty of Est’s promise. Est was speaking of brotherhood and healing, while William had just confessed the very thing that made healing impossible.

"Yeah," William breathed into the dark, his fingers brushing against the red and blue bracelet on his wrist. "Brother."

The word tasted like ash.

He stayed there, wrapped in the arms of the man who was both his savior and his executioner, listening to the steady beat of a heart that he was destined to break. 

He had 14 days left. 

Fourteen days to be the "brother" Est deserved, while every cell in his body screamed that he was something else entirely.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

Day 83

The wood of the confessional felt like a vertical coffin.

William pressed his forehead against the cold, vertical slats of the screen, his fingers digging into the ledge until his nails bled into the grain. He wasn't there for a conversation with God. He wasn’t there to repent— you couldn't repent for the way your lungs chose to grow. He was there because the silence of the dorm had become a physical weight, and every time Est looked at him with that pure, brotherly devotion, the roots in William's chest tightened like a noose. He was a walking desecration, a boy whose very breath was a violation of the hymns he sang every Sunday.

"Forgive me, Father," William rasped, the words catching on a velvet petal. He swallowed hard, the taste of copper and rosewater flooding his mouth. "For I have... I have allowed a desecration to take root in the House of God."

On the other side of the screen, the priest shifted. It was not Father Reyes who knew his routine. He was a shadow, a silent auditor of the soul’s rot. He didn't know this was William— the boy with the jolly mask and the red-and-blue bracelet. He only heard the voice of a dying sinner.

"God’s mercy is a wide sea, my son," the priest’s voice was a low, clinical drone. "What is this desecration you speak of? Is it pride? A theft?"

William let out a jagged, wet sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn't ended in a choked wheeze. He gripped the wooden ledge so hard his fingernails bit into the grain.

"It’s a love, Father," William whispered, and the word felt like a blasphemy in the dark. "A love that wasn't invited. A love that grew like a weed in the middle of a sacred field. I looked at... I looked at a man, and I didn't see a brother. I saw the sun. I saw the only reason to stay on the earth."

He paused, a sharp spasm racking his frame. He shoved his sleeve into his mouth, stifling a cough that felt like a chest-bursting eruption. When he pulled his arm away, he could feel the dampness of the blood soaking into the cotton.

"And now," William continued, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly hollow register, "the garden is full. The roots have wrapped around my heart so tight I can hear them straining against the valves. I am dying of a beauty I wasn't supposed to witness. I am being suffocated by the very thing they told me was a sin."

"The Hanahaki…." the priest murmured, the word landing between them like a stone. "You have the floral affliction. The physical manifestation of a heart that has turned away from the natural order."

"Is that what it is?" William’s voice rose, a frantic, jagged edge cutting through the quiet. "A turning away? Or is it just... a blooming? I didn't choose the seed, Father. I didn't water it with anything but my own survival. I prayed until my knees bled for God to take the roses away, to make the daisies stop. I begged for the light to be enough, but it’s… it’s here. It’s cobalt blue, and it’s white, and it’s tearing me apart from the inside out."

He leaned closer to the screen, his forehead touching the cold slats.

"Tell me," William pleaded. "When the final bud opens... when my lungs finally turn into a graveyard... where does the soul go? Does the Gardener burn the weeds? Or does He forgive the flower for simply being born in the wrong soil?"

The silence from the other side of the screen was absolute, a suffocating weight that felt like the heavy, wet soil of a fresh grave.

"The City offers the surgery, my son," the priest said finally, his voice devoid of the warmth William craved. "To remove the roots is to return to the grace of the Architect. To keep them... is to choose the man over the Creator. You are choosing to die for a shadow. You are making a martyr of a mistake."

A martyr of a mistake.

The words hit William. He thought of Est’s mother— the white daisies in her throat, the choice she made to keep a memory instead of a son. He thought of Est’s hand on the bridge, the desperate, heroic grip that had saved a boy who was now voluntarily walking into the same fire.

"I can't take the surgery," William breathed, the roots in his chest tightening in a violent, sympathetic throb. "Because if they take the flowers, they take him. They take the way the light hits his eyes. They take the way he says my name when he thinks I'm sleeping. If I lose that... then the person who leaves that hospital isn't me. It’s just... a hollow shell with clean lungs."

He let out a long, shuddering breath that smelled of roses and rot.

"I’d rather be a grave full of him," William whispered, "than a temple that is empty of everything that made me feel alive."

The silence that followed was not holy. It was a sudden, terrifying absence of air that made the blue roses in William’s lungs flare in a violent, territorial throb.

On the other side of the screen, the priest’s breath hitched— a sharp, inhaled gasp of pure, unadulterated shock. For a moment, the only sound in the confessional was the frantic, wet whistling of William’s airway, a sound like wind moving through a ribcage made of thorns.

"Blasphemy," the priest breathed, his voice no longer a clinical drone but a trembling, thin wire of horror. "To compare the Divine Sacrifice to the corruption of the flesh... to the misplaced hungers of a boy who has forgotten the Word..."

"Misplaced?" William’s voice rose, a jagged, frantic edge cutting through the darkness. His fingers were digging into the wood until a splinter pierced his thumb, the sting lost in the greater agony of his chest.

"Tell me, Father..." William whispered, the words hanging in the cramped space like a final sentence. "What is the difference between my love and yours? You spend your whole life devoted to a Man you've never touched, a Man who died two thousand years ago. I am devoted to a man who saved me from the water ten years ago. Why is your sacrifice called a calling, while mine is called a sickness? Why is your cross a crown, and mine is just a garden of filth?"

A hot, metallic surge rose in his throat. William didn't fight it this time. He let the liquid heat spill past his lips, a dark, viscous smear that stained the white wood of the ledge.

"Answer me!" William hissed, his eyes wide and bloodshot in the shadows. "If God is love, then why is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt the very thing that is drowning me? Why did He give me a heart that only knows how to beat for another man, if all He intended to do was watch it turn into a bouquet for my coffin?"

"Silence!" the priest commanded, the wood of the booth vibrating with the force of his palm hitting the divider. "You are not in your right mind. The disease... the Hanahaki... it has rotted your reason along with your lungs. You speak of love, but you describe a suicide. You describe a man made of bone and skin."

"He isn't just a man," William gasped, a fresh, jagged leaf unfurling against his pleura, making him wince in a sharp, white-hot flash of pain. "He’s the sea. He’s the reason I didn't jump. He’s the only person who looked at a broken, drowning kid and decided I was worth the weight of his own survival. If that isn't holy, Father... then why did God give me a heart that could only be saved by this? Why did He make the cure for my soul the very thing that is killing me?"

The priest didn't offer a penance. He didn't offer a prayer. Through the screen, William heard the rustle of robes as the man stood up— a sound of retreat that felt like the slamming of a heavy, celestial door.

"You have chosen your path, my son," the priest said, his voice now distant and cold, stripped of even the pretense of mercy. "If you refuse the surgery, you are choosing the grave. And if you carry that confession into the earth... you carry it alone. The Church cannot bless a heart that insists on its own destruction."

William’s throat was caught; it was not because of the growing vines, not because of the thorns from the cobalt blue roses. But— because he simply couldn’t say anything.

“Bless your heart and soul, my son.” The latch on the priest’s door clicked open, leaving William in a silence so absolute it felt like an excommunication.

William sat in the dark for a long time after the priest’s footsteps faded into the vast, echoing silence of the nave. He looked down at the ledge. In the dim light filtering through the curtain, the blood looked black—a blot of his own ending.

His religious guilt was a second, slower Hanahaki, its roots tangling with the blue roses. He didn't want to hate the Church; he wanted to belong to it. He wanted to be the good boy Est was proud of, the faithful servant Father Reyes praised. 

He wanted a version of heaven where he didn't have to leave his heart at the gate.

He pushed back the curtain and stepped out. The church was empty, the air heavy with the scent of snuffed candles and old stone. He walked toward the altar, his steps slow and deliberate, each one a feat of strength. He felt like a trespasser in his own home.

He stopped and sat at the third pew.

He reached down and touched the wood where Est sat every Sunday. He could almost feel the warmth of Est’s shoulder against his own— a warmth that felt more real than the stone saints staring down from the alcoves.

I am a garden of filth, William thought, a sad, devastatingly beautiful smile touching his lips. But if You made the flowers, Lord, then You must know why I can’t rip them out. Even if they’re the wrong color. Even if they're for him.

Then, a footstep echoed through the sanctuary, a shadow fell over the pavement.

“The wind’s getting cold, Will. You’ll catch a cough staying out here.”

William looked at the owner of the voice and saw Hong leaning against the stone pillar. Hong looked at William with a quiet, steady, clarity– the look of a brother who was used to sharing the same quiet spaces.

“Already got one, maybe, who knows,” William rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves over pavement.

Hong didn’t ask what exactly he meant. He didn’t ask why William’s eyes were dead or why his hands were shaking. He walked over and sat beside him, leaving a comfortable, respectful gap between them. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a candy, and put it between them.

“P’Est was looking for you earlier,” Hong said softly, staring out at the dark silhouette of the trees. “I told him you were probably under the trees, singing. He looked… restless. You know how he gets when he can’t find you.”

WIlliam subtly flinched at the name, a sharp, floral pang radiating through his chest. “I’ll… I forgot to tell him I was here.”

He didn’t wait for Hong’s reply.

“Phi… Do you ever feel like… like you’re a trespasser?” WIlliam whispered, his voice trembling. “Like you’re living a life that was never meant for you?”

Hong shifted, this wasn’t new. They had sat and talked like this before– on the edge of old stone benches, or tucked away in the back of the music room of the parish when their shoulders felt heavy. William had always been the one with the loud thoughts, the one who carried the world in his throat, and Hong was the one who knew how to hold the silence for him. There was something about Hong that didn't demand an answer or a prayer. 

"Every day, Will. I think most of us are just pretending until the lights go out." He turned his head then, giving William a small, tired smile. 

"I believe God didn't give us a map for everything," Hong said softly, his voice a steady anchor in the humid night air. "Sometimes we just find ourselves in a room we don't recognize, and we have to sit there until the sun comes up. It doesn't mean you don't belong. It just means the light hasn't hit the corners yet."

William felt a hot, thick surge of emotion in his throat.

"What if I can't wait for the sun?" William breathed, his fingers digging into the edge of the stone bench. "What if I'm just... tired of the room?"

"Then you just sit here with me for a bit," Hong murmured. "The walls don't feel so close when there's two people in the room. You don't have to explain the tired, Will. I can see it. Just... breathe. For five minutes, you don't have to be anything else."

The silence that followed wasn't the suffocating, holy quiet of the sanctuary. It was a shared silence, heavy and warm. 

"Thanks, P'Hong," William whispered, his voice barely a thread.

"Don't thank me. It’s too humid for speeches," Hong joked quietly, though his eyes remained anchored on his friend. He stood up slowly, giving William the space to breathe without feeling watched. "Go back when you're ready. Est is probably still waiting for you."

Hong walked away toward the dorms, his footsteps a rhythmic, grounding sound on the gravel. William stayed for a long time, the silver candy wrapper glinting.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

Day 87

"I know you have Hanahaki, William."

The rag in William’s hand froze against the cool, tarnished curve of the altar rail. Everything stopped. The ticking of the wall clock, the distant hum of the village, the very blood in William’s veins. It felt like a cold blade driven straight through the center of his chest.

William didn’t give Tui a glance. He gripped the brass rail until his knuckles turned the color of bone. "I don't... I don't know what you’re talking about, Phi. It’s just a cold. The rainy season is—"

"Don't lie to me." Tui’s voice cracked, the first sign of the composure breaking. "I’ve watched you for weeks. I’ve seen the way you look at the floor. I’ve seen the way you hold your chest, the way you cover your mouth when you cough."

“P’Tui—“ William wanted to deny it again, to defend himself. But he couldn’t, not when a sudden, violent spasm racked William’s frame. He tried to swallow it, to shove the floral eruption back down into the dark, but it was too much. He doubled over, a wet, tearing sound escaping his throat.

He coughed.

He coughed up a single, full cobalt blue rose, its petals unfurled and heavy, slick with a dark, venous crimson. It hit the marble floor with a soft, sickening thud, a vivid blue stain against the white stone.

Tui’s face went a ghostly, translucent pale. His eyes filled with a raw, unadulterated horror that made William feel like a monster.

"I knew," Tui whispered, his voice trembling so hard he had to drop the linens onto a pew to keep from falling. "Of course, I knew, Liam. I had one before."

William froze, his bloodshot eyes darting to Tui’s face. "You... what?"

"Two years ago," Tui said, his gaze fixed on the bloodied rose on the floor. "I had the surgery. I went to the city, and they took the roots out of me—“

“And you… you didn’t tell us?”

“That’s not the concern here. I’m alive, and I went through surgery. But you… William—” Tui stepped forward, his hand hovering over William’s shoulder but never touching, as if he were afraid William might shatter. "I recognized the scent, Will, just a few days ago. The way the air around you started to smell like a funeral parlor. I kept waiting for you to say something. I kept waiting for you to ask for help, to ask for the money for the city..."

Tui stopped, his breath hitching as he looked at the sheer size of the rose on the marble. He looked at the way William’s shirt was dampened by the sweat of a fever that wouldn't break.

"But it's... it's already late, isn't it?" Tui’s voice was a jagged sob. "The Full Bloom. You’re not at the sprout anymore. You’re at the end. You're... you're dying, William."

William slowly straightened his spine, though the movement made him wince. He looked at Tui, his eyes hollow but filled with a devastating, ancient kind of peace.

"I'm not dying, P'Tui," William rasped, the words sounding like dry leaves skipping over a grave. "I'm just.... I chose this. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay."

Tui stared at him, the horror in his eyes turning into a suffocating grief. He looked at the boy he had shared a dorm with, the boy who was currently a vase for his own ending, and realized there was no bridge left to build.

"Why? Who is it?" Tui whispered, a final, desperate question. "Who is worth this?"

William didn't answer. He dropped back to his knees, his knuckles white as he gripped the polishing rag, scrubbing the brass altar rail with a violent, frantic energy. The screech of the cloth against the metal was the only thing keeping the sound of his own whistling lungs at bay. He just wanted to finish the chore. He wanted to clean the floor, hide the blood, and walk out of the heavy oak doors before the garden in his throat claimed his voice forever.

"William, look at me!" Tui’s voice came sharper this time, firmer, vibrating with a helpless, frustrated anger. He stepped over the fallen linens, his shadow falling over William’s trembling shoulders. "Tell me her name. If she knew— if that girl saw what you were doing to yourself for her—"

‘That girl,’ William wanted to scream, to correct him. It was never a she, P’Tui. It was P’Est. Our brother, the same brother who saved me, who taught me how to clean this brass. 

But he didn’t want anyone to know about it. No, not until he’s gone.

“William, who—“

"It doesn't matter anymore!" William snapped, finally bolting upright.

He swayed on his feet, his vision blurring into a dizzying swirl of stained-glass colors. He looked at Tui, his eyes bloodshot and sunken. He hadn't slept in three days; he hadn't kept a meal down in two. His body was a battleground where the flowers were winning.

"It doesn't matter who it is, P'Tui," William rasped, a thin trail of blue-tinted saliva escaping the corner of his mouth. "Because I'm a sinner. That’s what this is, isn't it? A sickness of the soul? A weed that didn't grow the right way? Well, let it be. I’d rather die with my heart full of the thing that saved me than live with a chest as empty and cold as yours."

"What are you talking about… A sin? What sin? Stop talking like that!" Tui shouted, reaching out to grab William’s shoulders. "You're eighteen! You have a voice that people pray to hear! You can't just—"

"I am a garden of filth!" William’s voice broke into a jagged, wet shriek. "I chose this! I’d rather be a grave for my own secret than a temple that's been hollowed out! Leave me alone, Phi Tui! Just let me be!"

The exertion of the shout was the final thread snapping.

A sudden, tectonic shift occurred in William’s chest. It felt as if a massive, thorny vine had just wrapped itself around his windpipe and pulled. His eyes bugged out, his hands flying to his throat as his knees hit the marble with a sickening crack.

He began to cough.

It wasn't just a petal like a minute ago. It was a violent, volcanic eruption of floral matter and dark, thick blood. He hacked until his face turned a bruised purple, spitting out clusters of cobalt blue roses, their stems long and jagged, tangled with white daisy heads that were shredded and soaked in crimson. The floor beneath him vanished under a carpet of blue and red.

"Will! William, stop! Breathe!" Tui screamed, dropping to his knees, his hands hovering frantically over William’s heaving back. "Oh God... Will, please!"

William tried to gasp, but he inhaled only the cloying, suffocating scent of roses. His lungs were full. There was no more room for air. The last thing he saw was the absolute horror on Tui’s face before the world tilted, the cold marble rushed up to meet his forehead, and the light in the sanctuary went black.

Hiss. Click. Hiss. 

The first thing William heard wasn't the usual sound of nature, but a mechanical, rhythmic hiss. It was the sound of a machine trying to do what his lungs no longer could.

His hand felt heavy, anchored by a warmth that was trembling. He tried to twitch his fingers, but they felt like lead, heavy. Slowly, the world began to bleed in through his eyelashes. A suffocating white of the community clinic welcomed him.

"Will? Will, please... please wake up."

Lego’s voice was a jagged, wet wreck. William forced his eyes open, the light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs stinging like needles. He was lying on a narrow cot. An oxygen mask was strapped to his face, the plastic fogging up with every shallow, whistling breath he managed to claw back from the roses.

Lego was slumped in a chair beside him, his forehead pressed against their joined hands. He was sobbing— a violent, heaving grief that shook his entire frame.

"You told me you’ll be fine... I shouldn’t have—," Lego choked out into William’s knuckles. "No, I should have told everyone. I should have stolen more of the pills and forced you to get the surgery. I should have… but I let you rot, Will. It’s my fault. So, please… please wake up. Don’t do this to us.”

William’s gaze drifted past Lego’s shaking shoulders. Tui was standing by the door, as still as a statue in a graveyard. He hadn't changed his clothes. The white shirt he’d worn for the altar was splattered with a terrifying map of crimson and cobalt— William’s blood, William’s flowers. Tui looked hollowed out, there were no tears, his eyes fixed on a point on the floor as if he were still watching the roses bloom out of William’s mouth.

In the corner, Nut was pacing. His footsteps were a frantic, uneven beat against the floor. Nut, who usually had an answer for every theological riddle, looked completely lost. His hair was a mess, his hands were trembling, and he kept rubbing his face as if he could wipe away the reality of the room.

Then there was Hong.

He was sitting on the edge of the bench by the window, his arms folded tightly across his chest as if he were trying to keep himself from breaking apart. Unlike the others, Hong wasn't looking at the blood or the oxygen mask. He was looking at William’s face, his expression a mask of grim, exhausted recognition.

"Where..." William’s voice was a ghost, muffled by the plastic mask.

His eyes darted frantically toward the door. He was looking for a heart-shaped smile. He was looking for the man who had pulled him from the bridge. But the doorway was empty. Est wasn't there.

"He’s awake!" Nut’s voice cracked. He practically fell toward the bed, his shadow looming over William. Lego’s head snapped up, his eyes bloodshot and swollen, a fresh wave of tears spilling over as he saw William’s clouded gaze.

"Will? Oh God, Will," Lego sobbed, gripping his hand with a bruising strength. "Can you hear us? See us? Don't leave. Please, don't leave me here."

Nut reached out, his hand hovering over the oxygen mask, his face a mask of desperate, frantic confusion. "William... Tui told us. He told us what he saw in the church. What do you mean you have Hanahaki? How long? Why didn't you say anything? Why would you let it get this far?"

Nut’s questions were like stones being dropped into a well.

William looked at them— his brothers, the only family he had left. He saw Lego’s guilt, Tui’s haunted silence, Nut’s shattering, and Hong’s steady, aching anchor. He felt the weight of the mask on his face and the artificial air forced into his throat, but it didn't feel like life. It felt like a delay.

Under the sheets, he felt the red-and-blue bracelet against his wrist. It was the only thing that felt real.

"Where is… P’Est?" William rasped, the words scraping against the floral wall in his throat. 

"He’s... he’s talking to the doctor right now," Nut whispered, his voice thick with a strange, dark pity. "He was the one who found you, Will. He saw you and Tui in the sanctuary— he was the one who carried you all the way here while Tui was still in shock. Tui had to tell him, right there in the hallway, why your lungs were giving out and why the floor was covered in blood. And Est... he didn't say a word. He looked like he’d been struck by lightning."

William closed his eyes, a single, hot tear slipping under the edge of the oxygen mask. He had wanted it to be a beautiful memory. He had wanted to be a brother who simply faded away into the rainy season. Instead, he had been found by the very person he was trying to protect. He had forced Est to carry the weight of his dying garden, to feel the heat of the fever through his clothes, and to hear the rattling of the blue roses in his chest.

"I'm sorry," William breathed, the plastic fogging one last time before his head fell back against the pillow. "I'm so sorry I couldn't be... just a brother."

But no one heard the last three words, only him. They were swallowed by the hiss of the oxygen and the frantic, broken murmurs of Lego and Nut.

Then, the door to the clinic creaked.

The heavy, metallic sound of the latch was like a gunshot in the small room. Lego’s sobbing hitched, and Nut’s pacing came to a dead halt. Tui, still leaning against the far wall with William’s blood dried into the fibers of his shirt, slowly straightened his spine. Hong, who had been an unmoving anchor, finally unfolded his arms, his knuckles white as he braced for the light to hit the corners of the room.

Est.

Though Est didn’t enter alone. Behind him stepped the village doctor— a man whose face was a map of every tragedy this province had ever weathered. 

Est didn’t rush to the bedside. He didn’t scream. He didn't even cry. There was no salt on his cheeks, no redness in his eyes. Instead, he looked like a man who had been hollowed out by a sudden, violent frost. His skin was the color of ash, and his gaze was fixed on the oxygen mask over William’s face with a terrifying, vacant intensity. He looked like another person entirely— as if the radiant hero of the parish had been replaced by a ghost who had forgotten how to haunt.

His world, the floor, had been pulled out from under him, leaving him suspended in a void where the only thing visible was the boy he had pulled from the bridge ten years ago, now drowning in a different kind of water.

The doctor moved toward the bed with a heavy, practiced slowness. He didn't look at William’s face first; he looked at the monitors, then at the way William’s chest didn't rise so much as it strained, a jagged, tectonic shifting under the thin cotton gown. He reached out, his fingers pressing against the side of William’s neck, then his chest, feeling the irregular, thrumming beat of a heart fighting against a forest.

William felt the touch— cold and clinical– but his eyes never left Est. He felt a surge of guilt so potent it rivaled the physical agony in his lungs. He realized he had committed the ultimate cruelty. He had spent years being the one person Est didn't have to worry about, the second chance that made the death of Est’s mother bearable. And now, he was becoming the exact same trauma. He was forcing Est to relive the silence of that house, the scent of the funeral parlor, and the sight of a loved one being traded for a bloom.

The doctor pulled back, his hands retreating into his pockets.

"It’s not in the lungs anymore," the doctor whispered, the words sounding like a death sentence read in a crowded room. A heavy, suffocating pause hung in the air, thick enough to choke on. "The roots... they’ve calcified. They’ve wrapped around the heart and fused with the pleura. It’s too late for the city. It’s too late for the surgery."

The doctor’s voice cracked, dropping into a register of pure defeat. "To take the flowers now would be to take the life itself. He is in Full Bloom. It is... irreversible. I’m sorry."

The room broke.

Tui, who had been a silent sentinel of dried blood and guilt, suddenly doubled over. A raw, guttural wail tore out of him— a sound so jagged it felt like it was physically lacerating the air. He fell against the wall, his hands clawing at his own chest as if he could rip out his own healthy lungs and trade them. His sobbing was violent, a messy, unadulterated horror. He was the only one who knew the cost of the "clean" future, and now he was the only one who knew there wouldn't even be that.

"Damn it!"

The curse hit the room like a physical blow. It was Nut. Nut, who never raised his voice, who lived by the Word, was standing with his fists clenched so hard his knuckles were white. His face was twisted in a mask of pure, blasphemous rage. "Fuck it all to hell! Why him? Why this?" He kicked the metal leg of a chair, the screech of it against the floor punctuating Tui’s wails.

Hong, meanwhile, didn't move. He wasn't screaming like Nut or wailing like Tui; he was just staring at William with a look of absolute, quiet devastation. His eyes were starting to get wet. He was the anchor that had finally snapped, drifting silently into the dark room he had tried so hard to help William navigate.

The youngest, Lego, simply collapsed. He slid from his chair to the floor, his forehead resting against the mattress of William’s bed, his small hands clutching the sheets in a death grip. 

“No, no, no! This is all my fault. No, P’William.”

And William?

William lay there, a prisoner in a ribcage of thorns, watching the carnage his heart had caused. He wanted to scream. He wanted to tell Est he was sorry for being a seed in the wrong soil. He wanted to explain that he hadn't meant for his love to become a weapon.

But Est hadn't moved.

He hadn't flinched when Tui wailed. He hadn't blinked when Nut cursed the heavens. He stayed rooted to the spot, his eyes still fixed on the oxygen mask, his expression utterly, terrifyingly blank. He wasn't looking at the doctor. He wasn't looking at the brothers. He was staring at the plastic fog of the mask as if he were looking at a corpse already laid out for the wake.

He hates me, William thought, a single, hot tear carving a path through the sweat on his cheek. Doesn’t he?

The doctor straightened his back, the joints in his spine popping in the heavy quiet, and looked at the group of boys who had become a family of orphans.

"You have to decide," the doctor said, his eyes finally landing on Est, though Est didn't return the look. "Do you want him to stay here, in the clinic? Or... do you want to take him home? To his own bed?"

The word home sounded like a slur in the sterile room.

"No!" Lego shrieked. He scrambled up from the floor, his face a smeared mess of tears and snot, his small chest heaving as if he were the one with the flowers. "No, we aren't taking him home to die! We’re going to the city! My cousin— my cousin had the same thing, the same cough, and the surgeon at St. Jude’s fixed it! He took the roots out, and now she’s a teacher, she’s fine! We just need the money, right? I’ll sell the bike, I’ll—"

"Lego, stop," Nut rasped, though his own voice was shaking so hard he had to bite his lip to keep it together.

"I won't stop!" Lego turned on Nut, his voice rising to a frantic, jagged peak. “We just have to get him to the city! We can't just sit here and watch him turn into a... into a bouquet!"

Tui buried his face in Hong’s shoulders, his frame hitching in a silent, rhythmic agony that was louder than any shout. He knew the difference between a sprout and a forest, and he knew that William was already a forest.

William watched them through the plastic fog of the mask, and the pain in his chest shifted. It was no longer just the thorns— it was a cold, suffocating guilt that felt like drowning in mercury. 

I am so selfish, William thought, his fingers twitching against the thin sheets. I kept the beauty and gave them the rot. I let myself bloom because I was too weak to be empty, and now I’m leaving them to clean up the petals.

He felt like a parasite. He had taken their found family, their peace, and their brother, whom they all looked up to, and he had fed it all to the cobalt roses. He wanted to reach out and shake Lego, to tell him to stop hoping because hope was the sharpest thorn of all. He wanted to apologize for being the "second chance" that failed.

He looked at Est again.

Est still hadn't flinched at everyone’s outburst. He was still staring at William’s mask, his face so void of life that for a second, William wondered if they had both died in the sanctuary and this was just the rehearsal for their funeral.

"Est," the doctor said, more firmly this time. "He doesn't have much time. If you want him to see the stars one last time, you need to move him now. Or he dies in this bed, under these lights."

The mention of the stars seemed to pierce through the frost. Est’s hand, which had been hanging limp at his side, slowly curled into a fist. The knuckles turned the color of the marble floor William had bled on.

Est finally moved. He walked toward the bed, his shadow stretching long and dark over William’s frail frame, and for the first time, he reached out.

"We aren't going to the city," Est said.

His voice was a dead thing. It was flat, hollow, and utterly devoid of the warmth that usually defined him. It was the voice of the boy on the bridge who had watched his mother turn into a graveyard.

"P'Est, no!" Lego cried out, grabbing at Est’s sleeve. "We have to try! You always say we have to try!"

Est finally looked down at Lego. There was no pity in his eyes— only a vast, terrifying exhaustion. "There is nothing left to try, Lego. The garden is full."

He looked back at William, and for a fleeting, agonizing second, the mask of ash cracked. A flash of pure, unadulterated horror flickered in Est’s gaze as he looked at the red-and-blue bracelet on William's wrist— the colors of a bond that was now a noose.

"He's going home," Est whispered, his hand finally trembling as it hovered over William’s forehead, not quite touching, as if the heat of William’s fever might burn what was left of him. "He’s going to… he’s going to find his peace in the only place that ever felt like ours."

He couldn't say the word die. He couldn't give the darkness that much power.

But the room heard it anyway.

The announcement was the final blow to the dam. Tui’s wails turned into a hollow, rhythmic gasping, as if he were trying to breathe for William. Nut turned away, his forehead pressed against the cold glass of the window, his shoulders shaking in a silent, violent rejection of the world. Hong finally broke. He slumped against the wall, his face buried in his hands as he let out a hard, heaving sob that seemed to tear right through his chest. Below them, Lego’s grip on the sheets tightened until the fabric tore, his small voice reduced to a broken, repetitive whimpering of William’s name.

William lay behind the plastic fog, his heart stuttering against the calcified weight of the cobalt blue. He felt a devastating, cold clarity. The room was filled with the sound of a family breaking, and he was the fracture.

I'm sorry, he thought, the darkness at the edges of his vision beginning to bloom once more. I’m sorry I’m making you walk me to the gate.

He closed his eyes, the hiss of the oxygen mask fading beneath the chorus of his brothers' grief, and for a moment, he didn't feel like a sinner or a garden. He just felt like a boy who was very, very tired of carrying the spring.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

Day 89

The return to the dorm two days ago wasn’t the homecoming they had once imagined. There was no laughter, no scent of shared meals— only the cloying, heavy perfume of cobalt roses and the sterile tang of the medicine the doctor had sent with them.

No one spoke about the number of days left. No one asked exactly how many days were left. The calendar on the wall felt like a ticking clock, each sunset a stolen mercy they hadn’t earned.

And ultimately, no one knew he had exactly one day left to breathe.

Lego had become a shadow at the foot of William’s bed. He refused to eat, refused to sleep, his eyes rimmed with a raw, angry red. Every time William coughed— a wet, rattling sound that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards, Lego would flinch as if he’d been struck.

"I should have told them," Lego would whisper into the hem of William's blanket, his voice a broken loop of penance. "If I hadn't kept your secret... if I hadn't let you talk me into it... we'd be in the city. You'd be angry at me, but you’d be breathing."

William wanted to reach out to tell him that the secret was the only thing that had kept him whole, but his strength was a flickering candle.

To make the end bearable, Nut and Tui had spent the first morning dismantling their own lives. They stripped their beds, hauling their thin, worn mattresses over to William’s corner. They layered them one by one, sacrificing their own comfort to give William’s frail, bony frame a softness he had never known in their years of poverty. They tucked the sheets with a frantic, religious precision, as if a wrinkle in the fabric might be the thing that finally broke him.

Hong was the only one who refused to treat the room like a wake. He moved through the space with a deliberate, forced normalcy, humming under his breath as he folded the laundry. He’d sit on the edge of the makeshift bed, peeling an orange with his thumb and talking about the stray dog that had chased a delivery bike into the parish courtyard that morning.

William lay atop the mountain of linens, his body feeling strangely weightless. His lungs were, for the first time in months, eerily peaceful. He couldn't tell if it was the heavy dose of suppressors the doctor had provided to "ease the transition," or if the garden inside him had finally won enough territory that it no longer needed to fight. The pain was a dull, distant hum, a low tide retreating from the shore.

But the peace of his body was a lie compared to the war in the room.

And then there was Est.

Est was no longer the man who had pulled him from the bridge. He was a stranger wearing a familiar face. He moved through the room with a terrifying, mechanical efficiency. He checked his temperature, adjusted the pillows, and wiped the sweat from William’s brow with a damp cloth, but he did it all in a crushing, clinical silence.

When they were alone, the isolation was absolute. Est treated him like a fragile piece of glass— something to be cleaned and maintained, but never touched with any real warmth. He spoke in short, functional sentences.

"Drink this."

"Turn your head."

"Breathe."

But William saw through the mask. He saw the way Est’s hands shook when he thought William wasn't looking. He saw the way Est would stare at the red-and-blue bracelet on William's wrist with an expression of such profound, agonizing horror that it made William want to rip the threads off.

Every time Est’s eyes met his, William saw the silent, screaming question, Why?

"P'Est..." William rasped one afternoon, the name sounding like dry parchment.

Est’s hand froze as he adjusted the basin of water, but he refused to look at the boy. He stood there, his back to William, his shoulders so tense they looked like they might snap.

"Don't," Est whispered. It wasn't a command; William knew better. It was a plea. "Just... save your breath, William. You need it."

He didn't say to live. He didn't say to get better. He simply left the sentence hanging in the air, a hollow space where a future should have been.

William watched him walk away, the floorboards creaking under the weight of a man who was already mourning a boy who hadn't yet stopped breathing. 

The night came, and William lay staring at the ceiling of the dorm, his eyes wide and burning. He was sure of it now. The air felt different— thinner, as if the room itself was running out of room for him. This was the last time the moon would cast that specific, silver ribbing across his blanket. The last time he would hear the rhythmic, uneven breathing of his brothers in the dark.

Every tick of the wall clock was a drop of water in a rising tide.

Did he have regrets? The thought drifted through his mind like a ghost. He looked at his hands, pale and trembling against the mountain of mattresses Nut and Tui had built for him. He thought of the life he could have had— a voice that people prayed to hear, a career in the city, a chest that felt light and empty.

But then, he looked at Est.

Est was sitting in a chair by the window, his silhouette a jagged break against the starlight. He wasn't sleeping. He hadn't slept in days, not since the garden in the sanctuary.

William realized, with a devastating clarity, that a life without the memory of the only person who made him feel alive was a fate worse than this slow, floral execution. To look at Est’s heart-shaped lips and feel nothing? To touch those calloused, steady hands and not know that they were the reason he bothered to draw breath? That was the true sickness. He would rather die full of the thing that saved him than live as a man who had forgotten how to love.

Yet, the old, religious shadows of the parish still clawed at his mind.

I am a sinner, he thought, the word tasting like copper. I am a weed that didn't grow the right way. I’ve turned a house of God into a greenhouse for my own obsession.

He wondered if there was even a place for him after this. If he died with this secret, would he ever truly find peace? Or would his soul just be another tangled root, forever searching for a sun it wasn't allowed to touch? He felt he didn't deserve the soft bed, the tears of Lego, or the silent vigil of Est. He deserved the cold bridge and the dark water.

He shifted, a low, whistling wheeze escaping his dry lips.

Est’s head snapped toward him instantly. Even in the dark, William could feel that vacant, terrifying intensity. Est didn't move toward him, didn't offer a word of comfort. He just watched.

I love you, William thought, the words pressing so hard against the back of his teeth it felt like they might bloom right then and there. 

Deep down, the silence was becoming unbearable. He wanted to stand, to grab Est by the collar, and scream the truth until his lungs finally collapsed for good. He wanted Est to know that every blue petal on the floor was a "thank you" for that day on the bridge. He wanted to tell him that he wasn't dying for a girl, or a stranger, or a sin— he was dying for him.

But he looked at Est’s face, and the guilt paralyzed him. If he told Est now, would it be a gift or a curse? Would it be a confession, or would it be the final nail in Est’s own coffin?

William reached out, his fingers brushing the red-and-blue threads of the bracelet. The stars outside were indifferent, cold, and distant, mocking the fever in his blood.

Then—

"William."

The name hit the air like a prayer, or perhaps a confession. It was the first time Est had used his full name since the sanctuary— no "Liam," no "annoying brother." It was a formal, heavy recognition of the person who was fading. Est stayed still on the window; his shoulders were hunched.

"Do you think..." Est’s voice broke, a small, jagged splinter of sound. "Do you think you have enough strength to walk? Just for a little while?"

William felt a flutter in his chest— a frantic, floral twitch that had nothing to do with the disease. "Where, Phi?"

"The lake," Est said. He finally turned his head. The moonlight caught the hollow, desperate curve of his cheek, revealing eyes that were haunted.

William felt a cold spike of terror. His legs felt like water, and his marrow felt like lead. But the thought of the lake— the place where they had traded secrets for silence– felt like the only medicine left in a world of industrial bleach and bitter suppressors. He nodded, a small, slow motion against the mountain of mattresses.

Est moved then, crossing the room with a quiet, manic urgency. He didn't ask for permission. He didn't wake the others. He reached down and pulled the white sheet back, his hands trembling as he helped William swing his leaden legs over the side of the bed.

When William tried to stand, the world tilted. His knees buckled, the floor rushing up to meet him, but Est caught him instantly. His arms wrapped around William’s waist with a fierce, territorial strength. For a second, they stayed like that— William’s forehead buried in the crook of Est’s neck, the natural warmth of Est’s skin clashing with the cold sweat of William's fever.

"I've got you," Est breathed into his hair, his voice vibrating against William’s temple. "I'm not letting go. Not tonight."

The walk was a pilgrimage of pain. What used to be a ten-minute trek felt like crossing a continent. Est was incredibly patient, moving at a snail’s pace, letting William lean nearly his entire weight against him. Every few steps, William’s chest would seize, a wet, muffled sound echoing in the dark woods, and Est would stop, turning himself into a pillar, a silent anchor in the middle of the night until the spasm passed.

When they finally reached the shore, the moon was reflecting off the surface like a silver blade.

They sat in their usual spot, the grass cool and damp. Est helped William lower himself down with agonizing care, then sat beside him, their shoulders pressed together. Slowly, as if performing a ritual, they both slid their feet into the water.

The chill was a shock— a vivid, stinging reminder of the night on the bridge ten years ago. But as the silt settled around their ankles, a strange, heavy peace descended.

"The stars are the same," William rasped, his eyes tracking the constellations through the blur of exhaustion.

"They are," Est agreed, his voice barely a breath. "They’re the only things that don't change when we do."

Then, Est turned. For the first time since the blood had stained the sanctuary, he really looked at William. His eyes were vast and searching, tracing the sharp, new hollows of William's cheeks and the terrifying, translucent quality of his skin. There was a reverence in his gaze, a devastating sort of wonder, as if he were trying to commit every lash and every line to memory before the earth claimed them.

Being seen by Est felt like being burned and healed in the same second.

"William," Est said, his voice dropping into a register that made the cold water feel like a fever. His pinky reached out, hovering just a centimeter from William's, hesitant to bridge the final gap. "Who is it?"

The question hit William like a punch to the sternum. He had heard it from the doctor, from Lego, from Tui, from Nut— a clinical curiosity or a frustrated demand. But from Est, it was a different kind of agony. It was the sound of the person you are dying for asking you why you are dying.

William wanted to cry, but his tear ducts felt as dry as his throat. He wanted to grab Est’s hand and press it against the thrumming, thorny mess of his ribs and scream, It’s you. It has always been you. But the words died, smothered by the sudden, sharp taste of nectar in the back of his throat.

"Does it matter?" William whispered. "They don't love me back, P’Est. And that’s okay. I’d rather be full of them than empty like everyone else."

He looked down at the water, watching the moonlight ripple over their submerged feet. His pinky finger was twitching, a microscopic distance away from Est’s— a gap that felt like a thousand miles of unspoken history.

"It matters," Est said, his voice dropping so low it became part of the water's murmur. He didn't pull away. Instead, he moved that final centimeter.

His skin finally brushed against William’s.

The contact was electric, a searing heat that made the flowers in William’s chest thrash in a violent, territorial thrum. The suppressors failed, the thorns bit deep.

"It matters to me, William," Est whispered. He shifted his gaze, locking onto William’s eyes with a clarity so sharp it felt like a confession of its own. "Especially... if it’s me."

The world shattered. The silence of the lake was suddenly deafening, and for the first time in eighty-nine days, William forgot how to breathe entirely. His heart gave one massive, agonizing kick against his ribs and then seemed to forget how to beat.

He stayed frozen for a heartbeat, his breath hitching behind a wall of blue petals, before he violently recoiled. He ripped his hand away, his fingers curling into a tight, defensive fist against his chest. He scrambled back a few inches on the damp grass, the movement sending a jagged spike of pain through his lungs that made him gasp for air that wasn't there.

"No," William choked out, his head shaking in a frantic, blurred motion. "No, P’Est... It’s not you. I— I am not— I am, no. I am not in love with you. You’re misunderstanding. I am not—"

"Stop it, William."

Est’s words were a plea, a quiet, jagged break in the night that cut through William’s frantic denial. Est didn't move closer; he stayed anchored in the water, his shoulders trembling under the thin fabric of his shirt.

"You don't have to pretend anymore," Est whispered, finally looking up. His eyes were dark, swirling pools of grief and a terrifying, late-blooming clarity. "I’ve known."

William’s mouth hung open. The air between them felt heavy, charged with the static of ten years of missed signals and deliberate silences.

"When Tui told me... when I saw the blood on the sanctuary floor, my first instinct was to find her," Est said, a bitter, self-loathing laugh escaping his throat. "I spent hours sitting in that clinic chair trying to remember every girl in your life. I went through every name, every friend, every person you’ve ever smiled at. I tried to connect the dots to anyone else. I prayed it was anyone else."

He reached out, grabbing a handful of the damp grass, his knuckles turning white.

"But the dots always led back to me, Liam. They always led back to the way you look at me when you think I’m asleep. They led back to the way you’ve spent years being my shadow, my peace, my second chance. I know you by heart. I know the rhythm of your breath better than I know my own prayers. How could I have been so selfishly blind?"

"P'Est, please—" William’s voice was a thin, fraying thread. He wanted to beg Est to stop, to go back to the safety of the lie, but his lungs were already filling with the sweet, copper taste of the end.

"How could I be the one who pulled you from the water," Est’s voice dropped to a register of pure, unadulterated agony, "only to be the one who suffocated you? I’m the sunlight that grew the thorns, William. I’m the reason you’re dying."

"No," William gasped, a jagged, wet sound. "Don't... don't say that."

"But it’s true!" Est’s voice rose, a sharp, desperate cry that echoed across the water. "You’re only eighteen! You have a voice like an angel, and you’re spending your last breaths on a man who didn't even have the decency to notice you were drowning right in front of him! I was so busy being the 'saviour' that I became the executioner."

He reached out, his thumb finally brushing the dry, feverish skin of William's cheek. The contact was electric— a searing heat that made the flowers in William’s chest thrash in a final, tectonic shift.

"I’m so sorry, Liam," Est whispered, his forehead dropping to rest against William’s. "I'm so sorry it took me years to see the boy who has been loving me since the world was cold."

William reached up, his weak fingers tangling in the fabric of Est’s shirt, pulling him closer even as the thorns in his chest began to pull back for one final, volcanic surge. He could taste the nectar now, thick and cloying.

"You see me now," William rasped, his eyes locking onto Est’s with a devastating, ancient kind of peace. "That’s... that’s the only prayer I ever needed answered."

The peace was a fragile glass skin, and it shattered when William’s body finally betrayed the moment. William’s eyes flew wide, his fingers clawing into Est’s shirt as he coughed hard. A sound escaped him that wasn't human— a wet, tearing noise of roots finally ripping through the last of his healthy tissue.

"William? William!" Est’s voice was a frantic, jagged spike of terror.

William couldn't answer. He turned his head to the side and retched. It was a suffocating, tangled mass of cobalt blue roses, their stems thick with thorns that caught in his throat, dragging up a dark, arterial crimson that stained the silver surface of the lake.

"Oh God, no. No, no, no—" Est scrambled to him, pulling William’s collapsing frame into his lap. He didn't care about the blood. He didn't care about the filth. He shoved his hands into the mess of roses and daisies, trying to clear the flowers from William’s mouth as if he could physically dig the death out of him. "Liam, breathe! Look at me, breathe!"

William’s vision was a blurring smear of stars and Est’s face. He was drowning. Not in the water of the lake, but in the nectar of his own heart. He reached up, his trembling, blood-slicked hand brushing Est’s cheek, leaving a smear of red across the skin of the man he loved.

"P’Est..." he wheezed, the word gargled behind a fresh bloom. "I'm... sorry..."

"Don't you dare," Est sobbed, his tears falling onto William’s forehead, mixing with the cold sweat and the floral rot. "Don't you dare apologize for loving me. I’m the one... I’m the one who didn’t say it. I’m the one who waited until you were leaving."

Est looked at William’s lips— blue-tinted, stained with the copper of his ending, and trembling with a final, unspoken confession. The hero of the parish finally surrendered. He didn't care if it was a sin. He didn't care if the flowers were poisonous. He didn't care if he was kissing a grave.

Est leaned down and pressed his lips to William’s.

It wasn't a cinematic kiss. It wasn't the beginning of a life together. It was a collision of grief and desperation. It tasted of metallic blood, of the cloying, sickly sweetness of roses, and the salt of Est’s tears. It was the kiss of a man trying to breathe his own life into a body that was already being reclaimed by the earth.

He kissed him like he could suck the thorns out of his lungs. He kissed him as if his own heart-shaped lips could act as a seal against the coming darkness. He was holding William’s face with a bruising strength, his fingers tangling in William’s hair, refusing to let him go, refusing to let the stars have him yet.

The kiss was everything William had ever seen in his fever dreams, yet nothing as he had imagined. It was the culmination of ten years of stolen glances, of the red-and-blue bracelet, of the stars at the lake, and the silence in the sanctuary. It was soft, hesitant, and devastatingly thorough.

But as William’s eyes drifted shut, the crushing, romantic cure he had read about in stories never came.

Instead, the agony intensified. As Est’s lips pressed against his, William felt a violent, tectonic surge in his chest. The cobalt blue roses didn't wither; they flared. The thorns dragged against his throat, carving fresh paths of fire through his lungs. The white daisies— the remnants of Est’s mother, shredded further, their sharp, papery petals fluttering up into his windpipe.

The kiss wasn't a miracle. It was a mercy.

Est was kissing a tragedy, not a partner.

Against Est’s mouth, William let out a soft, broken hitch— the first full breath he had taken in eighty-eight days. Not because the flowers were gone, but because for one split second, the secret was finally out. The pressure was gone. The garden had nowhere left to grow. And William’s hands, which had been clutching Est’s shirt, slowly began to lose their grip. His fingers uncurled, sliding down the fabric until they rested on the red-and-blue threads of the bracelet.

Est pulled back just a fraction, his lips still hovering against William’s, his breath hot and frantic. "I love you," he whispered into the small space between them, a desperate, rhythmic mantra. "I love you, William. I love you. Please. Just one more day. Give me one more day to love you back."

William looked up at him. The translucence of his skin was absolute now, his eyes reflecting the moon with a clarity that was no longer of this world. He tried to smile, his heart-shaped lips mirroring Est’s for the last time.

"It was... enough," William whispered, the words barely a vibration of air. "The bridge, the lake, stars... it's enough, P'Est."

William’s eyes began to drift, the heavy, velvet curtain of exhaustion finally winning. The hand that had been clutching Est’s shirt slipped, his fingers trailing weakly over the red-and-blue threads of the bracelet.

"No," Est gasped, the word catching in a throat that felt like it was being crushed by invisible hands. "No, William, look at me. Open your eyes. Liam…”

The dam finally broke. The silent, stoic hero of the parish vanished, and in his place was a boy, just a boy, shattering into a thousand jagged pieces. Est’s face contorted, a raw, guttural sob tearing out of his chest, a sound so violent it seemed to shake the very surface of the lake. He pulled William closer, his forehead pressing against William’s, his tears hot and fast, washing away the blue nectar and the blood from William's pale skin.

"Don't you dare leave me with these flowers!" Est shrieked, his voice cracking into a jagged, desperate plea to the empty sky. "You hear me? I don't want the roses! I don't want the daisies! I want you! I don't want to live in a world that smells like a funeral parlor again because you were too brave to tell me you were hurting!"

He grabbed William’s face, his thumbs frantically wiping at the corners of William’s mouth as if he could stop the life from leaking out.

"I was wrong— It’s not too late! We’re going to the city, Liam. Do you hear me? I’ll carry you the whole way. I’ll sell my books, I’ll sell the church, I’ll sell my soul if I have to. We’re going to see the sea—  You told me you wanted to see the waves, remember? We’ll sit on the sand, you’ll watch me swim, and the air will be salt, not flowers. No more flowers, William. Just salt and the city lights. We’ll watch the neon signs until the sun comes up. I'll buy you the loudest, brightest life you can imagine."

William’s lips twitched. A small, heartbreakingly soft smile touched his face— it was the smile of someone who had finally found the sun. He looked up at Est, his gaze hazy, the moonlight reflected in his pupils like two dying stars.

"P’Est..." William breathed, a tiny bubble of blood popping on his lip.

"I'm here! I'm right here!" Est let out a broken, hysterical laugh, his hands trembling as they tangled in William’s hair. "I’m not letting go. I’ll beg— William— I’ll beg the heavens. I’ll tell God He can’t have you yet. He has enough angels; he doesn't need my brother. He doesn't need my... he doesn't need you—"

Est collapsed over him, his body heaving with sobs that sounded like bones snapping. He was a man who had spent his whole life saving people, only to realize that the one person who mattered was the one he had helped kill with his own silence.

"Please," Est whispered into William’s neck, his voice reduced to a raw, bleeding whimper. "Just one more morning. Just let me wake up and see you breathe one more time. I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for the years I was blind. I’ll love you so loud the stars will get jealous. Just... don't leave me alone on the bridge again. Not again, Liam. Please."

William reached up, a final, tectonic effort of will, and brushed a stray, tear-soaked hair from Est’s forehead. His touch was as light as a falling petal, but to Est, it felt like a brand.

"You're... crying," William whispered, his voice a ghost of a ghost. He looked at the man he had worshipped for a decade, seeing the absolute, unadulterated wreckage of his heart, and for the first time, William didn't feel like a sinner. He felt loved. "Don't... don't be sad, Phi. The garden... it's so beautiful... now that you're in it."

The world around the lake seemed to mourn in a way that was heavy and absolute. The water stopped lapping at the rocks, and the wind died in the trees, leaving only the sound of Est’s ragged, hitching breaths and the terrifyingly slow rhythm of William’s fading heart.

"No, no, no... Liam, stay. Stay with me," Est pleaded, his voice a raw, bleeding wreck. He pressed his cheek against William’s cold forehead, his tears soaking into the younger boy’s skin. "Don't talk about the garden. Don't look at the sky. Look at me. I'm right here. I’m right here, William."

William’s fingers, stained with the dark crimson of his own life, twitched against Est’s chest. He felt a strange, terrifying lightness spreading from his toes upward— a sensation of drifting, as if the bridge were finally letting him go.

"P’Est.. I’m... happy. I’m so happy... it was you."

"Stop it," Est sobbed, his hands clutching William’s shoulders as if he could physically anchor his soul to the earth. "Don't say it like that. Don't say it like it's over."

"I'm... sorry," William whispered, his eyes widening slightly as the stars began to blur into a single, blinding white light. "Sorry I... made you... carry this. Sorry, I couldn't be... just a brother. I tried... I tried so hard, Phi."

"You were everything." Est shrieked into the night, the sound tearing through the woods like a physical blow. "You were never just a brother! You were the only reason I didn't jump back into that water ten years ago! You were the light, William! You were the only light I had!"

William’s gaze finally fixed on Est’s eyes— the vast, searching pools of grief he had spent a decade trying to protect. He reached out one last time, his thumb grazing Est’s heart-shaped lips, leaving a final, red-stained mark of his love.

"I love you," William rasped, the words finally breaking free from the thorns, clear and honest for the only time in eighty-nine days. "I love you... P'Est. Always... always you."

His hand didn't fall. It didn't drop. It simply... drifted away.

William’s chest gave one final, tectonic heave— a soft, whistling sigh that sounded like the wind through the rafters of the parish. And then, the silence.

The struggle was gone. The fever was gone. The garden of filth had finally, mercifully, become still.

Est felt the moment the weight changed. He felt the exact second the boy in his arms stopped being a person and became a memory. The tension in William’s spine vanished, his head falling back against Est’s arm, his eyes remaining open, staring up at the stars with a devastating, fixed clarity.

"William?" Est whispered, his voice small and high, like a child lost in the dark.

He waited. He waited for a hitch in the breath. He waited for the red-and-blue bracelet to twitch against his wrist. He waited for the whistling lungs to rattle just one more time.

But there was nothing. Only the cold mud at their feet and the cloying, suffocating scent of cobalt roses that seemed to bloom one last, violent time in the air between them.

"Liam?" Est’s voice broke into a guttural, inhuman wail. He pulled William’s limp body into his chest, burying his face in the crook of the boy’s neck, his shoulders shaking with a grief so profound it felt like the world should have ended with him. "William….. Come back! Wake up! I didn't tell you— I didn't get to tell you enough! Not again— not again— please, Lord God… No—“

He rocked him. In the mud, in the blood, and in the ruins of the garden they had grown together, Est held the boy he had pulled from the water ten years ago, only to realize he had been holding him under the surface the entire time.

The moon continued to shine, indifferent and cold, casting its silver light over the two orphans. One was finally at peace, a heart full of the love that had killed him; the other was left on the bridge, staring into the dark, drowning in a silence that would never, ever end.

✿───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───✿

The walk back from the lake was a funeral march that no one was supposed to see, yet everyone was waiting for.

Est moved like a man carrying the entire weight of Heaven. His arms were locked in a bruising, protective grip around William’s frame, his knuckles white and stained with a mixture of dark mud and the terrifyingly bright crimson of the final bloom. William was a garden in his arms— cobalt roses and shredded white daisies were tangled in his hair, spilling from the collar of his thin shirt, and caught in the crook of his limp elbows.

The dorm door was already open. The yellow light from inside spilled onto the dirt path, illuminating the four figures standing there in the suffocating silence of the pre-dawn. They had heard them leave. They had been waiting for the return.

Lego was the first to move. He took one step, then two, his small face contorted in a mask of desperate, frantic hope that vanished the moment the moonlight hit William’s peaceful, lifeless body.

In that heartbeat, Lego's world shattered into a million jagged pieces that tore through his chest. How was he supposed to live in the quiet that followed his annoying brother? He had spent his entire life within the safe, weathered walls of the sanctuary, guided by the steady hands and the fierce, protective love of his five brothers. He was a boy who had been welcomed out of the cold by five beautiful souls, and now, the very sun of that world had been extinguished in Est’s arms.

"No," Lego whispered, a small, broken sound. "No, P’William... you said— you will be okay. No, not yet, no—"

He didn't finish. His knees gave out, and he hit the wooden porch with a sickening thud. A raw, jagged shriek tore out of him— a sound of a childhood ending in a single breath. He scrambled toward Est, grabbing at William’s limp, hanging hand, pressing the cold skin to his tear-soaked face. He wailed, a violent, rhythmic grief that seemed to vibrate through the very floorboards of the dorm.

Nut was there a second later, reaching out to pull Lego back, to hold him, but his own strength was gone. He collapsed beside Lego, his forehead pressed against the younger boy’s shoulder, his eyes squeezed shut as tears carved tracks through the dust on his face. Nut, who always had a prayer, was silent. There were no words holy enough for the wreckage in front of them.

And Hong. He had been standing perfectly still, but as Est stepped into the light, Hong’s face twisted into something unrecognizable. Unlike everyone, he didn’t move toward William and Est, he baked away.

"Put him down," Hong rasped, his voice thin and dangerously sharp. "Phi— put him down. He’s just cold... The lake is cold, right? We just need to get him inside—"

He let out a short, hysterical breath–. "I told him the sun would come up! I told him the light would hit the corners!" Hong suddenly lunged forward, grabbing Est’s arm so hard his fingers dug into the muscle. "Wake him up! You're his brother, you're supposed to be the one who saves him! Why aren't you saving him?!" His voice broke into a raw, heaving sob as he finally slumped downward. 

While Tui was leaning against the doorframe, his hand clawed at the center of his chest. He was gasping, his mouth opening and closing in a desperate search for air, his face turning a ghostly, translucent pale. It was as if his own ghost-flowers— the ones the surgeons had cut out years ago were clawing their way back up his throat out of pure, sympathetic horror. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't speak. He only watched the boy he had tried to warn, now a bouquet of his own secrets.

Est couldn’t afford to look at them. He had to stay strong for his brothers, for his family. His eyes were bloodshot, the vessels burst from the hours he had spent by the lake, screaming at the stars until his voice had turned into a jagged rasp. He had spent hours holding William’s cooling body, whispering into his hair, begging, bartering, and finally, cursing the heavens.

He walked past them like a ghost.

He carried William to the mountain of mattresses they had built for him just the day before. He lowered him with a reverence that was terrifying to behold, straightening his clothes, brushing the petals from William's forehead as if he were only sleeping.

"I told him," Est rasped, his voice sounding like dry stones grinding together. He didn't look up at anyone. He just kept his hand over William's heart, as if he were trying to jumpstart the rhythm with his own heat. "I told him I loved him. And he smiled."

Est let out a small, hollowing laugh that was more painful than Lego’s screaming.

"He smiled, Nut. He said it was enough."

Est leaned forward, his forehead resting against William’s collarbone, his eyes closing as he inhaled the scent of the blue roses one last time. He looked like a man who had finally found the shore, only to realize the land was on fire.

"Why?" Est whispered into the fabric of William’s shirt, a final, broken question to a God he no longer recognized. "Why did You let me find him on that bridge if You were only going to make me the one who let him go?"

Est didn’t wait for an answer from the ceiling or the stars. He turned his head, his cheek resting against William’s unmoving chest, his bloodshot eyes fixing on Nut and Lego with a terrifying, vacant intensity.

"It was me," Est croaked, the words tearing out of his throat like jagged glass. “I killed him.”

Lego’s sobbing hitched, his small, tear-streaked face looking up in confusion. Nut reached out a hand, his own face a mask of wet exhaustion. "P'Est, don't—"

Est let out a sharp, hysterical breath, his gaze dropping back to the cobalt roses tangled in William’s hair.

"Eighty-nine days," Est whispered, his voice dropping to a hollow, haunting register. "He spent eighty-nine days drowning in his own lungs, and I was the one holding his head under the water. Every time I patted his head... every time I called him 'little brother'... I was pushing another thorn into his throat. I killed him."

He reached out, his thumb tracing the blue-stained line of William’s jaw with a devastating tenderness.

"He died because I couldn't love him back in time," Est choked out, a fresh torrent of tears spilling over his lower lids. 

"I pulled him off that bridge ten years ago just so I could be the one to break him," Est whimpered. "I saved his life so I could steal it. How am I supposed to live with that? How am I supposed to look at the stars when I know I'm the one who put out his light? Why?”

Tui moved then. His movements were stiff, his chest still whistling with tightness, but he crossed the room and sank onto the edge of the mattress. He reached out a trembling hand and placed it firmly on Est’s shaking shoulder, forcing the older man to look up from the hollow of William’s neck.

"Stop it, Phi," Tui whispered, his voice cracking like dry earth. "Stop killing yourself in front of him. He didn’t die to make you a murderer. He died because he loved you more than he loved his own breath. You think he’d want to hear you say you stole his life? After he spent his last second telling you it was enough?"

Est’s head snapped up, his eyes wild and raw. "It wasn't enough, Tui… He's cold! He’s cold, and I’m the reason—"

"No one wanted this!" Tui’s voice rose, a desperate, sharp spike of grief that cut through Est’s spiraling guilt. "Not the doctor, not Nut, not Lego, not Hong, and especially not William. You didn't plant those seeds, Est. You were the sun he chose to grow toward. You can’t blame the sun for the way a flower decides to bloom."

Lego, seeing the crack in Est’s armor, crawled the rest of the way forward. He grabbed for Est. He wrapped his small arms around Est’s waist, burying his face in the tear-soaked fabric of his shirt.

"P’Est, please," Lego sobbed, his voice muffled. "Don't leave us too. If you hate yourself, then who’s going to tell us stories about him? Who’s going to remember the way he sang when he thought no one was listening? You're all we have left of him."

Hong stood a few feet away, his jaw clamped shut so hard it ached. He was staring at the ceiling, blinking rapidly, his chest heaving as he fought to keep the steady mask from slipping again. But when Nut moved in from the other side, his large, steady presence finally breaking, he reached out and pulled Hong into the huddle, too.

The moment Nut’s arm draped over his shoulder, the last of Hong’s resistance evaporated. He collapsed into them, his forehead dropping onto Est’s other shoulder as he began to cry like a baby— a loud, messy, unbridled sound that he’d been holding back since that night on the stone bench. 

For a long, agonizing minute, Est sat rigid, his muscles corded like iron, his breath coming in jagged, dry hitches. He looked at William’s peaceful, fixed expression and then at the three broken brothers clinging to him.

The iron snapped.

Est let out a sound of absolute surrender. He collapsed forward into them, his long arms sweeping out to pull Lego and Tui into the hollow of his chest, while Nut leaned his weight against Est’s back, anchoring the entire group from behind. They became a single, shaking mass of grief, huddled on the bed of mattresses they had built for a boy who no longer needed them.

They hugged each other with a terrifying, bruising strength, as if they were afraid that if they let go, they would all drift away like the blue and white petals scattered across the floor.

"I'm sorry," Est gasped into the huddle, his voice finally breaking into the deep, rhythmic weeping of a man who had lost his soul. "I'm so sorry, Liam. I'm so sorry."

In the same space lay William, draped in his garden of cobalt and white. He looked small amidst the five of them, a quiet anchor in the middle of a storm. The room smelled of damp earth and crushed flowers, a heavy, permanent scent that would haunt their clothes and their skin for years to come.

They just held on, five heartbeats trying to make up for the silence of the sixth.

-ˋˏ ༻❁✿❀༺ ˎˊ-

The day came.

Est stood at the head of the casket, his hands gripping the polished wood so hard his knuckles threatened to split. He looked like a man made of stone, except for the way his eyes tracked William’s resting face, the way the blue roses and daises frame his lifeless body.

"P’Est," William’s voice whispered in the hollow of Est’s mind, a phantom echo of the ink on the paper tucked into Est’s inner pocket. 

"I’m writing this because my voice is mostly thorns now, and if I try to say this to your face, I’ll choke before I get to the important parts... Phi, I know that look in your eyes. I know you’re already building a cross to nail yourself to. Stop. Please, for once, just listen to me without trying to save me. You’ve been a hero for ten years, Phi. Don't hate yourself for being blind. I wanted you to be blind. I wanted to stay "Liam" to you for as long as possible before the flowers took over. It’s all my fault.

I’m so scared for them, Phi."

Lego was a wreck. He was leaning so heavily into Hong that they looked like a single, collapsing shadow. Every time the priest spoke, Lego would flinch, his small hands twisting the hem of his black shirt until the fabric began to tear.

"I’m scared Lego is going to spend the rest of his life thinking he killed me just because he kept my secret. He didn't hide a sickness… he protected me. He gave me the only months of my life where I felt like a brother and not a patient. I wish I could tell him that. I wish he knew he was my savior."

Hong didn't cry anymore. He only stared at the flickering candle at the foot of the casket, his face a mask of exhaustion. He looked like he was still waiting for the sun to hit the corners of the room, still waiting for a joke that wasn't coming.

"And Hong... my steady, quiet P’Hong. I’m going to miss that stone bench. I’m going to miss the way he’d just sit with me when the world was too loud. I’ll miss his jokes."

Then, the undertakers moved in.

The sound of the casket lid sliding into place was the loudest thing Est had ever heard. It was a final, wooden crack that signaled the end of ten years.

Beside him, Tui let out a sharp, choked gasp. He grabbed at his chest, his fingers hooking into his shirt as if he were trying to reach the old scars beneath. He couldn't breathe. The air in the chapel was too full of the past, too full of bloom.

"I’m sorry I wasn't as brave as P’ Tui. I was just too selfish to let the memory of you go, even if it meant I could breathe. I spent so many nights being jealous of his clear lungs, but I was more terrified of his silence."

As they began to wheel the casket toward the dirt path that led to the lake— the same path Est had walked with William’s body only days before— Nut stepped forward. He reached out, his hand trembling as he touched the wood one last time. He tried to start a prayer, his lips moving in a silent, desperate rhythm, but no sound came out. His faith was a guttering candle in a gale.

"And P’Nut... I heard him praying every night. I felt like a fraud for letting him do it, but his voice was the only thing that made the room feel safe. I hope he doesn't lose his faith because of me. I hope he knows his hands were the ones that tucked me in when I was too tired to move."

They reached the open earth by the water. The lake was a flat, grey mirror under the morning light.

“As for you, my sun...

For ten years, I’ve lived in the shadow of that bridge. You think you saved me that day, but P’Est, you did something much more dangerous. You gave me a reason to want to stay. I spent so many nights in the chapel, kneeling until my knees bled, begging God to take these feelings out of me. I felt like a weed growing in the middle of your sanctuary, waiting for the day you’d finally notice and pull me out by the roots.

I’m so sorry I made you a witness to this again.

I know the scent of these flowers isn’t just a smell to you… it’s a memory. I know that every time I cough, you're seeing your past. You’re seeing the same petals, the same blood, and the same silence that took her. I spent so many nights hating myself for it, for being the one to bring the garden back into your house after you fought so hard to clear it out.

But please, don't you dare look at my body and see a failure. Do not think you missed it twice. You didn't. Look at me and see a garden that only existed because you were my sun. Every petal on this floor is a "thank you" for the ten years you gave me… years I wasn't supposed to have.

Loving you wasn't a sin, Phi. The only sin was that I didn't tell you how beautiful you made my world because I was too scared of the look of disgust on your face. But lying here now, I realize the truth: I wasn't ready to be a temple if it meant being empty of you.

We didn't make it to the city. We didn't see the sea. And God, it hurts to know I’ll never see the neon lights reflected in your eyes. But the lake... our lake... it was enough for me. Having my feet in that cold water next to yours was my version of the ocean.”

As the ropes began to strain under the weight of the casket, lowering William into the dark, Est finally broke. He just reached down and unlatched the red-and-blue bracelet from his wrist. He looked at it for a heartbeat— the symbol of the boy he saved, and the man he couldn't.

He didn't bury it. He didn't burn it.

With a hand that felt like it belonged to a stranger, Est tossed the bracelet into the open grave. It landed softly on top of the wood with a dull thud, disappearing into the shadow.

"P’Est, listen to me. When the morning comes, leave this room. Take that red-and-blue bracelet and bury it, or burn it, or throw it into the water… just don't let it be a noose around your neck. Do not spend the rest of your life being a hero to a ghost. You already did your job. You caught me.

If you ever feel the guilt coming back, if you ever start to think you killed me with your blindness… remember this: I would do it all again. I would jump off that bridge a thousand times if it meant you were the one waiting to catch me. I would choose the thorns and the blood every single time, as long as it meant I got to be yours for a little while.

My lungs are full, Phi. But my heart is finally empty because I’ve given everything in it to you. I’m happy to rest that way. Thank you for everything.”

The first shovel of dirt hit the lid.

Est turned his back to the grave and looked toward the gate, toward the road that led to the city. The sun was finally hitting the corners of the world, but for the first time in ten years, he was walking into the light alone.

"I love you. Always.

Your Liam."

End.