Work Text:
January, 2009
Rain fell, soaking parts of the earth that afternoon. Shafa, sitting on the farthest bench in the cafeteria, shifted slightly, disturbed by the chill that gently crept into his skin, while his hands were still busy sketching in his sketchbook. He was so focused that his head was bowed, as if his entire world revolved around that sketchbook.
Until a blue backpack landed on the table. Shafa lifted his face to see who had placed it there. For a moment, his heart raced; his eyes lingered there, as if spellbound by the figure before his. He took in everything about the person who had just arrived—his labored breathing, his disheveled hair, and his slightly damp uniform did nothing to diminish his handsomeness. However, his reverie was shattered when the guy waved a hand in front of his face, which had now turned crimson.
“I'll sit here, okay? It's full over there,” said the guy.
Shafa replied awkwardly, “Oh, sure, that's fine. Just sit here.”
The guy gave him a sweet smile that made his heart race even faster.
“I'm Keenan, from MIPA 3,” he said, extending his hand.
Shafa shook Keenan’s hand, a little nervously, “I’m Shafandra, just call me Shafa. I’m from IPS 1.”
“Your name is cool, like in a soap opera,” Keenan complimented.
“Why are you so quiet? Just relax around me—we’re in the same grade, after all,” he said as he opened a bag of potato chips.
Meanwhile, the boy he was talking to pretended to focus on his sketchbook to hide his flushed cheeks.
“Oh, are you drawing? Can I take a look?” Keenan asked.
“Sure, come on over,” Shafa replied with a smile.
Keenan immediately moved to sit next to him while looking at the drawings in Shafa’s sketchbook. After that, their conversation flowed naturally without the awkwardness from earlier.
Actually, this was just a simple meeting in the school cafeteria during the rain, but Keenan’s presence managed to turn the previously chilly atmosphere into a warm one.
A few days after that meeting in the cafeteria, Shafa thought Keenan might have already forgotten him. But he was wrong. Keenan was actually the first person to greet him in the hallway as he was about to enter the classroom. With his signature smile, Keenan waved at him, “Hi, Shafa! Keep up the good work with your studies.”
And Shafa always replied politely, even though his heart raced every time he saw Keenan. “Hi, Keenan! Good luck with your studies, too.”
The climax came one afternoon when Shafa was tired of standing in front of the school gate waiting for a minibus that never arrived, while the sky had turned cloudy. Suddenly, a scooter stopped in front of him. It was Keenan. He took off his helmet, and his face looked exhausted after soccer practice. However, he still smiled when he saw Shafa.
“Not going home yet, Shafa? Let me give you a ride so you don’t get caught in the rain.”
Shafa wanted to refuse, afraid of being a burden to Keenan, but Keenan quickly took off his jacket and put it on him.
“Put on my jacket, Shaf. The wind is strong; you'll catch a cold.”
His eyes took in how handsome Keenan looked from this close distance. His body suddenly stiffened when Keenan’s hand touched his shoulder to adjust the jacket’s position. He could smell the fragrance of the perfume Keenan was wearing, even though it had mixed with sweat.
On the motorcycle speeding down the street, Shafa gripped the hem of Keenan’s uniform slightly because of the strong afternoon wind. And Keenan warmly welcomed that grip.
“It’s okay to hold on so you don’t fall.”
He smiled behind Keenan’s broad back. What Keenan did today meant so much to him. Little things like this, he would remember and write in his diary later. About the handsome, kind-hearted Keenan who made the cold air feel warm.
At this very moment, Shafa officially fell in love with Keenan. However, at this very moment, the seed of Hanahaki was also planted. He didn’t realize that this tingling feeling would also bring a sense of suffocation and choke his own breath.
February, 2009
That afternoon, Keenan invited him to the library to look for books on biological science. Shafa happily accepted the invitation, and they ended up sitting across from each other, separated by a round table. A few minutes passed, and Shafa, who was reading a book, looked up when he heard Keenan softly snoring. Ah, it turned out the guy had fallen asleep with his arm as a pillow.
The yellow light streaming through the library window illuminated Keenan’s hair, which had fallen across his forehead. Slowly, Shafa reached out his hand to brush the strand of hair aside so it wouldn’t obscure his handsome features. He took in Keenan’s striking face—from his thick eyebrows, his long, curled eyelashes, his straight nose, to his thin lips.
However, suddenly his chest felt tight and his throat itched as if something were trying to force its way out. He sat up and moved away so as not to disturb Keenan’s sleep. He coughed violently. He covered his mouth with his hand to muffle the sound of his cough. The cough was painful, itchy, and left his feeling short of breath. How surprised he was when he found a blue forget-me-not petal in his hand.
Keenan, whose sleep had been disturbed, woke up. Quickly, Shafa hid the petal in the pocket of his uniform.
“What are you doing standing there, Shaf?” Keenan asked in a hoarse voice.
Nervously, Shafa replied, “Oh, it’s nothing. I just returned a book a moment ago.”
“Sorry, I fell asleep. I was just so sleepy,” Keenan said.
“It’s okay. I didn’t have the heart to wake you up. You looked so tired,” Shafa replied with a smile.
The days that followed were like a beautiful torment for Shafa. Keenan’s sweet gestures toward him made that root grip his chest even tighter. The blue forget-me-not plant grew more and more vigorously within him with each passing day.
Keenan always texted him at night, bought him a new sketchbook, and gave him water to drink. This felt wonderful for a moment before being replaced by a growing sense of suffocation in Shafa’s chest.
The pattern of Hanahaki began to emerge. Every time Shafa saw Keenan laughing freely with his other friends or receiving a love letter from a girl, he felt something inside his chest and throat as if they were rebelling.
Then he would run to the bathroom to get it out. Over the slightly encrusted sink, he vomited a handful of blue forget-me-not petals mixed with thick blood. His throat felt as if it were being sliced open as the flowers forced their way out. He gasped for breath as if he had just escaped from something that had been choking him.
Shafa stared at himself in the reflection of the sink mirror. There was blood lingering at the corner of his lips, and he wiped it away with a trembling hand. He roughly wiped his face, his mind in turmoil, filled with questions about this illness. He resolved that he had to find out more about it.
This afternoon, Shafa turned down Keenan’s offer to go home together, claiming his mother was coming to pick him up. However, that was just a lie to hide his anxiety. In reality, he went to a cybercafé not far from the school.
Inside the cramped, stuffy wooden booth, Shafa began typing a short search term into Google: “Vomiting bloody flowers.”
His heart was pounding as his eyes fixated on a thread in an old internet forum.
“Hanahaki disease is a curse for those who love in silence.”
Shafa read line by line, his hands trembling. When he reached the sentence, “That can only be healed if love is expressed and reciprocated,” he froze. That sentence felt like a death sentence to him.
The noise from the next booth seemed to leave him undisturbed; he was trapped in a silence that tormented him.
March, 2009
This morning, Shafa looked at himself in his bedroom mirror. He tried to convince himself that today, he had to confess his feelings to Keenan before that feeling grew any wilder inside him. His hand clutched a small letter he had written all night long, praying that Keenan would accept it and return his feelings.
When the dismissal bell rang, Shafa immediately headed to Keenan’s class to intercept him. His heart was pounding, a sign of just how nervous he was.
“Keenan… I want to talk to you, just the two of us. This is really important,” Shafa said, his voice trembling slightly.
Keenan turned to look at him, slightly surprised to see Shafa’s face paler than usual. Then he smiled broadly—a warm smile that was the very reason that plant had flourished inside Shafa’s lungs.
Then Keenan placed his hand on Shafa’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Shaf. I already promised to go grocery shopping with Mom after this,” he said regretfully.
However, before the sparkle in Shafa’s eyes faded, Keenan quickly added, “Here’s the deal: I’ll pick you up tonight. We can hang out, go for a walk, and grab something to eat. Okay?”
Instantly, Shafa’s face lit up again. “Really, Keenan? Promise?” Shafa asked, holding out his pinky finger.
Keenan smiled sweetly and linked his finger with his. “Yes, Shafa, I promise. I’ll pick you up at 7 p.m.,” he said softly.
Shafa smiled at Keenan’s words. For now, he thought that perhaps tomorrow the forget-me-not flower stained with blood wouldn’t appear again after his confession later that night.
That evening, the clock on the wall read 7:00 p.m. Shafa, now neatly dressed in his knit jacket, sat in the living room feeling anxious. The reason was that he had been going back and forth to the bathroom ever since his cough had gotten worse. He had changed his clothes twice because there was so much blood and phlegm that it had stained his clothes.
The clock showed 8:00 p.m., and there was still no sign of Keenan. He had sent Keenan text messages repeatedly, but there was no reply.
With a heavy heart, he kept dialing Keenan’s number, calling him to confirm whether he was coming to pick him up or not. However, by 8:30 p.m., Keenan still hadn’t given any word.
Instantly, that impatience turned into worry. It made him cough violently again. This cough was so painful that he felt as if his throat were tearing. And how surprised he was when he found a forget-me-not flower coming out along with its leaves and stem. His hand reached out to grab the rather long stem. He was struggling to breathe. His hand trembled as he clutched the plant. He ran to the kitchen to throw it away and drank as much water as he could to soothe the pain.
kriiinggg!
The ringing of his home phone broke the silence that had enveloped him. He immediately ran to answer it.
“Hello, is this Keenan? Keenan, where are you?”
But the voice on the other end wasn’t Keenan’s; it was a middle-aged woman sobbing uncontrollably.
“Hello, Shafandra. This is Keenan’s mom... Keenan’s had an accident, dear... Keenan has passed away—” the woman sobbed, her words trailing off, “—at Melati Husada Hospital, dear. Come here right away, okay? See Keenan one last time.”
Shafa couldn’t bear to listen anymore. He slammed the landline phone down so hard it fell onto the marble floor of his house. His knees went weak, unable to support his body anymore. He collapsed, his chest tight with unbearable pain.
With the last of his strength, he walked out to find a taxi to the hospital. The words “see Keenan for the last time” seemed to spin endlessly in his head. His world collapsed that very night. Inside the taxi, he held back his tears while coughing violently.
“Hey kid, are you okay? Please hang in there; I’ll do my best to get you to the hospital as soon as possible,” said the taxi driver.
Shafa couldn’t speak; he just nodded weakly.
A light drizzle began to fall over the city that morning. One by one, the mourners began to leave the mound of earth, still damp and fragrant with ylang-ylang flowers. But Shafa remained there. He was reluctant to move, even though Keenan’s mother had tried to persuade him. He knelt beside the mound of earth where Keenan lay sleeping forever.
Shafa’s body trembled violently. It wasn’t just because of the cold morning air, but because the cavity in his chest now felt as hard as stone. The plant’s roots had grown so thick they jutted up to the base of his throat. With every breath he took, it felt painful, as if he were being sliced by shards of glass.
His pale fingers slowly fumbled in his pocket. He pulled out a small letter he hadn’t been able to read to Keenan the night before. He slipped the letter beneath the scattering of flowers on the grave.
“Keenan... you broke your promise. You said you’d take me out for a walk and a meal last night. You said I could talk to you as much as I wanted, but you just left.”
Keenan’s smile and the link of their pinky fingers kept replaying in his memory like a broken tape.
A single tear fell onto the brand-new wooden headstone. As Shafa’s defenses crumbled upon seeing Keenan’s name engraved there, the plant inside his chest erupted violently. An excruciating pain struck the depths of his heart, as if every organ in his body were being forced to bloom into petals.
Shafa coughed violently. His body collapsed, resting on his hands on the grave’s soil. On that damp ground, Shafa vomited a thick cluster of forget-me-not stems. Their beautiful blue color was stained by fresh blood flowing freely from the corner of his lips. Every time he tried to take a breath, the flowers blocked his airway, robbing Shafa of his right to live because the owner of his heart was gone.
Shafa’s vision began to blur. The gray sky above him slowly darkened. The pain that had been tormenting him suddenly vanished, replaced by a soothing, cooling sensation.
Shafa lay his limp body down right next to Keenan’s grave, embracing the mound of earth. The corner of his bleeding lip turned up slightly, forming a small, sincere smile. For the first time in months, his chest no longer felt tight.
With his remaining consciousness, he gazed at the blue forget-me-not flowers he had scattered over Keenan’s grave.
“May we never have to feel this kind of pain in our next life.”
Shafa closed his eyes. He breathed his last breath beside his first love, taking with him the secret of feelings left unspoken, buried together in the gloomy year of 2009.
January, 2026
The gate of SMAN 14 had just been locked tight when two sets of panting footsteps came to a halt almost simultaneously in front of the iron bars.
“Damn, I’m late,” Kael muttered, leaning his sweat-soaked back against the gate.
Meanwhile, beside him, a guy with straight hair bent over, resting on his knees. The guy coughed slightly, out of breath after running from the end of the street.
Seeing him, Kael felt sorry for him. He held out a blue water bottle, “Here, have a drink. You poor thing, you’re all out of breath like that.”
Hearing this, the guy lifted his face to look at the person speaking to him.
“Oh, yeah, thanks for the offer. Let me have a drink, then,” he replied with a smile.
He took the water bottle and took a sip.
“Phew… thanks a lot. That feels so much better,” he said politely. Then he handed the bottle back.
“You’re welcome. By the way, my name is Kael. What’s yours?” Kael said, extending his hand.
“I’m Sakiya. Just call me Saki. Nice to meet you," he replied, taking Kael's hand.
For some reason, Saki’s breathing stabilized and calmed down again after shaking Kael’s hand. Kael felt the same warmth as he gazed at Saki’s sweet face.
The end.