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The first time Miu saw Lena, she forgot what she had been saying mid-sentence.
It happened under the blinding white lights of the university gymnasium during orientation week, the kind of crowded event where music echoed too loudly against polished floors and every organization on campus fought to be noticed. Freshmen flooded the venue in clusters, nervous excitement buzzing through the air while upperclassmen moved around with practiced ease.
Miu usually thrived in places like this.
She stood with the cheer squad near the bleachers, laughing brightly at something one of the seniors said while absentmindedly twirling a pom-pom between her fingers as she contemplated on joining the cheer team. Attention had never made her nervous. Neither had crowds. She knew how to smile at strangers until they smiled back, how to make herself at home in any room she entered.
Then the marching band walked in.
More specifically, their drum major did.
The gym shifted.
Not literally, of course, but Miu would later swear the entire atmosphere changed the moment Lena stepped through the double doors in full regalia. Crimson and gold lined the sharp silhouette of her uniform, fitted perfectly against her tall frame. The polished buttons gleamed beneath the lights, white gloves tucked neatly beneath one arm while her dark hair framed a face so composed it bordered on unreal.
She was beautiful in a way that did not ask for attention, which somehow made everyone look anyway.
Miu stopped breathing for a second.
“Earth to Miu.”
Ling waved a hand in front of her face, amusement already spreading across her expression. “You look possessed.”
Miu blinked once. “Who,” she asked carefully, “is that?”
Ling followed her gaze and immediately grinned.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s Lena Schuett.”
The name settled strangely inside Miu’s chest.
Lena.
“Drum major. Literature major too. Senior.” Ling tilted her head knowingly. “Why?”
Miu recovered quickly, smoothing her expression into casual curiosity. “No reason.”
Ling snorted. “You stared at her like she descended from heaven.”
“She kind of did.”
That earned her a laugh, but Miu barely heard it.
Because Lena had turned slightly while speaking to one of the band members, and Miu caught her profile beneath the lights. Sharp but soft, quiet but commanding.
And for reasons she could not explain, Miu felt something etch gently beneath her ribs.
Small.
Delicate.
The first bud.
Their actual introduction happened two weeks later.
Ling had dragged Lena to a café near campus after rehearsal, claiming she desperately needed caffeine to survive midterms. Miu happened to already be there, sprawled comfortably across one of the booths with her tablet and an untouched iced coffee she’d forgotten to drink.
Lena noticed her first.
“Your friend is asleep sitting up,” she told Ling quietly.
Miu’s eyes immediately flew open. “I was resting.”
“You were drooling.”
“I absolutely was not.”
Ling laughed as she slid into the booth. “Miu, this is Lena. Lena, this dramatic creature is Miu.”
Miu extended a hand instantly. “I’m much more charming than P’Ling makes me sound.”
Lena looked at her hand for one brief second before shaking it, her grip was warm. Steady.
“I have no doubts,” Lena said softly.
Miu stared.
Ling looked between them once, then groaned dramatically. “Oh no.”
“What?” They both asked.
“That,” Ling pointed between them, “was immediate.”
Neither of them answered.
Because Miu was too busy realizing Lena’s eyes were even prettier up close, dark and thoughtful with the sort of gentleness that made people instinctively lower their voices around her.
And Lena—
Lena was quietly noticing that Miu smiled with her entire face.
That she leaned forward when interested in someone, that her energy filled spaces naturally without overwhelming them. That she was beautiful.
Very beautiful.
The three of them talked for nearly three hours.
Mostly Miu and Ling talking while Lena listened, occasionally adding something dry enough to make Miu laugh harder than she should have. It surprised Miu, honestly. Lena looked intimidating from afar—elegant and reserved in ways that made people keep their distance. But sitting across from her now, Miu realized Lena wasn’t cold. Just careful.
And somehow, for reasons unknown to both of them, Lena wasn’t particularly careful around her.
By the time they left the café, evening had painted the streets gold.
Miu walked backward ahead of them while talking animatedly about one of her professors, nearly bumping into a pole before Lena caught her wrist.
“Careful.”
The touch lasted maybe two seconds.
Miu still felt it long after Lena let go.
The symptoms bloomed slowly at first.
A cough here.
Another there.
Easy to ignore.
Especially when Lena became such a central part of her life so quickly.
It happened naturally. Effortlessly.
Somehow Miu started waiting outside band rehearsals just to walk Lena home afterward. Lena started saving seats for Miu during campus events without even thinking about it. They studied together often despite being in completely different programs, Miu rambling while Lena highlighted passages in her books.
Everyone noticed. Absolutely everyone.
“You two are disgustingly attached,” Milk complained one afternoon while watching Miu steal fries off Lena’s plate.
“We’re literally just sitting here,” Lena replied calmly.
“You’re feeding her.”
Miu grinned smugly as Lena wordlessly handed her another fry.
Milk looked horrified. “See? This is what I mean.”
Lena only looked amused.
“You're different with her,” Miu’s mother stated one evening.
“Different how?” Miu asked.
“You’re more mature, grounded, and stable. You’ve become someone reliable, my dear.”
Miu just smiled.
“You know you have a specific look when you look at her right?” Ling told her after a particularly grueling cheer practice.
“You're hallucinating, Phi,” Miu answered.
But deep inside she knows what Ling was talking about, she knows how she looks at Lena
Miu looked hopelessly in love.
Unfortunately for her, that knowledge remained unspoken.
Because Miu fell hard.
Terribly.
Irrevocably.
It happened in fragments; In Lena quietly carrying an umbrella over her during sudden rainstorms. Lena reading passages from her favorite novels aloud because Miu once admitted she liked listening to her voice. In the way Lena became softer around her, easier with her laughter, warmer with her touch. Miu loved her in pieces first, then all at once. And she kept it to herself, because she loved what they already had too much to risk destroying it.
Lena was her best friend.
Her safest place.
The person she looked for first in every crowd.
If loving her silently was the price for keeping her close, then Miu would endure it gladly.
Even when flowers started blooming to announce its eventuality.
Hanahaki Disease was cruel that way.
People romanticized it too often, they spoke about it poetically, tragically. Love growing into flowers, petals blooming in lungs. As if there was anything beautiful about coughing until your chest burned.
As if there was anything lovely about waking up unable to breathe properly because your own feelings were killing you slowly.
But if there’s one thing Miu was becoming good at, it was pretending. The flowers became just another thing she had to hide.
And Miu hid it so well.
The tragedy of it all was that Lena never noticed. Or perhaps she noticed everything except the one thing that mattered most.
Because Lena knew Miu better than almost anyone else in the world.
She knew Miu hated bitter coffee despite constantly ordering it to look sophisticated. She knew she got emotionally attached to fictional characters so deeply that she needed entire recovery days after sad endings. She knew Miu became quieter whenever genuinely upset, softer whenever tired, clingier whenever anxious.
Lena knew how Miu looked illuminated by city lights during midnight drives.Knew the exact laugh she made when truly caught off guard. Knew how to untangle her overthinking with nothing more than a hand resting briefly against her shoulder.
But love—
Love remained untouched between them.
Not absent. Just unnamed.
And Miu let it stay that way.
Because loving Lena from afar was still loving her and having Lena as her best friend felt infinitely better than risking losing her entirely.
So Miu swallowed petals in silence.
Years passed gently around them, college ended and their lives changed shape.
Lena stepped into the entertainment industry almost accidentally after a talent scout noticed her during a university production. She carried herself too beautifully for cameras not to adore her. Audiences fell in love quickly with her quiet magnetism, with the intelligence in her gaze, with the calm elegance she never seemed aware she possessed.
Miu watched all of it happen with overwhelming pride.
And heartbreak.
Because Lena bloomed brilliantly beneath the spotlight while Miu remained beside her in the shadows willingly, faithfully.
Always.
The flowers grew worse after graduation.
Perhaps because adulthood sharpened loneliness in unexpected ways. Or perhaps because Miu began realizing that loving someone for years did not make the feeling smaller. It only buried it deeper until it rooted itself into every part of you.
The coughing became violent enough that she learned how to hide bloodstains professionally. Designer handbags became useful for carrying medication. Expensive perfume masked the faint floral scent that clung to her clothes after particularly bad nights. Work became an excuse for looking pale and exhausted.
Doctors begged her repeatedly to consider surgery.
“It’s progressing aggressively,” Ginny, a hanahaki specialist, told her carefully. “You understand what happens if this continues untreated.”
Miu smiled politely from her hospital bed. “I know.”
“Have you told anyone? You’re friends? Family?”
Miu let out a shaky breath, “No one needs to know.”
“But, Miu, you’ve been carrying this pain all alone,” Ginny sighed in frustration, “The disease will keep progressing. It’s already a miracle that you survived it this long, the flowers are in full bloom! Miu, you should tell someone.”
But Miu only remained silent, remained firm in her unspoken decision.
“The procedure would remove the emotional attachment causing the illness.” Ginny hesitated, “But you would survive.”
Miu looked down at the camellia petals resting in her lap—White, soft, and beautiful.
Pure unwavering love. How fitting.
“I don’t want to forget her.”
And truly, that was the end of every discussion.
Because people misunderstood Hanahaki when they spoke about survival.
Yes, surgery could save the body, but at the cost of love itself. At the cost of every heartbeat Miu had ever spent cherishing Lena.
Every warm midnight conversation, every lingering glance, every moment that made her feel unbearably alive. How could she erase that? How could she survive becoming someone who no longer loved Lena? That sounded far more frightening than death.
So Miu chose the flowers.
Again and again.
Even when breathing became painful.
Even when her ribs ached constantly.
Even when she started coughing red splattered blossoms into trembling hands nearly every morning.
And Lena never knew.
Because Miu made sure she didn’t.
“Do you think I’m difficult to love?” Lena asked the question unexpectedly one rainy evening.
They sat together inside Lena’s apartment, takeout containers scattered across the coffee table while soft jazz played somewhere in the background. Lena had just finished filming for eighteen hours straight and currently wore oversized pajamas with damp hair falling loosely around her face.
Beautiful.
Always beautiful.
Miu curled deeper into the couch beside her. “Where did that come from?”
Lena shrugged lightly, though her expression remained thoughtful.
“People like me easily,” she said quietly. “But sometimes I think they only like the version they see.”
Miu’s chest hurt immediately.
Because there it was again, that quiet loneliness Lena carried beneath all her success.
”Well, I like you for you,” Miu quipped playfully, though not meeting Lena’s eyes in fear of giving how much truth was in those words.
Lena laughed as she lunged at Miu, pinching Miu’s cheeks with the softest affection, “You’re required to say that because you’re my best friend.”
Miu chuckled to hide the cough wanting to burst out of her lungs before looking at Lena fully. “Anyone who actually knows you would love you.”
I love you…
Lena looked at her, really looked at her. And Miu nearly broke beneath the softness in her gaze.
“You say things like that so easily.”
Because they were true. Because Miu had spent years loving every hidden part of Lena that the world never noticed.
The introvert beneath the celebrity, the exhausted girl who forgot to eat while memorizing scripts, the person who loved old bookstores more than red carpets. The woman who still called Miu after every difficult filming day because somehow her voice made everything quieter.
Miu loved all of her.
Even the parts Lena herself struggled to love.
But instead of saying any of that, Miu only smiled.
“You deserve to be loved properly,” she whispered softly, genuine honesty coating every word.
Lena held her gaze for a long moment, gaze so soft and genuine she looked like she’s about to cry before looking away and burrowing her face in Miu’s comforting hug.
Neither of them noticed the blood slowly staining Miu’s sleeve from where her nails dug crescent moons into her palm to suppress another cough.
Lena fell in love two years later.
Miu knew before Lena even admitted it aloud.
She saw it in the way Lena suddenly smiled at her phone. In how her exhaustion became lighter somehow, how carefully hopeful she sounded whenever mentioning a certain actress she had begun working with repeatedly.
Miu listened quietly through all of it.
Supportive.
Warm.
Smiling perfectly.
Ignoring the pitying looks that her family and friends are trying so hard not to throw at her. Then she went home afterward and coughed flowers into her sink, hacking white petals and vomiting crimson blood until she collapsed, shaking against the bathroom floor. She missed out on work and meetings for weeks as the debilitating disease rendered her helpless under everyone’s notice.
The disease became monstrous after that. Unforgiving, vicious in its urge to claim every single breath of her life.
As though her body itself finally understood what her heart had been denying for years. Lena was never going to love her back.
And still—
Still Miu could not regret loving her. That was maybe the cruelest part she inflicted on herself.
“Miu?” She blinked back into focus.
Lena sat across from her at dinner, concern knitting softly across her features. “You disappeared for a second.”
Miu smiled gently. “Sorry. Just tired.”
“You’re not looking too well these days,” Lena’s expression softened immediately. “You’ve been working too hard.”
No, I’ve been dying too hard.
But Miu only laughed quietly instead.
Then asked about Lena’s new film because hearing Lena speak passionately remained one of her favorite things in the world.
The night of Lena’s major film premiere arrived wrapped in gold lights and excitement. It was her breakthrough role. Critics already called it career-defining before the film had even officially been released.
Lena had texted Miu three separate times that day.
You’re coming, right?
Miu stared at the message from her penthouse bathroom floor, crimson blood splattered across white camellia petals around her knees. Her breathing sounded terrible now.
Wet.
Fragile.
Pain pulsed through her chest with frightening intensity.
Still, she smiled faintly while typing back with shaking hands.
Wouldn’t miss it for the world. ❤️
But by evening, Miu could no longer stand without collapsing. It was her mother who found her unconscious beside the bathtub surrounded by beautiful yet devastating flowers.
White camellias covered the floor like snowfall.
Meanwhile, Lena kept searching the crowd for her. During interviews and even while cameras flashed endlessly around her.
Miu was never late, she’s never absent during important moments. Anxiety settled slowly beneath Lena’s ribs as the hours passed. Then her phone rang near the end of the event.
Ling.
Lena answered immediately.
“Where’s Miu?”
Silence.
“Lena,” Ling whispered shakily, “It’s Miu, she—you need to come to the hospital.”
Everything inside Lena went cold.
Hospitals after midnight felt unbearably quiet, Lena hated that, hated the sterile smell, the pale lighting, and the terrifying stillness lingering through empty corridors. By the time she reached Miu’s room, her hands were trembling. Ling stood outside the door crying silently.
And suddenly Lena understood.
Not fully, not yet. But enough.
“What happened?”
Ling looked devastated. “She didn’t tell you?”
Lena’s stomach dropped violently. “Tell me what?”
Ling covered her mouth briefly before whispering, “Hanahaki.”
The word shattered something inside Lena instantly.
“No.”
Because no.
Impossible.
Not Miu. Not her bright vibrant Miu who smiled through everything, not the girl who carried sunlight into every room she entered. Just… please. No.
Ling cried harder.
“They said she’s been sick for years. She never told anyone, not even her family. She refused surgery a while back and that the disease had progressed over time well beyond any treatment could cure.”
Years. Lena physically staggered backward. Years?
Miu had been suffering for years and Lena never noticed?
Guilt crashed through her so hard she could barely breathe, Then slowly, horrifyingly, realization followed.
Hanahaki only came from unrequited love.
With a shaky voice, she dared to ask the question no one seemed too keen to voice out, “Who?”
The look Ling gave her was a kind of devastating blow on its own and suddenly, all at once, as shared memories played in their minds, Lena knew.
Of course it was her.
It had always been her.
Lena entered the room shaking and her body almost gave up when she saw how Miu looked painfully small against white hospital sheets. Oxygen tubes framed her face while monitors beeped softly nearby. Her skin looked pale beneath the dim lighting, lips slightly cracked from hours of coughing blood.
Yet when she saw Lena—
She smiled.
God.
She smiled.
As if nothing as monumental as dying was going on, as if it was just another day where they’ll spend nothing and everything just enjoying each other’s company. As if she wasn’t choosing something as selfish as love rather than life.
“I’m guessing you finally know.”
Lena nearly collapsed beside her bed.
“Miu,” she whispered brokenly.
Miu’s eyes softened immediately at the sound.
“You shouldn’t cry, Lalee,” she murmured weakly. “You look beautiful and you'll ruin your makeup.”
A laugh escaped Lena halfway into a sob, “How long?”
Miu looked away quietly. “Does it matter now?”
“Yes.” Lena’s voice cracked. “It matters to me.”
Miu fell silent for a long moment, then, “Since university.”
Lena’s entire body went numb.
University. All those years, every memory replayed differently now, every smile, every lingering glance, every moment Miu stayed beside her faithfully while quietly dying, and she never knew.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lena asked helplessly, hand reaching for Miu’s fragile one, holding into it tightly. Like if she hold on tightly enough, Miu wouldn’t disappear.
Miu looked at her with unbearable tenderness. “Because I love you.”
As though that explained everything.
Maybe it did.
Tears slipped freely down Lena’s face now. “You should’ve gotten surgery.”
Miu smiled faintly, “And forget you?”
“Miu—”
“I couldn’t.” Miu’s voice wavered softly for the first time.
“I tried thinking about it once. About waking up without loving you anymore.” Tears gathered slowly in Miu’s eyes too. “It scared me more than dying.”
Lena broke completely then.
Because no one had ever loved her like this.
No one.
And she had been too blind to see it.
“I’m sorry,” Lena whispered desperately, sobbing uncontrollably now. “I’m so sorry.”
Miu shook her head weakly. “Don’t apologize for not loving me the same way.”
But Lena’s grief deepened anyway, because perhaps she could have, she knew she would’ve. Maybe in another life, maybe if timing had been kinder.
Maybe if Lena had looked closer, paid more attention years ago instead of assuming Miu would always remain beside her no matter what.
The thought became unbearable.
Lena carefully held Miu’s hand between both of hers and pressed them to her lips, it’s cold.
It felt so frighteningly cold.
“Miu,” she whispered through heartbreaking devastation and sobs. “Stay.”
Miu smiled softly at her. There was so much love in that expression that Lena thought it might haunt her forever. “I’m tired, Phi.”
“No.” Lena shook her head immediately. “No, don’t say that.”
Then Miu coughed.
It was the unforgiving kind, the one where it rattled Miu’s body as she coughed up full blooms of white camellias. In any other circumstances, the soft white petals would have been beautiful, but it isn’t when it's currently bathed in the bright red of Miu’s life's blood. Those are the flowers that is currently taking Miu’s life.
And Lena could only watch in horrified silence as the light of the girl she thought as the sunshine of her life began to dim right in front of her very eyes.
Miu’s breathing weakened, but her hold remained tight and strong on Lena’s hands. The only indication that she doesn’t want to go, that she also wants to stay.
Flowers rested in a glass vase near the bedside now, placed there by some unaware caretaker trying to brighten the room.
White camellias.
Lena suddenly hated them.
Miu looked toward them quietly and then at the blood splattered flowers in front of her before speaking again.
“You know,” she whispered, tone somber and dripping with the heaviest kind of regret and sadness, “This isn’t the kind of flowers I meant to give you.”
Lena’s face crumpled instantly, tremors wracked her body as she cried and cried, while swearing she could hear her heart and soul practically split. This is it, this must actually be what heartbreak truly feels like.
Miu’s gaze found hers one last time.
Soft.
Warm.
Endlessly loving even now.
“I’m sorry, Lalee.” she breathed shakily.
Then, very quietly…
“I love you.”
The monitor screamed moments later, drowning the sound of Lena’s own cries as the light of her sun finally flickered out.
Later on, her fans and the people close to her would never forget the way she cried, looking so destroyed when a fan gave her a bouquet of white camellias.
And Lena—
Lena would spend the rest of her life unable to look at white camellias, not when every time she sees the flower she would always remember Miu, the girl who loved her enough to bloom herself to death.
fin.