Work Text:
The alarm clock on the nightstand was a chunky, plastic thing that ticked with an aggressively rhythmic precision. Hitori was busy, drifting in the hazy periphery of a dream where she was standing center stage at STARRY, the lights blindingly white and the crowd roaring. Beside her, Kita was laughing, her hand grazing Hitoris shoulder in a way that felt grounded and certain. It was the kind of warmth that didn't usually exist in Hitoris waking hours, a sort of gravity that pulled her chest tight.
Then, the silence of her bedroom crashed back in and the dream disappeared. Hitori blinked, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. She shifted, intending to roll over and hide under her covers, when a sudden tickle flared in the back of her throat. It was a sudden, invasive itch that demanded attention. She sat up abruptly and coughed.
When the spasm subsided, Hitori looked down. There, resting against her hand, was a single delicate petal. It was a vibrant, shocking pink shaped like a teardrop and looking too vivid to be real.
Hitori remained frozen, her posture hunched, staring at the tiny petal.
"...Huh?" she whispered, her voice cracking.
She reached out with trembling fingers and pinched the petal. It was soft, slightly damp, and unnervingly warm as if it had been kept in a heated greenhouse. A nervous laugh bubbled up in her throat—the kind of laugh she had when she accidentally walked into a glass door. "Did I... accidentally inhale a flower yesterday?" She muttered into the empty room.
---
"The internet is a vast repository of human knowledge," Hitori whispered to her screen, "which means it is also a vast repository of the most terrifying ways to die." It was 2:14 AM, and the blue light of her laptop cast a ghostly light over her face, making her look more like a specter than a high school student.
She had started with a simple, cautious search—*Coughing up petals*—but her own anxiety had quickly taken over. Her fingers flew across the keyboard in a rhythmic and desperate dance, clicking thru medical forums and blogs that spoke of a condition that sounded more like a fairytale than a diagnosis.
The search results spiraled downward, and she skilled past the "lifestyle" blogs and went straight for the data. *Hanahaki Disease.* She scrolled through a list of symptoms that mirrored her own morning: the tickle in her throat, the sudden fever, the unexplainable floral scent. Then came the mortality rates. She read about the "suffocation stage," where the lungs became a garden of beautiful, suffocating blooms, stealing oxygen until the heart simply gave up.
Hitori felt a cold sweat break across her neck. She leaned back in her chair, her breathing becoming shallow, which only triggered another short, sharp cough. This time, three small pink petals fluttered onto her keyboard, resting atop the 'Enter' key like tiny, mocking flags. She stared at them, her mind racing. This couldn't be happening.
Then, she found the section on the "Surgical Solution." Her eyes scanned the text rapidly, skipping over the details of other things until she hit the line that made the world stop turning: *The surgery removes the emotional source feeding the disease. The patient permanently loses every romantic feeling connected to the beloved.*
Hitori froze, her hands hovering over her keyboard. To the world, Kita was a beacon of sunshine—radiant, energetic and effortlessly loved.
To Hitori, Kita was the only person who had ever looked at her and seen something worth knowing. The thought of that connection being surgically removed—of looking at Kita and only seeing a "friend"—felt more violent than the idea of dying.
"...No," she whispered, her voice barely a ghost of a sound. "Absolutely not."
The idea was unthinkable. To lose the feeling that made her heart hammer against her ribs whenever Kita smiled, to erase the specific, agonizingly sweet ache of wanting to be perceived by her—felt like removing the only part of herself that had ever felt like a masterpiece. Hitori stared at the screen until the pixels blurred into a smear of white, her chest heaving in a rhythm that was no longer steady.
With a sudden, violent motion, Hitori slammed the laptop shut. She curled into a tight ball, pulling her knees up to her chest and burying her face in her hands. A jagged sob escaped her, followed immediately by a fit of coughing that left her gasping. When she pulled her hand away from her mouth, three more pink petals lay cradled in her palm.
The silence of the room became a physical weight, pressing against her chest, echoing the rhythmic thrum of her own panicked heart. She felt small—smaller than she had ever felt in the face of a crowd or a stranger's gaze.
The tears came not as a flood, but as a slow, leaking seepage, hot and salt-heavy. She pressed her face into the pillow to muffle the sound, her body shaking with the effort of staying quiet. The house was still; her parents were asleep, and the world outside her bedroom door continued to turn, oblivious to the fact that flowers had begun blooming inside her lungs.
---
Maybe it's just a very specific, very localized form of acid reflux, Hitori thought. She stood before the bathroom mirror, staring at the pink petal clinging to the corner of her lilp
Perhaps she had accidentally inhaled a stray seed from a florists window in Shimokitazawa ? Or maybe—yes, this was more plausible—she had simply swallowed one of Nijikas flamboyant hair decorations during a band meeting..
She spent the next hour trying to "cure" herself through sheer denial. She drank three glasses of lukewarm water, and performed a series of erratic stretches she'd seen in a fitness magazine. Every time a tickle flared in her throat, she squeezed her eyes shut and visualized the petals as nothing more than colorful phlegm. *It’s just a cold,* she told herself, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. *A very colorful, very rare, very specific kind of seasonal flu that only affects girls who are too shy to hold a conversation.*
But the denial began to fray the moment she stepped onto the train for school. Hitori felt a sudden, sharp pressure bloom behind her sternum. She clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling a cough that felt less like a sickness and more like a root trying to push through concrete. When she finally pulled her hand away, a small, wet cluster of pink petals lay hidden in the palm of her hand.
"Hitori-chan! Good morning!"
The voice was like a physical strike of lightning. Hitori jumped, nearly dropping her bag, as Kita appeared beside her. Kita was beaming, her eyes sparkling with an enthusiasm that made Hitori feel like a smudge of grey charcoal against a neon painting.
She leaned in close—too close—and the scent of her perfume collided with the faint, sweet aroma of the flowers in Hitori's lungs. The reaction was instantaneous; Hitori’s chest tightened, a sudden surge of warmth flooding her face as the flowers inside her seemed to lean toward Kita, yearning for the sunlight.
---
The air in the studio was thick with the humming of an amplifier and the chaotic rhythmic chatter of a band
"And if we can just hit that transition without Hitori-chan floating away into the astral plane, we'll be golden!" Nijika cheered, flashing a wide, encouraging grin.
Kita let out a bright laugh, leaning towards Hitori. "Hitori-chan is just concentrating! Right?"
She beamed, her expression so genuinely fond that it felt like a physical weight. For a fleeting second, Hitori managed a fragile smile in return, a tiny spark of connection that made her heart flutter.
Then, the warmth in her chest curdled into a sharp, stabbing pressure
It started as a tickle, then a flare, and suddenly Hitori was doubling over, her hand slamming across her mouth to stifle a violent, racking cough. The sound was muffled, but the sensation was rough—something solid tearing its way up through her thraot.
"Hitori-chan, you're totally in the zone today!" Kita chirped, her voice a bright melody that seemed to dance over the ambientness of the studio.
She was practically vibrating with excitement, her fingers lightly dancing across the strings of her guitar. Beside her, Nijika was mid sentence, explaining a shift in the percussion for the third chorus. Ryo, meanwhile, had entered a state of Zen-like vacancy, staring at the ceiling like it was the only thing she seemed to find interesting. It was a moment of rare, effortless harmony.
For a second, Hitori actually let herself lean into it.
She looked at Kita—really looked at her, and felt a surge of something so tender it made her fingertips tingle. She managed a small, genuine smile, a fragile connection that Kita immediately mirrored with a beaming, radiant grin.
Then, the garden in her lungs decided to bloom.
The transition was violent. One moment she was floating in the warmth of Kita's gaze, and the next, a jagged spike of pain shot through her, feeling as though a thousand tiny needles were stitching themselves into her chest. Hitori doubled over, the world blurring as she slammed her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. The cough was wet and guttural, a sound that didn't belong in any room.
When she pulled her hand away, the sight made her breath hitch. A small splatter of red stained her palm, and nestled in the center of it—
—was a single pink blossom—tiny and delicate. With a panicked, wide-eyed desperation, Hitori swept the flower and the blood into the deep, oversized sleeve of her hoodie, her movements frantic as she tried to erase the evidence of her own dying.
Then,
"Hitori-chan, wanna help me with harmonies?"
Usually, the mere suggestion of singing with somebody—of letting her voice with somebody else's in a public space—would send her into a full blown meltdown. She would typically respond with a series of bird like noises or attempt to merge her form with the nearest wall, but today, she wanted to say yes.
She wanted to reach for the harmony, to let her voice be the steady anchor to Kitas melody.
She opened her mouth to give a tentative, shaky affirmation, but the moment she tried to shape the word, the garden in her chest revolted.
The air didn't flow; it collided. It felt as though a thicket of thorns had suddenly surged upward, hooking into her throat. The attempt to speak triggered a violent spasm that buckled her knees. Hitori collapsed into a hacking fit, the sound raw and wet, echoing harshly.
She clamped her hand over her mouth so hard her knuckles strained white, her entire body shaking as she fought to keep the flowers down
"Hitori-chan!" Kita’s voice was suddenly laced with concern, her hand reaching out to steady her. "Are you okay? That sounded... really rough.”
Hitori froze, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against the very things that were stealing her breath.
Kitas hand was hovering just inches from her shoulder. She could feel the wetness clinging to her palm, the copper tang of blood and the sweetness of the crushed petals.
If she spoke now; she wouldn't be answering a question, she would be spitting floral gore onto the studio floor
“I-im fine!” Hitori managed, the words sounding like they were being pushed through a sieve of travel. She stepped back abruptly, her movements jerky and panicked, putting a safe distance between herself and Kita. She kept her hand clamped firmly over her mouth.
Her eyes darted around the room as if searching for an emergency exit. Nijika stopped drumming, her sticks mid-air, her eyes narrowing with a mixture of confusion and suspicion. "You don't sound 'fine,' Hitori-chan. You sound like you're trying to talk through a mouthful of marbles."
"Just... a tickle!" Hitori squeaked, her voice jumping an entire octave. She gave a frantic, stiff-armed wave of her hand, trying to project a level of normalcy that she was physically incapable of maintaining. "A-allergies! Very aggressive... spring... allergies!"
—
The rehearsal ended with the mechanical click of amplifiers being switched off and the rhythmic *zip-zip* of guitar cases closing. The room, once filled with the electric tension of their music, suddenly felt cavernous and cold.
Hitori didn't move. She slid down the wall, her spine clicking against the acoustic foam, and rested the back of her head against the cool surface. She felt as though her chest had been hollowed out and replaced with a heavy sponge.
Every inhalation was a battle, a slow struggle to pull oxygen through a thicket of velvet petals that seemed to tighten with every beat of her heart.
She closed her eyes, trying to regulate her breathing, but it came out in shallow, ragged hitches that sounded, to her own ears, like a death rattle.
“Hitori-chan ?”
Hitori opened one eye to find Kita crouching beside her, her hair falling forward like a curtain. Kitas expression was devoid of its usually energetic aura; instead, her eyes were clouded with a quiet searching concern.
Hitori snapped upright with a violent, mechanical jerk, her posture stiffening.
“Y-yeah!!?” She exclaimed, the voice too loud and the pitch too high; a desperate attempt to hide the rattling sound in her chest.
She felt a sudden, sharp prickle in her throat—a bloom demanding release—and she clamped her jaw shut so hard her teeth ached.
"You're breathing like you just ran a marathon through a swamp," Kita observed, her voice dropping an octave into a register of genuine worry. She didn't pull away; instead, she leaned closer.
Hitori felt the panic rise.
She could feel the petals shifting, responding to the girl who occupied every single one of her thoughts. She forced her spine to snap straight—her muscles locking into an artificial posture that didn't really look like a human.
Y-Yeah!!" Hitori exclaimed again, the sound cracking mid-air. She gave a disjointed thumbs-up that shook violently. "Just... the humidity! It’s... very humid in here! Right? Super humid! Almost... tropical!"
Kita blinked, her head tilting to the side. She looked around the climate controlled airconditioned studio, and then back at Hitori, who's face was currently pale.
The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, as Kitas gaze lingered on the way Hitori was clutching the hem of her hoodie.
There was a singular, faint petal clinging to the fabric.
"I... I'm just tired," Hitori added, her voice a fragile rasp. It was a lie, a practiced, comfortable shield that she had used for years to hide a thousand different anxieties.
“I'll just… head home early! I forgot I have to- Uh… water my c-cactus!” Hitori blurted out, the lie clumsy
Before Kita could process the absurdity of the statement, hitori had already pivoted on her heel, her tracksuit billowing around her as she bolted towards the back. She didn't head for the exit; instead, she dove into the narrow sanctuary of the STARRY restroom, the heavy door clicking shut with a finality that felt like a gasp of air.
The moment the lock clicked, the facade collapsed. Hitori slumped against the wall, her chest heaving in spasms. For the last hour, she'd been holding her breath—fighting a tide of botanical growth that felt like it was trying to rewrite her internal anatomy.
Now, with the door acting as a shield between her and the world, she let it happen.
The first cough was a violent eruption that knocked the wind out of her, sending her doubling over the sink. It wasn't just a few petals anymore. With a thud, a whole blossom—a vivid, saturated pink camellia—slid from her throat and landed in the basin. Then another. And another.
The flowers were beautiful—their petals pristine, but they were slicked with a terrifying amount of *red.* Dark blood splashed against the white sink, mottling it in a splatter of red.
Hitori gagged, her lungs burning, her body shaking and—
She clutched the edges of the sink, sobbing silently into her arm, the room smelling cloyingly *sweet.*
Outside, the heavy thud of the main door closing echoed through the hallway. Hitori froze, her heart hammering. Then came the footsteps—steady, rhythmic, and unmistakable.
"Hello?"
The voice was cool, mature, and laced with a flicker of suspicion. It was Seika. The manager of STARRY had a nose for trouble.
Hitori stopped breathing
She squeezed her eyes shut pressing her back against the wall, her chest still heaving with a shallow, rattling sound. She looked down at the sink, at the blood and the flowers—and felt a surge of panic. If she moved, she may cough again. If she spoke, she may reveal the wreckage of her lungs.
"Hitori? Are you in here?" Seika asked, her voice closer now, just on the other side of the door.
Hitori didn't move. She didn't dare to *blink*. She watched a single blood slicked petal slide slowly down the slope of the sink. The air in the bathroom was thick, smelling of metallic copper. She felt the garden inside her, the roots tightening around her windpipe as if mocking her attempt at invisibility.
For a long minute, there was nothing but the frantic, drumming beat of Hitoris heart.
She could almost feel Seikas gaze piercing through the wood of the door, searching for a pink blob
Then, with a soft dissapointed sigh, the footsteps receded. The rhythmic *clack clack* of Seikas shoes faded down the hallway.
Hitori *collapsed.*
She sank to the floor, her legs giving out as she let out an exhale that felt like drawing shards of glass through her throat. She stayed there for a long time—curled into a ball on the floor, staring at the sink. The flowers were still there.
They were a physical manifestation of a love she couldn't voice,
And a pain she couldn't share.
—
The upload bar walked forward with an agonizing slowness.
Hitori sat in the dark of her room, the only light provided by her monitor. She wasn't really thinking about the technical precision of her sweeps, nor the way the distortion screamed in the bridge; no, she was listening to the gaps between the notes. In the raw audio, there were moments where she had to stop to cough. Tiny mistakes in the recording that she had edited out.
It was a lie—a polished version of a girl who was currently clutching a blood soaked, tear stained handkerchief to her mouth.
She wasnt recording for the views or the praise. She was recording a memory
This song was a map of *everything she couldn't say to Kita.* The way the melodies climbed in the second verse, was a confession. The sudden crashing chord at the end… was a sob.
She was archiving the sound of her soul before the garden finally claimed the air required to produce it.
When the upload finished, Hitori lingered on the description. She typed a single sentence, the words feeling heavy and final, like a farewell. “Thanks for listening all this time.”
She hit Publish.
Within minutes, the notifications began to roll in.
“Another masterpiece!”
“guitarhero never misses!”
“Wait, why are they so sentimental, are they graduating ?”
Hitori read the comments, a smile touching her face. They saw a caption, they saw a musician being humble. None of them could smell the scent of camellias that had stained her bedsheets, nor could they see the way her fingertips trembled as she reached for her water glass. To the world, she was an enigma of talent; to herself, she was a clock winding down.
"Bocchi-chan! Your new upload is trending already!"
The voice shattered the silence of the following morning. Kita had walked up beside Hitori in the schools hallway, her phone thrusted forward.
The screen showed the view count climbing, the numbers spinning in a blur.
Hitori didn't jump this time. She didn't try to make a noise or dissolve into the lockers. She simply stood there, her shoulders slumped, feeling the sudden vibration of a cough building.
It felt like a wet twine tightening around her windpipe. She leaned away from Kita, not out of social anxiety, but out of a desperate, animal need to keep the blood away from the other girl's pristine white uniform.
"It's... just a hobby," Hitori rasped. The voice that came out was no longer her own; it was thin and airy, as if the sound were being filtered through layers of silk.
Kitas smile faltered. She stepped closer, her head tilting in that puppy like way that always made Hitoris heart do a painful somersault.
“Your voice... Hitori-chan, are you still sick? You’ve been sounding like that since the studio. Maybe you should actually go to the nurse's office? I can walk you there!"
“N-no! No need! The air… is just spicy today!”
Hitori blurted out, the absurdity registering only after she had said it. She didn't wait for Kita to question it. With a jerky, mechanical motion, she pivoted 90 degrees and began to retreat. She kept her head bowed, her hair acting as a curtain to hide the way her eyes were watering, her gaze fixed solely on the scuffed toes of her indoor shoes.
—
The amplifier hummed, a low voltage drone that usually felt like a heartbeat, but today it sounded like a warning. Hitoris fingers hovered over the fretboard, trembling with fragility.
As the band launched into the second verse of their latest arrangement, the music felt disconnected, as if Hitori were listening to it from the bottom of a deep, cold well.
She hit a G major chord, but her ring finger slipped, producing a twang.
It wasn't just a slip.
For the first time in her life, Hitori found herself staring at her guitar as if it were written in a foreign language. The chord changes, once etched into her muscle memory, suddenly felt like puzzles she couldn't solve. She missed the transition to the bridge entirely, her hands freezing in a confused claw while Kitas rhythm guitar continued to drive forward.
Then, the air simply vanished.
In the middle of a soaring lead line, Hitoris chest locked. It wasn't a gradual loss of breath; it was if an invisible hand had reached inside her ribcage and squished her lungs shut. She stopped playing mid note, her guitar sliding an inch down her body as she gasped. Not a cough, not yet, but she stood there, mouth open, eyes glazed, fighting a losing battle.
Nijika lowered her sticks. “Hitori-chan? Again?” Her voice was soft, tempered with a kind of frustration.
“You've been off beat for the last 20 minutes. Are you overworking yourself? You can't keep pushing your brain into a meltdown if you wanna make it through a full set.”
Hitori couldn't answer. She remained frozen, her chest heaving in desperate hitches. Her vision blurred at the edges, the studio lights bleeding into long white streaks. She wanted to tell Nijika that it wasnt her brain that was melting; but her lungs that were blooming. Instead, she managed a weak nod.
Ryo, however, didn't look convinced. She had remained leaned against her amp, her expression passive, but her eyes were narrowed, tracing the rise and fall of Hitoris shoulders. Ryo lived in the margins of things; she noticed the details others ignored. The faint smell of flowers had begun to permeate the air of the studio. It wasn't the smell of perfume or candy, it was the scent of a florist's shop.
"You're not tired," Ryo said, her voice a flat, deadpan observation. "You're struggling to inhale."
The bluntness of the statement sent a jolt of electricity through Hitori. She recoiled; her back hitting the amp with a thud. The sudden movement triggered it—a violent spasm that started in her gut and surged upward. Hitori doubled over.
The sound was less of a cough and more of a tear, as if something stubborn were trying to force its way through bone. Hitoris hand flew up in a blur, her palm slamming against her mouth. The impact muffled the sound, turning the violent eruption into a series of stifled grunts, but she could feel the warmth instantly. It was a thick syrupy beat, the weight of blossoms pressing against her skin fighting to be free. For a second, the world tilted, and the studio lights became spinning blurs of white, with the only thing real being the metallic tang filling her nose.
She stayed double over for several seconds, her chest heaving in jagged tremors. The garden was claiming more territory with every spasm, the roots tightening around her windpipe.
“H-h-h-h…” Hitoris voice was a shattered thing, a rasp that barely carried across the room. She didn't dare move her hand, terrified that the moment she lowered it, the evidence of her decay would spill across the floor.
She forced her eyes to focus on the tiles, her mind spiraling. *Don't look. Please don't look at me. Don't ask me to open my hand.*
"Hitori-chan! Are you okay?!" Kita was there in an instant, her voice laced with an urgency that made the flowers in Hitori's chest shiver in sympathetic resonance. Kita’s hand reached out, hovering just inches from Hitori’s shoulder, the warmth of her presence acting as a catalyst for another surge of pressure in Hitori's lungs.
“Hitori-chan!! Are you okay?!” Kita was there in an instant, her voice laced with an urgency that made the flowers in Hitoris chest shiver in sympathetic resonance.
“S-s-sorry!!” Hitori shrieked, the word muffled and distorted by the hand still clamped over her mouth. “S-so sorry!! I just… uhm.. forgot to… take my allergy medicine! I have to go! Right now! Urgent! Bye!!..”
—
The walk home from school was usually a masterclass in avoidance. But the air in Shimokitazawa had turned treacherous. It felt thick, saturated with a humidity that didn't come from the weather, but from the suffocating garden expanding within her.
It happened near a vending machine, the hum of the refrigeration unit vibrating through her shoes.
The spasm was sudden, a needle that pierced her sternum. Hitori doubled over, the force of the cough ripping through her with violence. There was no handkerchief, only the frantic press of her palm against her lips. When she finally straightened, gasping in shallow sips of air, she saw it. A single pink camellia had escaped on the gray concrete.
Hitori froze. The flower looked alien, too vibrant, too perfect and stained at the base with a bead of crimson. She lunged for it, her fingers trembling, desperate to erase the evidence of her decay before it could be—
But she was too slow
A hand, slender and fair, reached the blossom first. Kita had been walking a few paces behind, her presence a warm, golden aura that Hitori had tried so hard to ignore. Kita knelt,
A hand, slender and fair, reached the blossom first. Kita had been walking a few places behind, her presence a warm aura that Hitori had tried so hard to ignore. Kita knelt, her red hair brushing the concrete, and pinched the stem with a gentle curiosity. She lifted the flower to the light, her crimson eyes widening in genuine wonder.
"Pretty.”
The word was a soft, devastating exhale. Kita held the blossom between two fingers, the delicate pink petals stark against the grey concrete of the sidewalk. She didn't look at Hitori at first; she was mesmerized by the flower, her thumb grazing the edge of a petal that was still damp with a viscous, metallic crimson. To Kita, it looked like a piece of art that had simply fallen from the sky—a sudden, vivid splash of color in the mundane commute.
"What kind of flower is this?" Kita asked, finally turning her gaze toward Hitori. Her smile was radiant, fueled by the simple, innocent joy of discovering something beautiful.
Hitori felt her heart stutter, not with the flutter of romance, no, but with the cold paralyzing terror of a condemned prisoner who's cell door had just creaked open.
The air in her lungs felt like wet fool, and the scent of camellias was so potent now that it felt as if she were standing in the center of a garden.
She simply froze, her eyes wide and vacent, looking like a deer caught in headlights.
"..."
"Hitori-chan?" Kita’s head tilted, the flower still held aloft. "Did you drop this? It's so pretty, but... it looks like it's wet. Is this paint?"
Hitoris brain entered a state of total systemic failure. Her internal monologue, usually filled with a thousand worst case scenarios, suddenly went quiet.
She could see the exact moment Kita’s gaze shifted from the flower to Hitori’s face—noticing the trembling lip, the glassy eyes, and the faint, tell-tale smear of pink on her collar.
"I... it's... it's a prop!" Hitori managed to wheezs. "For... for a school project! About... botany! And the red is just... food coloring! Very high-quality... realistic... food coloring!"
She lunged forward, snatching the camellia from her fingers with desperation. She shoved the blossom deep into her pocket, her movements jerky.
Her heart was drumming a frantic rhythm against her ribs, and with every beat she felt the roots in her chest tighten.
Kita didn't move. Her expression had shifted from curiosity to a quiet, focused concern. She didn't call her out on the lie; she was too kind for that. Instead, she stepped closer, entering Hitori’s personal bubble with a softness that felt like a physical weight. "Hitori-chan, you're shaking. And you're breathing so... strangely."
"I-I just remembered! A... a very important appointment! With my... my cactus! It needs... a specific kind of water! At this exact minute!"
Hitori didn't wait for a reaction. She turned on her heel, her shoes screeching against the pavement. She just didn't walk away; she practically launched herself into a frantic stumbling sprint.
Behind her, the silence of the sidewalk felt like a heavy curtain falling, leaving Kita standing alone
Hitori didn't look back. She couldn't, because, If she saw that expression of worried tenderness one more time, she was certain her lungs would simply give up and bloom into a full, suffocating bouquet right there in the middle of the street.
She didn't stop until she reached the safety of an alleyway three blocks away, where she collapsed against the brick wall and let out a sob-wheeze. The cactus excuse was, by her own standards, a failure. She sold down the wall, her chest heaving, and reached into her pocket to retrieve the blood stained camellia. She stared at it for a long moment, the pink petals mocking her.
They were beautiful, they were killing her, and the worst part? She didn't want them to stop.
—
The rehearsal room was devoid of its usual warmth.
Hitori was packing her gear with a frantic and trembling haste, her movements jagged and discounted.
She was halfway through silding her cable into the bag when a shadow stretched across the floor, long and lean, blotting out the fluorescent lights. Ryo was leaning against the doorframe, her expression unreadable. Her eyes locked onto Hitori with a clinical, terrifying precision.
Ryo didn't move. She didn't smile. She simply existed in Hitoris periphery like a glitch in the matrix.
Then, her voice sliced through Hitoris thoughts.
"—Hanahaki."
The word didn't land like a question; It landed like a statement.
It was a statement of fact; a diagnosis delivered with the cold certainty of a mathematical proof.
Hitori froze, her hand still gripping the guitar cable. For several seconds, the only sound in the room was the rhythmic *drip drip drip* of a leaky faucet in the hallway.
Hitori didn't dare look up; terrified that Ryo could see the garden blooming behind her eyes.
"...How long?" Ryo asked, her voice shifting slightly, the deadpan tone softening into something resembling a curiosity that bordered on pity.
Hitori didn't answer; she couldn't.
The silence stretched between them until the pressure in Hitoris chest became an unbearable tide.
She let out a jagged, wet exhale, her shoulders slumping as the facade finally cracked.
"Three months," Hitori whispered, the sound barely a vibration. "Since the first petal... in the sink."
Ryo didn't move to comfort her. She wasn't the type for hugs or affection. Instead, she shifted her weight, her gaze drifting towards the door where Kita was currently chatting with Nijika, her laughter filtering through the walls.
Ryos eyes returned to Hitori, narrowing slightly.
"Tell her," Ryo said. It wasn't a suggestion; it was a directive, a logical solution to a biological problem. "The flowers only stop when the feeling is returned, or the heart is emptied. You're choosing the slow way to die."
Hitori let out a sound that was meant to be a laugh, but it emerged as a hacking wheeze that shook her entire frame. She leaned back against the amp, her eyes staring vacantly at the acoustic foam of the ceiling. "Tell her? Ryo... look at me. I'm... not the kind of person people fall in love with.”
"You're an idiot," Ryo replied simply. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper, and handed it to Hitori. It was a list of clinics—not the high-end hospitals, but discreet specialists who dealt with the psychological manifestations of the disease. "If you won't tell her, at least stop pretending you can breathe. You're playing the bridge of 'Seishun' like you're underwater."
Hitori took the paper, her fingers brushing against Ryo’s cold skin. For a moment, the oppressive weight in her chest eased, replaced by a flicker of gratitude for the girl who noticed the silence between the notes. Ryo didn't offer a smile, but she did reach out and flick Hitori’s forehead—a sharp, grounding pinch that snapped her back to the present.
"Don't let it kill you before the tour," Ryo added, her voice returning to its usual monotone as she turned to leave. "It would be a pain to find a replacement guitarist who can actually play the solos."
As Ryo disappeared into the hallway, Kita’s voice suddenly pierced the air, loud and brimming with an energy that felt like a physical blow. "Hitori-chan! Are you still in there? We're going to get ice cream! Come on, let's go!"
Hitori looked down at the paper in her hand, then at the door. She felt a sudden, violent surge of pressure in her lungs, a bloom of heat that tasted of copper and sweetness. She quickly pressed her hand over her mouth, coughing once into her palm. When she opened her hand, a single, blood-soaked petal lay there, trembling.
She shoved the petal deep into her pocket, alongside the others, and forced a shaky, fragile smile onto her face. "C-Coming!" she called out, her voice sounding like it was being dragged through a field of broken glass.
"You're so quiet today, Hitori-chan! Even for you!" Kita laughed, leaning her head against Hitori’s shoulder for a fleeting second. "Are you thinking about a new song? Is it a ballad? I bet it's something really emotional!"
Hitori felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her left lung, as if a thousand thorns had suddenly sprouted. She choked back a gasp, her face flushing a deep, frantic red. "Y-yeah," she managed to stutter, her eyes fixed firmly on the pavement. "A ballad. About... about something that can't be said."
"How romantic!" Kita beamed, her eyes sparkling with a genuine, innocent affection that felt like a death sentence.
—
The stage lights were a blinding white, bleaching the world into a void where only music existed. For Hitori, the noise of the crowd was a distant ocean, a crashing wave of sound that she navigated by instinct alone. She didn't feel the ache in her chest or the way her breath came in shallow, jagged sips.
Instead, she channeled every ounce of her suffering into her guitar. Every distorted chord was a scream she couldn't utter. Every soaring solo was a confession to Kita she lacked the courage to speak.
She played with violent, desperate precision, her fingers blurring across the fretboard as the roots in her lungs tightened with every breath.
It was the kind of performance that felt like it may break the room.
The chemistry between them was electric, Kitas vocals soaring over Ryos grounding bass, and Nijikas relentless, driving beat. Hitori felt herself ascending, floating above the physical wreckage of her body. For those 45 minutes, she wasn't a girl suffocating on flowers; she was the lead guitarist of Kessoku Band.
She poured everything she had left—every lingering hope, every hidden tear, and every shred of her remaining oxygen—into the final, crashing crescendo of their set.
As the final chord rang out, vibrating through the floorboards and into their bones, the crowd erupted. The roar was deafening, a wall of adoration that pushed Hitori back towards the wings of the stage.
She flashed a trembling smile at Kita, whose face was radiant with the high of the performance. Then, the moment stepped beyond the curtain, the adrenaline that had been acting as her life support..
Collapsed
Hitori barely made it three steps away from the light before the first spasm hit. It wasn't a cough; it was an explosion of pain.
She doubled over, her knees hitting the cold concrete with a sickening thud, her body racking with a violence that felt as though her ribs were being pried open from the inside.
With a sound that was more of a choke than a gasp, a splatter of blood stained flowers spilled from her lips, blooming across the grey floor in a gorey, beautiful heap.
She gasped for air, but there was no oxygen left; only the scent of crimson stained petals.
She lay there for a moment, her chest heaving, staring at the pile of flowers that marked the cost of her masterpiece. A few feet away, the band was chatting and laughing, their voices muffled by the curtain.
They were basking in the glow of the applause, oblivious to the girl trembling in the shadows, surrounded by the floral wreckage of a heart that had given too much.
"Hitori-chan? Are you back here?" Kita’s voice drifted through the curtain, brimming with that same, devastating warmth.
Panic flared. With a strength of pure desperation, Hitori scrambled to her feet, her hands shaking as she scooped the petals into a pile and shoved them into a nearby equipment bin.
She wiped her blood stained mouth with the sleeve of her hoodie, her breath coming in shallow sips.
By the time the curtain parted and Kita stepped in, Hitori was standing upright though her face was pale.
"There you are!" Kita cheered, throwing her arms around Hitori in a crushing hug. "That last solo was unbelievable! You were like a different person up there! You looked so... passionate!"
The hug tightened the roots around Hitoris lungs, stealing the very air she needed to respond.
She leaned into the embrace, closing her eyes, the scent of Kitas perfume mixing with the tang of blood on her lips.
For the single second—the pain was almost bearable, eclipsed by the terrifying sweetness of being held by the person who was unknowingly—
—killing her.
"I... I'm just... glad you liked it," Hitori managed to whisper, her voice a ghostly rasp.
—
The walk home was a slow descent into a gray, suffocating haze. The lights of Shimokitazawa, usually a comforting blur, now felt like streaks of static cutting thru her vision.
Hitori didn't walk so much as she drifted, her guitar case acting as a heavy anchor dragging her towards the earth.
Every step was a calculated gamble; she had learned to breathe in shallow sips, timed to the cadence of her footsteps to prevent the garden in her chest from shifting and triggering another violent spasm.
By the time she reached the familiar turn to her neighborhood, the adrenaline from the show had completely faded, leaving behind a hollow exhaustion that settled deep into her.
The silence of the street was oppressive, broken only by the steps of her shoes. She felt a sudden, sharp pressure behind her sternum, a blooming heat that tasted of copper and spring. She pressed her hand against her chest, feeling the thumping of her heart, and wondered of the roots had finally reached her throat.
The front door of the Gotoh household felt like the gateway to a sanctuary, yet as she stepped inside, the familiar scent of home—warm dashi and laundery detergent—was overwhelmed by the suffocating aroma of camellias.
"I'm... home," she whispered, but the words didn't quite form. Instead, a wet, rattling sound escaped her throat. She didn't wait for her parents to come from the living room; she didn't want to see the concern in her mother's eyes or the confused tilt of her father's head. She bolted for the stairs, her lungs screaming for oxygen that wouldn't come, her vision tunneling until the hallway was nothing but a blur of beige wallpaper and shadow.
Once inside the sanctuary of her home, the door clicked shut.
Hitori collapsed onto the tatami mat, the impact knocking the remaining air from her lungs. She didn't even have time to reach for a tissue before the first wave hit. It was a violent, racking cough that felt as though her ribs were being used as a loom to weave something terrible. She curled into a fetal position, shaking with the effort to keep the sound muffled, her hand clamped tightly over her mouth.
—
Kita Ikuyo was a creature of observation. To the casual observer, she was merely a whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm, but beneath the sunny exterior lay an internal layer of the people she loved. She noticed when Nijika’s smile didn't reach her eyes, when Ryo was spending her last yen on a vintage pedal, and most of all, she noticed Hitori. For months, Kita had been cataloging the fractures in Hitori’s composure. It started as a series of oddities: the way Hitori would vanish into the restroom for twenty minutes between sets, returning with eyes that looked red, as if she’d been weeping in secret. It was the way Hitori’s water bottle was never half-empty, but always being drained in desperate, gulping swallows to soothe a throat that sounded like crushed bones.
Then, there were the tissues.
Hitori had always been a girl of nervous habits—the way she fidgeted with her tracksuit sleeves or tried to hide behind her bangs—but the tissues had become a ritual. They were no longer just for a runny nose; they were a shield. A constant barrier that Hitori held between her lips and the world. Kita watched as Hitori folded them, hiding the crimson stained tissues in her pockets.
Kita began to treat those moments like a puzzle, mapping Hitoris deterioration.
She noticed the pattern; the way the guitar would slide from Hitoris lap the moment the mp was powered down, the frantic scrambles towards the exit, with the inevitable return from the hallway with eyes that looked like bruised petals.
The frustration began as a small, cold knot in Kita’s stomach. It wasn't just the mystery; it was the distance. Hitori was slipping away into a private world of pain, and every time Kita reached out to pull her back, Hitori would recoil, terrified that the touch would shatter the illusion of her health.
Kita found herself staring at Hitori during their breaks, watching the way the girl struggled to draw a full breath, her chest hitching in a rhythm that sounded less like breathing and more like a struggle for survival.
*She thinks she’s protecting me,* Kita realized, her crimson eyes narrowing as she watched Hitori cough silently into a crumpled handkerchief. *She thinks that by suffering in silence, she’s keeping the band together.*
The thought sparked a sudden flare of indignation.
Kita wasnt just the cheerful girl of the band; she was a girl who thrived on clarity and connection. The ambiguity was an insult. The silence was a wall she wasnt willing to let Hitori hide behind any longer. She didn't want a friend who was a tragedy in the making.
The echo of Nijikas drumming and Ryos bass still hummed in the walls of the studio. Hitori moved with a frantic speed to pack her gear—she had always been doing this for months now—her movements a blur of trembling fingers and avoided eye contact.
She had managed to slip towards the door, hoping to merge with the evening shadows of the hallway before anybody could utter a word. But as she reached for the handle, somebody blocked her path.
Kita stood there.
She didn't *just* stand there, she occupied the space with an intensity that felt like a physical barrier.
She hadn't left. She waited, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed.
Hitoris world shrunk.
The air in the hallway felt like it had been replaced by thick wet wool, clogging her throat and making every gasp a labor of sheer will. Her mind, usually a chaotic storm of worst case scenarios, shifted into a scream.
*She knows. She’s figured it out. The secret is out, and now I have to say it, or I’ll just explode into a pile of petals right he—*
A violent spasm rocked her frame, and she doubled over, a series of hacking coughs echoing through the space.
Three vivid petals fluttered on her lips, landing with drops of blood on the floor. Hitoris hands flew to her hoodie, twisting the fabric into knots as she stared intensely at her own shoes.
"K-Kita-san..." she wheezed, her voice a fragile thread. "I... I’ve always... liked you. More than... bandmates. More than... anyone."
The confession was clumsy, barely a whisper, and delivered with the grace of somebody falling down a flight of stairs.
Hitori didn't look up.
She couldn't.
She just stood there, trembling, waiting for the sun to explode or for Kita to laugh, her heart hammering against the roots in her chest.
The silence that followed was the loudest thing Hitori had ever heard. When Kita finally spoke, her voice wasn't mocking; it was soft, laced with a devastating kind of kindness.
"Bocchi-senpai…" Kita began, her voice trembling with a sincerity that felt like a serrated blade. "You’re really, really important to me. You’re my hero on guitar, and I love being in the band with you. More than I can even put into words." She paused, the smile that touched her lips devoid of its usual spark, replaced by a gentle, devastating honesty. "But… I don’t feel the same way. I’m sorry. I just… I don’t think I see you that way."
The words were kind, polished, but as they entered Hitoris ears, they acted as a knife. In the depths of Hitoris chest, the roots of the camellias didn't wither; they surged. It was a biological betrayal, a violent bloom triggered by the absolute *certainty* that the love feeding them would never be returned.
The garden didn't just grow.
It erupted.
Kita, sensing the sudden shift in Hitori’s posture—the way she seemed to shrink into herself as if trying to fold into a singularity—stepped forward. "Bocchi-senpai, please don't be sad! We can still be the best of friends, and you're still the most amazing guitarist in the world, and—"
She was cut off by a sound that wasn't a cough, but a wet, visceral tearing. Hitori’s eyes flew wide, her pupils dilating as she gasped for air that was no longer there. Inside her chest, the camellias didn't just bloom; they detonated. The gentle pining that had fed the disease for months suddenly mutated into a violent, absolute certainty. The roots, sensing the finality of the rejection, surged upward in a desperate, reflexive attempt to claim the space where a heart once beat.
Hitori’s hands clawed at her throat, her fingernails digging into the fabric of her hoodie. A single, jagged blossom—thick, crimson, and dripping with dark blood—forced its way past her lips.
Then another.
Then a torrent.
The flowers erupted from her mouth in a grotesque fountain of beauty and gore, spilling over her chin and staining the linoleum floor in a vivid, floral mosaic. She looked up at Kita, and for a fleeting second, the panic in her eyes vanished, replaced by a terrifyingly lucid serenity. She knew the clock had finally run out.
"It’s... okay," Hitori managed, the words barely a wet rattle. She forced a smile, a fragile, trembling thing that didn't quite reach her glassy eyes. "I knew... you're too bright... for someone like me... anyway..."
The final surge was silent. The vines, having claimed the last of her breath, tightened one last time, sealing her airway with a definitive, floral snap. Hitori’s body gave a sudden, violent shudder and then went limp, her head lolling back against Kita’s shoulder. The light in her turquoise eyes didn't fade so much as it retracted, leaving behind a vacant, staring void.
The silence that followed was not the peaceful quiet of a song’s resolution, but the vacuum left behind when a heart stops beating. Kita remained frozen, her arms still half-extended, her fingers grazing the fabric of Hitori’s hoodie. She waited for the punchline, for the sudden gasp of air, for Hitori to make a strange noise and shrink away in embarrassment. But Hitori didn't move. The only sound in the narrow hallway was the soft, wet *drip-drop* of blood-soaked petals sliding off the linoleum and onto Kita’s white sneakers. The vivid crimson of the flowers matched the exact shade of Kita’s hair, a cruel symmetry that seemed to mock the sudden stillness of the girl beside her.
For several minutes, Kita didn't scream; she simply stared at the vacant turquoise of Hitori’s eyes, which were still fixed on a point somewhere beyond the ceiling. The world around her began to distort, the edges of the hallway blurring into a smear of grey and beige. She reached out, her hand trembling as she brushed a stray, blood-streaked camellia petal away from Hitori’s pale cheek. The skin was already cooling, the warmth that usually radiated from the anxious girl now replaced by a terrifying, hollow chill.
Kita always knew something was wrong.
But now—
—it was way too little,
Way too late.