Chapter Text
Drift sighed as she looked back down at her map, while the path was traveling in the directions her map claimed it should, this was the second town listed on her map that didn’t seem to exist…
“Hi! I’m Shelby,” a voice shocked Drift out of her thoughts, “What brings you all the way out here?”
Drift flinched, “Oh, um… hi. Sorry, I didn’t expect to see anyone else here,” she quickly regathered her composure, “I’m Drift, and I’m looking for Oakhurst.”
“Oh, me too,” Shelby said, “but with all the fog I’ve gotten a bit lost…”
Drift laughed softly, almost nodding and commiserating before a small part of herself stopped her. For some inexplicable reason, she had the sudden urge to be helpful, or at least seem competent, and decided she might as well just trust her map. “I think Oakhurst should be this way…” she said, gesturing in the direction she had been traveling.
Surprisingly, they had eventually reached the town. After they met several other travellers who were coincidentally also in Oakhurst, they had to rebuild the town enough for it to be habitable. Which not only included gathering building supplies, but fighting off an annoying number of zombies. Once the town was cleared, some people started to build an initial fence around the town to keep any more undead out, or at least force them to make enough noise entering to alert someone. Since some people were already covering that job, Drift was free to begin construction with Elle, her new roommate, on their house. As soon as the walls of the house were finished, she mumbled an exhausted ‘goodnight’ to Elle and returned to her room. While tiredly going through her evening routine, Drift felt herself coughing more than usual, but decided it was probably just her body adjusting to the different allergens of a new environment. She noticed a few specks of blue in her peripheral but ignored it, brushing it off as a trick of the light. She sighed, deciding she’d feel better in the morning, and collapsed into her bed. She was asleep the instant she closed her eyes.
The beacons were strangely soothing, they even seemed to reduce the effects of Drift’s “allergies,” which she was now beginning to suspect may actually be a cold. Being around the beacons seemed to have effectively kept the headaches and congestion that tended to come with colds at bay, but they could only do so much for her sore throat. The group had agreed to stay for a few minutes after they consecrated the beacon. Once the five minutes were up, Pearl, Cleo, and Shelby stood, ready to go. Drift reluctantly followed the group further down the path. The moment she left the sphere of the beacon’s influence, Drift felt her throat begin to burn once again, and she nearly immediately started to cough.
Shelby flinched at the sound, quickly turning her head back to give Drift a concerned glance, “It’s that bad?”
Drift sighed, “Yeah, but the bea-” she was cut off by another set of coughs, “-the beacons have been helping some,” she explained, walking faster to catch back up with the group.
“That’s good,” Shelby said, “You should probably still talk to the doctor about it though…”
Drift nodded, “Probably, it’s gotten a lot worse than I’d expect from a norm-” another violent set of coughs cut her off.
When the coughing fit lasted a bit longer than usual, Cleo noticed and turned around, “Everything alright?” she asked, her mild concern suddenly replaced by a flicker of significant annoyance that quickly melted back into her mask of nonconcern. “Oh, that would explain it,” she sighed.
Drift tilted her head, then stopped dead in her tracks as she saw what rested in the center of her palm.
A single purple petal.
“Oh!” Pearl said, “You’ve got the… flowery disease? What’s it called?”
“M calls it ‘loveblossom’ in his books,” Shelby said, “but I’m not sure if there’s another name for it.”
“I’ve heard that one a couple times, but I’ve mostly heard it called flower flu,” Cleo said.
Drift sighed, “Tha-” she coughed again, “-That’s great and all, but could anyone explain to me what I do about it?”
“It’s simple, just needs some basic communication skills,” Cleo said, a slight impatience edging into their voice.
Drift tilted her head, “To do what?” she asked.
“Confess,” Cleo said bluntly.
Drift flinched, “Why would I confess to a crime?! What does that have to do with flowers??”
Cleo sighed, “No, it shows up because you need to confess your love for someone,” they explained tiredly, giving her a glare as if this was common sense, “And you should get that over with pretty quickly, since the flu will start to get in your head about it if you let it get worse.”
“So! Who is it?” Pearl asked conspiratorily.
“…how am I supposed to know that?” Drift asked.
Shelby gasped, “Exactly! I’ve always thought it was weird that the people in the books just knew, that can’t actually be how it works, right?”
Pearl gave both of them a weird look, “You just kind of… know? I’m not sure how else to explain it, but you’ll definitely know it when you feel it.”
“Maybe it’s a platonic flu?” Cleo suggested, “Those are a lot more rare, but do happen sometimes. You can generally tell from the color of the flowers.”
“Wait, they aren’t always red?” Shelby asked.
Cleo nodded, “They’re usually red, which indicates love, but sometimes they’re different colors, which mean different things.”
“What does purple mean then?” Drift asked.
“I’m not sure,” Cleo admitted, “probably just another flavor of love, most of them seem to be, but the Doctor might have more specifics.”
“Regardless, you should probably go check in with Legs,” Pearl said, “Cleo’s right that you should get it over with as quickly as possible, and he’ll probably have more information for you.”
“I’ll go with you then,” Shelby decided, “Pearl and Cleo can keep looking for beacons and magic books.”
Drift shook her head, “Thanks, but I’ll be fine, it’s not really that ba-”, before she could finish insisting she was ok, another violent set of coughs stopped her.
Shelby laughed softly at the response, “I know, but it isn’t exactly safe for anyone to wander around out here by themselves. We came out here in a group of four so we could split up if we needed to.”
Drift felt heat rush to her face, “Oh, yeah, of course…”
Shelby and Drift’s conversation about how strangely M’s books talked about ‘loveblossom,’ and romance in general, began to trail off as they finally reached Oakhurst. The temporary fence had been replaced by a small wall surrounding the town. Abolish, who was building another layer onto the wall, nodded to them as they passed through the town’s gates. Thankfully, they weren’t interrupted before they reached the doctor’s house/medical center.
“Hello, what brings you to my clinic today?” Legs asked as they walked through the door.
“We’ve found the cause of Drift’s ‘mysterious allergies,’” Shelby explained.
Legs laughed, “and that would be?”
“We’re not sure what it’s called, but I coughed up a petal earlier,” Drift said.
“Ah, it’s called hanahaki,” he said, “Do you need an explanation of what it is, or did you just want to ask about its name?”
“Cleo explained some of the basics, but a full overview would be helpful,” Drift said.
The doctor nodded, “Of course. Hanahaki disease is spread by corpses infected by hanahaki, and especially by hanahaki zombies, infected corpses being puppeted by the disease. In order for it to take hold, there must be some kind of deep emotional bond or connection not fully conveyed, or that hasn’t been repeated recently. Usually this takes the form of romantic love, but not always. It can be cured one of three ways, the main one being by confessing said feeling, but the disease will also slowly disappear if the emotion fades, and will quickly end if whoever the feeling is directed towards dies or otherwise becomes unreachable. The best and simplest option is to confess, but the disease will begin to affect the patient’s mental state as it takes hold, discouraging them from confessing. It generally does this by creating doubts of the feeling being reciprocated and/or by catastrophizing the effects of confessing if the feeling is not reciprocated. Therefore, the best course of action is to confess quickly and get it over with. Oh, and I always forget to mention, when you’re cured you’ll cough up all of the flowers in your lungs, which is not an especially pleasant experience, but it’s easier the earlier it’s cured, as less flowers will have had time to grow.”
Drift nodded, “That’s all great to know, but how am I supposed to know what I’m supposed to confess?”
“The color of the flower,” he answered, “What color, or colors, were the ones you’ve coughed up so far?”
“Purple,” Drift said.
Legundo’s eyes lit up, a burst of energy seeming to appear from nowhere, “Oh! Then would you be willing to let me record some of your experiences? Purple is not an especially common color and it is always useful to have more information on it.”
“Um… sure?” Drift agreed.
“Thank you!” Legs said, turning to grab two books from his shelf, a textbook and a small leather bound journal, and placing them on the table between them. “I’ve brought out my notes on the subject as well, because the way the general medical community describes the meanings of many of the colors of flowers is simply wrong in many regards, and uses unnecessarily degrading terminology. This is especially true in the case of the purple flower, which I tend to refer to with the name many of my patients have coined for it, Asexual, Ace for short, or simply purple. Unfortunately, the medical community has decided to refer to it as ‘half-love’ which is, to put it bluntly, profoundly stupid and unhelpful.” Before continuing his rant, Legs seemed to notice the clock hanging above the front door and grabbed two more leather bound journals from the shelf, “These are my other journals on hanahaki, in case you’ll need it. I would help you look through these now, but I’ve got an appointment in a few minutes, so you can look through them on your own for now, and can come back to me with your questions later.”
“Oh, of course,” Drift said, grabbing the three journals and nodding when Shelby reached towards the textbook hesitantly. The duo walked out of the clinic, waving to a nervous looking Elle as they left.
“So, where should we go to work on these?” Shelby asked.
“We won’t be bothering anyone if we head back to my house, since Elle’s with Legs at the moment,” Drift suggested.
Shelby dropped the textbook onto the circular table and fell backwards into the couch that curved around it, quickly turning to the beginning of the section on the purple flower. Drift gently placed the notebooks next to the textbook, and sat next to Shelby, leaning over to read the textbook.
The purple flower represents half-love, a rare form of pseudo-romantic love characterized by a significantly less intense bond and connection, signified by a lack of a physical connection and/or desires.
They both stared in silence at the page for a few moments, before Shelby closed the textbook and grabbed the journals, searching through their tables of contents until she found the one with information on the purple flower, Volume Two.
Purple
The Purple flower represents Asexual Romantic Love, or ARL. It is a form of romantic love similar to that of the Red flower (Standard Romantic Love, or SRL), except without desires sexual in nature. ARL is not lesser than SRL in any meaningful way. The feelings attached to it are not definitionally any greater or lesser in intensity, and vary between people and situation just as much as SRL. Unfortunately, due to ARL’s great rarity, and the further limitation of sample size due to the nature of hanahaki, little is known about ARL**.
Drift sighed, “Thank gods…”
“Hm?”
“Oh, just glad this means I don’t have to deal with any of the sexual stuff,” Drift explained, “I was starting to get worried.”
Shelby laughed, “Fair…” they trailed off, “I’m just glad to know that’s a thing,” she admitted, “It makes a lot of things make more sense.”
Drift nodded before glancing back down at the journal.
Purple, like many of the less common flowers, has significant overlap* with other flowers.
Often:
- White
- Pink
Rarely:
- Blue
- Magenta
Never:
- Red
- Orange
- Yellow
*See page 6 of Volume One for information on flower overlap.
**See Volume Three for cases of the purple flower
“They can overlap?” Shelby said.
“Apparently,” Drift shrugged, grabbing Volume One from the stack and opening it to page 6.
Overlap
Overlap is a property of many of the rarer hanahaki flowers in which multiple colors of flowers are applicable, leading to multiple being displayed. The most common most well known of which being the overlap of Orange and Yellow. However, the most common overlap is between the pseudo rarer romantic flowers, as many of these flowers are similar.
Overlap occurs in three forms:
- Separate
- The appearance of distinct colors on separate flowers appearing from separate episodes, almost always the first form of overlap observed in a patient*
- Codominant
- The appearance of distinct colors on the same flower, often in the form of stripes, dots, splotches, gradients, and/or distinctly colored petals, usually the second form of overlap observed in a patient
- Bouquet
- The appearance of distinct colors on distinct flowers coughed up together in the form of a bouquet, often observed in combination with Codominant Overlap, usually the last form of overlap observed in a patient
It remains unclear if the different forms of overlap embody different meanings, further research is needed in the area. However, if the disease is allowed to progress to a stage where Codominant Overlap and Bouquet Overlap become possible, both generally do appear in all patients which experience overlap.
*As of 26/4/18-- exactly one patient has been observed to display Codominant Overlap before Separate Overlap, their case is described on pag-
“-Hey, Drift?” Elle asked, seeming to appear in front of the table, “You were at the Doctor’s earlier, are you sick? Is something wrong?”
Drift looked up from the journal, at this point used to her roommate’s tendency to suddenly appear, “I’m alright for the most part,” she said, “I just caught hanahaki, and curing it is a bit more complicated than I’d prefer, but it’s doable.”
“Hanahaki?” Elle asked.
“You might know it as ‘loveblossom’ or ‘flower flu,’” Shelby explained, “It’s the one where you cough up flowers.”
“Oh! Faerie flu,” Elle said, “in my experience it’s pretty simple… but I’ve only ever had orange flowers, so it’s probably different for most people.”
Shelby tilted her head, “Orange?” she asked.
“The family one,” Elle explained, “I’ve gotten it a couple times, and each time it was for…” she trailed off, staring blankly down at the crossbow she carried everywhere, “…nevermind.”
Drift made a mental note to not bring up family around Elle. “Anyways, we’ve still got some daylight left, do we want to go looking for some magic books?”
“Sure,” Elle agreed.
Shelby shook her head, “Not right now, I have something I need to work on, but I can join you tomorrow if you’d like?”
“Of course, you’re welcome to join us anytime,” Drift said.
“Maybe beacon hunting then, tomorrow?” they asked.
“Sure!”