Chapter Text
It all begins when he starts coughing out flowers.
Red petals spatter all over the mosaic tiles. Sickeningly sweet stench assaults his nostrils like someone shoved fistfuls of flowers down his throat. He doubles over, knees hitting the floor, retching. Waxy leaves cling to his moist tongue and he gags at the foreign texture.
Soonyoung removes the hand covering his mouth, staring at his spit-slick palm.
His vision spins, yet he cannot mistaken those red dots as anything else other than chrysanthemums. Crimson chrysanthemums—the flower of love.
And so it begins: The slow, beautiful process of his bodily destruction.
The first stage of Kwon Soonyoung’s death wraps him in its beauty, a gossamer veil drooping over his eyes.
Nothing has changed: The landlady quips her greeting with a wave and a smile when he leaves his room—then her smile freezes and she stares after him, dropping her broom. He knows he reeks of flowers like that time when Mingyu doused a women’s perfume over him. That stunt he pulled sent everyone into collective aneurysms when they thought he was dying at 15.
Now, it’s no longer a joke. The cheap softener he soaks his laundry in does little to chase away the stench.
Soonyoung’s an adult, already 22, paying his rent with part-time shifts at the dojo by his apartment. His feet are quicker than his mind. A trip to 7-11 lurches him forward into the foundation of his plan: complete and total isolation from everyone else to avoid their fussing about his untimely death—with no offence to their disastrous matchmaking skills.
Little ramen cups dotted the length of his desk, neatly stacked according to colours: bottom right is green for button mushroom, followed by mellow yellow for chicken soup, and after that some freckled black cups representing peppered crabs, and spicy red—
—his stomach quivers all of a sudden, bile rising, throat tightening, and the next thing he knows he’s already on all fours, convulsing, making gagging noises as saliva trickles down his chin.
Petals rain over his shaking hands; crimson chrysanthemums sing to him all about love. The pungent perfume burns right up his esophagus to his nasal cavity, accompanied by the icky flavor of crushed flowers flooding his mouth. Soonyoung’s eyes water as his fingers reach into his parted lips and pinched out a whole chunk of bitten chrysanthemum, soggy from moisture.
He drops it on the pile of petals. And wipes the single teardrop with the back of his hand.
Then, he gets up to reach for the tissue box right by his bedside, tears off a few sheets, wraps the evidence of his deathly deterioration into a moist pile, and chucks it into the wastebasket. Plodding over to the bathroom sink next door, Soonyoung switches on the tap and scrubs his face with icy water.
When he looks up, the reflection of a gaunt spectre haunts him with its hollow brown eyes and a crimson petal stuck on the corner of its lips.
It won’t be long before he can’t hide it anymore.
His body is a flowering graveyard, and chrysanthemum parasites feast on his banquet of innards.
The first stage of death comes in petals; from coughs and sneezes and talks, then it escalates to vomiting whole flowers.
Soonyoung is already a veteran in all aspects.
He no longer lies on his back in case he hacks out flowers in his sleep, chokes on them, and dies an impromptu death. These days, he wakes up with sore sides and tatami mats imprinted on his cheeks. From every dusted nook and cranny, his room stinks like someone’s done a massive overhauling with floral air-fresheners. Awfully stifling, so he gets up and slides the rattling windows open.
Some fresh air to flush out the stench would both him and his mind some good.
Soonyoung takes his time washing up in the bathroom when he brushes his teeth, carefully going over each molar. Only a few days in, he’s established a routine for himself: Wash up, wait for the customary gagging to begin, vomit flowers into the toilet bowl, and flush it all away. He showers with a bar soap, pulls on a shirt and some carelessly folded shorts, and makes a mug of tea while waiting for his antique laptop to boot up.
If he’s lucky, he doesn't cough again for a few hours. If not, he regurgitates flower-laced breakfast into the wastebasket, then primly wipes the corners of his mouth with a napkin.
It’s pathetic how he’s reduced to nothing but a slave of nature, a slave to the epidemic documented by the world. A slave of love.
Now, he’s stuck either dying all holed up in his room, or journeying to find the person he’s supposed to court and woo and kiss and marry.
At the rate of his advancement, Soonyoung knows where he stands.
“I heard you’re taking a leave from University.”
“Don’t worry,” Soonyoung replies. One hand cradling the phone, the other handling the kettle, he douses his noodles with a liberal amount of steam-hot water and watches the bubbles rise to the surface. After a moment’s consideration, he adds, “I’m fine, I’m eating well. I’m taking care of myself. You didn’t have to call me, Jihoon-ah.”
”As the most responsible in the group, I have to make sure nobody’s skipping classes on purpose,” comes his predictably irritated response. ”As long as you have a proper letter or a medical certificate to prove that you’re absent for a valid reason, I’m not concerned at all, Soonyoung.”
Jihoon’s voice shakes when he recites his lines, speaking haltingly, seemingly weighing out the pros and cons of each word on his tongue. He is such a bad liar compared to the rest of them.
Soonyoung waits for a full minute before he adds the curry seasoning and stirs the contents, watching it spike into runny crimson, all the while nodding in tandem with Jihoon’s stream of motherly nagging. He shouldn’t be pressured to make decisions on an empty stomach when Jihoon asks if he’s keeping up with assignments, whether he’d like to have some notes delivered to his house this weekend, if he’s aware of the schedule changes for next week’s classes—
”—though, I’ve heard from Seokmin. You’re… ill.”
Soonyoung frowns. He stops stirring. “How far did he tell you?”
”You vomited red flowers.”
“Oh. That.” Blasé, Soonyoung carries on with his dinner, laying out the plastic cutleries on the countertop and waiting for his instant noodles to cook. Cold air washes over his feet and he fidgets, moving over to stand on the orange rug instead. “I’m still alive, talking to you right now.”
Jihoon doesn’t seem to hear his witty response; that or he’s purposely ignoring Soonyoung. Scratchy sounds come from the other end and Soonyoung scrutinises them. When it’s followed by a tearing paper, Jihoon resumes. “Soonyoung, I think you should talk to him.”
It’s getting colder now. Soonyoung rubs his feet over one another, unsettlement oozing thickly over him. “Thanks Jihoon, I really have to go now.”
“—don’t get me wrong, I still need you to stay alive for everyone’s sake,” Jihoon says him abruptly, but his voice turns hushed. Strained, even. “Take the time to call him. After that, well, you can do whatever you want.”
‘Whatever you want’ involves staying locked in his house until Soonyoung knows exactly what to do with this disease.
Modern science declared war on this wanton lovesickness, calling it nature’s cruel joke, and set out to battle it for the betterment of humanity—with a certain price tag of 84,000,000 won via surgery. They’d uproot the flowers wholly from its infestation within the human cavity, snipping off the core of its madness. ”Repairing you,” they said, ”so you’d be as good as new.”
Nothing great comes without a side effect; newspapers reported the patients awakened from deathlike slumber with a hollow sensation in their chest, never to love nor to feel love ever again for the rest of their lives.
But Soonyoung doesn’t own the riches of a CEO. His options branch off only in two directions: to accept death as dictated by fate, or to die trying. And Jihoon is offering the latter as a plausible destiny.
“I’ll think about it,” he says, dipping his chin in resignation. “Thank you for worrying about me.”
Jihoon only grunts, but there’s no hiding the small improvement in his monotonous timbre. “Get some rest, avoid lying down on your back if you can.”
By the time their phone call ended with a tolling dial tone, Soonyoung puts down his cell phone and grabs his dinner.
His noodles have gone cold.
They’re 16 when they first start dating. Soonyoung had found him interesting, head always in a book every time he sneaked glances. Every single day of that year, he came in, reading a different book and it wasn’t until the end of the school year when Soonyoung approached him.
“Hi, I’m Soonyoung” he had said, eager to know more about the quiet, mysterious boy that sat in front of him in class.
“I’m Wonwoo”
Fractured sunlight falls over the woven tatami. Overhead, rainy bullets stormed the roof.
Rainy Saturdays are meant to be spent warming hands on mugs of green tea, burrowed safely in cocoons of blankets. Instead, Soonyoung clicks away on his laptop, cellphone opened nearby. Jihoon’s text shines on the screen, arranged neatly in a sequence depicting numbers, address, and a name, then another paragraph of his motherly nagging to remind Soonyoung to live.
Living is what Soonyoung’s trying to do right now.
A frustrated sigh leaves his lips and Soonyoung cradles his head in the nest he fashioned with his arms, holding himself together.
Just as soon as he thinks there is hope, it leaves him with a dying flicker.
They spent every single day of that summer together. Much of it was spent at Wonwoo’s house (read: mansion). His family owned a large conglomerate in Seoul, but the fortune didn’t make Wonwoo snobby or standoff-ish. He was the most humble person Soonyoung had ever met.
Yet, he wasn’t this intriguing and complex person Soonyoung had made up in his mind. Wonwoo liked to read books. He enjoyed going to the arcade. He liked to sing in the shower. He loved his mother. Soonyoung didn’t know whether to be glad or disappointed.
Over time, he came to realize he was wrong but in the moment, Soonyoung became more and more attracted to him.
Which is why he didn’t pull away when Wonwoo kissed him one night in his backyard. He had leaned in and, without a word, brushed his soft, soft lips against Soonyoung's. Having barely registered the fleeting sensation, Soonyoung leaned in and placed his lips more firmly against Wonwoo's.
When Wonwoo had pulled away, they, somehow, both knew what it meant. No official agreement had been reached, no verbal consent given, but they just knew that they had become something more than friends. And that had been their constant. They hadn't labelled their relationship, nor each other. In fact, Soonyoung hadn't called Wonwoo his boyfriend until Jihoon had pointed it out. Everything between them had just been; the other just knew, accepted, understood.
Jihoon is in front of Soonyoung’s door. The worn-out nameplate reads Kwon Soonyoung but if he squints he can see that there were more letters underneath his name. The remnants of bubbly hangul. He rings the doorbell again and faintly wonders if Soonyoung had died in his sleep.
Except, Jihoon doesn’t get to finish his thought when Soonyoung emerges, movements ghostlike.
"Hey, Jihoon."
Jihoon freezes.
Grand red spider lilies swell out of Soonyoung’s left eye, drooping heavily against his cheek. Glorious red claws outstretched, they veil his face partway. Healthy crimson parasites feed off his pain and sorrow; impaled on his eyeball, their dainty stamens shiver in time with the frigid current stirring in the hallway.
The second stage of Hanahaki begins with flowers growing out of the host through their open cavities; most commonly the eye, the ears, and the mouth, an article recites automatically in Jihoon’s head.
And Soonyoung himself is the perfect living embodiment of that article, a fine specimen to be examined.
Jihoon's hand jerks automatically to cradle Soonyoung's cheek. He keeps his touches tender, shaking, aware that every prod of his fingertip has Soonyoung flinching. He’s seen a few tragedies from watching hospital dramas on TV, but nothing as critical as this. “Why didn’t you just go, Soonyoung?”
Bitter is what normal people are supposed to sound like.
Bitter from unrequited love, bitter from lost hope, bitter from everything life tests him with. Kwon Soonyoung, however, seems incapable of sounding bitter. At most, his voice carries the tone of acceptance, acceptance of everything and anything that will happen. Resigned acceptance. “I tried texting him, he won’t answer.”
“Then call—“
“He doesn’t pick up.” Almost lamely, Soonyoung shrugs and fishes out his phone, showing off the red lines running down his screen. “Fourteen times. I tried.” Jihoon wonders where Soonyoung’s previous fire went. His annoying stubbornness, his fight to be on top. When did he become so weak.
Jihoon would’ve banged his arm on the door out of sheer frustration, but he does not lose his cool.
He breathes in, filling his chest with air, counts to ten, and breathes out again..
“If you don’t see him, I swear to god I will bring him to you,” he says.
Soonyoung tries to blink, but not without lowering his eyelids like every single time would be his last and he’d never open them again. Only one eye gets to close; the other is a joke with lilies faithfully prying it open. He looks like he’s winking than blinking, cynically mocking fate. Bruised purples erupt from the crowded socket, crawling with spiderweb veins uprooting the little pale canvas Soonyoung has to offer. It’s got to hurt.
“I don’t think this is your fight, Jihoon.” He shrugs, about to close the door when Jihoon stops him again, his pride forgotten.
“Soonyoung, please” he pleads, trying to look into Soonyoung’s eyes, or at least the one that isn’t blocked by the flower. His normally bright, slanted eyes are swollen and Jihoon can’t find an inch of emotion in them.
“Like I said,” he says, patting Jihoon on the shoulder, “It’s not your fight.”
He shuts the door leaving Jihoon in the cold hallway.
In hindsight, Soonyoung should have expected it. Wonwoo lived a different life than him. He was expected greater things than him. He couldn’t be tied down with Soonyoung, an average class college student who could barely come up with rent at the end of each month. But even so, Soonyoung had hope. He gave Wonwoo the space he needed and supported his boyfriend from the sidelines.
Wonwoo went to a business school, hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps and Soonyoung had started freelancing university and teaching Tae Kwon Do whilst trying to find an occupation for himself. Long nights at the office were not communicated, because Wonwoo expected his boyfriend to understand. Soonyoung's moods were swept under rug because, hey, that's just how it was.
It wasn't that Soonyoung was miserable in the relationship, it's just that he wasn't exactly happy. And he sometimes saw that same unhappiness mirrored in his lover's face. So he'd ended it. He just wished that the affair hadn’t ended so horribly.
There was no screaming, no tears, no scratching at each other’s throats. (Soonyoung almost wished it had occurred that way). It happened so easily and that was what hurt him the most. It was as if Wonwoo had rehearsed everything; his lines, his movements, walking out of Soonyoung’s apartment and, ultimately, his life.
//
This time, it’s Jeonghan who comes to visit him, which is a surprise because Soonyoung had taken that Jeonghan was more of Wonwoo’s friend than his.
His big eyes grow even wider at the site of Soonyoung and all Soonyoung could do is muster a small smile before stepping aside and letting him into the apartment.
“Soonyoungie,” Jeonghan says, and Soonyoung winces at how his words are laced with pity.
“You need to talk to him.” There it goes again. Soonyoung is willing to bet money that Jihoon put him up to this. He sighs, fingers going up to gingerly brush under his swollen eye.
“I don’t need to, hyung. If this-,” he says, pointing at his eye, “-is because of him, then shouldn’t he be affected as well?”
Jeonghan is quiet, just staring at him. Soonyoung wants to yell, he wants to scream until his throat is raw. He wants to pour the tea he’s drinking on Jeonghan. His life was so easy, he fell in love, he was happy, he has a good job, he talks to his mother every night.
“Why is it only me?” he says softly, and Jeonghan scoots closer to him on the couch, putting his arms around him. This is what he wanted from Wonwoo. He just wanted his boyfriend to touch him, talk to him, baby him around for a while. Was that so wrong?
“Please, Soonyoung,” Jeonghan says finally, and it breaks Soonyoung’s heart. “Just talk to him, we don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose you.”
Jeonghan makes him keep the promise and leaves, leaving Soonyoung alone in his apartment again.
Wonwoo’s eyes make you want to come near him but you know you'll burn yourself. They're dark, and for a moment, there exists nothing but a world of darkdarkdark to Soonyoung. He carries himself with an erect posture and walks with faint clip-clop-clip-clop of his shoes, in a way that Soonyoung feels he's in big trouble with his boss after work.
While he's aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, he's an unpleasant presence invading Soonyoung's heart.
“Soonyoung?” is the first thing that comes out of his mouth, in a questioning tone. He doesn’t look surprised, if anything he looks slightly bothered at the sight of him. Soonyoung immediately feels aware of his state and he quickly glances over his outfit: sweats and an old sweater with a curry stain near his sleeve. He folds his hands over the stain and looks back at Wonwoo.
“Hi, Wonwoo,” he says, and it’s really disgusting how foreign the conversation feels to him. “Um. I need your help”
“Help?” Wonwoo echoes and leans back against the door frame. Soonyoung knows he’s not purposely being asshole-ish but it still doesn’t stop the shameful sting in his heart.
“I just-“Soonyoung breathes and closes his eyes, “I’m not the only one, right?” He sounds pathetic and he knows it. “This thing, I mean- why is it only me? There’s got to be a reason why.”
Wonwoo’s face remains the same. “I don’t understand.” The phone rings from inside Wonwoo’s house.
Soonyoung swallows the last of his pride and wonders if this is worth all the trouble. “Can we try again?”
He watches as Wonwoo’s arms unfold and he waits a moment before sighing deeply. “Soonyoung, we can’t.” he says looking into his eyes and Soonyoung knows he’s being honest and just looking out for him and it’s not like he feels his heart breaking for the second time.
“I know, but- I need something, to…reassure myself-“
Wonwoo kisses him.
Soonyoung’s first kiss is done with his eyes closed and a startled hitch of his breath.
But now, there’s no romantic reassurance of a hand grasping his; only a demanding hand pressing bruises into his flesh. It’s the pathetic scrape of dried lips on one another, with flowers clustering Wonwoo’s face, his dark eyes peeking between the fingers of the lilies.
There is a certain persistence in the way Wonwoo kisses him. Like he won’t stop until he’s kissed all air out of Soonyoung, with the faint introduction of a tongue pressing against the seams of his lips. Are they supposed to kiss with this much fervour? Soonyoung doesn’t know. He obediently follows his steps, parting his lips, having no options to reverse the outcome.
Wonwoo tastes like creme brûlée. Bitter, like the scorched sugar granules on the top. Bitter, bitter, bitter with an underlying thirst of sweetness.
His body is tense, but Wonwoo coaxes him to loosen his muscles. Fingers knead Soonyoung’s sides, digging into his flesh to tear him apart, seductive provocation only the beasts are capable of. Slick warmth and slow suction that hits him right in his knees. Open up, he seems to say while sucking on Soonyoung’s tongue, open up and let me devour you. Let me devour you like the flower that devoured your eye.
When they’re left breathless, chest heaving, they part. Wonwoo removes his hand from Soonyoung’s body, and he licks his lips consciously. Bitter. Just bitter. Bitter, like Soonyoung’s heart.
Comfort only comes in the form of the sunset now washing over them; it’s the only right thing Soonyoung likes, out of all the wrong things he likes.
Wrong things like Jeon Wonwoo.
Like the flower of death, still rooted in his eye socket.
“Goodbye, Soonyoung”
The clanging of the steel gates swallows him whole and shuts him away.
In his bathroom, baby blue tiles glaring at him, Soonyoung scrubs his face and hands thoroughly like he’s disposing the evidence of his tears. Wonwoo’s soiled him with kiss, in what seems to be an official edict ordering his death. His low, authoritarian voice plays in an eternal loop in the darkness.
“Did you honestly think he would still love you? Have the flowers seized your brain and given you rose-tinted lenses?”
Yes, yes they have. These flowers come with a name—Jeon Wonwoo. He is the cruel red spider lily, the rotten flower representing paradise and parasites, he has seized every nook and cranny of Soonyoung’s brain and proclaimed it his and his only. But in turn, madness, sheer madness will infect the bearer. Sheer madness of love, wanting to learn how to love, and wanting to be loved.
”You ruined him and your relationship.”
Soonyoung braces himself over the sink and heaves mouthfuls after mouthfuls of crimson chrysanthemums into the running spray of water. With each retching comes a burning pain that rips right up his lungs to his throat, it’s just like jamming a dagger right into his mouth to make him puke. He reeks of a sickly fragrance called old romance. He is lovesick.
“You can return home knowing that he’s not for you, and you are most definitely not for him.”
Soonyoung twists the tap to stop the current, pumps out two dots of handwash gel, slathers them over the back of his hands—he stops short.
There, a single rusty red petal has grown out of his fingernail, replacing its existence.
Like a festering wound, there’s more. More and more of them. More and more erupt from his finger to his wrist, resembling dragon scales transplanted onto a human. In his fit of confusion of where his fingernail disappeared to and how his hand is shedding rhododendron flowers like feathers to a bird, Soonyoung gingerly touches them.
They sting. They sting as much as Wonwoo’s words.
Biting his lips, Soonyoung trembles with uncertainty of the future. When he looks up, the reflection of a gaunt spectre haunts him with its hollow black-red eye, and a crimson petal stuck on the corner of its lips.
And another petal. And another. And another. All the way down to his jaw to his throat to his collarbones, a line of petals blooming in its wake.
The final stage has just begun.