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Go to class, Kim had thought. A neat distraction, Kim had thought. Don't think about it for a bit, Kim had thought. Give it a rest, Kim had thought. Come back to it later, Kim had thought.
The meeting with his manager had been fine. She'd mentioned a new song, and Kim had thought, unbidden, of the half-written melody he had strummed out after Chay had— and Kim had erupted into a violent coughing fit. He had managed to disappear into the bathroom, and when he'd returned, his manager was boiling water, lemon and ginger tea bags at the ready. Take care of your voice, she'd told him, frowning, and he'd nodded. I mean it, she'd said. Take some rest. Kim had gone home and tried not to think about it. Chay hadn't been on the front doorstep. The flowers had made another brief appearance in the aftermath of interrogating the old police inspector, which had made even less sense than usual, but he'd been fine. He was fine. Everything was fine, under control.
Except then Pran had to open his fucking mouth and say, "Well, how's that nong doing? Why'd he disappear?"
Kim felt his throat tickle. He swallowed it down. He blinked. "Who?"
Pran raised an eyebrow. Kim held his gaze, keeping his face as open and placid as he could. Slowly, as though Kim were something of an idiot, Pran said, "The nong you were tutoring." When Kim still did not respond, he continued, "You know that he passed the practical exam, but he didn't come in for the interview." Kim stared. His throat itched. A small sound escaped him, careening high enough that it sounded like a question, and Pran took it for one, nodding. "Mm. He was promising. Left the teachers all confused— hey! Kim?"
Kim wasn't listening anymore.
Kim had turned on his heel, sharply, stiffly, and— he wasn't running, because that would draw too much attention, but he was brisk, quick, and when he reached the toilets, he was so fucking glad they were empty and he had hardly locked the door of the stall when he fell to his knees, the coughs rattling his chest so sickly sweet, so bitter, so fucking suffocating, and the petals just wouldn't stop.
Kim felt hollowed out by the time he stopped retching. He'd bitten into several, and the taste lingered, sharp and sweet and bitter and awful, and he felt feverishly hot. Just what he needed, of course; to come down with a fever in the midst of this bullshit, although, of course, it was entirely possible the fever was another symptom of this bullshit. Kim breathed in. He tried not to look down at the toilet bowl. He did not want to see the petals.
He looked down, of course.
The petals were, somehow, more grotesque a sight than blood might have been, piling upon each other like a series of limp and imperfect scales, withered armour. Kim felt nausea curl in his gut. He slammed the toilet lid down with too much force. He flushed. He wouldn't open it again to check. Except— Kim bit his tongue, hard. He needed to make sure they were gone. He couldn't— he couldn't have word about this getting out. He just needed to—
Clear, empty water stared back at him. Kim breathed out in relief.
When Kim opened the door, Pran stood outside the stall, eyebrows creased in concern, shoulders hunched in uncertainty.
"Kim," he said.
Kim brushed by him, washing his hands with vicious vigour. "I'm sick," Kim said, eventually, when Pran kept staring. "Thought I'd gotten better. Clearly not."
Kim could practically hear Pran hovering. He breathed in again. He wouldn't lose his temper. This was not the time, not the place, not the— he simply couldn't. Kim could afford to be a bit snappish, could afford to hold himself at a distance, could afford to skip class and call his classmates nosy when they asked and bow out of conversations of any real personal substance, but he could not afford to be Khimhant Theerapanyakul.
"Right," Pran said eventually. "You should probably just go home. And don't worry too much about that nong, okay? I'll—"
Maybe it was just that Kim was still weak from the recent bout of petals. Maybe Kim's condition was worsening at a more alarming rate than he had anticipated. Maybe Kim was just incredibly unlucky. Whatever the case, his throat closed up, lungs spasming so suddenly and so violently that all Kim could do was double over, hands braced tightly around the sink, and— shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit—
There was a loud slam, and then a smaller one, but heavy, rattling, although that might have just been Kim's lungs as— the petals. There were so many of them. They just— they clung, and they blistered, and they landed in an unseemly heap in the sink, and Kim was— Kim was so fucked.
"Oh," Pran said, voice high-pitched and nervous. "I. I wasn't expecting. That. Oh. Um."
"It isn't what it looks like," Kim said, voice hoarse, shoulders heaving as he breathed. His throat felt scraped raw. Kim did not look at Pran. There were so many fucking petals. He needed to— he needed to clean this up. Get rid of them. He didn't know what to do about Pran.
"It looks like you've got hanahaki," Pran told him, quiet and gentle as though speaking to a wild animal.
"I don't," Kim snapped back, too quick and too harsh and too blatantly untrue.
"Right," Pran agreed plainly. Kim did not turn to check, but he had a feeling that Pran was nodding slowly. "So coughing up flowers is something you just do now. Okay."
Kim's grip on the sink tightened.
Pran cleared his throat. "Either way," he said, and thumped his hand against the door— the closed door to the toilets. Closed and bolted. Kim blinked. "The door's closed. No one's finding out. Worst case, people think we got a lil frisky." He waggled his eyebrows. Kim was too high-strung to manage a true laugh. He gave Pran a poor imitation of one, one that made even Kim himself want to wince.
Taking another breath, Kim began to gather the flowers by the handful. He could just throw them into the bin, but the sheer volume of petals was so disconcerting it wouldn't take anyone long to figure out what was going on. He carried them to a stall and flushed them down.
Pran stood awkwardly to the side. He tapped his foot listlessly against the floor. Almost absently, he said, "You know, if I'd had to guess, I would've… I mean. I wouldn't have thought it would be you."
Kim felt his throat constrict again. He swallowed down against it. He was fine. He did not answer.
"It just seemed… he was enamoured," Pran continued, musing. "It doesn't make sense."
Kim swallowed again, harder. His throat itched so bad. He had half a mind to simply claw it out. "No," he agreed, hoarse and quiet and empty. He grit his teeth. The illness had been taking its toll. He'd gotten no closer to finding answers and it was driving him mad. "It doesn't."
Pran was quiet for a long moment. Kim was caught between wishing he would leave and terrified of the prospect of that door opening. He was not ready to face the world at large again. That much was clear, when just the tiniest mention of Ch— of him had Kim in shambles. Pran sighed. "You don't drink much, do you?"
Kim frowned at the sudden change in topic. "What?"
"Alcohol," Pran clarified needlessly. "You don't drink it much."
Kim's frown did not let up. Whilst true enough that Kim did not like the loss of control inebriation promised, especially in public enough settings that that Pran might have seen him in, the topic's relevance escaped him. "You know I don't," Kim said, pausing to rinse out his mouth. "What about it?"
Pran nodded again, which at this point seemed more of a nervous tic than a real response. "Alcohol's poisonous to plants, isn't it?" Kim blinked. "You've not gone to a doctor," Pran stated with complete confidence. Kim could not argue. Pran still waited a gracious second as though to allow a rebuttal, but he did not look surprised when none came. "I don't want to encourage that, but I get it. This is scary. And you're Wik," which was only half of it.
Kim said nothing. When Pran kept quiet for too long, Kim forced out a toneless, "Mm." After a longer moment, Kim said, "So you want me to take up day drinking?"
Pran laughed nervously. "Well, I mean…"
Kim took up day drinking.
Perhaps that was too dramatic a way of putting it.
Alcohol discomfited Kim with its threats of disinhibition, but Kim was no stranger to alcohol; he could not afford a weak tolerance to it.
Which, concisely, meant that Kim, in all technicality, was drinking far earlier than anyone should have been, but he was not drunk, or even tipsy, for the vast majority of his days. And Kim had begun to experiment.
Beer did close to nothing. The flowers shrivelled for a mere second or two before they began again anew. Cider was a similar story, and wine only marginally better. A good vermouth could hold it back for a few minutes, but vodka was where the magic really started. A shot of vodka could manage what a pint of beer only just edged at. Gin, tequila and rum were similar enough in effect that it started to feel like a game of preference for a good half-hour of a clear throat. But then, of course, came the bourbon. A near miracle-worker, with the way the flowers threatening to burst through scampered away, withering in Kim's throat, and stayed away for an hour at the very least.
Bourbon had come to be Kim's poison of choice.
All this to say, that night, when Kim saw him at the club, saw him for the first time in— so long, his throat burned with the scratch of nascent flowers, and then burned again with the smooth glide of bourbon. Just a sip, not much, not enough to inebriate, not enough to disinhibit, not enough to—
What the actual fuck was Chay thinking?
Kim would have liked to say he wasn't thinking clearly, but Kim's focus had felt laser-sharpened by rage. There was perhaps too much force in the whack of his hand as he slapped away the hand with the pill— dangling over Chay's open and waiting mouth— and there was sick but familiar satisfaction, vicious and heady, at the crunch of bone beneath his fist, and there was a scream somewhere, shrill and piercing, and Kim's blood was singing, burning, and when Kim grabbed ahold of Chay's arm, Chay did not resist.
They made it all the way to the dimly lit hallway that lead to one of the emergency exits before Chay wrenched his arm away, hard enough to turn Kim around to face him. Kim was breathing heavily, too heavily, and Chay was staring at him— no, glaring at him, eyes wide and bright and hard, his own chest heaving with each breath he took, and Chay looked livid and Kim had never seen a sight more beautiful and—
Kim's throat was burning.
Kim itched for the flask in his pocket. He had a feeling that would not be a good idea.
"What are you doing here?" Chay snapped, body curving away from Kim, and Kim's blood was still boiling, but Kim felt, inexplicably but indubitably, cold.
Kim's response was a couple seconds too late. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Something flashed in Chay's eyes, furious. "What I'm doing is my business," and then, with a visible but frail effort to compose himself, he said, "Why are you doing this? I've never messed with your business. Don't mess with mine."
Kim's throat was burning. When Kim clenched his jaw, something gave way and bitterness burst to life in his mouth, and fuck, that was a petal, and Kim swallowed down, and it hurt, damn it, it hurt, and did Chay not understand? That Chay was Kim's business, that— Kim's throat convulsed. Kim took in a breath. He needed his flask. Kim had never seen Chay so angry, had never known Chay so bitter and sharp and—
Chay hated him.
Chay hated Kim.
Kim swallowed again. He felt seconds away from doubling over. "From now on," he grit out, "what you do is your own damn decision," and the words barely felt like words, felt more like static, background noise, a high keening that would not stop fucking screaming in Kim's ears, and when he slammed the door behind him, he hardly had a second to recompose himself before he doubled over, and the gravel bit into his knees when they slammed down, and the petals were unrelenting, and Kim's throat was so fucking raw and it hurt so fucking bad and Kim's fingers were clammy, cold, as he fumbled for the flask in his jacket's pocket, and the bourbon tasted awful with the sharp bitter-sweet taste that layered over his tongue from the crumpled petals, and he drank, and he drank, and he drank, and when he stopped, it was only because there was nothing left.
Kim gasped into the flask. One palm landed on the ground to steady him, and it landed in a heap of petals, almost black in the darkness of the night. They crushed beneath his palm. Kim dropped the flask, then cursed, and pocketed it, and then tried to dust his palm off, but the petals had crushed and there was that black-red on his palm now to match them, and Kim's head spun, and he was so, so fucked.