Chapter Text
He doesn't quite remember when it started; just that it had been a part of him since a long, long time ago, for thirteen years and counting.
"Oh," Kim Dokja says to himself one day, when he feels the texture of what is very much a wet flower petal in his hand.
He's curled up in the corner of his closet, door shut, phone screen emitting bright light in the darkness of the house, reading the newest chapter of his favorite webnovel, when his throat had suddenly locked up and sent him into a coughing fit.
He had reached a hand to cover his mouth instinctively (be as quiet as possible, take up neither space nor sound in the house), and there are small pieces of something bloody in the palm of his hand.
Flower petals.
Hanahaki is something he's read about occasionally in works of fiction; a fictional disease, used as a tool to encourage romantic confession by looming threat of death. He's never cared much for it, nor has he heard of recorded cases in real life. And why would it only apply to romantic love, anyway? Romantic, platonic, or familial, it can be just as strong (and hurt just as much.)
(The petals in his palm, soft and warm with blood, are anchors to this cold hard reality. He tries to go back to reading, to distract himself with thoughts of the story he loves so much, but the petals don't stop flowing as he does; they never really do. After all, as he comes to accept, they're proof of his love.)
It should bother him more than it does, but maybe Dokja lost the part of him that cared a long time ago. It just becomes part of his life, as natural as breathing.
(In brighter light, he looks back at the petals on his desk from that day. They're small, and after washing the blood off, he finds a variety of different colors: white, orange, yellow, red, purple, pink. It doesn't help him identify them; Dokja doesn't know much about flowers.)
(In half-hearted interest, he picks up some books about flowers the next time he stops by the library. They're not particularly interesting, nor do flower meanings make any apparent sense to him, but he reads nonetheless. He's good at that.)
He reads "Ways of Survival" like it's a guidebook to surviving his own mundane life, and often calls himself Yoo Joonghyuk too. It's nothing more than a good luck charm to make himself feel braver, and he knows that well; yet every word he reads and repeats aloud drags him another step closer to tomorrow, even with the petals he spits up everyday.
(He covers the petals in his hands before anyone can see them leave his mouth, and hides them away before anyone can find them. His life has been made into a terrible enough story as it is by his mother; he sees no need to add one more tragic trope to it.)
The days pass by, he gets older and taller, his throat gets tighter and tighter, and (as he comes to learn, hanahaki does not apply to just flowers, but tree leaves and other plants too) the variety of petals and leaves he coughs up become larger and more beautiful; some he has even grown to recognize: black and silver poplars, primroses, and goldenrods seem to come up the most often when he reads.
Really, he just tries not to think about it too much. A few clumps of petals a day— that was the price for living.
Yoo Sangah catches him one day, in the very same moment he catches her putting pepper in their boss's coffee in the breakroom.
(Well, he doesn't have any intention to say anything about that. Han Myungoh deserves it, and Dokja wouldn't say anything even if he hadn't.)
She hadn't noticed him huddled in the corner, and her mouth goes open with shock when she hears muffled coughs in the room, but it snaps shut just as quickly when she sees the blood dripping down his lips.
(He's not sure if she saw the flower petals in his hand or not. If she did, she's never commented on it.)
He holds a finger over his lips, and, ever politely, Sangah seems to shake herself before giving him a slight nod.
(He turns the security camera away as he walks out the door, and they don't speak about it again, though he can feel her gaze on him throughout the days from then on.)
(It burns with concern, but she never asks. He appreciates that.)
It's a gradual but certain realization, that the words and letters of the story he loves so much— of the story that helped him live until this point— were going to kill him, too.
And what a stupid way to go, he thinks. Of all things, for loving a story too much.
(Even as the years pass by, petals and leaves have collected between the pages of his books, serving as bookmarks for pages he's reread time and time again. The petals get bigger as he flips from front to back.
He doesn't dare trample on this proof of his love, even as it kills him.)
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(And in hindsight, maybe it was an indicator since long ago that the novel he loved so much was going to become reality.)