Hanahaki Disease Meme

[misheard]

HANAHAKI DISEASE

The Hanahaki Disease is an illness born from one-sided love, where the patient coughs up flowers or flower petals. The only cure is to have that love reciprocated, or to somehow wipe away all one’s memories of their beloved person. The infection can be removed through surgery, but the feelings disappear along with the petals.

1. Post your character with name, canon, and ship preferences in subject line. Also include whether you'd prefer your character to be the one suffering from the disease or not.
2. Tag other people.
3. Pain.
4. If you need help choosing specific flowers, this flower meaning chart might be a good starting point.

Comments

[goatsongs]

[Of course she came to investigate. Of course she did. That's what friends do when their friends don't answer their messages. He should have expected this eventually.

He can't get her to leave, but he'll try. Maybe he can convince her he's fine.]

Go aw-

[Except that snapping at her after spending days not talking at all was bad for his lungs and he ends up hacking in the middle of the second word, loud enough to be clearly audible through his front door.

Fuck.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

Chuuya.

[ if there are certain things you get an eye for, living with someone sick, there are also things you're never going to forget the sound of. there's a crackling electrical hum as all the lights in his house flare and then dim in reaction to her stab of panic, shortly followed by the doorknob rattling as she grabs for it ]

[goatsongs]

[Like any sane person in this city, Chuuya keeps his front door locked. To keep unwanted people out, and to keep Kaiko out too, right now.

The lights hurt his eyes but he can't give any response until he gets this stupid flower out of his throat, and that'll take some ugly-sounding coughing. He knows it sounds bad, it is bad, but when he can finally speak again-]

I'm fine...

[-of course he's going to try to keep her out, even if it's hopeless. He knows it's pointless, but the words still leave him in a wheeze.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

[ with the kind of shaky fury that comes from being deeply upset: ]

Then you can either prove it by coming and telling me that to my face or you can handle me coming in.

[ she's a ghost. she damn well doesn't need to use a door if she doesn't want to. ]

[goatsongs]

I'll come out.

[Because the state of the room doesn't give the impression of good health, he knows.

There's the sound of someone getting out of bed - and then, immediately after, the sound of someone stumbling and ending up on the floor with a loud bump, as one might if they've barely moved for several days.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

[ why did she say that? she should have expected him to be stubborn— ]

—I'm coming in.

[ stepping right through the door ]

[goatsongs]

[Noticeable immediately:

The floor is littered with flower petals. Large yellow petals, sometimes in ones and twos and sometimes in larger clumps, with a rare few having the center of the sunflower attached.

Chuuya's cell phone is next to the wall, nearly in two pieces.

There is a large stack of books next to the bed. All the titles suggest they're medical journals or encyclopedias centering on disease. There is also a stash of food sitting out, sizable enough to feed Chuuya for a few more days before he would have to leave.

Chuuya is sitting by the bed, slowly picking himself up again after he'd fallen.]

...Just fine. I told you.

[ghostfromthemachine]

[ taking that all in, her expression shuttering the rest of the way as she sees the ruined phone— her eyes linger for a moment on the food (good, at least he'd been eating) and then a lot longer on the books. a lick of electricity crawls a circuitous path down her body before grounding itself at her feet, but thankfully there are no more shenanigans with the lights. ]

You've been coughing hard enough for it to hurt and you fell when you tried to get up. That isn't "fine."

[goatsongs]

I haven't been moving much for a while, that's normal.

[Leaving aside that staying mostly in bed for days at a time isn't normal.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

In the sense that bleeding because you've been cut is normal, perhaps.

[goatsongs]

What do you want me to say? I-

[However he was going to finish that sentence, probably with something like 'I don't need your help', it's interrupted by another coughing fit, which ends with Chuuya spitting large yellow flower petals out onto the floor.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

[ takes an automatic step forward before stopping herself, hands curled so tightly her fingernails are digging into her palms. she's all but vibrating with tension by the time Chuuya finishes choking the petals up, but at the sight of them she freezes entirely, the implications of the petals littering the room sinking in.

her eyes dart to one of the larger clumps, the center still attached, and it's like the unsteady anger in her voice and the set of her shoulders has had a bucket of water dumped on it. ]

...You don't have to say anything so long as you don't try to act like this isn't something worth worrying over. Please.

[goatsongs]

...Alright.

[There's no way she'd be fooled into just leaving him be anyway. Not now, and maybe not before that either. So he can try to be a little more honest.]

There's nothing you can do.

[It's lovesickness. Unrequited love. And of course he's aware that it's her - but he's equally aware that she doesn't love him, why would she? Kaiko deserves better. Even if he's dying, that fact hasn't changed.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

Noth—

...I can get you to one of the Temples or bring a doctor, can't I?

[ she hadn't even begun to think far enough ahead to get to the possibility that there might not be anything to do. it's a mess and he looks a mess and he scared the hell out of her, certainly— but her mother had looked so much worse and she'd pulled through, so surely...? ]

[goatsongs]

The surgery's risky on a human being, where the doctors understand all the body parts going on. I'm not a human being and my insides don't work that way.

[It might be worth trying, but it'll probably kill him. And even if it doesn't, it could fuck him up.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

There's still— that still leaves the temples? The gods here can bring back the dead, so surely...

[goatsongs]

It's a possibility, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[The temples are powerless at the most inconvenient times.]

You should get used to the idea now, I guess.

['That I'm going to die'. He sounds disconnected, as if he isn't talking about his own impending death. Like he's just discussing something somewhere else, far from him.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

[ between one blink and the next her eyes go dark, almost all the color leeching out of them and leaving them a dull, dark steel-blue ]

...no. No. To Hell with that.

[goatsongs]

[She doesn't need to be this upset for him. He isn't sure why she is. It's not like he's someone who's still alive?]

It's not as bad as the meningitis was. Hurts like hell, but other than that it's not that bad a way to go.

[ghostfromthemachine]

"Other than that—" are you even listening to yourself? I've seen what getting your lungs eaten away does to a person, and that was by ordinary disease! And dying once is damn well enough!

[goatsongs]

And compared to getting my brain eaten away, it's better, I'm standing by that.

[Slowly losing his mind is the worst way he could go.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

[ ... passing her hand over her eyes, upset enough that she can't quite steer herself away from remembering the mental jumble of her own final moments ]

Not much is worse. That doesn't make it good.

...

I'm not going to give up yet, but. If it turns out—

If it turns out there really is nothing to be down. There is one thing I can do.

[goatsongs]

What's that?

[Don't do anything stupid or reckless for his sake, Kaiko.]

[ghostfromthemachine]

[ dropping her hand ]

I can make it painless. If you wanted.

[goatsongs]

[Talking about mercy kills already, huh.]

...That wouldn't fuck you up? I'm not going to make you do anything like that if it's going to be hard on you.