LOVE

For some reason they decided that hosting a picnic would be the best thing to celebrate the senior class’s accomplishments. The school bought checkered gingham blankets and baskets and everything with the overflow of money from the fundraiser, and the seniors are dining on the most fancy of foods - finger sandwiches and sunflower seeds. They have huge bowls filled to the brim with the hulls and various people’s saliva because for some reason half of the school can’t spit properly.

Yangyang sits on a blanket with his friends, legs crossed and eyes closed as he enjoys his own tiny sandwiches and seeds. Hendery says something he doesn’t catch and the rest of the group laughs, making Yangyang open his eyes. Bad choice.

There, outlined by the sunlight, stands his crush, Y/N. She’s gorgeous, more like a painting than a human, seemingly carved by an old master. He promptly chokes on the sunflower seeds he has in his mouth and his friends crowd around him trying to decide what to do.

“Give him CPR!”

“You idiot, that’s only if he’s unconscious!”

“Heimlich?”

“Is that the one where you press under the ribcage?”

“You’re all so dumb.”

This goes on for a few seconds while Yangyang panics and tries desperately to breathe until suddenly the pressure is gone. His airway is cleared and he laughs in relief, drawing their attention. Kun comes to make sure that he’s okay and Yangyang eats another sandwich to prove that he’s fine. Everything goes back to normal.

It’s just that he’s not fine. He discovers this a week and a half later when he has to run to the bathroom and gag on small yellow flower petals. His chemistry teacher looks at him strangely when he comes back and tells him to wipe up the blood on his cheek, please. He looks in his selfie camera and sure enough, there’s a smear of red up from the corner of his mouth to his cheekbone - Heaven knows how it got there. He wipes it away quietly and tries to ignore the stares of other students for the rest of class. It’s a long lecture, and one that he barely participates in. He knows he can just use Sicheng’s notes later - in fact, his might be more legible than Yangyang’s own. Sicheng is, as Mary Poppins would say, practically perfect in every way.

After class Sicheng walks up from where he sits on the other side of the room. “Are you feeling okay? Why was there blood on your face?”

Yangyang takes him to the bathroom quietly and shows him the bloody flower petals in the trash can, and then for good measure coughs up another one. Sicheng goes paler than usual and he takes a deep breath before he speaks again. “Is it… Hanahaki?”

Yangyang nods. He doesn’t have words. He knew, of course, that his crush was a little stronger than the average. But this, this he never expected. Hanahaki is a nearly extinct disease now, rare but still notorious. He’s heard the stories of people mysteriously growing flowers - often roses - in their lungs. They often start coughing up petals first, then suffocate and die once the flowers have fully grown and expanded into the person’s airway. It’s a horrific way to die. The only cure is your crush falling in love with you in return (how much like Beauty and the Beast this is, Yangyang thinks bitterly) or an extremely difficult and expensive surgery. Either way, Yangyang knows that his timer is counting down - he can neither afford a surgery nor think of any way to make her fall in love with him. The seconds lengthen and suddenly he’s crying against Sicheng’s shoulder, unable to keep it in.

He’s going to die.

☾:۞:☽

In the end, Yangyang thinks that the only way he has even a fighting chance is to get a job. He knows that a basic job at minimum wage won’t get him even close to enough for the surgery in time, so he goes to the only person he can think of that would have enough money to help him - Y/N. He’s standing in front of her front door, having obtained the address from Ten, who once did a project with her. He’s afraid to ring the doorbell, rehearsing his pleading speech in his head. If she turns him away, he can’t think of anywhere else to go. This is quite literally his last chance at life.

He rings the doorbell before he loses his nerve and stands there anxiously, hands behind his back. He wore his good clothes in an effort to impress her, but he’s not sure if it’ll work. After all, his ‘good clothes’ are a too-small dress shirt and a pair of pants made to look like slacks even though they’re not. He knows that just her back patio has furniture worth more money than his entire house.

Eventually, as he’s about to walk away in defeat, the door opens. A man in a suit stands there, looking dignified and put together in a way Yangyang thinks would be impossible for him to pull off. The man beckons him in and walks briskly down the hall.

“Would you like some tea while you wait in the parlor, sir?”

Yangyang, distracted by a painting of a field on the wall, answers late. “Yes, that would be great! Thank you. May I, uh, speak to Y/N?”

“The mistress is in her quarters. I shall let her know she has a visitor. Would you tell me your name?”

“Oh, it’s Yangyang. I went to the same school as her.”

The man nods and walks out of the room through a different door than he came in through and Yangyang lowers himself slowly onto the couch. It’s so soft, and the whole room is such an expression of money… If only she’ll agree to sponsor his surgery, he knows Y/N can afford it.

When the man returns, it’s with a pot of tea and a mug. Yangyang is in the middle of admiring the chandelier when he comes in, and he hurriedly sits down, but the man appears unfazed. “The mistress will be down as soon as she is done with her work.”

Yangyang can’t think of what work she would be doing, but he resigns himself to sitting and waiting more. The tea is actually quite good, and he enjoys a cup of it in the silent room until his phone dings.

Ten-ge

so

did u do it

Yangx2

i dont know yet

she didnt come down yet

Ten-ge

dude

it’s been like half an hour since you texted me

that was when you got there

Yangx2

i know

the butler said she was coming tho

Ten-ge

k

just lemme know how it goes

Yangx2

k

He puts his phone away and takes another sip of the tea. It’s cooled a bit so that it’s not as pleasant, but it still tastes good. He probably can’t afford whatever it is, though. That’s what he’s thinking about when the door opens and Y/N walks in, towering over him because of how squashy the couch is. It looks like she’s stressing over something. She’s not even dressed up or makeup-ed like usual. He idly wonders how it is that she manages to look breathtaking anyway. His chest aches.

“What are you doing in my house?” she demands.

Wow. Great start. “I- I have hanahaki,” he stutters out.

“So?”

“I need a job, a well-paying job. I’m willing to work hard for it, but I need money quickly.”

“So you’re a gold digger?”

“What? No! I want to work for you. Please. You’re my only hope. I need to get the surgery.”

She rolls her eyes. “Listen, whatever your name is-”

She’s cut off by her mother, walking past the open door. “Y/N. Be polite,” she snaps. “What’s going on?” She’s a stately woman, not tall but not short, and dressed as though she’s on her way out or just coming back from an event.

“Mother, this guy from school just came here to beg for a job,” Y/N complains. Yangyang winces at her tone. It truly seems like she hates him in particular. His chest twitches again and he resists the urge to cough. Uh oh.

Her mum turns to Yangyang. “What exactly were you thinking of doing here? We already have servants aplenty.”

He racks his brains for something he’s capable of doing. “I can help with anything school related, and really, I’m willing to do anything. I really need the money for my surgery.”

“Surgery?” She raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

“For Hanahaki disease, ma’am. I have sunflowers growing in my lungs.”

“Then I’m sure we’ll be able to find something for you. My aunt died from Belladonna in her lungs, you know. Dreadful way to die. Belladonna is poisonous on top of the usual Hanahaki symptoms.”

Y/N sputters in the parlor behind the two of them as her mother takes Yangyang for a brief tour of the main section of the house. Their family really is just swimming in money, he can see it in the carpet, in the paintings on the walls, in the sheer size of the family mansion. Money is everywhere. When the tour is concluded, her mum shows Yangyang back to the front door and gets his number so that she can text him (or, more likely, the butler or some other servant will text him) about job times.

“You might not be able to do much, but I’ll do what I can to get you work. Of course I can’t just give you money, it doesn’t grow on trees, but I’m sure you can make enough quickly enough. Sunflowers are edible, at least. Might let you live that much longer. It was nice meeting you, Yangyang.”

“You too, ma’am. Thank you for this opportunity.”

“Oh it was nothing, really.”

Then he is pushed out the front door and onto the front walkway, and breathes out a sigh of relief. He knows that without her mum’s help, he never would’ve gotten the job. Mostly he just hopes that she treats him okay while he works for her. He knows that he’s not on the same social level as her, but hopefully she won’t flaunt it.

Frankly, he doesn’t have high hopes. When he leaves, he throws up more petals, bigger ones than last week, into a spare grocery bag in his car and groans. This is going to be hard. He drives away once he’s stored the bag in the footwell of the passenger seat. His throat aches subtly, and his heart throbs sadly.

☾:۞:☽

The first time he comes to the mansion for work, he’s outfitted with the same outfit as the rest of the staff and shown by what appears to be the head housekeeper what he’ll be doing. She mutters something about being too busy to help, and if he needs assistance to find somebody else. It’s pretty simple, he’s just cleaning a spare bathroom this afternoon. Still, he’s getting paid twenty dollars an hour, so he’ll drag this out as long as he can and make sure he does a good job.

Making the job last a while isn’t an issue, he discovers. There are at least a dozen different bottles, scrubbies, cloths, and wipes in the cleaning bucket he’s given, and finding what they all do takes him at least twenty minutes. Nobody comes to check on him, so he just keeps chugging along. He looks up how to clean a jacuzzi tub on Google and follows the instructions there, using things conveniently placed in the cleaning bucket. At least he knows he’s doing something right.

That takes up the rest of the first hour, and he moves on to the shower tiles. There’s a checklist of everything that needs to be cleaned with his supplies, which is fantastic because he knows that otherwise he’d never have thought of cleaning the shower head (another thing he uses Google to learn to do).

Y/N walks in while he’s cleaning the toilet and leans against the doorframe. He pauses in his work, wondering what could have possibly brought her here. He doesn’t expect her to help him, at any rate. She looks stunning as always, even dressed in nothing more than sleepwear, a t-shirt and shorts. It’s not much, but his lungs throbs and he can’t help the slight wheeze on his out breaths.

“Seriously?” is the first word out of her mouth. How nice. “How long does it take you to clean a bathroom?”

“I had never cleaned a jacuzzi before, I had to use Google! Plus, cleaning a bathroom this big isn’t easy. Have you ever tried?”

Her eyes seem to flash in the lighting. “I have servants for that, people like you whose families can’t get it together.”

“What? My family is perfectly together. It’s just that we aren’t filthy rich.”

“Sure. My family is perfectly together as well, and we are filthy rich. So your family must have done something wrong.”

All Yangyang can do is gape at her. Her logic is so off, and so… entitled. Why did he have to fall for her of all people? His breaths still wheeze, and he wonders if it’ll be like that the entire time he’s working for her.

“Anyway,” Y/N continues, “I just came up here to make sure you were working and not ripping my parents off. It looks like you’re trying, at the very least.” She wrinkles her nose. “Even if you are underqualified for the job. I don’t know why Mother even hired you in the first place. She’s going soft, I guess.”

She pushes herself off of the doorframe and turns around. “Get back to work, Mister Liu.” His name is said in a sneer that he can hear in her voice, but it still makes his heart skip a beat. She knows what his name is. His whole name. He returns to the toilet with renewed vigor.

☾:۞:☽

Another week passes and he comes in to do small tasks, each day dragging by and yet reminding him that his clock is counting down the days. He is invited back that Saturday to work. Apparently the family is having some sort of social gathering, and he’s expected to serve food there. It’s really not a difficult job, he discovers, he just has to carry the tray with both hands and not make eye contact unless someone speaks to him.

He wanders aimlessly through the crowd of overdressed people with the teeny appetizers on his tray. He doesn’t even know what they’re called, the appetizers, just that they’re good. He snuck one just to see what they were at one point and thoroughly enjoyed it. He still doesn’t get what’s up with rich people and tiny food, though. He would have to eat more than ten of whatever these are to feel as though he had eaten anything in the first place.

At some point something important must be happening (Yangyang zoned out after a while and has no idea what’s going on) because the crowd parts to the sides of the room and lights that he didn’t notice appear in the ceiling, pointing to the main staircase going up from the front room to the rest of the house. He follows the rest of the staff to the back of the room and watches as Y/N descends. His breath catches in his throat, and he truly can’t tell if it’s because of the sunflowers or the fact that she looks radiant. Her dress looks fantastic against her skin, and her makeup looks like that of an idol, absolutely stunning. He can’t stop staring and gets lightly scolded when the rest of the staff move through a pair of doors to prepare the dining room for the crowds of people and he doesn’t notice. He peeks at her one last time, the picture of elegance, before he gets swept away by the other waiters.

He helps make sure that everything is in place before the guests come in and then steps obediently to the side when the people stream in, finding their place cards and sitting down, starting new conversations with their neighbors. It seems that everyone is happily seated, and the staff jumps into action. Roast birds are brought out, side dishes are ladled, drinks are poured, and the room instantly transforms from a place to sit into a place to enjoy good food and drink with friends. Or at least, Yangyang assumes they’re all friends. Nobody looks unhappy, at least.

The lady of the hour, Y/N’s mum, sits at the head of the table, with Y/N at her left side. Her father sits across from her, and she’s surrounded by people who clamour for her attention. Yangyang watches as she takes a carefully cut piece of green bean and chews it thoughtfully. It sort of looks as though she’s trying to buy herself time. He bristles as the man sitting next to her presses into her space. She looks awfully uncomfortable, and Yangyang wishes he could protect her, but there’s not a lot that he can do from this position.

Unbidden, the sunflower petals come up again, and he coughs as quietly as he can manage. One of the other waiters looks at him strangely, but he otherwise goes unnoticed and breathes out a sigh of relief. Or at least, he tries. The sigh causes his throat to itch again, and he can tell the exact moment that his gag reflex is activated. He holds his thumbs tightly, a trick he learned to help with nausea. It doesn’t help though, he can’t get it to go away. He doubles over and loses track of what’s happening around him, trying to focus on keeping the flowers and bile down.

The next thing he registers is hands on his arms, leading him somewhere. There’s a voice muttering next to him and he struggles to understand what it’s saying on top of the pressure in his throat.

“-don’t know where to take you, I guess a bathroom? You look like you’re about to throw your guts up.” It’s Y/N’s voice, he realizes with a start, and that just confuses him even more. Since when has she cared about him enough to leave a gathering for him? Actually, since when has she cared for him at all? “I bet nobody will come looking for us in the back guest suite, we haven’t done anything with those rooms for a while. I hope it’s clean.”

She leads him through hallways and there’s distant yelling but all he can focus on is keeping his mouth closed and the feeling of her grip on his bicep, strong and in charge. Eventually she drags him into a tiled room and puts him in front of the toilet. Then she bends down (how, in all of those layers of fabric, he has no idea) to his level and waves her hand in front of his face to get him to focus on her.

“Hey, dude, are you all right?”

He nods as best as he can and then turns to the toilet and hurls up petal after petal. After a while blood comes up too with the force of it all, and with everything being coughed up, his gag reflex activates as well. That one tiny appetizer that he had comes up, and then he just dry heaves for a while. Y/N rubs his back during it and he’s grateful for her presence, because he’s sure he would’ve lost his mind by now if he were alone. He didn’t know she could be such a comforting presence, and he can hardly draw parallels between this version of her and the one who yelled at him for entering the house a few weeks ago.

Once the urge to heave is gone and he can breathe at least somewhat normally, he sits back and flushes the toilet. Y/N grabs a paper cup from somewhere in the room and gives him some water, which he gratefully takes and sips from.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” comes a soft murmur from his left. “I really thought that you were just trying to get easy money, I didn’t realize how bad it can get. I didn’t realize how horrific it is. I know that’s stupid of me. I get why you’re so desperate now. And I’m sorry for insulting your family, too. That was wrong of me, for many reasons.”

“It’s-” his voice breaks and he takes another sip of the water. “Well, it’s not exactly okay, but I appreciate the apology. And, y’know, all of this.” He waves a hand around, indicating the room in general.

“Oh it’s no problem. You helped me get away from Mister What’s-his-name anyway. He can come on so strongly. I’m glad I could spend time with you instead.”

Yangyang feels his heart twist in a new way. Not in the way hanahaki warps his insides, and certainly not the way that his crush made him feel. More like… comfort. He feels safe in this bathroom with her, even if his tailbone is going numb and there’s no way that she’s comfortable either.

“Who is Mister What’s-his-name anyway? Why was he all up in your business?”

“Oh, he’s a partner of my dad’s, I think. I’m pretty sure they made some sort of deal that includes permission to try and court me? But he’s a bit old and a bit… well. He’s the sort of man who has never heard the word ‘no’ in his life.” She winces and Yangyang wishes he could just reach over and hug her, but he’s not sure if that’s allowed in this sort of situation. He’s still not sure if she actually cares for him at all, or if she used him as an excuse to get away from this man that she clearly doesn't like. Either way, he’s just glad she’s comfortable.

“I’m sorry,” he offers. She smiles, a weak thing that doesn’t come even close to her happy smile. Yangyang would know, he’s watched her smile at school for at least a year, and the glow of that is one hundred times more powerful than this imitation.

“It’s fine. The life of a woman, no?” The laugh that follows is full of pain and has an undercurrent of anger.

“It shouldn’t be. You of all people should be free to love a person who cares about you, man or no.”

“Thank you, Yangyang.”

He’s about to respond when there’s a knock on the bathroom door, and Y/N stands up to get it with a small groan, rearranging her dress around her legs. She opens the door to another one of the servants. “Miss, you’re needed in the dining room for a toast and celebration of your graduation. Mister Liu, are you feeling well enough to come back?”

She groans and nods, reaching back to help Yangyang stand up. He takes her hand and relishes in the warmth of it. It makes him feel good that she’ll willingly touch him now. “We’re both feeling lovely, unfortunately.”

Y/N leads him back until he sees the doorway he’s meant to use and he thanks her again. She brushes it off, but he tries to make her understand just how much it meant that she would come for him. That she cared. He can’t find the words that he wants to use, but she just smiles and walks into the dining room, already apologizing to the guests profusely for leaving so suddenly. Her voice fades as Yangyang walks into the kitchen and is immediately given the rest of the night off once he’s explained what happened. He tries to say that he’s fine now, but the head cook pushes him out and a different staff member walks him to the front door.

“Take care, Mister Liu.”

“Thank you.”

☾:۞:☽

The next time he’s texted is from an unknown number.

Unknown ID

Hey yangyang :)

It’s Y/N, my mum gave me your number

Can you come over on Saturday morning? My parents are coming home on Sunday and I need your help cleaning up the house since they gave the rest of the staff the weekend off

Yangx2

yeah totally

what time

Y/N <3

I think 8

Yangx2

cool see u then

He spends the next few minutes freaking out because she has his number and she texted him and he just can’t believe how things are progressing. A few weeks ago she never would have even talked to him, and now he’s being invited, not by her mother, but by her, over to her house.

On Saturday morning he wakes up bright and early and eats a full breakfast to make sure that he can work all morning if she needs him to. Then he drives himself over to her house and takes a deep breath before ringing the doorbell. He checks his watch, congratulating himself on being right on time. Nobody answers, so he tries the front door hesitantly. It’s open, which seems suspicious, but he walks in anyway.

The room is an absolute mess. It hardly seems like the same house as the one he served tiny appetizers at. There are drink glasses and red solo cups all over the place, and he’s starting to get an inkling of what happened here last night. People are passed out in every room he enters, and the front parlor’s couch is piled with at least four bodies. They all look like they’re still alive, which he counts as a plus. Upstairs, clothes are strewn about, and he only cracks open doors to closed bedrooms to see what’s inside. At the first sight of a dropped shirt (or other article of clothing) he closes each door again, unwilling to see the people inside and how much or how little they might be wearing.

He progresses through the house, only the private family wing appearing untouched. The paintings are still straight on the walls here, and nobody is laying on the carpet. It’s still and silent, like a house should be at eight AM on a Saturday morning. He peeks into some of the rooms just to make sure that there’s nobody there. There isn’t, at least until he comes to a room in the far back. It’s the last one, and he barely takes a cursory glance before blinking and coming fully into the room.

The blinds are drawn, but he can see a walk-in closet, a dresser, a vanity, a couch, a desk with a monitor on it, and a TV in the dim lighting. There’s also a queen-size bed, one with a little sleeping lump on it that he really really hopes is Y/N. He walks slowly and gazes happily down at her sleeping features. She looks so peaceful, face lax and breathing even. He figures that it would be a shame to wake her up, so he leaves the room quietly and walks back to the main floor, where most of the people are sleeping.

He starts rousing them from their slumber, some simply refusing to and rolling over before falling back asleep. That’s fine, he knows they’ll leave eventually. For the most part, he gets everyone up and leaving, all of them complaining about their hangovers. A few run into the nearest bathroom to empty their stomachs, but it’s a blessedly small percentage. He doesn’t recognize any of them.

Once the people on this floor are gone, he gets to work. He absolutely refuses to go looking for the people in the guest rooms, so he just has to hope that they get up on their own before he has to clean that wing of the house.

He starts in the kitchen, putting bottles of liquors he’s only heard of in passing and ones he can’t pronounce in a black trash bag he finds under the sink. Then he goes through the rooms, collecting spare red solo cups and the occasional confetti spray. He moves methodically through the rooms, cleaning up what he can and avoiding the heavy sleepers that he couldn’t get to leave. There are three of them, and he just leaves them be. Better not to rouse a sleeping bear. In one of the back parlors (a less prominent one, it has less expensive things in it, he thinks) he finds a broken window and winces. That’s not going to be easy to fix before tomorrow.

He’s just finishing rearranging the furniture when Y/N comes down the stairs, still rubbing sleep from her eyes. She doesn't look nearly as hungover as the other people he chased out, which he’s thankful for. She’ll be a better cleaning buddy if she’s not in pain or needing to vomit.

She grabs a bowl of cereal and looks around at the clean kitchen.

“Did you clean the entire room?” Her voice is rough with sleep and he loves that he’s the first person to hear her speak today. It’s sort of intimate. He knows that’s just because he wants it to be intimate, but it makes him smile nonetheless.

“I’m almost done with this floor, actually. I got here at eight like you said, and it’s almost nine thirty now.”

“Oh wow, okay. Thank you so much. I can’t believe you did all of that by yourself.”

“Well, you are paying me for this. I’m still willing to do just about anything.”

Her grin almost hurts his eyes, it’s so bright. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Hey!”

She laughs and he relaxes. Yangyang can never resist her, and he knows it. As she finishes her cereal and puts the bowl in the sink, he follows her, and then she turns to face him. “I’ll work on getting people out of the guest rooms, you start on the hallways. Okay?”

He nods. “Before we go up, though, you should see this.” He leads her through the rooms until he finds the back parlor again, and gestures to the window.

“I thought that was a dream,” she groans. “It’s going to be a pain to get it fixed.”

“I figured you should know about it sooner rather than later.”

She nods, eyes still fixed on the splintered glass panes. “Yeah. Thanks. I’ll call someone to come fix it, I guess.”

Yangyang walks out of the room behind her, heading to the guest room to start cleaning up. He starts with the paintings knocked askew, putting the shards of broken wall decorations and such in another black trash bag. She comes up after a while.

“I called a guy to fix the window, he said he can be here later.”

“Do you want me to stay? Just in case?”

She gives him a long hard look and he’s afraid that she’ll tell him off, but then a lovely small smile comes out. “Sure, Yangyang. Thanks.”

She starts opening doors to guest rooms, yelling into each one. “Get up! C’mon guys, time to go! Ew, Jeremy, don’t do that. Okay, Caroline, time to go, yep. Sun is up, so are we! Let’s go you guys!” Yangyang, meanwhile, moves on to the carpet, finding a vacuum in one of the numerous linen closets. He finds some loose clothing and makes a lost and found pile. He’s surprised, frankly, that there aren’t any lost phones or other more important items. There is a condom on the floor though, thankfully unused.

Finally, when everyone is roused and gone, he moves on to the bathrooms. Y/N joins him after a while, helping to scrub stains and generally put everything back in place. It’s nice, the two of them working in tandem. She isn't talking much, so he doesn’t either, and it’s a comfortable sort of silence.

Once they’re done, she invites him to have lunch with her and the two of them eat, getting to know each other. He knew this whole time, of course, that he was in love with her, but spending time with her like this makes his whole body warm in a way that he’s unfamiliar with. It reminds him of how he felt on the floor of the bathroom with her: safe.

After lunch they clean the back patio, which is surprisingly untouched. The window guy comes and goes, and Yangyang sits with her in her room, now with the curtains opened to let light stream in onto the floor.

“You know what’s weird?” he asks.

“What’s that?”

“I haven’t had a hanahaki episode all day. I haven’t even had trouble breathing like I have been recently. It’s strange.”

“That is weird. Maybe you fell out of love with whoever it is? I read up on hanahaki and I think that’s possible. Maybe the sunflowers died or something.”

He nods, but only because what she’s saying makes sense. He knows he didn’t fall out of love though. “Well, maybe I don’t need to work for you anymore, then? I mean the money is nice but my other job pays less… sporadically.”

“If that makes you happy, sure. More money for us, I guess. Until next time, then?” She gives him a loose hug and his heart flutters.

“Until next time. Thank you for everything, Y/N.”

She beams at him, although he thinks there’s an undercurrent to her smile that isn’t as happy as it was a few minutes ago.

“No problem Yangyang. I’ll walk you to the front door.”

He thinks he could probably walk around her house blindfolded at this point - he’s been everywhere cleaning things - but he allows her to lead him to the front door anyway. It’s just a few more moments in her presence, but he relishes in it. Y/N waves to him as he walks down the front walkway, and then she closes the door. He can’t help feeling as though he’s made a big mistake, but surely it’s fine. He’ll be fine. The flowers are (possibly) dead, and he’s free to only work one job. Nevermind that he misses her already, knowing that there might not ever be another text sent from her to him or vice versa.

☾:۞:☽

The next evening it’s raining - no, pouring - when Yangyang gets into his car and prepares to drive back to her house. After dinner he had a worse episode. It appears that the sunflowers have grown more, because he now has the ability to spit out sunflower seeds on top of the scratchy flower petals and stems. He almost envies people who get softer plants like roses, until he realizes that roses have thorns. He can’t imagine that thorns are any more pleasant; they’re probably worse. They also probably take longer to flower, though. Sunflowers grow so big, so fast, in comparison. Daisies, maybe? That pretty purple one that his neighbor is growing? Those are small.

He coughs up more petals while he drives, the lines on the road blurring under the water outside the car and the tears in his eyes. The whole time he wonders if he’ll even make it, if he won’t just suffocate on the way over. He doesn’t even know if Y/N’s home, for goodness sake. He hopes so, because he’s definitely done for if he can’t see her. He can feel it.

The next batch of petals comes up with blood on them, dripping from his bottom lip onto the pile of coughed-up items in his lap. He had the foresight to put another plastic grocery bag in his car after he threw out the last one, and he’s thankful for that now as he coughs more. There are tears streaming down over his cheeks and he can’t even wipe them away. All of his attention is on driving and coughing up as much as he can so that he doesn’t start asphyxiating.

When he finally arrives at her house, he dashes up the front walkway and rings the doorbell like a madman, hoping against hope that she’ll answer the door.

He’s almost surprised when she does open it, jumping backwards before turning away and coughing more petals into a bush out front.

“Yangyang?” her voice is panicked, filled with more emotion than he’s ever heard from her. “What’s going on?” He has blood on his shirt, and probably some on his face too, but he can’t find it in himself to care. When he speaks, his voice is rough and his throat aches. There’s a sort of pressure at the bottom of his trachea, and it doesn’t like how it feels at all.

“Relapse,” he grunts. “Help.”

He’s thankful that she has the presence of mind to lead him into a bathroom, ignoring the servants swarming the two of them. They’re just trying to help, but Yangyang knows they won’t be able to do anything. The only one who could possibly help him is her, his love. Once she’s locked the door behind her, she rubs his back as he coughs up more into the trash can. For reasons unknown, it’s mostly seeds now, falling from his throat like some sort of black mold. He supposes that the flowers have had the same approximate results as a mold, just with more breathing issues.

After a while the flow of them slows enough for him to sit back against the wall. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I didn’t know where to go.”

She shakes her head. “It’s okay. I… I think I get it now. It was me all along, wasn’t it? That’s why it stopped hurting you so much while we were together. I started… I started to fall for you, and somehow… somehow the flower knew it. It stopped growing for a while, that’s the only explanation for how much better you were feeling. And then yesterday, we said we’d stop seeing each other, and I guess the Hanahaki didn't like that much. So you started throwing up again. And, uh, now we’re here. And I… Well, I sort of fell in love with you too, somewhere along the line.”

Yangyang takes in her earnest expression, the spot of blood on her shirt that he doesn’t remember getting there. He doesn’t know what to say. All of this time pining after her, and suddenly she’s fallen for him too? It’s too much to ask, too much to hope for; her face says that it’s true anyway. His voice is scratchy and shredded when he speaks, a byproduct of the seeds that ravaged his throat. “Really? You actually mean it?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she says resolutely.

It surprises both of them when Yangyang crumbles forward into her lap, head landing between her arms. “I can’t kiss you ‘cause I have blood in my mouth,” he mutters, voice muffled where it’s squished into her thigh, “but I really want to.”

“The feeling is mutual. Let’s get you cleaned up first though, yeah? I can find you some clean clothes and let you use this shower.”

“Sure. Thank you, Y/N.”

“No problem.”

She leaves the room after helping him stand up and he finds some spare shower materials in the closet, so he pulls them out. A generic shampoo, bodywash, and an incredibly soft and fluffy towel that he almost feels bad for touching. It’s decadent. He puts everything in the shower and she comes back with some spare clothes.

“Will these fit you?”

Yangyang holds the shirt up to his body and nods happily, even though it’s several sizes too big, and then holds up the sweatpants. He looks down, trying to gauge their size, and all of a sudden his throat constricts. He can’t process what’s happening; his love confessed! The flower should be dead! He should be fine!

“Yangyang?” Her voice cuts through the panicked fuzz in his head.

“Can't breathe,” he wheezes.

“What?” She drops the shirt in her arms and rushes forward, nearly dragging him out of the bathroom and down the hallway. “Help! He’s- he’s choking! Mum, call the ambulance! He’s got to get the surgery, right now!”

All Yangyang can do as he is manhandled out front and frantically encouraged to keep breathing is stare at Y/N. Maybe it’s the lack of oxygen going to his brain, but he thinks that she looks even more amazing like this, worried about him. It’s sort of what he wanted all along, isn’t it? Maybe not for her to be in a panic over him, but for her to care about him. He thinks, even as he runs out of air, that he’s happy to die right now if it means that he gets to be cared for by her.

The last thing that he registers is the distant scream of a siren and her desperate, incoherent mumbling.

☾:۞:☽

Later on, Yangyang can never figure out how they kept him alive long enough to do the surgery. The sunflower was already dead since Y/N had confessed, but it had still shifted and blocked his air passage, which was why he had passed out. She had rushed him to the emergency room by ambulance and the nurses had somehow gotten the head of the flower out of his trachea before he died from lack of air. Afterwards she was sitting in strained silence in the waiting room, waiting for him to come out, or for one of the doctors or nurses to proclaim that the worst had happened.

She couldn’t stomach the thought, she told him later. It hurt her to even consider having him suddenly ripped from her by something that was, in a way, her fault.

“It’s not your fault. At all. In any way.”

“Well, I don’t know. If I had just realized my feelings earlier, you might not have started suffocating, and you wouldn’t have had to go through that.”

“Falling in love takes time. I don’t blame you at all.”

“You should.”

“I won’t.”

“But-”

“Nope. I love you, and you love me, and everyone’s okay now. You need to stop feeling guilty about something that was out of your control. You know you would say the same to me.”

A huff. “True.”

She walks him slowly out of the hospital, and he feels weak because the stance she’s taken indicates an inability for him to take care of himself. He’s fine! It was his lungs that had the surgery, not his legs! Still, he lets her hold him next to her, and he smiles because she cares for him. He still can’t get over that. He wasn’t sure that she even had it in her to love someone outside of herr close (rich) friends, but here they both were, him alive and her worrying over his health.

It's almost more than he ever hoped for. Almost. He still wants a son, if only because he made a bet with Ten years ago that he would be the first to have a son, but he’s aware that both of them are too young to give a baby the love he wants to give it. They just graduated high school a few weeks ago, after all. And he obviously has to ask her what she plans to do in the future before anything else happens.

But he would very much like to have a son someday.

He’s drawn out of his thoughts by Y/N opening her car door and helping him into it, even going so far as to carefully strap him in. He lets her, aware that she’s just worried that he’ll relapse. He doesn’t think he will, though. After an excruciatingly boring two weeks in the hospital, he’s doing a lot better. His mum came to see him whenever she got off of work, and his older sister came in to bring him food and things to entertain him in the painfully white blankness of his recovery room.

Y/N had offered to pay for the entire surgery and hospital stay, but Yangyang insisted upon at least using what he had stored up from working for her family. She had let him, but he suspected that it was only so that he would feel better about it. He knows that she could easily support him for the rest of his life. If all goes well, that’s exactly what he was hoping for. Obviously he’ll get his own job, but he wanted to live with her for as long as he could, regardless of whether it’s in her mansion or his small family apartment, or somewhere to call his own.

Before she draws away, she gives him a hug, holding him loosely enough to make sure she doesn't hurt him but tightly enough that he knows she’s wanted to do this for a while. He lifts his own arms and holds her close. It feels like her soul is bared to him, and vice versa. There’s pain in the hug, an unwillingness to let go, and an unspoken sentence: I love you.

End.