grow in me
yet another shot of depresso a xicheng hanahaki au
~
~
Jiang Cheng is bent over the toilet bowl, hacking coughs wracking his entire body. He shudders with the force that builds from the roots squeezing his lungs and scratches up the column of his throat for escape. When another heave leaves his body, Jiang Cheng leans deeper into the toilet bowl feeling as if he were throwing up his entire heart.
After a minute of dryness and pain climbing up his throat, Jiang Cheng anticipates relief when he manages to heave out what had made a mess of his throat.
What leaves his lips are a few anticlimactic petals, spotted in pink and dark blood red. Jiang Cheng holds onto the rim of the toilet, trying to ignore the ringing in his ears with the metallic aftertaste on his lips. Jiang Cheng takes in a slow breath. The jasmine petals are dainty and supposed to be white, but they’ve soaked up a lot of blood from their growth inside of him. The garden is a heavy responsibility, especially when he cannot tend to the unruly roots that begin to take up all the space between his insides.
Jiang Cheng holds onto the toilet bowl as tightly as he can, the coolness in his hands the only grounding pressure that keeps him lucid. Jiang Cheng is spent; with sleepless nights where his lungs are wrapped in merciless vines and days tied in the branches of academia, he doesn’t know how much energy he has left to spare.
It takes him another full minute to realize that there had been loud knocks on the locked bathroom door.
The ringing is still loud in his ears, though he catches the muffled warnings of a familiar voice outside.
“Jiang Cheng! Let me in!…I’m telling you….”
Jiang Cheng blinks, daring to let go of one of his hands and bringing it to wipe at the edge of his mouth. When he brings his hand back it lands heavily on the rim of the toilet bowl. There’s a line of red from where he’s just pressed the back of his hand against his chin.
“…don’t test me. I’ll break open this door…”
Jiang Cheng huffs softly, though the small action is enough to irritate his raw throat. In the redness of the water in front of him, he sees the petals from before, floating on the surface, bumping into a handful of bloomed jasmine flowers. He tries to shake his head to get a bit of focus back in his eyes but it only helps in making his stomach roll. Jiang Cheng clutches onto the cool porcelain again.
He wants to give up.
“…Jiang Cheng! Open the damn door!”
The door knob shaking rapidly in its place jolts Jiang Cheng out of his hazy thoughts. Jiang Cheng wants to get up to open the door for his brother (they can’t afford any extra fees on their student payments anyways) but he’s slowly losing feeling in his limbs. He can’t really hear his own thoughts anymore.
Jiang Cheng ends up laying his head against his arms, hoping for a second of relief from everything that’s been choking him from the inside out.
Keep reading
