Hanahaki was a well-known disease because everyone was so afraid of it. It’s been studied for centuries, and yet, there’s no real cure. If one has unrequited love for another, they cough up bloody petals until they either suffocate a painful death, or they make their crush realise they love them back.

There was the option of surgery, but it was expensive and it could remove the capacity to feel love - or you’d just regrow the flowers. It wasn’t reliable.

So you thought you were safe, initially. The boy you talked to most was Nishimura Riki, a tall, deep-voiced, chiselled 16 year old in your school. However, you both practically bullied each other. Enemies. It started years ago and never changed.

That was, until you and your friends squirted a water bottle all over Riki and his other popular friends. You laughed hysterically, so much that you coughed, choked-

… there in the palm of your hand, a bloodied, baby pink petal.