"So, care to explain why there are petals in my bathroom bin?" he asked as he slammed a couple of petals on the table that separated both of you. He didn't look smug as he usually was, rather he looked enraged.

The reason: You're in love with Sylus.

Despite trying so hard to prevent this from happening, it ended up occurring.

You felt like you were running away from a prophecy the Oracle of Delphi: You knew it was impossible that, after everything you've been through together, these feelings wouldn't arise.

And it wouldn't be so horrible if it wasn't killing you.

Hanahaki disease is an illness where flowers grow in the lungs due to unrequited love. As the person suffers from one-sided love, they cough up flower petals. The flowers continue to grow. As the person suffers more from this love or becomes more depressed because of it, these flowers will grow until they obstruct the respiratory system, causing drowning until the person dies. The only way to cure the disease is for the beloved to reciprocate those feelings or remove the flower by surgery, with the certainty that if the flower is removed, the feelings of love will disappear.

As soon as you found out, you tried your hardest to hide it from Sylus, since: 1. You didn't want to worry him, and 2. You preferred not to confess to him what was going on and why was it happening because he was painfully sweet to your heart since, if he rejected you, you would get worse and the waiting list was too long, and you didn't want to feed your illness with the pain of rejection.

It was already hard enough, given the circumstances that your crush on Sylus would trigger in your life if it was uncovered since he was the Onychinus leader and you were a rookie in the Hunters Association. It was unfeasible.

But you forgot that Sylus wasn't dumb and knew your habits all too well, so when your behavior started to change (feeling weak all the time, coughing too much...), he started to observe and watch over you even more.

And that brings you to now.