Kuroken Angst ~ Hanahaki

Chapter Four

The flowers come faster and harder, after that episode. He wakes up in the night, choking on stamens, leaves, yellow pollen. He takes the pills, but they don’t seem to be suppressing anything anymore. School has become an exercise in survival. Practice has him on the bench, daily, a box of tissues next to him. His breath comes fast and shallow and unsatisfying. The flowers are growing, desperate and needy - he feels them brush against his airway. They want to see the sun; they are tired of the darkness.

The more flowers he grows, the more Kenma feels a calm fatalism. He knows he’ll die with the blue spilling from his mouth. There’s no other option: surgical removal would mean the removal of his deepest self. It would be a suicide, but he’d die years later, empty and alone. At least now he can die filled with love, filled with flowers, as himself. 

It happens as he sits on the bench, eyes trained on his team, but thoughts turned inwards. The heaviness has a new quality to it: real, sharp pain, rather than just a weight. Breathing hurts, and then it stops hurting, because it’s impossible to breathe at all. The flowers spill from his mouth, whole and blue and beautiful. He closes his eyes. He feels the blood spread across the bench and touch his cheek - gently, like a lover might.

He hears a faint scream. He doesn’t know who made the sound, but seconds later he recognises the rough hands cradling his face, and he thinks: how lovely, to die like this, in his hands.

He doesn’t die like that. He doesn’t die at all. He wakes in a hospital room, sterile and gracious. There are no flowers on his bedside table. Breathing comes more easily. He opens his eyes to the same doctor he spoke to weeks before.

‘You should have been more careful,’ she says. ‘You could have died. Your options -’

‘There aren’t any,’  Kenma tells her, as though he’s the doctor and she’s the patient. ‘No options.’

She shakes her head.‘So young -’ She says, ‘I’m going to schedule you for surgery next week. You can cancel, but I would recommend that you don’t.’

He has to stay in hospital. They fluff his pillows, and touch his forehead. He leans into their careful, gentle touches. Their hands are soft and warm. They aren't the rough hands he wants. The chasm has opened; he can’t hold back the blue. He coughs into basins, into his own sleeve, into cardboard bowls. It happens so often now that there’s no point in marking the episodes. It’s one, long, blue moment. His mother cries. His father breaks a cup, as he drinks coffee by the door.

He hears voices outside his door.

‘Get out of the way. I need to see him.’ Kuroo's voice is strained.

‘You’re going to kill him.’  That’s Hanamaki.

‘Don’t you ever - I would never -’ His voice breaks before he can get the words out. Does he think he’s lying? Does he believe it?

‘You already have.’  Yaku. He hears a loud, anguished yell. It’s Kuroo. Kenma thinks he should be more quiet; this is a hospital, after all.