Blood and Flowers

Memories

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"But they just won't fade, the memories we made of you and me, l couldn't fight."
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"Shinobu, what do I do?" asked Karma. She tilted to the side, slightly, as if to say she didn't know. "I can't get Gakushu out of my head."

"Have you ever fell in love with another fish?" She looked at the redhead as if to tell him that he should know the answer. "Oh yeah, you haven't really seen other fish, you've been with me since you were a baby."

"That makes me wonder if animals can get the Hanahaki Disease, but chickens and peacocks probably get rejected daily, so they probably don't."

Even though Shinobu never said anything, to Karma, it always felt like she did, like he was conversing with her and she was conversing with him. It was a weird feeling, but it also felt right. He gazed lovingly at her, she gazed back.

"You sure know how to cheer a man up," said Karma and she beamed at him.

"I have to get to school, have a good day ok?" he said as he quickly fed her. He pressed his lips to the tank and she did the same. Then he went to change.

He was done in a flash, pulling on his black blazer, and out of his room.

Karma was barely out the door when he had to stop to cough up flowers, gagging on them, feeling as if they were stuck in his throat.

"Shit—" he chocked out as people passing stared. They walked right past the redhead. They probably thought he had a sickness, though he did in a way if the Hanahaki Disease was counted as a sickness.

A child of one of them pointed at him and looked up at her dad, saying something to him. He told her something about minding her own business and that it wasn't polite to point at people.

Why here? Why now? Karma thought as the flowers stopped coming. He stared at them for a little while. Yellow roses? The redhead had always though he'd be coughing up sakura blossoms if anything, but he knew he wasn't when the yellow petals had come. He thought maybe it was a sunflower or something like that. But no, a yellow rose. Weird. Was there anything that he thought wasn't weird about Gakushu? Perhaps that only made him more likable.

It hurt Karma's heart to know that he could never have anyone as amazing as Gakushu. And he would never be able to think anyone was as amazing as Gakushu was again.

He felt the familiar sort of painful, ticklish sensation that he felt every time the strawberry blonde came to mind in his throat.

[•-•]
School wasn't very eventful. Everything was as boring and plain as all of the other days. Karma felt as if he'd spent half of it in the bathroom. His classmates were probably thinking he had a problem with his bladder or something. But no matter, as long as they didn't know he had the Hanahaki Disease he was ok.

Too many things had reminded him of Gakushu though. Even just a gesture of a hand, a single word, something written on the board. It was terrible.

Isogai laughed in class. He thought of Gakushu laughing at something Sakakibara Ren said when he was getting his strawberry milk. It was the most adorable sound that he had heard Gakushu make.

Maehara was deliberately talking loudly so everyone heard what he was saying. He thought of Gakushu and him trying to publicly embarrass each other because they were already publicly embarrassed by being by being near one another. Gakushu had started talking loudly about the redhead, random things that were supposed to be embarrassing. Only he forgot to emphasize who "Akabane" was. Everyone stared at him like he was crazy. Karma chuckled. That was probably the first time Gakushu had flushed so red in his life.