Flowers of Remembrance - An Oumasai Fic

✿ ❀ Chapter 7 ❀ ✿

Have you ever listened to the ragged rasp of your own breath, desperately clawing its way out of your chest? It's a haunting sound, an eerie symphony that relentlessly echoed through Kokichi's days, a stark reminder that his time was slipping away. Within Kokichi's fragile lungs, a garden of flowers had taken root, blossoming solely for Shuichi's sake. Yet Shuichi had no desire in this gift. The disease had mercilessly progressed, leaving Kokichi helpless. He became unable to make even the slightest movement without triggering a series of violent upheavals of the soft flower bouquet that thorns lodged in Kokichi's throat. Death by flowers. It sounds beautiful but is deceivingly tormenting. Kokichi could live with that cause of death.

The two boys hadn't dared to approach each other since their argument. The tension between them was too thick, so thick even a chainsaw couldn't make a dent in it. Sometimes one of them would glance at the other, hoping their relationship hadn't turned out the way it did. But it had. And neither of them were courageous enough to fix it. If anything, Shuichi had been desperately trying to cut all ties with Kokichi. All thoughts and feelings towards Kokichi he wanted gone. The intense sense of guilt that Shuichi was responsible for Kokichi's death was uncontrollable and suffocating. If only he hadn't approached him that Wednesday maybe Kokichi would have had a fighting chance at life. Yet he and he alone had stripped that away from him. The guilt was swiftly drowning him, and no one could save him even if he reached out his hand for help. What was worse? A small feeling had been creeping upon him that went off whenever he thought of the time he had spent with Kokichi before everything came crashing down. A feeling of warmth and tenderness.

Kokichi had yearned to spend every last passing moment with Shuichi before it was too late. When he noticed Shuichi anxiously walking off with his true friends whenever Kokichi came near, he got the memo. It's ironic how life can be so cruel, teasing you with your desires, even granting you a taste, only to cruelly snatch it away with more you had bargained for. All Kokichi had desired was a typical high school experience, yet destiny had dealt him a terminal illness because he got too attached to a boy who now sought no association with him whatsoever. It just made it all the worse. Pleading for a swifter demise, Kokichi accepted Shuichi's wishes and stayed far away from Shuichi too with the few remaining days he attended school.

Music blasted in his ears to drown out his impending doom as he miserably attempted to take a short walk without kneeling over and making the addition of bloody flowers to someone else's garden. He knew his timer would soon run out and signal the end, he just longed for one last breath of life before death robbed it from him.

One step onto the road without looking both ways was all it took.

Maybe this was a sign of mercy from whatever twisted gods were toying with him.

* * *

Silence is what filled the car. Silence. Each passing moment amplified the deafening quiet, magnifying the cacophony of his panicked mind. Shuichi's thoughts were toppling over one another in a frenzied race. Kokichi had been hit by a car. The school needed him to confirm Kokichi's identity as he had no known living relatives and Kokichi had only ever gotten close to him. Kokichi had been hit by a car. His thoughts careened between the fondest memories he had of Kokichi and desperate pleas for this all to be a rotten dream. Pleas for a different outcome. The uncertainty gnawed at him, twisting his insides into knots of anguish. The reality of the situation had crystallised and seeped into every crevice of his consciousness. Kokichi had been hit by a car. What if he arrives too late? Will his last words to Kokichi really be ones that hurt him greatly?

The panic within him only seemed to multiply to great lengths, he could feel his heart slam against his rib cage over and over again. His breaths running rampant and lips quivering, he had never felt this way before. It was as if his body was overwhelmed by panic and had forgotten the gentle pace of natural breathing. Instead, succumbing to a chaotic whirlwind that threatened to spin him out of control.