Hi there!~
I've been on Hiatus and my current work 'Family Matters' is too...OTL
Anyways, it still is in progress...just a VERY SLOW progress but in the meantime, enjoy this little piece...*See more notes below..*
Hiro knew how selfish she was.
To the point that it was tearing her own mentality apart.
Hiro wanted to cling to her brother and never let him go. To make sure that he was hers and hers only!
And his happiness was everything that mattered to her... Very much so over her own happiness.
But her clinging to him ...it would be like keeping him locked up from the light that was her brother's happiness, which she strongly believed it to be. It was his smile, his aura and everything that Hiro would do anything just to keep him in that bright world.
However, this meant she would linger in his shadow as she couldn't really bring herself to sink any further into the darkness that would con her to spill blood just for her brother. Hell no!
Oh, how selfish she was that it had now driven her...mad!
However, this was kept to herself and it only started to tear her apart from within the more her feelings grew for her brother. She didn't even know when or how this obsession began and it had been eating her up slowly on the inside. Could it be acquitted to hormones as she had just hit puberty not too long ago?
It only began to eat into her at a faster pace when her brother started dating...this girl from his classes. Tall and sweet as was her name to her brothers' girlfriend.
The time Hiro would spend with her beloved brother decreased at the same increasing rate of Hiro's' mixed emotions, of jealousy and hurt. It had even hurt even more so when they were all together having dinner or some sort of gathering. But she hid it well. Her brother was smiling after all!
Months had passed and her brother had moved out to live with his girlfriend. He seemed so excited by it. Hiro held it in though and the pain eventually numbed itself. Tadashi's happiness was what mattered after all...it was what really mattered, right?
.
.
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...Right?
Several more months passed and Hiro was completely numb to the pain in her chest. However, she had awoken to petals on her pillow during the early hours of a morning. Yellow tulips by the looks of it. It had Hiro mildly freaked out as she didn't know where they were coming from. This continued for a few weeks, followed with a mild tickle in the back of her throat. All the while, her feelings towards her brother now slowly started to change.
Hiro would now distance herself from Tadashi. She would stand or sit several meters from him during a family outing. Communication of any form and Vocal responses were shortened and she avoided direct eye contact with the older sibling. Even catching a glimpse of his face from a distance made her stomach churn.
Eventually, she began to distance herself from her aunt as well. She would lock herself up in her room or the garage, where she worked. It was her own creative and learning space, where even her education had taken place but over a computer screen. Hiro had also developed a mild irritating feeling of tightness in her bones. Maybe she was feeling this from sleeping a lot? Or a lack of exercise perhaps?
A few more weeks later, she had begun to notice red rose petals amongst the yellow tulip petals that surrounded her in an increasing manner. She managed to hide such a fact from all prying eyes, especially from her aunt for worry that her aunt could jump to conclusions of a stalker or something.
A few days after discovering the red rose petals, she felt her bones ache more in an irritable way but also her throat would begin to itch. She would stifle a bit of a cough now and then. Maybe a bug was going around?
That did die down when the summer holidays had come around. She hadn't even thought about her brother whatsoever. The flower petals had stopped appearing too but the ache remained in her bones.
At the end of summer break, her aunt had actually dragged her to a party. It was a party that her brother's girlfriend had apparently organized and it made her taste bile in the back of the mouth.
"Come on, Hiro. It's a party to congratulate your big brother on finishing college!"
Hiro was now facing her brother after so many months. His smile now felt...nostalgic, almost toxic even. Her love for her brother felt rather inadequate.
That same night, she had gotten home pretty late and was exhausted from keeping a fake facade all evening. Hiro went straight to bed, but it was all but restless, tossing and turning in her sleep till she fully awoke to petals of not just Yellow tulips and red roses but orange lilies. And these had completely covered half of her bed like a thick textured fraying blanket.
The aching of her bones flared as did an irritation in her throat. Bits and pieces of the night before with her brother's face along with a few parts with the girlfriend had surfaced. Hiro was now feeling very much irritated..like hatred. She didn't even realize that she was gripping at her quilt whilst crushing the petals in her grasp.
'I hate that...he no longer smiles like he once did...'
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.
.
She was nauseated.
Coughs were now more prominent as there was a growing scratchy sensation in the back of her throat. They were overpowering her efforts to suppress and would come back much worse at any attempt. Her aunt had found out about her flower petals when Hiro could no longer hide her coughing fits.
The look on her aunts' face was of horror, watching her own niece hacking and choking herself to death.
Tinges of crimson were very much prominent amongst the yellow tulips that fell on her lap and the red liquid that seeped through her fingers as she covered her coughs with a hand. The dull aching in Hiro's' bones were now painful throbs that pulsated consistently. Her coughing fits led to chest pains and she felt extremely drowsy. With each cough, Hiro was also hacking up bundles of blood tinged petals as her consciousness wavered about that she didn't even realize that her aunt had dialed for an ambulance.
When Hiro soon came too, she was hospitalized and in ICU. Only her aunt was by her side. Hiro felt very drowsy but in much less pain from an IV injecting painkillers into her system to her relief. She didn't seem to experience any more coughing fits either but that was probably due to the fact that she had a pipe down her throat, making her gag a bit. The nurses were quick to switch her over to an oxygen mask though and Hiro could only groan in disappoint at her self as she wearily looked over at her distraught aunt.
"Hiro...why didn't you tell me how you were feeling all this time?" Her aunt sobbed out as she grasped Hiro's hand.
Hiro wanted to say something but she couldn't and instead let tears roll down the sides of the cheeks. She then eventually passed out.
Slowly regaining consciousness again, Hiro could faintly hear her aunt's voice down the hallway along with her brother's.
'Wow...how long has it been since I...heard Tadashi's voice...'
"...it's a severe case of Hanahaki..."
'Hanahaki huh...? How could I have missed that?...'
All of that became hazy as she internally chuckled at herself, spiting her emotions and resenting her feelings all the while, Hiro was beginning to feel her physical pain resurface. Her monitor went off and that had made her ears throb and her voice crack into broken gasps of pain. Sooner or later, she could make out a blurred scene of a doctor, nurse, her aunt, and her brother rushing into the room before blacking out again.
If only she could've made out the look on her brother's face.
Days passed and Hiro remained in a coma. Tadashi and her Aunt Cass would take turns overlooking her comatose form. They would talk to Hiro about many things in hopes that their beloved family member would wake up and get better. But they also knew of the grim fate that awaited their Hiro when she or if she would awake again.
"It's in its final stages now. Unfortunately, all we can do now is comfort her and give her painkillers to ease the time she has left..."
That statement echoed in their mind repeatedly whilst recalling the MMR scan they were shown on Hiro.
The dull ache in the her bones were attributed to rose vines growing wildly and wrapping themselves around Hiro's joints along with buds developing in her chest cavity, that attributed to the rose petals Hiro had been coughing up.
Hiro had hidden this from her family very well in a way that included the lengths that Hiro had gone to to avoid them. It was a price to pay in a way but it was even a greater one for their loved one to pay for letting her emotions get the best of her.
Another couple of days later, Hiro started to regain consciousness again but she was now choking. The two relatives were quickly ushered from the room as nurses and doctors did what they need to do to ensure Hiro wouldn't slip away. They were soon allowed back in after a few hours and found Hiro sitting upright (or more precisely being supported into an upright position) and barely hanging onto a normal respiratory action as a mix of bloodstained yellow tulip petals and red rose petals collected in her lap. A few sweetpeas were amongst the mix which were a pretty contrasting colour to the reds as Hiro looked down. She was intentionally avoiding the look on her brother's face. Not because of his smile but because of how Hiro herself had failed to keep her big brother in the brightness. She was ashamed at herself for allowing Tadashi's smile to falter.
A hand had grasped hers in the midst of being lost in her own thoughts, jolting her a bit to face the other family member. Concerned brown eyes met her lifeless one.
"Why did you hide this from us, Hiro-chan?"
Hiro merely stared tiredly into her brother's' eyes with no response. How could she even answer that when she couldn't think of one? She wouldn't even be able to voice one as her throat was torn up from the hacking, coughing and the rose vines that had spread through her neck and pierced its thorns into the walls of her windpipe.
Another petal falls on her lap but it's drenched in blood. She looks over to her aunt who appears to be holding back her tears. Guilt bubbles to the surface and Hiro tries to avert her gaze from her family.
"Hiro...please look at me? Don't...try to avoid us again, please?" Her brother presses.
Hiro bites at her lip to hold back her own tears and slowly turns to face her brother, who decides to envelop her into a hug. Nostalgia hits her and she doesn't know how to react. But what she can feel the pain killers wearing off and she begins to fidget. Great timing as she can't feel the warmth of her brother around her, which she has missed so bittersweetingly much.
"We love you, so very much, Hiro! Me and Aunt Cass!"
Something then snapped in her head.
"Hiro, are you ok?" Her aunt asks as she can see her niece becomming uncomfortable. Hiro wants to nod yes because she doesn't need them to worry anymore then they already are.
But simultaneously, she began yo cackle sarcastically in her mind.
'Love? My brother..loves me?...ahaaha..hahahhaha...l-lies..'
It was all futile though.
"Hiro? ..."
Her brother's' voice sounds distance and that cackling makes itself physically known as sharp coughs and hacks through a chilling smile across her face.
Hiro is immediately shoved from her big brother's' arms and a tight grip grasps both her uper arms. Fear in his eyes stares straight at her blown irises and trickled tears staining her porcelain skin.
"Hiro! Hiro! Can you hear me?"
She can make out her aunt's figure running out the room and the muffle shouting, calling for a nurse but her brother's shouting is muted.
Everything hurts. It's so painful now as she feels like her bones are about to be snapped. Her vision too starts fading and she then begins to lose her senses and control over her entire body in a swoop. And in the seconds before she loses grasp of her consciousness completely, she makes it known!
Her accumulated mix of emotions, her supressed thoughts, her tainted feelings and her change of heart, the rollercoaster ride of such events compressed...summed into a very short sentence...
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"...I hate you!"
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...ANGST! and Major character Death...LOLLLL OTL...I have a thing for making the dom suffer and the sub with mental issues.
Anyways, there will be a short chapter to this, detailing (not so much) the aftermath (would I call it that?) of the events in this one off. It will be in Tadashi's POV just as this one was off Hiro's POV.
I really felt like doing up a hanahaki angst fic for some reason over making further progress on my other bh6 works but...meh
I hope you enjoyed the story and thank you for doing so. An even bigger thanks to those who have been following my other works as well :D
Notes: the flower meanings
- Tulips (yellow) - Unrequited Love
- Red roses - Love/In Love
- Sweet peas - Goodbye
- Lillies (orange) - Hatred