So I accidentally got into reading some hanahaki fics and I just really wanted to write this. It's about time I got off my butt and wrote some Rummy Labyrinth.

This was originally gonna be a one shot but then it got really really long, so now it's in chapters.

Chapter 1: Take One Step Outwards (See What Happens)

The Hanahaki Disease is an illness born from one-sided love, where the patient throws up and coughs flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. The disease can only go away if the love becomes requited, or if the plant is removed through surgery, but the feelings and memories of the love disappear along with the petals.

It starts sometime during the first G-Quest, Luna suspects. She had spent the whole morning getting nervous over whether she could perform well. She spent the entire car ride to Magallanica with her hands shaking. By the time they were at the stadium, Luna could barely hear, and has to be dragged to their dressing room by Am.

"I-I'm sorry…" Luna stammers out, but her vision swims as she watches the brightly lit tiles of the dressing room dance while wobbling. "I-I'll be f-fine… by showtime…" She takes deep breathes, but all it does is stress her out more. All this was doing was proving that Luna was incompetent and not suited for this job.

Am is the only other person in the room, but Luna barely pays attention to the other as she gets into her costume, putting it on backwards two times before finally getting it right. Luna trips on nothing and has to grab the makeup desk to stop herself from plummeting to the floor pathetically. She barely registers anything through her haze, and the next thing she knows, they're alone backstage waiting on the platform to rise to take them up to the stage. Luna feels like fainting.

"I can't take this anymore!" She faintly hears Am say.

And then Am's hands smack Luna's cheeks hard.

She blinks as her world comes into focus solely on Am, standing in front of her with her arms outstretched and hands still harshly holding onto the sides of her face. "Do you remember our first routine?" Am says.

"I-Introduce ourselves, go over rules, and then let the tournament happen while we perform." Luna recites.

"What are we doing during the song?"

"S-Side step, sing, rotate─"

"Exactly the same as what we've been doing in rehearsals up until now, right?"

"R-Right."

"Are you afraid of the crowd?"

Luna can feel her heartbeat rising into her throat again, and she gives a small nod from between Am's hands.

"I am too." Am says, and Luna's eyes widen. "But more than anything, I'm excited. I'm excited to share with them the hard work that I've put in to make them smile, and I can't wait to see how everyone will be. Because I'm the whimsical dreaming butterfly, Chouno Am. And who are you?"

"With the moonlight as my magic, I'm Yumizuki Luna."

"And who are we?"

"We're Rummy Labyrinth."

Am nods, letting go of Luna's cheeks. "Exactly. The both of us together are Rummy Labyrinth. And I'm going to be beside you the entire time."

Luna wants to respond, to say something, but the platform rumbles and they get a warning from their headpieces that it's starting, so she settles for just nodding back. Her hand's still shake, but Am's words ring in her head and her cheeks still sting and she feels slightly better.

Luna lets her body go onto autopilot, the exact same as rehearsal. She stumbles over one word, but it's covered up easily. She misses one dance step, but Am easily fills in and makes it look natural. And in the end, the audience screams and cheers for them all the same.

Everything goes fine in the end, to the point where it almost feels like a dream once the car pulls up in front of her and Am's apartment, and she stands at the doorway to bid Am goodnight.

Am has a certain sort of brilliant business smile, masterfully crafted and perfectly shaped like a sculpture, but also cold and frozen in time like one. Luna's seen in multiple times per day ever since she started working with the other girl. It made Am popular and well received, but it never seemed to reach her eyes, and no one else ever commented on it so neither did Luna.

"Good job today, Luna." Am says, and for once it's not her business smile, but a genuine smile that splits across her face and makes her eyes crinkle and Luna's chest is all the sudden unnecessarily warm and she thinks she just wants to look at that smile forever. "I knew you could do it."

Luna thinks its maybe because she had so much to eat at dinner, or maybe she's just giddy because the performances went well, but her chest feels tight and she stumbles over her own feet as she gets ready for bed. Her cheeks feel warm, as if it was still that morning where Am had hit them and held them to get her to focus, and Am's hands had been warm.

Am praised her today. Luna smiles and laughs and then her chest feels too tight and she coughs.

A tiny red petal floats gently into her palm.

The second G-Quest is a frantic blur for Luna. She and Am had spent the week planning for it, but on the dress rehearsal day at Dragon Empire, she kept messing up. The reappearance of Team Try3 cheers her up slightly, and it only makes her more determined to do well, even with the strange cough she had been developing.

For the last week, she had been occasionally coughing up red petals. At first Luna thought it was because the wind was blowing them into her apartment, but they kept showing up even after she closed all of the windows. That coupled with how she seemed to be coughing them up just confused her further. It wasn't too bad, and she was able to hide every petal that occasionally slipped out of her mouth when she was with Am so far.

Coughing up the petals made Luna notice just how much she watches Am on a regular basis. She's always watching the girl choreograph new moves for routines, talk and negotiate with others how to set up the special effects, and Am just makes it seem so simple to have everything work just the way she wanted it to. Compared to Luna, who tripped over her own feet whenever she ran, Am was basically a god. It became a habit for Luna to just watch Am work, smile, and then for Luna to cough up another petal and hide it in her back pocket before anyone saw.

And so it becomes relatively simple for Luna to notice the kinds of things that Am has influenced or touched. Their routines always have a signature flare. The songs all have a similar style. The atmosphere of Rummy Labyrinth stays together with Am. And Luna doesn't miss the way Am always has a backpack full of stuff for what she assumes is other work for the Vanguard Association that she's been tasked with.

And it's exceedingly simple for Luna, on her break from getting things ready for the G-Quest, to recognize the mitten charm that's been attached to Am's backpack for the last month in a trash bag being wheeled away and not being able to do a single thing about it.

Luna's throat feels so clogged up, she wants to cry.

Tokoha and her teammates come over, and Luna tells them as best as she can, and Tokoha helps by telling her where all the trash ends up. Luna runs as fast as she can, with the other three following.

The trash heap is huge, and every plastic bag looks the same. Luna remembers the workers at the beginning telling them about the litter on the ground, but didn't expect this much. It's hard to breathe and she coughs, looking at the petals that spilt into her palm before scrunching them up in a fist.

No, she's not going to cry. She's going to do something about this.

Luna rips open bag after bag, sifting through litter and trash, and she's glad that Try3 is here helping because she feels braver now, and she wants to prove that she herself is capable of something. She wanted to at least prove to Am that she wasn't completely useless on her own.

Luna bends over and goes into a coughing fit. She coughs and coughs and her throat burns as more and more petals spill out, so many that her hands can't hide it anymore, and she sees Tokoha's horrified face when the petals all tumble to the ground, sees Chrono and Shion stop their search to try and help her, and she yells at them "I'm fine!" to try and get them to go back to searching, and coughs again, red petals contrasting with the green grass under her knees.

She feels Tokoha's hand gently rubbing her back as her coughing subsides, and the girl hands her a handkerchief. Luna's glad, and she wipes away stray petals at the edge of her mouth.

"Are you o─ow!" Chrono starts, but Shion slaps the back of his head and glares at him.

"Your rehearsal's going to start any minute. You should go and let us keep searching." Tokoha says, accepting the handkerchief back. Luna shakes her head and stands up again.

"I'm not leaving until I find it." She says, and goes back to searching. She searches and searches and she's sure that she's late now and Am's going to be disappointed but if Luna doesn't find the mitten then Am's going to be sad, and Luna would rather Am be disappointed at her than be sad all the time. Luna can handle disappointment by this point, but Am doesn't deserve to be sad after how hard she works.

Luna's hand brushes the mitten and she cheers, coughing up another petal in the process as she pulls it out and shows the others, and then they rush back to the stage.

Elation fills her heart. She's done something good for Am.

"Am!" Luna yells as she sees the girl near the stage.

"Where were you?" Am demands, and it makes Luna flinch. Am is disappointed and harsh, to the point of it being discouraging, and Luna can feel the hopes inside her being squashed down.

But she holds out the mitten for Am anyways.

Luna's never seen an expression like that on Am before, staring down at the now-found mitten. Bewildered, puzzled, confused, something out of Am's calculations and careful planning. Luna wonders if Am figured it was better to have lost the mitten forever. She wonders what Am thinks of her now, someone who wasted time to search for useless trinkets.

Am surges forwards, and Luna's suddenly hugged tight and all she can do is let out a squeal because Am is warm and trembling and her arms are strong around her. "This is really precious to me! Thank you!" Am shouts, muffled into her shoulder, and her blue hair tickles Luna's throat and her jacket's soft and Luna never even dreamt that she'd get this close to Am before. "Thank you, Luna! Thank you!" And Am is warmer than Luna ever imagined.

She feels more petals rising in her throat, and forces herself to swallow them down as she embraces Am back. "If you're happy, then I'm happy too, Am."

The warmth of their hug is way more important to Luna than any discomfort in her throat.

That night, Luna drops her toothbrush into the sink as she bends over and retches on the ground, her chest heaving and throat burning, and more petals fall out of her mouth as she struggles to breathe. When it finally dies down and she can somewhat breathe normally again, Luna begins scooping up the petals to put in the wastebasket when something catches her eye.

All the things that had fallen out of her so far were just petals, but Luna scooped up the complete flower that had fallen out this time in both hands, soft and beautiful.

It's a red carnation.