Thirty Kisses Theme 11 - Gardenia

Yuugao had always thought flowers were pretty. The colors, the shapes, the delicate nature all combined to make them such precious little things. She would keep bouquets in her apartment, the colors illuminating a drab corner and bringing a bit more life in to a home occupied by a woman who dealt in death.

Her favorite color was red. She supposed this was because it was the color she most often saw. The color of death. The color of blood. She had always liked red flowers the best, probably because of that. She kept bundles of roses, gardenias, peonies, carnations, and other such things around her apartment when she was home. She hated the sight that would greet her when she came home, vases of flowers browned and wilting. Dead.

When she moved in with Hayate (well, technically he moved in with her, her apartment was bigger), you could still find the bouquets everywhere. Hayate would sometimes pick them for her, and the surprise of finding a gardenia on her pillow when she returned home was something she looked forward too every day.

Her disillusionment with flowers began when Hayate's condition began worsening. He had always had the cough. It was a constant thing, always in the background, the soft noise of his sickness. But the day he doubled over on his way down the hall, his shoulders shaking, his chest caving in with the force of the violent coughs, did she truly begin to hate the color red. The color of the blood on his mouth, his chin, the rose in his hand… it was the same.

Now that Hayate is dead she cannot abide the color red. It reminds her of the blood that spilled from his chest and dried across the roof. It reminds her of her lover doubled over on the floor, hand across his mouth, with blood leaking from between his fingers. And it reminds her of his blood on the rose, the red blending in to the petals and running down the stem.

She cannot abide the color red. It reminds her now of all that she has lost.