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jimin couldn’t believe it. even as he hunched over the toilet, creamy white magnolias crawling their way up his lungs and spilling from his mouth.
he chuckled dryly at the irony that something so pure looking could be so cruel. the thought of yoongi not loving him back made him sick, literally. he laughed at his humor, forgetting how sore his throat was, and wheezed at the scratch and burn of the leftover flowers clinging to his throat.
of course he knew that falling in love was dangerous, with hanahaki at its peak, but he couldn’t help but fall for the blonde boy with bright eyes and look where it got him.
throwing up flower petals into a communal bathroom while he should be outside with his friends.
he heard the door swing open, so he tried his best to control his laboured breaths in a hopeless attempt to not raise any suspicions. footsteps could be heard making their way to his stall and he just hoped the person would just walk right past it. however, he deflated when he heard a knock on the stall door.
“minnie? you good in there? you’ve been in there so long we’re starting to think you’re taking a shit.” of course, it was one of his friends coming to check up on him.
“yeah jinnie, i’m good.” he winced at how scratchy and sore his voice sounded and knew it wouldn’t sound good to the boy standing just outside of his stall.
“you sure? you sound sick. you okay?” seokjin questioned a hint of worry seeping into his tone.
“yeah, i’m fine. i’ll be right out,” he returned, though he sounded very far from fine and he knew it.
“i don’t know, min. you sound really sick. i’ll just wait for you,” the other boy pressed. jimin sighed, knowing he had no choice but to open the door and put on his best show.
so with a heavy heart, he flushed the toilet and got up off the ground and out of the stall.
“minnie, were you taking a shit?” seokjin joked. jimin knew he was trying not to show his worry, but hints of the emotion were evident.
jimin laughed sarcastically. “haha very funny. but no i wasn’t. i was just-” he was cut off by the familiar sting of flowers forcing their way from his lungs and out of his mouth. he quickly rushed into the stall, holding in his coughs until he was over the toilet bowl, even more white magnolias falling from his lips.
as he stayed there, dry heaving over the toilet, flowers delicately falling into the water he heard seokjin push the door open and peek into the stall.
“jiminie, i knew you weren’t fine-” seokjin started and jimin knew that he had seen what he’d been trying to keep hidden for weeks. he could only imagine the look on seokjin’s face and would laugh at the image of his bugged out eyes, and wide mouth if it were another situation. but it was now, in this moment where all he could do was wheeze until the rest of this batch of flowers finally left his system.
seokjin must’ve finally snapped out of his trance because then he rushed to jimin’s side and rubbed his back as comfort. he’d never seen seokjin this worried about someone or this affectionate, but he guessed if his friend had a disease because of an unrequited love, he’d step out of those boundaries too.
seokjin stayed there with him until the flowers made their way out of his system, not once leaving his side and he just started to think about everyone else wondering where they were, but feeling too drained to truly care. so he raised his limp hand to the toilet handle and weakly pressed down on it to flush the toilet. the two boys watched as the guilty flowers made their way down the drain and couldn’t help but wonder just how many other beautiful flowers had gone down the same pipe.
~
as seokjin and jimin exited the restroom, he could sense the eyes on him and seokjin.
“minnie, are you okay?” he was asked by his friends. he could feel seokjin’s worried gaze on him and it made him shift in his place standing in the mall.
“yeah i’m great, but i gotta go home, y’know, moms. annoying as hell,” he forced out a laugh that he hoped sounded real enough and rushed away from the group trying to ignore the weird looks he gained as he ran away.
~
the next day at school seokjin was the first person to come up to him.
“minnie!” he shouted throughout the hall. only few looked up because the hallway was always a loud place in the morning and seokjin was just a naturally loud person.
as seokjin finally made his way to him, he grabbed him by his arm and pulled him to their group of friends. while they were walking, he could feel seokjin’s gaze on him and tried to ignore it, but eventually the shorter boy said something.
“who is it?”
and though the taller knew the question would come soon, he couldn’t help but tense up and let out a deep sigh. he cast his gaze down because not only was the boy a boy, but he was yoongi.
“i don’t know if i could tell you, seokjin,” he sighed.
“you can’t or won’t?” the taller pressed.
“both.”
he tried to walk away, but seokjin’s hand on his arm pulled him back. “is it yoongi?” he guessed, and jimin didn’t know how, but what he did know is if that seokjin could tell who it is, then anybody could probably tell he had a crush on the boy.
the older boy took his silence as a yes. “i’m right aren’t i?” he sighed. when the younger sighed deeply at his shoes, he let go of his arm and walked to their group as if nothing happened, jimin following close behind.
~
he of course avoided seokjin for as long as he could until namjoon came up to him while he was in the bathroom. he groaned at the face of his friend who didn’t know that a coughing fit was coming on.
“why are you ignoring seokjin?” he questioned. jimin tried to appear confused, but namjoon saw right through it. “don’t play dumb, jiminie, it doesn’t look good on you,” he huffed at the younger’s faux expression.
jimin kept his mouth shut as he felt his chest tighten and the familiar white magnolias clogged his throat. he feared that another person would see his weakness and the sad fact that he fell in love with somebody that couldn’t love him back.
“hello? jimin?” the older boy questioned. “are you just ignoring me and i’m right here?” he asked incredulously. jimin wanted to say something, but some flowers were already resting in his mouth, and opening his mouth would create a tragic flow of them.
so instead he just hoped that soon enough namjoon would grow tired of him and leave.
but of course if he was stupid enough to fall in love with somebody (in this world at least), he was stupid enough to assume that his problems would just go away.
“i’m not leaving until i get an answer,” namjoon huffed, and jimin all of a sudden remembered his constant defiance and stubbornness, and knew that he really wouldn’t leave unless he absolutely had to. so jimin sucked it up and tried to push any oncoming flowers to the back of his mouth and spoke.
“i’m not-” and out came the flowers.
~
“min!” namjoon yelled. “are you okay?” all that jimin could do was fail to keep his knees from buckling as he curled into himself and wheezed, gasping for an escape from his body.
namjoon dropped almost immediately to the floor when he saw the younger fall to his knees. the sight looked painful and was painful to watch. he was one of his friends, in love with someone that didn’t love him back, and a result of these white flowers spilling onto the school’s bathroom floor.
he comforted the boy and tried to catch any spec of red on the flowers to see just how serious it was, and couldn’t help but feel relieved as there was none.
when the shorter boy’s flow stopped, the other gave him a few minutes to compose himself and regain control of his breath.
“what flowers are those?” the taller questioned.
“white magnolias,” he signed, defeated.
“yoongi’s favourite?” the shocked question was blurted out by the other, and all jimin could do was nod.
“yoongi’s favourite,” he confirmed.
~
somewhere along the lines of two boys cleaning up the large pile of magnolias did they just stop to talk. they both sat against the same wall of the bathroom, extremely close. jimin was weak in namjoon’s hold, his head laying on his shoulder and legs splayed over the older.
“will you get the surgery?” namjoon asked somewhere along.
“i don’t know, joon. i wanna be able to feel things, y’know. but i don’t wanna die cause i’m too stupid to know not to fall in love,” he sighed, finally voicing his thoughts.
“i won’t tell you what to do because even i don’t know what to do. but what i do know is that you gotta tell yoongi because really, even though i want to stay positive nothing can get worse from here,” the older said. jimin thought about it, and realized that he was right and couldn’t help but crumble at the thought.
instead of responding, he curled further into namjoon’s body, not caring how compromising they would look, forgetting momentarily about the flowers on the floor as a result of a broken heart.
~
it wasn’t until a few minutes later that he remembered they were still sitting on a dirty boy’s bathroom at school.
it wasn’t until he heard two pairs of footsteps leading to the bathroom they were currently occupying that he remembered that there was still a large pile of flowers laying in the middle of the bathroom floor.
the two boys quickly scrambled to try to collect as many flowers in their arms and throw them into the toilet bowls, but froze when the door opened and revealed their two friends, seokjin and hoseok.
“min, where were you two-” hoseok started to question, interrupted by the sight he saw. both seokjin and hoseok were in a trance until seokjin snapped out of it to go by jimin’s side.
“again?” he asked sadly.
“again.”
“wait, you knew?” hoseok gasped, snapping out of his shock. namjoon nodded, agreeing with the question.
“he found out yesterday,” jimin answered.
“before you ran off? is that why you two took so long?” hoseok asked. the boy in question nodded.
“well, let’s clean these flowers up before somebody else walks in,” seokjin suggested. the three other boys nodded, and started picking up the magnolias on the floor.
~
exiting the bathroom, the four boys were silent until the shortest of them all asked a question.
“yoongi?” he questioned knowingly. jimin nodded.
“yes, hoseok. yoongi.”
~
so that’s how his days went.
every three or so periods, he would ask to go to the bathroom, try to avoid his friends’ worried gazes while getting yelled at by his teachers for leaving the class so frequently.
then one day, after coming back from the bathroom to expel another batch of flowers, he was called down to the office.
“jimin,” his teacher called.
“yes?” he questioned.
“go down to the office. the dean wants to talk to you,” his teacher elaborated. he ignored the playful oohs of his classmates and grabbed the office pass, worried and walking out of the classroom and to the office.
~
walking out of the office with dread in his chest, he sighed.
why should he have to suffer, in more ways than the flowers that he throws up daily, but with the added dread that he now to conceal them because his unknowing teachers decided that it was time to make his life harder and report to the dean of his school that he had apparently been “going to the bathroom a lot during class.”
but he couldn’t really blame them, for they didn't know about the white magnolias forcing their way out of his system. they didn’t know that he was in love with somebody that didn’t love him back, so instead of complaining, he sat there listening to his dean’s hurting words, pretending that the flowers in his lungs didn’t burn.
~
jimin was fed up. entirely fed up. as he walked into school, he heard whispers surrounding him and saw his classmates staring at him. the whispers hadn’t died down and neither had the stares. everything was overwhelming and he had to pretend that he hadn’t acknowledged anything.
he was kept in the dark until seokjin came up to him and yanked him into the bathroom. after checking that there were no students occupying any stalls rather aggressively, he whisper-yelled at jimin.
“min! why the hell does everybody know about your hanahaki?”
jimin froze. what?
his hanahaki? the one caused over yoongi? how did people know? he was sure nobody knew except for his three friends. he was sure he hadn’t slipped up and told the wrong person. so how did they know?
“what?” jimin responded.
“yeah, everybody was talking about it and then you came in and everybody’s sure that you have it,” he explained.
jimin sighed deeply, sliding down the wall of the bathroom, and his head resting in his hands.
it was then when the door opened and in came namjoon and hoseok.
“min!” they synchronized, worrying about the boy in front of them.
jimin didn’t respond and instead bit his lip to hold back tears from falling.
his friends came over to him to comfort him, and he didn’t know that the tears fell until one of them wiped the tears from his eyes gently. he looked up slowly and tried to ignore the feeling stirring in his chest as he received three individual looks of pity.
“do you know who told everyone?” he questioned, trying not to wince from the rasp in his voice.
two shook their heads, but hoseok sighed. “apparently while you had to get the flowers out of your system, somebody was in one of the stalls and heard you,” he explained to the three other boys.
“who?” jimin pressed.
“i don’t know,” hoseok admitted, sighing deeply.
breathing out a deep sigh (which he seemed to be doing a lot lately), he pushed himself off of the dirty floor and away from the stained walls of the bathroom, ready to wash his hands and get out when the door opened.
he froze at the sink, his three other friends looking at each other in confusion at who it would be when the person he dreaded the most at the moment walked in.
yoongi.
~
the four friends stared at the blond, but the blond’s eyes were focused on jimin.
he cowered under the stare of the blond, but he kept staring.
“i- i should go,” jimin stuttered out, not giving anyone a second to speak before he was out of the bathroom, leaving the four behind, one sporting a confused face.
~
that was a week ago, and then came the storm.
everybody knew that he was in love with somebody that didn’t love him back, and that he had roots in his chest.
everybody knew that he had hanahaki. and if that isn’t the scariest thing he’d ever experienced, then he really has no clue what is.
luckily, nobody other than the friends who really knew him knew who was causing the hanahaki, but he still was entirely finished with life at this point.
but now, the hallways were clear as everybody was in class pretending to learn and he was the only person lingering.
since his hanahaki was now known, he got to use the bathroom or leave his classes as many times as he wanted. yeah, he was abusing that power, but so what? he figured that if he might die soon, who cares.
his mother almost pulled him from school, but thankfully his dad convinced him to let him live his life(though there wasn’t really much of it left).
so as he was walking mindlessly up and down the hallway, too far in his head, he didn’t notice that there was another student standing at the other end.
he looked up eventually and saw the boy(?) staring at him, questioning who it was. he squinted a bit to see them, and instantly regretted never wearing his glasses.
oh fuck .
really, out of all of the people at this school, it had to be yoongi, the cause of his death. quite literally.
he turned and tried to get away but the taller boy ran across the hallway, not caring about the weight of his footsteps possibly disturbing classes going on and grabbed a hold of jimin’s wrist.
“jimin. stop ,” yoongi breathed heavily, catching his breath. from having just ran across the halls.
jimin tried to yank his wrist loose, but yoongi’s grip was firm, yet gentle and it really took all he had not to confess to the boy right then and there.
“what do you want?” he spat, turning his head away, for the older’s gaze was too tempting.
“i want to know why the hell you’ve been ignoring me,” the taller replied. jimin tried to feign confusion.
“what do you mean, yoongi?” he questioned fakely. he knew absolutely what he meant. he was talking about how every time he saw the boy, he would turn around and walk the other way, not caring how late it made him. he was talking about how every time he and the other were alone or in the same room when necessary, he would rush out(cue the bathroom incident).
“you know exactly what i mean,” the blond pressed.
jimin sighed. there was no way he would get out of this, so turning back to face the other boy, he looked up and into his eyes.
“yeah, maybe it’s because i like you,” he snapped. the other’s grip on his wrist loosened from shock, and jimin used that moment to pull his wrist out of his grip move away from him. “wait, no, forget that! i love you, that’s why!”
“b-but don’t you have-” yoongi started.
“yeah, hanahaki. it’s because i like you. and it’s killing me. quite literally,” he chuckled bitterly.
“b-but how?” yoongi gaped. jimin’s frustration rose at the lack of response from the other.
“are you that dense?” jimin gaped. “that you don’t understand that loving you is killing me. and you still don’t care!”
“y-you shouldn’t-” he started. the younger was fed up at his words and snapped, cutting him off.
“and i’m really fucking sorry, okay! because now i’m the one that has to suffer. i’m the one that has to deal with these fucking roots in my chest, and these feelings in my brain. i’m the one who loves you, and you’re the one who’s causing me all this pain!” he said, each sentence ending with a push to yoongi’s chest. he’d never cursed this furiously or seriously, but the sudden anger of him having the possibility of dying just because of his stupid emotions passed through him in such a sudden wave.
yoongi stood shocked standing over him, and he just laughed dryly at the situation. “of course. typical. i should’ve expected it, y’know. what should’ve happened? i confess my fucking feelings for you and you gain enough balls to realize that ‘oh, maybe i should tell him i fucking love him before he fucking dies!’ and you confess and you kiss me or some shit-” he was cut off by a crash against his lips and gasped at the sudden feel of soft lips against his. their lips moved in sync with each other and the feeling was perfect.
there was no perfect way to describe a first kiss, but all that jimin knew was that this one brought on fireworks, but also such a warm feeling of content that felt like a day at the beach. it felt like a cup of hot chocolate early on a cold winter morning, listening to soft songs. but is was also like flying through the air, adrenaline pumping through your veins, and jimin knew that everything would be alright from here on out.
as long as he had yoongi, and yoongi had him.
~
end.