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i.
The first time Bailu coughs up a flower she's delighted.
Hanahaki. No one had been afflicted with it since the Ambrosial Arbor was sealed. She has read of it in the ancient records. It's a thing of poetic tragedies and deep symbolism but she has always been more interested in what the flowers were than what they meant.
This one looks like the Cloudrest daisy, except for the pistil tinged with purple. Catching it in a sterile glass jar (self-extracting samples! marvelous!), she pokes, dissects and catalogs.
Can it cross-pollinate with its mundane brethren? Does it derive nutrients from exhaled qi? Does it have medicinal uses? Is it related to Mara, or perhaps something stranger—a byproduct of a thing yet unstudied?
The stories, she recalls, said it was unrequited love. Research notes from the same period suggest the real cause is unspoken feeling, Mara simply giving a form to desire. Mara allows everything to live, regardless of convenience.
By the end of the week she runs out of tests. Admiring the white petals she realises who she thought of every time she coughed.
She calls out, "Dr. Linshu? Um—can we maybe have lunch together? I’d like to show you some of my notes." Linshu, pink to the tips of his ears, nods frantically.
They go on a not-date (which is, in fact, a date), The flowers stop the same afternoon. Bailu documents that too.
It takes some time to cough up the rest of them. She makes sure to keep the samples
ii.
Dan Heng approaches his condition with methodical terror.
He lines the petals up with five botanical references. He runs a scan for foreign DNA, alien pollen, traces of Mara, Stellaron exposure symptoms...
Except its an ordinary violet, a type native to Luofu gardens. There's only one reason for it to appear—a strong, unconfessed feeling. It's not alien infection, or a side effect of any recent Stellaron exposure. It’s him.
He takes a sip of Himeko's coffee. If he's correct about its formula, it has mild herbicidal properties. He made sure to ask for a second cup today.
Still, more petals come, purple and unwanted. Bailu's recent paper says the only treatment is expression. A confession.
He sits in the archive with flowers pooled on his desk, practicing confessions in his head. March bounces by, utterly oblivious, and he barely manages to suppress a coughing fit until she leaves. Stelle calls, worried, and he almost chokes from another.
The petals burn his throat as he drinks his coffee, gaze fixed on the door. Tomorrow. Maybe.
Would be nice if he could figure out which one of the two it is.
iii.
Jing Yuan accepts his condition with characteristic leisure.
"General, you appear to be unwell," one aide reports.
He glances at the wisteria petals in his hand and smiles. "Ah, yes. Tragic, isn't it? The old Hanahaki legend."
He spends the next few days languishing until work piles high enough—would be unfair to waste such a rare excuse—then quietly makes his way to the Scalegorge Waterscape. Miss Bailu had insisted he'd do this.
A large, jade-shelled Vidyadhara egg rests in a cradle of water. He noticed it in passing a few moons ago.
He kneels in the hush of the hatching grounds, looking quite ridiculous for a general, and places his palm on the egg's smooth, cool shell.
"Listen," he murmurs. "This is going to sound absurd, but I've grown... attached. You're not even hatched and yet I find myself worrying about you, hoping for your future. I think—" He coughs up another blossom. "—I think this is a confession, of sorts. You can take your time with it."
"You'll be extraordinary, you know."
A faint warmth pulses beneath his hand, gentle and steady. He smiles, clearing away the last of the petals. "There now. I suppose this makes me your first admirer."
He straightens up, dusts off his robes, and leaves the grounds. Behind him, the egg shimmers, quiet and content.
iv.
Jingliu is unbothered by pain, but the flowers are persistent.
Each morning she rises, meditates, trains—and coughs a scatter of chrysanthemum petals into the snow, wiping her mouth.
Mara, she assumes. A sign of weakness. She redoubles her focus, ignoring the pain in her chest. The sword cuts through empty air—again, again, again.
Luocha is never far, applying his healing arts each time she stumbles. She dreams of him sometimes, his gentle hands, his serene smile. Each time she wakes to petals all around her, certain it's just another test of will.
They both remain clueless: Jingliu doesn’t see it as love, and Luocha believes it requires reciprocity to heal.
v.
Subject: Blade. Hanahaki Progress Notes
Date: June 15, Sol-Cycle 8097
Kafka here. You wanted a log, so here's a log.
He's dead. Again.
I cleaned him up, told him to stop dying in public.
It goes like this: Bladie coughs up a flower. Takes it in stride. Says he's fine. Coughs up a bouquet. Dies. Forgets everything.
Bladie's crush? Nobody knows, not even him. That’s the problem with dying too often. Every time he wakes up it’s tabula rasa. The flowers start over.
Please hack the surveillance to loop the footage, so nobody has to see it twice.