Yeonji thinks her life is doomed, or not, ending. She let out her tenth sigh that day which annoyed Hayeon and Joobin beside her.
“What is wrong with you?” The youngest in the room gave Yeonji a big side eye.
“Guys if I just fall and die one day, what would you guys do?”
Hayeon just let out a laugh, not taking the question serious – who would though?
“I’ll laugh in your lifeless face.”
Yeonji cursed at herself for living in a world where hanahaki disease is a real thing. She dragged herself back to her own room for a moment of peace, where she would cry over the great memories that her and the 23 other members shared since she’s dying soon.
She hates Soomin. Yeonji hates how the older one managed to get her to fall deep in love with her, while not returning any feelings to the younger one – or at least she thought.
The first day she found out about her own feelings, she was terrified.
The second day, she was trying hard to shake the feelings away.
The third day, she cried herself to sleep, knowing that falling out of love with her best friend was impossible to do so.
There she is in her fourth day, already accepting the “fact” that she will start coughing out flowers and die.
Yeonji forced herself to cough since it would happen eventually, why not just do it quicker so she can end everything soon? She can’t however, her unnatural coughs earned her weird stares from the other members and it only caused her throat to dry out.
“You have been coughing weirdly since this morning.” The person that she doesn’t want to face the most, Soomin approached and spoke to her. “Are you okay? Is my baby sick?” There she goes with that pet name. Yeonji was disappointed at the fact that it’s just a platonic thing, even though calling another person ‘baby’ doesn’t sound platonic at all.
Yeonji only wished that her heartbeat would slow down at the hearing of the pet name.
The girl finally gave up on her fake coughing. Yeonji sat silent on the couch, waiting patiently for the real cough to happen.
And of course, at the worst moment as possible, Soomin approached her again.
The older girl had a bowl of warm soup in her hands, walking slowly towards Yeonji and sat down beside her with the bowl of soup still sitting carefully in her hands.
“I don’t know if you are actually sick and coughing but, drink this up,” Soomin handed the bowl over to Yeonji and gave the younger one puppy eyes, “I don’t want you to get sick.”
Yeonji was so flustered but an idea suddenly popped out in her mind, if she just continued to stick around Soomin, getting more and more miserable due to the unrequited love, would the disease just spread faster inside her body?
However, what’s odd is that, even after a whole day of hanging around the girl she loves one sided, she still can’t feel any part of her body weaken, nor any coughing had ever happened. Now Yeonji was wondering, is hanahaki disease even a real thing?
Can’t be.
She had seen Chaewon coughing out flowers and being at the edge of dying before Hayeon had finally figured her shit out and developed real feelings for the fellow 07 member.
Soomin was concerned. She looked at Yeonji as the younger one was having her eyebrows furrowed hard, looking like she’s figuring out algebras in her brain.
“My baby, are you okay?” The distance between their face lowered down to 10 cm max after Soomin questioned her. Yeonji felt like her heart was about to burst.
I think I will just end my life here.
Yeonji think, could she have the rarest case of hanahaki that humans have yet discovered yet? Would she just faint over the next second and spit out piles and piles of flower petals?
“Are you trying to fake sick so the unnies won’t asked you to go to school?” Soomin continued her interrogation. “Or it’s just that your cough sounds fake.” Soomin squinted her eyes at Yeonji.
Everything is getting weirder and weirder. Yeonji is started to think that hanahaki disease is just a fake thing and she was hallucinating when she saw everything that had happened to Chaewon.
However, everything that she thought and theorized was about to be proven fake.
“Yeonji yah,” Soomin suddenly called her name out in the middle of the movies, “I like you, do you like me too?”
So in the end of the day, hanahaki disease isn’t fake, it’s just that Yeonji never got it.