Rose petals
Noel threw himself into his bathroom and locked the door behind him before he collapsed to the floor. He clutched the notebook he’d brought with him and tried to accept the reality of his situation.
He knew one thing for certain. Tonight, he was going to die in here. Alone.
And with no explanation.
Hence the notebook.
He hadn’t intended to die this way, but recently, it had become more and more inevitable. And he wasn’t even mad about it.
This was the romantic tragedy he’d always wanted, wasn’t it?
But then why did he feel so empty?
Noel had heard of hanahaki disease, he’d known about it his whole life, and he’d thought it inspiring. Beautiful stories of people finding each other through the flowers, tragic stories of lovers who didn’t confess in time and died never knowing their love was requited, or ones who would rather die unrequited than live without the ability to feel that love again.
It was a beautiful, tragic disease, and Noel saw it as his ideal way to die. The perfect ending to his story.
And then it happened, and it wasn’t anything like Noel had imagined.
It started one day, when he was hanging out with the choir. He was talking back to Ocean, like usual, and he heard Mischa laugh at his comment. His laugh was low, but musical. Beautiful, like him.
Then Noel felt something caught in his throat, and he coughed into his hand.
And that’s when he felt it.
A soft, red petal.
A rose petal.
It meant new love, or true love.
Shit.
He quickly shoved his hand in his pocket and continued with the conversation, but dread was already building in him. Because he knew that there was a ticking clock here.
And it only got worse as the days went on, as he and Mischa grew closer. There was a connection there, they were basically best friends, so separation wasn’t an option. They say absence made the heart grow fonder, but Noel was pretty sure that absence was the only thing that could have saved him in those early stages.
But he didn’t leave. He didn’t distance himself. Because even as he got more and more choked around Mischa, even as he started having to carry around a backpack filled with bloody handkerchiefs and flower petals, a place for him to hide them when his pockets overflowed, he still couldn’t leave. He was drawn to the other boy by some sort of magnetic force, and while his lungs ached as more and more of the plants took over, his heart burned with light and fire that felt so, so much better. It wasn’t relief, quite the opposite, but it was a distraction. Mischa made him feel more than he’d ever felt before, and if the thorns twisting inside of him were the consequences of that, he could accept it.
But then things got so much worse.
Within just a month, he couldn’t text Mischa without coughing up whole flowers, and whenever he even thought about him petals and blood built up in his throat until he felt like he was choking, but he couldn’t think of anything else. Mischa’s laugh, his eyes, his music, it was everything.
He only distanced himself and started bailing on the choir when he couldn’t hide it anymore, when he knew it was too late.
So, he had to inevitably start imagining solutions, possibilities. Confessing to Mischa was a no go, obviously. Noel had been watching him closely since the disease had first begun taking over him, and he never saw Mischa cough, not even once. He didn’t know why he’d ever considered he might. Mischa was straight, or at least, he seemed it. And he had his Talia. The girl he loved more than anyone else.
He had someone real, and Noel had a beautiful fantasy, something impossible, that was going to kill him.
He’d rather die than tell Mischa the truth, that he’d fallen in love with him. Mischa wouldn’t be mad, far from it. He’d be concerned, worried, but the friendship would be ruined. He didn’t want Mischa’s pity, and he couldn’t have his love, so that left one more option.
The surgery. Noel could have the flowers removed from his lungs quickly, quietly, and no one would ever know. But there was a catch, one that was a high price to pay.
If he had the surgery, he would never feel romantic love again. He would never be able to love anyone.
The most romantic boy in town would lose that identity.
Noel knew there were many, many people out there in the world who didn’t feel romantic love, and they were okay. Close platonic relationships were enough for them. He respected that.
But he wasn’t one of those people.
Since he was a child, Noel had dreamed of love. Any kind of love he could get. A deep romantic connection was what he really wanted, but he was willing to take love where he could.
What he really wanted was to be known, adored, appreciated. And what he convinced himself he could be was wanted.
With the surgery, all of that would go away.
Even if he could be loved, he’d never be able to reciprocate, and that somehow felt worse than not being loved at all.
Romance was too big a part of Noel’s life, even though he’d never been loved romantically. It was a huge part of who he was. He couldn’t let it go. He didn’t want to.
So, he was going to die by it.
He’d made the decision three days ago, his final decision. He was going to die. He’d spent his last days locked in his room, coughing as he liked, letting the petals, flowers and blood cover his room, letting them cover his bathroom.
He told the choir that he was sick, and Mischa and Constance had tried to come over twice already to look after him.
The fact that Mischa was so kind to him really didn’t help the situation at all, but Noel couldn’t fault him. Because that’s one of the things he loved about him.
One of many.
That gave him the idea to start writing in his notebook. Writing letters to the choir, to his mother, to himself. An explanation, a story of what had happened. He wrote poems about the petals, lists of the things that caused them to come out, wrote down everything he’d been thinking but been too scared to say.
He wrote down why he kept it a secret, and why he wouldn’t have the surgery. He wrote it all down without ever once using Mischa’s name.
Because he knew that if Mischa knew, he’d never forgive himself. Even though this wasn’t his fault. This was all Noel.
But on the last page, in a note that he’d ripped out and hidden in his favourite poetry book in his room, he wrote the truth. A confession. An apology.
The honest truth that somehow, he still had some hope that this could end well. He still wished for Mischa to burst through his bedroom door and see him, love him, make all of this go away.
It was a stupid fantasy, but Noel wrote it anyway. That Mischa would hear coughing when he tried to visit and barge through the door, seeing the flowers and blood and putting things together quickly. He’d hear more coughing and slam through the door to the bathroom, breaking the lock, and seeing Noel on the floor, clutching a book and doubled over. He’d crouch down, take his face in his hands and tell him it would be okay. That he was loved. That he was safe. That everything would be alright. Then he’d kiss him, a deep, passionate kiss that would make all of this go away.
Everything would go back to normal, more than that, it’d be better. The boy that he loved would save his life.
And he ended the story with an apology to whoever read it.
Apologising for deceiving himself, apologising for wishing for tragedy for so long, apologising for making the decision to die, even though that wasn’t what he truly wanted.
What he wanted was impossible.
And hopefully, no one would find the note.
Even if they did, the only people who knew his favourite poems were his mom and Ocean, and he knew, or at least, he hoped, that they wouldn’t ever tell Mischa.
Noel would rather die than confess his feelings, and there was no point in that confession after he was dead. It would only bring more pain.
He set his notebook aside on the sink where it could be easily found, and he felt the petals, the flowers, climbing back up his throat. He coughed, and a few bloody petals broke free, but there were painful thorns scraping, creeping to the surface. It was time.
As Noel coughed, trying to take another breath, trying to get rid of the blockage, he knew he’d lost this fight.
He had so many thoughts as the lack of oxygen tightened his lungs painfully.
He wondered who’d find him, and he hoped they’d be able to handle it. Finding him on the bathroom floor, flowers filling his mouth, book on the sink that showed that he knew all too well what was coming and did nothing to avoid it.
He thought about his mother, who’d be left all alone. She hadn’t been home for a week, away on a business trip, and he hated knowing she’d come home to this. But he couldn’t hold on any longer.
He thought of the choir. His friends, the people who loved him. They had no idea of what was happening. The news would take them by total surprise, but at least they’d have each other to lean on.
They’d be okay without him.
As he choked out his last weak cough, Noel’s last thought was of Mischa.
The boy he was in love with. The one who’d somehow managed to give him exactly what he always thought he wanted. A true romantic tragedy.
And it would break his heart to know it.
Noel hoped he knew, on some level, how grateful he was to have him around. And how much he appreciated that even as he died, he was surrounded by beautiful flowers that represented the most he’d ever felt, the one thing he wanted more than anything and could never have.
This was tragic.
Noel was tragic.
And then he was gone.