final
seasons die one after another
The first time it happens, Sicheng is alone in the practice room; dancing relentlessly as if the dance alone would allow him to debut in the upcoming subunit.
Step forward, to the left, a natural turn and his legs suddenly collapse. He lays lifelessly on the parquet, limbs unmoving and chest heaving as a small, single sunflower emerges from his throat. He ends up exiting the practice room with his backpack thrown across one shoulder and a tiny flower with yellow petals held securely in his hand.
Winwin doesn’t debut in the first subunit.
They’re all huddled around the monitor and he watches in amazement (though with a sense of jealousy) as Ten and Taeyong perfectly perform the choreography for the group’s debut single. Congratulatory words are thrown all around the room - said by some and received by others - before the celebratory meal begins.
While the others throw themselves at the meat, he spots Kun nibbling on sunflower seeds in the corner (after all, he thinks that an idol so close to debuting must maintain their diet well).
They exchange smiles and Sicheng’s throat constricts.
That night, sicheng coughs up two sunflowers right before he falls asleep.
He throws Kun’s sunflower seeds away and leaves to take out the trash right after.
Sicheng ignores the sunflowers for a month.
He notices faint signs of the disease progressing (the flowers get bigger and more frequent each day) but doesn’t think much of it. When he first joined SM Entertainment during winter, Jaehyun was recovering from the flower removal operation. Sicheng’s understanding of Korean was nonexistent back then, though Kun had filled him in with what he had understood.
“I haven’t been here for a long time, but the others told me that it was going on for over a year. Apparently he wouldn’t have survived if he refused the surgery once more.”
With Jaehyun, Hanahaki disease began from small carnation petals falling from his lips every time Doyoung looked in his direction. Those petals soon became flowers, which almost progressed to bouquets.
At first it wasn’t established whether carnations bloomed in Jaehyun’s lungs because Doyoung didn’t reciprocate his feelings or because he was simply unaware of them; they soon eliminated the former theory.
In the beginning month of spring, Doyoung was rushed into an emergency surgery. The red rose lodged in his throat was piercing his insides and damaging his vocal chords.
He was given the rose after the anasthaetic wore off.
It died almost immediately, and Doyoung’s feelings for Jung Jaehyun died with it.
A year is a long time, Sicheng thinks. I’ll be fine by the time I debut.
The first person to find out is Donghyuck.
The younger always wakes up at unbelievably early hours of the day for such a young person, strolling between the dorms with a watering can in his hands and reviving all the plants that are neglected by SM Entertainment’s incompetent employees.
On the first of April, Donghyuck’s restlessness and excitement wake him up at five o'clock. He sighs, grabbing the watering can from his windowsill and walking into the bathroom to fill it with water.
He doesn’t expect to find Sicheng leaning against the bathtub filled to the brim with yellow petals, holding two tall sunflowers in his left hand. The sight leaves Donghyuck shocked and speechless, thinking that this is simply an idiotic April Fools’ prank, and the question leaves his mouth before he realises.
“Winwin-hyung, would you like me to water those for you, too?”
Sicheng looks at the younger and cries, knowing that he is further from being alright than he previously thought.
He doesn’t comprehend Korean well, though he understands when Donghyuck tells him to get the surgery. Sicheng refuses.
“Donghyuck-ah, do you know what happens to the feelings after?” he asks with slight difficulty.
The other shakes his head. The younger trainees were moved to an isolated dorm when Jaehyun and Doyoung suffered from the disease to save them from witnessing their hyungs in agony at such young ages. They themselves were too young for love.
“They die,” Sicheng chokes out. “I don’t want the sunflowers to die, Donghyuck. I don’t want my feelings for Kun-ge to die. It’s only a few weeks, I want to love him forever. I don’t want this love gone.”
He feels a yellow petal slipping out of his mouth. The tears allow it to stick onto his chin, and he wipes it with the sleeve of his oversized sweater.
“I don’t want to die.”
Sicheng starts keeping a journal the following day. It’s not an original idea - Yuta has a journal with information about star football players throughout the recent years, while Ten’s equally new journal is filled with the memories that the members made together in Bangkok.
Sicheng’s journal is more breathtaking and beautiful, yet more solemn and agonising to read. The originally plain, white hardcover is decorated with Chinese symbols and unique swirls. They’re insignificant compared to the beauty hidden inside - dried sunflowers, some already wilted and others turning a dirty yellow because of the lack of water, stuck to the pure white sheets of A5 paper.
Each page is dedicated to a single sunflower that is taped in the middle. Some pages have sketches, some have stickers and some have writing decorating the empty spaces that surround the flower.
One thing that all the pages have in common is the date - different each day, though always written in the upper right corner. Often, they also include descriptions on when and how the flowers appeared.
When Kun-ge’s hand brushed against mine, when he offered to go shopping with me, when he smiled so warmly during dinner…
Sicheng ends up filling up three more journals that week.
He should’ve known that the journal was a stupid idea.
It only takes two more weeks for Taeil, his current roommate, to find out that the previously empty cupboard in the kitchen is now stacked with at least ten identical books. Taeil momentarily thinks that reading them would invade Winwin’s privacy, but then realises that he won’t understand something that is written in Chinese, anyway.
Taeil reluctantly takes out a journal from the top; he opens it and gasps.
That evening - when Sicheng enters their dorm after practice with a bag full of petals and a bouquet of sunflowers in his hand, he is confronted by his roommate. The older wipes his tears and sings an old, Chinese lullaby until exhaustion takes over the younger and he succumbs to sleep, dreaming of an alternate universe in which the sunflowers in his garden are watered by drizzling spring rain instead of his salty tears.
Sicheng only allows Taeyong to forcefully drag him to the hospital when the older finds him struggling to inhale and exhale during practice because of the tiny yellow petals that are relentlessly filling his mouth.
Taeyong is understanding and discreet; he informs the other rookies that Winwin got injured while performing a difficult dance move, and it takes him twenty minutes to convince them that all fourteen of them aren’t required to accompany one person.
Out of all the members, Doyoung specifically insists to come and Taeyong struggles to disagree.
The two worry that Doyoung will be another person to find about Sicheng’s predicament, but the worries dissipate as soon as they all enter the taxi. Doyoung suddenly embraces Sicheng tightly and his hair, whispering “my poor Winwinnie is suffering so much… You’ll be okay, it will all end soon…” into his ear.
Sicheng can’t comprehend half of his hyung’s words, but the comforting voice allows him to believe in whatever he says. And while the ride to the hospital is otherwise uneventful, they find out upon arrival that Sicheng’s condition is serious and hectic.
The doctor hands him an x-ray image - showing everything from the shoulders to his abdomen - and Sicheng lets out a small, shocked gasp.
He sees the roots settled in between his ribs, while the unusually soft sunflower stems are tangled loosely around his heart. The stems seem to be growing through his lungs in certain spots, as that is where the large flowers bloomed beautifully, so restricted and desperate for space that they rapidly push their competition out from the lungs and through the trachea.
Sicheng’s eyes are torn away from the image as he feels another sunflower emerging from his mouth, and he only agrees to have the emergency surgery after twenty minutes of suffocating, choking and Taeyong’s persuasive words.
He gets changed into the thin hospital gown and shivers as the cold air hits his bare skin. Although the sun snines brighter than the sunflowers in his lungs and the streets of Seoul are crowded with people wearing nothing but tank tops and short sleeves, the air trapped within those four white walls is colder than it was during the winter, when he first arrived in South Korea.
The surgeon comes into his room several minutes later with another person trailing behind her, and Sicheng soon finds out that she is a translator.
“How long have you had this for?” they both ask, and he tries to recall the exact date with no success.
“Three months, give or take a few weeks,” he replies. Speaking in his native language comforts him slightly. “My friend had the same disease for over a year, and the symptoms worsened this much only a few days before his surgery.”
The doctor sighs and places a reassuring hand on Sicheng’s shoulder.
“Your symptoms progressed unusually fast. I’m afraid that the surgery is a necessity, or you might not live long enough to see your debut.”
Sicheng’s first thoughts are of Qian Kun; he thinks of his smiles, his kind actions, shopping days and the nights spent sitting at their dormitory, conversing quietly in Chinese while other members slept off their exhaustion, that eventually made his cheeks flush red and heart beat faster.
Thinking of Qian Kun and the happiness he brought into his life makes the pain insignificant in comparison, and Sicheng decides that he doesn’t mind enduring the suffering for the precious seconds of happiness that the other brings him.
The following thoughts are of his dream - he thinks of hours of nervewracking practice, the hopes and excitement of his parents; multiple days spent on studying Korean from several different textbooks.
“Sacrificing your happiness in the name of survival… How cruel of this world.”
Out of all the things to fear before a serious surgery, Sicheng doesn’t fear for his life. He knows that there is an extremely high probability of survival, and so the only death that he mourns as the anaesthetic starts taking action is the death of his feelings for Kun.
When his eyes finally begin to shut, he ends up envisioning his dream of Kun reciprocating his feelings before it disappears forever.
As expected, Sicheng survives with no further complications.
He awakens to the monotone sound of medical apparatus and birds chirping outside the lone window in the room.
A single sunflower stands on the windowsill, growing brightly and proudly, and the sight of it no longer makes Sicheng’s brain stir in preparation and anticipation for the arrival of another one.
“Oh, you’re awake!” he hears a familiar voice say, and suddenly he is embraced in another tight hug. He returns it with no hesitation.
“Taeyong-hyung went back to the dorms to tell everyone that you’ll be staying at the hospital overnight because your ‘leg injury’ is quite bad,” Doyoung continues after they finally separate. “Don’t worry, Winwinnie. They’ll believe him.”
Sicheng nods. The lack of his verbal response ends the conversation, but Doyoung is surprised to hear the younger speak once again after several seconds.
“Doyoung-hyung… How did you feel after your operation?” He asks, and regrets it immediately after he sees sorrow replacing happiness in the older’s eyes.
“You don’t have to-”
“Empty,” Doyoung replies. “It feels empty, waking up and knowing that the person you once loved more than anything is no longer your first thought in the morning.”
Sicheng hums in agreement once despite limited understanding.
“And knowing that if time was patient, the person could have been a morning view instead of a simple thought… It makes the empty feeling a complete void.”
The sunflower on the windowsill wilts.
Sicheng is allowed to leave the next day, with Doyoung accompanying him while the other members have practice or personal schedules. He thinks that this is nice, being able to breathe without planting a flower garden on each step of the way.
Before the two enter the dorms, the younger suddenly pulls Doyoung off the street into a secluded corner between buildings.
“Hyung,” he says. “I understand if this is too much to wish for… but maybe Kun-ge loved me too?”
Several weeks later everything returns to normal once again, and they’re all watching the debut performance of NCT 127. There’s only a handful of them in the dorms since the others are busy on stage, energetically performing their choreography for the first time.
They decide to hold a congratulatory party for NCT 127, and elect Doyoung to go snack shopping while the rest of them decorate the interior.
Doyoung takes the shopping list from Hansol’s hands and his eyes quickly scan through it.
They stop on Kun’s sunflower seeds.
Preparing a celebration is hard, Kun realises as he chuckles while watching Ten and Johnny bicker over the basics of making a chocolate cake.
The brown-haired boy suddenly hears someone - most likely Doyoung or Hansol, judging by the higher pitch of their voice and the absence of a honorific - yelling his name from the other side of the dorms. He jogs through the hallway to meet the other and when he finally arrives at where he thought the voice originated from, the room is empty and the lights are switched off.
Out of all the other rooms, Kun instinctively enters his own first. He sees the small lamp illuminating the whole room (he swears that he turned it off this morning) and walks towards the nightstand to switch the light off.
He finds two packets of his favourite, salted sunflower seeds with a journal underneath.
The cover is worn out, with a few drawings scattered here and there, and he suddenly feels disappointment when he realises that it most likely isn’t a present from Doyoung for the insightful Mandarin lessons that the older had given him.
Invading privacy is unlawful, he thinks as he unwillingly opens the journal on a random page with hopes of finding the owner.
He sees a sunflower without petals (they were trapped between the two pages, he notes) and begins to read the Chinese writing beside it.
[03/05/2016]
My chest felt tight after Kun-ge hugged me and congratulated on being chosen as the final member of the next subunit. His warm smile made even more sunflowers grow within my body, and I’m anxiously waiting for them to bloom.
Kun desperately avoids meeting Sicheng’s eyes that night, which stretches on to become weeks and months.
One October day, when the trees are bare and leaves in different shades of red and yellow cover the pavements, Kun finds himself regretting eluding Sicheng’s precious smile as he watches the younger arranging a bouquet out of maple leaves with Jaehyun.
He hides the tulip petals under a pile of leaves and walks away in the opposite direction, occasionally turning around to steal glances at the oblivious Chinese boy.
A / N: // apologises profusely for not knowing how to write angst or write in general //
this oneshot probably has more page breaks than winwin has lines in 'fire truck'. sorry about that ( ´･ω･).
aff formatting is driving me crazy i hate this!!!
thank you for reading! ❀ ♡
(p.s. dojae spinoff? maybe...)
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