A week passes. Taeyong is mostly bedridden now. Eunyong is constantly at his side. Doyoung visits occasionally. Ever since the red spider lilies, he’s only been coughing up sweet pea blooms. For departures, for goodbyes. Eunyong turns them over in her hands. He knows she knows they are his body’s way of bidding them all farewell.

The first couple days after he told his parents were fine. He was still able to get up and make himself food, though he didn’t like moving around much. Now, though, it’s a chore to drag himself to the bathroom in the middle of the night to cough up more flowers. They come up with vomit every time; he’s lucky that with the later stages of the disease, the flowers only come once every few days. Otherwise, he’d starve to death before the flowers could get him. He has a sporadic fever, and it makes him tremble under his many blankets at night.

He didn’t make it to Jaemin’s birthday party. He figured it would be scarier for them to see him like this than to not see him at all. He texted Jaemin, apologizing, but didn’t say anything else. He knows he’ll have to tell all his friends soon. He knows they know something is up. But it’s not like they can break into his house or anything, so for now, they’re only left wondering.

Doyoung’s visits are quiet. He’ll sit with him, bring him fresh water, comfort him when his dreams, strange and frightening from the fever, wake him suddenly. He’s not lucid most of the time, so there’s not much else they can do. One day that his head is clear, he apologizes to Doyoung.

“Shut up,” Doyoung responds fiercely. “Stop saying sorry. It’s not your fault. I’m choosing to be here. I want to be here with you. I don’t care if we can’t do anything. I don’t care if I’m playing nurse a bit. It doesn’t matter.”

“Thank you,” Taeyong murmurs, too tired to argue. “Have you heard from Johnny?”

Doyoung just shakes his head. “I saw him at the party, and I told him it was because of your sickness that you couldn’t come. He didn’t say anything, just frowned and turned away.”

“That’s that, then,” Taeyong says.

It’s almost karmic, the way this has turned out. He worried from the first day that he would lose Johnny along the way, and now he has. Not for the reason he thought, but still from the disease. He fell in love, and got sick because of it; that was his own fault. It was his own fault that he couldn’t speak up about it, because he was too scared. And now it’s his fault that Johnny is angry with him and won’t see him. Another reason it’s all my fault, tucked inside a reason it’s all my fault, like a little Russian doll.

His parents check in on him from time to time. He can tell they’re trying not to be stifling, because they know he wants rest, and he wants space. He knows they know it makes him uncomfortable for them to see him like this. But they can’t help it that their touches linger, that they always ask a third time if he needs anything before they go back downstairs. He can’t really blame them for it, either. They want to feel useful, even when there’s nothing to do. And they want as much time with him as possible, before they can never see him again.

The guilt is still there, of course, almost more suffocating than the flowers. It’s not that he didn’t always kind of know this is how he would end up, it’s just that he had never really stopped to think how it would feel for everyone else. He never considered how gut-wrenching it would be for his friends and family to sit and literally watch him die. It makes the days drag by, but also makes them pass with uncanny speed. Every day, he watches the sky change out of his window for long hours. Every day, he gets worse. Every day, he gets closer to the inevitable.

One night, he wakes up to the sound of crying. It’s pitch black, probably around 2 am. He sees the vague shape of Eunyong sitting with her back against his bed, knees drawn up so that she can rest her forehead on them. Her shoulders shake with her sobs. Taeyong reaches his arm out weakly, managing to brush the back of her head.

“Noona, noona, don’t cry,” he croaks.

“Oh!” She raises her head quickly, wiping away tears as she turns to face him. “I’m—I’m okay. Do you need anything?”

Taeyong shakes his head, reaching up to swipe a stray tear away with the pad of his thumb. “I’m fine,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to hide this from me, though. I know it hurts.”

Eunyong covers his hand with her own, sniffling. “It’s not that I don’t understand,” she says softly. “Of course I understand. And I don’t blame you. It just—I wanted more for you. My baby brother. I wanted to see you grow old in that flower shop you love so much. I wanted to be able to come home to you when I was tired of the city. I wanted to be at your wedding.”

“Not my funeral, I know,” Taeyong says. “I wanted to be at your wedding, too.”

“It just ,” she murmurs. “You don’t deserve this. I know you’re convincing yourself that you do, because that’s easier than admitting it’s not fair, and having to grieve a life you won’t ever get to live now, but you don’t deserve it. You’re sweet and gentle and kind. It’s like Eomma said. All you did was fall in love. I’m sorry he doesn’t love you back.”

“Do you think he’ll come?” Taeyong asks faintly.

“He better,” Eunyong says. “Or I won’t let him into your funeral.”

“Don’t do that,” Taeyong replies. He laughs a little at her anger, but it turns into coughing. More sweet pea flowers push their way up from his lungs. Eunyong gets a plastic bag under his chin just in time, so the blood doesn’t stain. When the fit subsides, she wipes his face clean.

“See, this is what I mean. You’re too good for this,” she says. “You love him like this, even now.”

“I think that means I’m perfect for it,” Taeyong replies. Eunyong glares at him. He can see her eyes flashing, even in the dark.

“This disease, it preys on the best of us,” she tells him. “You only got it because you love too much. It’s not right.”

“Maybe one day you and Gyunghui can find a cure,” Taeyong suggests sleepily. He closes his eyes. “I believe that. You’re both so smart.”

Eunyong his hair. He isn’t looking at her, but he hears the despair in her voice. “Silly,” she says. “You’re the best witch in this family. If anyone were to find it, it would have been you.”

= = =

It’s the last solid memory Taeyong has. He’s too tired to speak, and he spends most of his time in a terrible place between wakefulness and sleep. His dreams plague him, visions of blood and talking roses, of the sun rising and setting and rising and setting at an alarming pace, blending in with the world around him until he can’t tell what’s real. His fever doesn’t lessen ever; he shakes so violently his bed rattles against the wall.

If anyone visits him, he doesn’t know. People come in and out of his room, at a frequency that forces him to assume it’s not just his family and Doyoung. He guesses someone, probably Eunyong, told his friends, and now they’re coming to say goodbye. Maybe Johnny has been to see him, and he wasn’t awake, or just doesn’t remember. He has no way of knowing. He can barely understand what they’re saying when his parents or Eunyong come in to give him something to eat, or to drink. All he knows is the horrible shivering, the dreams, the pain in his chest that’s become almost unbearable, and the blood, so much blood.

He thinks Eunyong comes to read to him, though he can’t be sure. Maybe it’s another dream. But one day he swears he hears something familiar.

“Whomever I touch, I send back to the earth from whence they came…” He only catches pieces. “I can help you someday, if you grow too homesick for your own planet…”

Taeyong wishes, in his delirium and hurt, for a snake like that to deliver him back to before all this happened. Or better yet, like the Little Prince, to his flowers, beneath the soil, still and cold and peaceful. No more blood. No more pain. No more terrifying visions.

If he had known the last bits would have been spent in such agony, he would have really considered the surgery. Maybe he still would have decided not to get it, but it would have been a much more present option. He’d seen Yuta at his worst, but he’d never gotten this far. He just didn’t imagine it would be this violent. Now that he thinks about it, though, he doesn’t understand why he could have thought otherwise. He’s kind of glad, in a way. It would have been awful to spend all those weeks so afraid, if he knew this was what was waiting for him.

It’s like he can feel the flowers taking his body apart. They’re such little blossoms in comparison to what he’s had before, but they’ve taken root. He feels their grip inside of him with every breath he takes. Each inhale is labor. His lungs feel taut and unhappy.

One day, he wakes to what he thinks is a wave of blood washing over his bedroom floor. He panics, pressing himself to the wall as best he can with his dwindling strength. But then, he realizes it’s just the sunset, the colors reflecting off his mirror and painting his room. Still, his heart won’t stop pounding. He can’t tell if the tremor in his hands is from the chills brought on by his fever, or the fear. Maybe it’s both. He can’t be sure.

The rest of that evening is excruciating. The more the shadows encroach on his room, the more anxious he gets. The logical voice in his head is so quiet now, drowned out by his panic. He knows it’s nothing, but he can’t convince himself of it. He feels like he may be going insane. Eventually, he resigns himself to curling up under the blankets in the fetal position, eyes squeezed shut so they can stop playing tricks on him. His mind still dutifully plays a movie of horror behind his eyelids, anyway; at least it is easier to convince himself that isn’t real.

That night, he thinks Eunyong presses her face to his cheek. He thinks he hears her say, “You can let go now.” He thinks she says, “I know you’re trying to hold on for as long as you can. But I know it must hurt so much. And it’s okay if you’re afraid. I’m right here.” He thinks she picks up his hand. “I want you around forever,” he thinks she murmurs. “But I don’t want you to suffer anymore. And I’m sorry.” He thinks he feels tears, not his own, hot and wet on his jaw. He thinks he hears her whisper, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I want to. We did our best, right? We did everything we could.” He thinks he feels her sigh. “It’s alright. Rest now. I’ll stay until you’re sleeping.” He thinks she presses a kiss to his temple, her breath cool against his burning skin.

But he can’t be sure.