Miyeon was someone who believed in many things. At the age of 23, she still believed in Santa Claus even though she had seen her parents dropping presents under their Christmas tree when she was 7 and hearing the next day from her father’s lips that the said presents were from the old guy. Every time she goes to sleep, she fearfully looks under her bed to look if the boogeyman is staying still under her, waiting for his chance to take her when she’s as---

“Miyeon unnie! Come here quickly!” Though she’s a weird bunch, Miyeon never fails to make friends easily, sometimes much more natural than friendly Yuqi. She looks up from her phone and raises her eyebrows at Jisoo who’s peeping her head from the door. A wide smile spreads across the younger girl’s face when she detects the innocent look on her unnie. “Get your up and get yourself outside!”

Miyeon frowns, taking her time from moving. “Why? What’s happening outsi---”

“YAH MIYEON-AH, WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS SO SLOW?!” A light, vibrant feeling settles in Miyeon’s insides when she hears that whiny yet lovable voice at the same time, she saw how the smile on Jisoo’s face gets wider. Miyeon jumps on her feet in such haste that Jisoo thinks she might be too excited for her own good. She proves this when Miyeon almost face plants as she jumps out of her trailer.

“Minnie! What are you doing here?!” Miyeon’s eyes can’t be seen with all the smiling she’s doing, and Jisoo had only seen this kind of face of hers whenever Haku and Mata were brought in the set. Miyeon runs and hugs Minnie who giggles when Miyeon bulldozes her way towards her, holding out the bouquet she bought for the older girl.

Within the time they were hugging, Miyeon swears she saw a patch of blue flowers shining when she had her eyes closed.

She shrugs it off.

She’s an imaginative kid after all.

“I’m here to visit you, of course.” Minnie says when they both pull back from hugging. Minnie steps back and offers the flower to her friend, smiling so brightly Miyeon is sure she can battle it out with the sun and the Thai would win. Miyeon ignores the itchiness in her stomach and accepts the flowers, unaware of the eyes of the crews and casts watching the interaction unfold. She smells them, closing her eyes and seeing the patch of blue flowers again even though the bouquet were not the ones she was seeing.

“Congratulations on the drama, Noodles,” Minnie says with her big smile, her hands clasped behind her back as she watches Miyeon enjoy the flowers. She doesn’t know what Miyeon’s favorite flower was, but when she was in the flower shop earlier when she had set her eyes on this flower, she knew it was perfect for her group member. “I never thought you’d be the first one out of all of us to get into acting. Considering I’m basing on how we all acted on Never-ending Neverland.”

This causes Miyeon to pout and punch Minnie’s shoulder, stepping closer towards her to pull her into a hug again. “Hey, they all said I did well back then! Even Shuhua! You know how hard it is for me to get compliments from her since she always loves to clown me.”

“Exactly, Noodles.” Miyeon punches Minnie again when she finally understands what Minnie meant with her answer.

The shooting is close to ending, Jisoo and the others just have to shoot a few more scenes before the call for a wrap was to come. Miyeon was in her trailer, using her phone and texting her mom about how her day was going when she feels this instant need to scratch .

So she scratches it from the outside with one hand while the other continues with the phone.

She feels weird. The itchiness isn’t going away. She stops texting and drops her phone on the vanity, sets her eyes on the mirror in front of her, stares at the redness on .

It’s still itchy.

So, she coughs.

It disappears for a moment before she feels the itchiness coming back, a bit stronger than the first feel. Miyeon grabs her handkerchief from her bag and coughs. She coughs and coughs until she can feel the roughness, and when she pulls the handkerchief away from her, a few, small, blue buds litter her handkerchief.

She stares at it for a few minutes, still taking in if it’s true or not. She puts her handkerchief on her vanity, beside her phone, and she rubs her eyes.

She opens them.

It’s still there.

Miyeon stays seated in her place for a while, staring at her phone now laid on her palm on her lap.

She chuckles.

Hanahaki Disease.

It’s what she saw when she searched for a possible reason why she’s coughing up flowers.

The disease of one-sided love.

A name pops up in her head, her familiar bright smile making its way in her mind, painting itself all over the walls, but Miyeon pushes it away.

She can’t be in love with her.

Her tummy just feels funny around her.

She finds her funny, attractive, pretty, amazing, brave…

Miyeon’s eyes shake when she realizes what she’s been thinking.

She can’t be.

No, she can’t be.

“Unnie!” Miyeon almost screams when Jisoo’s voice rings from the outside of her trailer door. She rests her hand on her chest, trying to calm her heart before she answers. “Yeah?”

“The shooting’s done! The director is buying us all dinner.” Miyeon strangely feels relief flooding her whole body. She releases a sigh before answering the girl that she’d be out in a second.

She can’t imagine going home after learning this…thing.

Miyeon spends her night indulging herself in anything, random conversations, possible meet-ups with other idols and actors and actresses that can be possible new friends, anything that can take her mind off of the thought of flowers growing in her lungs just because she’s in love with her best friend.

The itchiness comes back when she’s on her way back to the dorm, and she looks up in a panic, looking at her manager through the rearview mirror. She can’t be coughing right now, she can’t let her manager know about this. She pulls her legs up and shoves her face on her arms, closing her eyes as she remembers the five blue buds in her bag, ignoring the growing ache in . She sighs in relief when she sees the building of their dorm in the distance.

She runs out of the car, not even saying anything to her manager, shoving herself in the elevator, her hand cupping as tears fill her eyes. The ache is too much, but she can’t do this outside. She can’t do this in public or anywhere that can make people know about her disease.

No.

She can’t let Minnie know.

Everything changed for Miyeon.

Her once always open room is now always locked, her bathroom time got doubled whenever she showers, and she always brings bottles of water and plastic bags with her. When people ask her about this, she always answers with “I don’t want to litter.” that seems to be a plausible answer. If they only knew that those plastic bags are always filled with blue buds and about to bloom ones, those bottles used to momentarily soothe the ache she has in . It hurts.

All these things hurt.

But she can push through with it. If it means that Minnie wouldn’t know. If it means that she gets to love her all to herself in her way.

She had finally gotten over the stage of denial a few nights after she learned about her disease, realizing that there was no use in lying to herself about her feelings for the Thai girl.

She understands why she fell for the girl. Who wouldn’t? Minnie is a special girl. She’s hard-working, she’s gorgeous, she’s funny, she’s everything you would be looking for.

And Miyeon fell for her.

A smile breaks out of her face.

Cho Miyeon fell for her best friend, Minnie Nicha Yontararak.

“But you’re not my style.”

Miyeon closes her eyes when she feels the urge to puke, her hand already by , a reflex she had become used to after a month of coughing flowers.

Those words had always been the following remark whenever she thinks of her situation with Minnie. Whenever she tells herself that she’s in love with Minnie, those words seem to be a magician suddenly popping out of nowhere in her mind, triggering the need to cough the flowers out.

“Miyeon unnie? Are you okay? You’ve been zoning out ever since the break.” Jisoo lands her hand on Miyeon’s arm, startling the older girl. Miyeon blinks her eyes for a moment, pulling her hand away from , turning to look at the younger girl beside her.

“I’m fine Jisoo. I’m still sleepy, I guess.” She offers the girl a reassuring smile, one that looks so fake and Jisoo knows better than to believe it.

Jisoo is a smart girl, and she’s been trying to know what’s happening to her unnie. They’ve been close, she can say that she’s the closest to Miyeon from all the casts, and with the times they’ve bonded, Jisoo can read Miyeon.

And right now, she knows Miyeon is so far from being fine.

She has a hunch of what’s happening to Miyeon ever since she heard the girl coughing at the back of her trailer, and when she checked when the girl finally left, she saw the flowers that she’s pretty sure, don’t grow in Korea.

Miyeon inevitably excuses herself from the table, going for the restroom. When she sees Miyeon enter the restroom, Jisoo also excuses herself, following the girl. She waited outside the door, hearing Miyeon’s loud coughing, followed by…retching?

Is she vomiting?

Miyeon had tried to stop this the first time she had coughed up flowers in the dorm in fear that Shuhua and Soojin might know, and with that dangerous act, she had made it harder for herself. The need to release these flowers had been so adamant, and with her keeping them inside by drinking water and pushing them down , from being stored in her lungs, the flowers had stayed in her stomach that her organ didn’t like, caused the vomiting. This time, instead of buds, they were all mid blooming flowers.

Jisoo stays before the door, feeling helpless, all that she can do is hear her unnie’s sobbing and vomiting.

She feels so hollow.

The sobbing and vomiting stop, but Miyeon doesn’t come out of the restroom that makes Jisoo worry.

She hesitantly knocks on the door.

“Miyeon unnie?”

No answer.

“Miyeon unnie? Are you okay?”

Still no answer.

“I’m going in, okay?”  Jisoo turns the doorknob and luckily, it isn’t locked. She pushes the door open and sees a lot of blue flowers on the tiled floors, some having…specks of blood on them. Flowers decorates most of the restroom, the sink, the toilet, the floor, Miyeon.

Jisoo runs towards a passed-out Miyeon lying on the floor, blood on her lips.

“Miyeon unnie?? Oh no, Miyeon unnie, wake up. Miyeon unnie!” Jisoo wipes away the blood from Miyeon’s mouth with the sleeves of her hoodie, pulling her up and putting one of Miyeon’s arms over her shoulder. She stumbles out of the restroom and calls the attention of their friends, the group of men quickly on their feet. She instructs them to take Miyeon in her trailer and passes the older girl to Mincheol. The boys quickly move and go, Jisoo enters the restroom again, cleaning the littered flowers.

People can’t know that Miyeon has this disease.

She knows Miyeon wouldn’t like the world to know this way.

She knows Miyeon doesn’t like the world to know.

But she needs to tell someone. Anyone.

A name rings in her head.

-

Miyeon wakes up in her trailer, lying on her small bed, someone sitting by the end of it, beside her feet.

The said person turns around and Miyeon stills.

It’s Soyeon.

“Since when did you had this, unnie?” Soyeon asks quietly.

The air inside the room tenses as time ticks, and Miyeon feels the air in her lungs getting thicker, and it’s getting harder for her to breathe.

But she doesn’t let it show on her face. Instead, she lets the shock appear and fools her dongsaeng. “H-How did you know…When did you arrive, he---”

Soyeon cuts her off. “Jisoo knows. She found you in the restroom, you were unconscious.” Soyeon crawls on the bed and puts herself beside Miyeon, and now that she’s close, Miyeon can see tears shining in her leader’s eyes. “She…She called me.”

Miyeon watches as Soyeon’s lips tremble as tears threaten to fall from her eyes. “Unnie, why did you let it get to this? You’re vomiting blood.” Soyeon lifts her fisted hand, opening it to let Miyeon see one of her little flowers, a mid-blooming cornflower, tainted with her blood.

Miyeon feels nothing as she stares at the flower, she feels nothing as her blood slowly slides down from an open petal down to the tissue where the flower was laid on.

She doesn’t feel anything.

No sadness.

No regret.

She smiles.

This was all for Minnie.

For her love.

Soyeon notices how fixated Miyeon was on the flower. “So this is the reason why you’ve been locking your room. Why you’ve been locking YOURSELF in your room. Why you’ve been taking too much time in the bathroom.”

The leader closes her fist.

Miyeon’s eyes shoot up from Soyeon’s fisted hand to the younger girl’s telling eyes.  “How did you know that?”

“Miyeon unnie, Soojin is very observant. If your walls were transparent, she would’ve already figured out what’s happening.” Soyeon sighs and grabs Miyeon’s hand, feeling so guilty for letting this happen to her member.

Soyeon keeps herself quiet for a few passing moments, rubbing her thumb over Miyeon’s hand, feeling so strange because it doesn’t feel like her unnie’s hand at all. “W-Who is it, unnie?”

“Unnie, who is it?” Miyeon keeps shut.

Soyeon sighs. As much as she doesn’t like using her authority over anyone,