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Valentine looked into the mirror as he grabbed another small vine with tweezers. Biting down on a towel, he ripped it out of his skin, small rivulets of red beads following soon. Raising the towel to his cheek, he wiped off the blood, cursing in his mind.
*I am not the one supposed to bleed.* He thought as a hiss escaped his lips. The fucking irony haunted him each week, when new vines managed to breach his skin, thanks to this damned disease. ‘Hanahaki - disease of love’, doctors told him. Love? Valentine did not love **him**. It was a mistake... Was it?
Valentine could feel the flowers slowly winding up his trachea, scratching his throat. As if coughing up petals and flowers was not enough. As if those flowers overtaking his estate were not enough - fertilized by his blood. *It’s driving me insane…* He looked at the mirror, the once perfect skin now looking like marble due to small scars.
*****
Is this some divine punishment? Were constant nightmares not enough? Every other night he woke up as the deafening screams of him burning at the stake ring in his ears. But it is all a dream... Like he was in real life - fleeting, short-lived. But unlike a dream, he could not forget him. Each breath and heartbeat reminded of him, as thorny vines constricted his lungs and heart.
*He died. you is dead. I saw him burn in 1752.* Valentine reminded himself once again. *But then why, these wretched wild roses never stop growing?*
Leaving the bed, Valentine walked to the kitchen turning on the TV. *Another commercial for surgical removal of Hanahaki… Should I?* He wondered, sipping coffee. He doesn’t know why he did not do it earlier. Self-inflicted penance? Lingering love? **No…** They were never in love. Just two men. Friends? He did not know anymore, but the constant pain left him numb and full of vitriol.
**He needed this. The hate. To keep him moving. To help him wake up.**
At least that is what he told himself.
*****
**Knock. Knock. Knock.**
A hiss escaped his lips. Barely anyone visited his villa, he was the ‘strange man’, the ‘recluse’, ‘rich freak with too many flowers’ or any of the adjacent terms bestowed by locals and people living close by.
Leaving the canvas and paint brushes alone, Valentine slowly moved towards the first floor. The wild roses made him slower than he liked, tired. But whoever, kept so persistently knocking, must have a good reason to fight their way through the unkempt yard full of thorny rose bushes and barge past the gate.
Opening the door with a groan, he felt like struck by lightning. Uncomfortably fidgeting behind his door was you. He couldn’t mistake those eyes. Valentine registered only fragments of whatever he was telling him - being lost, needing to make a call. *Doesn’t he recognize me?* Was all that echoed in his mind as he looked at the reincarnation of a man who cursed him with the existence full of roses.
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