I tried to forget—
the scent of spring,
the shape of your breath in the morning light.But memory roots itself,
soft and stubborn,
like lavender in the lungs.Even now,
I breathe,
and it still hurts.
The petals are everywhere when Shirota finds him.
Lavender and blood—a mingling of sweetness and iron—clings to the air, to his skin, to the edges of Taiga’s shirt where his fingers have curled in the last moments of struggle.
For a heartbeat, Shirota forgets how to breathe. Then instinct takes over.
“Taiga.” His voice cracks on the name. He drops to his knees, hands trembling as he presses against Taiga’s chest, searching for a pulse that feels too faint to belong to someone still this young.
He’d known about the flowers for a while. The stray petals Taiga thinks he’d hidden, the exhaustion he brushes off as lack of sleep—Shirota has seen it all. He has hoped, quietly, desperately, that it wouldn’t come to this.
You always wanted him to love someone properly, something inside him whispers. Maybe this is what it takes to give him that chance.
He tilts Taiga’s chin back and begins to breathe for him. Each exhale comes back faintly scented—lavender, fading too quickly. His hands find the rhythm of compressions, desperate and steady.
When Taiga’s body is still beneath his hands, Shirota’s first thought isn’t panic—it’s guilt. This isn’t what saving him was supposed to look like.
He doesn’t let himself think of the petals beneath his fingers, or the name that slipped from Taiga’s lips between gasps. Just breathe.
“What’s on your mind?” Shirota’s voice is soft, but there's a gravity beneath it—the kind that comes from caring too much, too quietly. It pierces through Taiga’s reverie, and the younger man snaps back to attention. They’ve known each other for quite a while now, but Taiga can still be a little sheepish when he gets caught unaware. Shirota chuckles at Taiga’s deer-in-the-headlights look, the novelty of it never growing old for him.
At that, Taiga pouts, and then he relaxes from the stiff posture he adopted. “You enjoy seeing me suffer so much, huh.”
“Oh, not at all,” Shirota teases. Then, more seriously: “If anything, I want to see you happy. You’ve been distant lately…”
“I’m so out of it,” Taiga admits. “I have a lot on my mind.”
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Shirota offers.
Taiga shakes his head, but his gaze has gratitude in them. “It’s a lot to take in, it's already tiring even thinking about it.”
“I see,” Shirota nods his understanding and doesn’t pry further. “But the offer stands. You know you can talk to me about anything, whenever you’re ready.”
“Thank you,” Taiga says.
“Anytime, my prince,” Shirota smiles, ruffling Taiga’s hair. The smile Taiga returns holds warmth from the gesture and nickname alike.
It turns to heated kisses. Taiga gives the green light in breathy, shaky exhales, and Shirota moves them to the bed. Hands roam further down, moving articles of clothing just enough to get them out of the way.
Shirota’s hands tremble a little as they trace Taiga’s skin. He tells himself it’s lust, but he knows better—it’s fear. Every touch feels like the last chance to memorize him, to keep him breathing.
He’d noticed the petals weeks ago, the faint scent that clung to Taiga’s pillow. He knows exactly whose name Taiga would call in the dark. And still, he couldn’t stop himself.
If I can’t be the one you love, then at least let me be the one who saves you.
When Taiga kisses him back, desperate and unsteady, Shirota let himself believe—just for a moment—that this could keep Taiga alive. That love, any kind of love, could be enough.
Even in the heat of the moment, Taiga’s conscious mind drifts back to Juri. To the one man he loves with all his heart, and the reason why the flowers bloomed in his throat. Will he be this gentle? And then, quieter still: I’m sorry for doing this with someone else.
“Juri…”
The name escapes, soft and broken, as the flowers clog his airways entirely. In the same instant, white-hot pleasure tears through him. His orgasm knocks him out—and then he stops breathing altogether.
Shirota presses on through Taiga’s velvety resistance, chasing his own end blindly. When he comes a few thrusts later, he collapses beside Taiga, careful not to crush him. Nestling against Taiga’s neck, he basks in the afterglow—and then panic shatters everything.
“Taiga?” Shirota calls, cupping his face. No response. Pale skin began to blue; the cold of death crawling up his fingers.
“Oh shit,” he whispers, fear tight in his throat. He tilts Taiga’s head back, pinches his nose, breathes into him—the faint scent of lavender returning.
Time was critical.
Shirota carries Taiga to the carpeted floor, performing compressions with shaking, desperate hands. Two more breaths. Still pale. Still unmoving.
“Hey, come on, stay with me.” Shirota’s voice trembles, raw in a way Taiga has never heard, and would never hear in this lifetime. He presses two fingers to Taiga’s throat, but the pulse there is as thin as thread.
A rush of thoughts floods his mind—the late-night silences, the way Taiga’s eyes always drifted elsewhere, softening at the mention of Juri. Of course. Shirota has always known where Taiga’s heart belonged. He just never thought love could kill him this literally.
“Don’t you dare die before you tell him,” Shirota mutters, breath already shaking as he tilts Taiga’s head back. “He deserves to know. You both do.”
He seals his mouth over Taiga’s and breathes once, twice—his own lungs burning as if the flowers were taking root there instead. The air that comes back tastes more strongly of lavender.
Every breath he gives Taiga feels borrowed. Each one hurts a little more to take back.
When he pushes down on Taiga’s chest, he imagines he’s pressing the flowers back into the soil they came from, refusing to let them bloom here, refusing to let this be the end.
“Come on, my prince,” he whispers between compressions, voice breaking on the nickname. “You haven’t even confessed yet.”
He tries again. And again. By the fourth attempt, something snaps beneath his palms—a sick, cracking sound that happens late into the cycle—but he presses on. Finally, as he turns Taiga to the side, dislodging the obstruction, deep purple lavender petals tumble from his mouth, bent and bloodied. Taiga’s heart is beating again. He should feel joy, but relief and despair twist together in his gut.
All he can think is that this borrowed breath might not be enough to keep him here. Shirota swallows the nausea, grateful that at least this part was functional again.
Later, in the bright sterility of the emergency room, Shirota stands back as the doctors rush Taiga down the corridor.
“Flowers, in full bloom,” he tells them, voice hoarse. “Stage four.”
He watches until the doors close, lavender still clinging to his skin. When he finally sits in the empty waiting area, his hands are trembling. He tells himself he did the right thing—he saved Taiga, gave him the chance to love freely. To tell Juri everything.
He doesn’t yet know that the surgeons will cut the flowers from Taiga’s lungs, and with them, every trace of that love. That when Taiga wakes, he’ll breathe easily and look at Juri with gentle confusion.
Shirota lowers his head into his hands and breathes once more, tasting the faint sweetness of flowers that will never bloom for him.
The smell of antiseptic can’t quite drown the cloying sweetness that follows Shirota through the corridors, a cruel reminder that he had held the one he loved—and that it might never be returned. He’s been sitting outside Taiga’s room for hours, still in the same clothes, dried blood and flower residue under his fingernails. Every time a nurse passes, he rises halfway, then sits back down when they shake their head. “He’s stable,” one finally says, gentle but firm. “You should rest.”
Rest. The word feels obscene.
Through the small window in the door, he can see Taiga lying still beneath the sheets, a pale shadow of the man who had laughed in his arms only hours ago. Beside him now is Juri—head bowed, fingers laced around Taiga’s hand, whispering things that only grief can interpret.
He has saved him. And yet the victory feels hollow. Each breath he draws in the quiet hallway feels heavier than the last. Shirota watches in silence. He tells himself this is what he wanted. Taiga alive. Juri here. A chance for both of them to have the words they’d never said.
But when Taiga stirs—confusion creasing his brow—and looks up at Juri with soft, polite bewilderment instead of recognition, something inside Shirota splinters.
The doctors’ explanation echoes dimly in his ears: the surgery removed all traces of the infected tissue—the roots, the seeds, the cause. The heart freed from the burden of one-sided love. Shirota understood it logically, but his chest ached with a knowledge no words could reach. The boy who had gasped out Juri’s name in the heat of passion, whose lips had trembled in pleasure and panic, would never remember it.
He closes his eyes and lets the silence press against him. There’s no rage, no pleading—only grief. A slow, quiet grief for the loss of what he had loved, what he had saved, and what could never be.
He grips the edge of the doorway until his knuckles whiten. It isn’t supposed to be like this. He gave Taiga his breath to save him, and in doing so, stole his heart’s memory.
Now Juri sits there, pouring love into an empty vessel, and Shirota can’t bear to step inside and tell him why.
He turns away. The air in the corridor feels too thin, like he’s already given away all the oxygen he had.
Somewhere down the hall, a cleaner empties a bin, and petals tumble soundlessly onto the floor—lavender, crumpled and forgotten.
Shirota tells himself it was worth it. That Taiga’s peace, even hollow, is better than Taiga’s death.
He breathes in, breathes out, and forces the tightness from his chest. “At least you’ll breathe easy,” he whispers, more to the emptiness than to anyone else.
He does, eventually. But it still hurts.
Shirota’s footsteps fade down the corridor, soft against linoleum, carrying the quiet devastation of a love that had saved a life—and erased its own reason for existing. The air he leaves behind feels strangely still, like the moment after a candle goes out—warmth without flame.
Inside the room, Taiga stirs. His fingers twitch against Juri’s palm, weak but alive, the faintest pulse of something that should feel like hope.
“Hey,” Juri breathes, leaning closer. “It’s me.”
Taiga blinks, lashes trembling, and the gaze that meets Juri’s is kind but empty—the sort of softness reserved for strangers. The kind that knows nothing of shared laughter, of nights spent pretending love wasn’t killing them both.
For a heartbeat, Juri forgets how to breathe. Then he does what he’s always done—he steadies himself, tucks Taiga’s hand against his chest, and smiles like the world hasn’t just come undone.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “You’re safe.”
He doesn’t notice the faint scent lingering in the air, nor the way the door clicks shut behind Shirota down the hall.
All Juri knows is that Taiga’s alive. And that, somehow, feels like losing him all over again.
Days pass in a blur of beeping machines, antiseptic smells, and muted footsteps. Taiga lay in the hospital bed, still fragile from surgery, his chest rising and falling with the careful steadiness of someone who had been pulled back from the edge.
Juri had stayed by his side since the moment he’d learned what happened. The scent of lavender clung faintly to the air—a cruel echo of what had nearly taken Taiga from them.
When Taiga opens his eyes again, the ceiling above him is sterile white. He blinks against the bright light, every muscle aching, every breath heavy and cautious.
Juri is sitting nearby, holding his hands together in his lap, eyes rimmed red. He startles slightly when Taiga moves, and then relief floods him, quiet but profound. “You’re awake,” he whispers, voice trembling with a mixture of awe and fear.
Taiga’s gaze falters, trying to piece together the fragments of the last few days. Shirota’s voice—warm, teasing, insistent—lingers somewhere at the edges of memory. But it’s faint, blurred, as if a thread has been pulled too tight and frayed. I… can’t quite remember… he thinks, a hollow tug in his chest.
Juri swallows and looks away, coughing lightly. Petals, pink-tipped and flecked with blood, cling stubbornly to the tissue in his hand. His chest tightens at the memory of his own coughs, the way he’d been unable to stop the flowers from growing inside him.
Taiga’s voice is small. “Juri… what happened?”
“You nearly—” Juri stops, shaking his head. “You almost didn’t make it. Shirota-kun… he saved you.”
A pang twists in Taiga’s chest, and though he remembers the warmth of Shirota’s hands—the tenderness, the frantic desperation—the memory of it is muted, hazy. He can recall the act itself, the sensation, but not the voice that had been guiding him, not the affection that had been wrapped in every touch. It’s like trying to hold a scent in the wind.
Juri takes a deep breath, forcing a calmness he doesn’t feel. “It’s… Hanahaki. You had the flowers—full bloom, too far gone to handle without surgery. Shirota-kun saved you, but the… feelings that caused it…” His voice falters. “They’re gone, Taiga.”
Taiga’s hand instinctively goes to his chest, touching the scar beneath the layers of bandages and clothing. It hurts, but not like before. The ache is hollow, an echo where love once thrummed.
“I… I’m sorry,” Juri whispers, voice breaking. “I don’t know how… I couldn’t tell you.” He stays quiet for Taiga, knowing that confessing would change nothing—would only risk the fragile stability of the one he loved.
Taiga’s lips part, but no words come. He wants to remember Shirota, to grasp the warmth and fear, the love that had saved him. But it slips, faint as mist—and then he falls into a fitful, medication-induced, sleep.
Juri coughs again, and with no time to catch anything, petals spatter onto the floor. “I couldn’t ask you to return what you can’t feel anymore,” he murmurs, almost to himself. He forces his breathing steady, forcing the panic down. Not now, not yet… he tells himself. I have to be here for him.
In the sterile, quiet hospital room, the scent of carnations and lavender drift between them—a reminder of love, of sacrifice, and of the cruel cost that unrequited feelings can take.
“Why is this happening?” Taiga whispers one morning, eyes unfocused. “How did it…?”
Juri’s hands rest lightly on the blanket, brushing against Taiga’s fingers. “It’s not contagious,” he says softly. “It’s… just a disease of the heart.”
Taiga frowns. “But… I thought—Shirota-kun—he saved me so I could… what? Love someone properly? And now…”
He trails off, the memory of Shirota’s hands, his voice, the heat of his touch, flickering somewhere in the edges of memory that the surgery had dulled. The realization was bitter: the life-saving procedure had erased the very feelings that Shirota had hoped to protect.
Juri’s throat tightens as he coughed, petals prickling the back of it. Just a few days ago—before the events that led to almost losing Taiga—he’d been feeling just a tickle at the back of his throat, coughing up nothing. Now the pink carnations of unreturned love began to grow within him, stubborn and painful.
“I… I don’t understand,” Taiga said, gaze meeting Juri’s. “How is this possible?”
Juri exhales, hiding the trembling in his hands. “I don’t know, Kyomo,” he admits. “I just… fell in love. That’s all.”
Taiga frowns, trying to reconcile the sweetness of Juri’s tone with the horror of what he now understands. “But it’s not fair. I—You’re… you’re going to suffer for me too.”
“Don’t go there,” Juri begins, effectively cutting Taiga off. “You didn’t have much of a choice either,” Juri argues. “But at least you’re still here. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Not when the alternative is losing you,” Juri adds, so faintly.
Taiga accepts Juri’s answer with a small nod, but there is so much sadness in his eyes that Juri has to look the other way.
“How could anyone not love you?” The sorrow in Taiga’s voice cuts through the atmosphere despite Juri’s efforts to lighten the mood.
Juri snorts, catching himself and stopping from laughing at the irony. On any other day, Juri would have whipped out his phone to document Taiga’s medication-addled state.
“I think it’s time for bed,” Juri suggests softly, though there’s an edge of authority in his voice. As he tucks Taiga in, Juri concedes, “I’m sorry I can’t offer a better answer to that.”
He feels his chest tighten again, and he makes a conscious effort to calm the overwhelming feeling of his love, locking it away to buy himself time. Juri takes slow, controlled breaths, and lies through his teeth. “I’ll be fine, really,” he tells Taiga.
When Juri steps out of Taiga’s room, he clutches his hands to his mouth to stifle the cough that rips through his chest. It shakes his whole body—nearly bringing him to his knees—but he leans against the wall, gripping it like a lifeline. The fluorescent lights hum overhead, cold and indifferent. Crimson petals spill between his fingers, a fragile trail of beauty and decay.
Jesse’s footsteps echo in the corridor. Eyes wide, heart hammering, he reaches Juri in a heartbeat, steadying him by the shoulders.
“I’ll be fine,” Juri whispers, forcing a smile that barely reaches his eyes. Alive, yes—but at a cost he can already feel pulsing through him, every breath a debt coming due.
Even as he speaks, another fit of coughing wracks him, scattering petals into his palm, flecked with blood. The scent of carnations and life—and heartbreak—hangs heavy, a bitter perfume of unrequited love turned deadly.
“You’ve kept all this to yourself,” Jesse says, understanding dawning too late, panic lacing his voice. He supports Juri as his knees buckle again, guiding him to a nearby chair.
Juri nods, determination etched across his pale features. “I did.”
“You are an absolute idiot,” Jesse blurts, voice shaking, fists clenching. The words are sharp, but his hands stay gentle, afraid that even anger might break what little of Juri is left. “I can’t believe you suffered alone.”
“I know,” Juri says softly. “But what’s the point in telling him I love him? He can’t return it anymore.” His words pierce the air, each syllable heavy, carving room for the flowers blooming inside him to rage unchecked. “We almost lost him, Jesse. Taiga is here only because Shirota-kun fought for him… and at a cost I can’t ignore.”
“How bad is it?” Jesse asks when the worst of Juri’s hacking cough is over, and Juri knows he isn’t asking about Taiga.
Juri shakes his head, pressing the blood-streaked petals into his palm. “I… don’t think I have long,” he admits.
“And because of your stubbornness,” Jesse snaps, anger and fear mingling, “we might lose you too!” His hands twitch, wanting to grab him, to make him see the danger. “Do you even hear yourself?”
“I don’t want to make him sadder. I don’t want him to feel guilt on top of everything else,” Juri reasons. He swallows his own panic, keeping his thoughts on Taiga. He survived, because someone else loved him enough to fight. I can endure this too, for him.
“What about me? What about your mother?” Jesse hates hitting weak points and using such arguments, but fear has blanked his mind. “Aren’t we just as important?”
“I can’t erase what I feel,” Juri says, voice cracking. “Even if I wanted to survive, I can’t… not without feeling. Not without love, even unreturned, being the price.”
“It’s not fair,” Jesse clings to Juri as he sobs—loud, wet, graceless.
“I know, Jess,” Juri says. With Jesse in his arms like this, he lets himself rest into the back of the chair, exhaustion seeping into his bones. He brushes Jesse’s hair as he cries, offering what little comfort he has left.
He coughs again. The sound is weaker this time, quieter. Petals scatter onto the floor—pink and white, trembling as they fall. Jesse holds him close, the weight of helplessness pressing down on both of them. Shirota’s image—strong, caring, guilt-ridden—flashes through Juri’s mind for an instant, a faint reminder of the hands that had saved Taiga but lost their own claim to memory.
In the quiet hallway, Juri’s heart beats unevenly; his breaths come shallow and laced with the scent of flowers. The last one that leaves him is a trembling whisper of Taiga’s name, smelling faintly of carnations—a ghost of the love that saved a life and died unreturned. He leans against Jesse one final time, letting himself sag, hand slipping from Jesse’s hair.
By the time Jesse looks up, Juri’s chest no longer moves. The petals fall soundlessly, pink and white, mingling with the sterile linoleum beneath his feet. Jesse presses his cheek to Juri’s hair, swallowing the sobs he cannot release—a quiet dignity honoring what Juri endured.
The price of love hangs in the air like a scent no one can escape.
Jesse stays seated long after the stillness sets in, his hands cold around Juri’s. A nurse passes at the end of the corridor but doesn’t approach. There is nothing to do now but wait for the world to start again.
The door behind him opens.
Taiga stands there—frail, barefoot, one hand still clutching the IV stand. The light from his room spills into the hallway, touching the edges of the scene he shouldn’t be seeing.
Taiga shouldn’t be walking yet. He should still be sleeping off the strong analgesics, but something—maybe a sound, maybe a feeling—had pulled him from half-sleep.
“Juri?” His voice comes out hoarse, uncertain, as if naming a stranger from a dream.
Jesse startles. His first instinct is to shield the sight—but Juri’s head has already fallen limp against his shoulder. The petals at their feet catch the current from the open door, drifting toward Taiga like the world itself is breathing its last with Juri.
Taiga takes a step forward, the floor cold under his feet. His gaze catches on the flowers—pale pink, blood-tipped—and the faint, lingering scent of carnations. It hits him like a memory trying to claw its way back from nothing. His chest tightens—not in pain, but in recognition without context.
He doesn’t know why he wants to cry.
“Jesse…” he whispers, but the man doesn’t answer. Jesse just shakes his head once, slow and trembling.
Taiga’s breath hitches. He drops to his knees, graceless, hospital gown and contraptions tangling. He reaches out but doesn’t quite touch Juri. The distance between them feels infinite. He leans in anyway, drawn by something he can’t remember but still mourns.
A petal lifts in the draft and brushes his knee. Taiga flinches as if burned.
A nurse comes running, steadying him with a firm, gentle hand. “You should lie down,” she says softly. Her touch feels impossibly human against the surreal quiet.
“Go back inside,” Jesse says quietly. “Please.”
Taiga nods numbly. As the nurse guides him away, the scent follows him—a breath that doesn’t belong to him. When the door clicks shut, the sound feels final.
Even back in bed, the sight of Juri taking his last breath lingers. It takes a sedative to still his trembling hands.
The air stills, then hums to life again—the low whir of the hospital’s ventilation system filling the silence that Juri left behind. The faint scent of carnations threads through the vents—a final breath winding through narrow passages before escaping into a world that will never know whose lungs it came from.
That breath moves on: through hospital corridors and city streets, through rooms emptied of laughter and windows cracked open just enough for air to pass. By dawn, it reaches where Taiga sleeps—a ghost of scent that stirs him, faint but undeniable. He does not wake, but his body remembers the shape of someone else’s love.
Taiga wakes, still in the hospital room, chest rising and falling easily for the first time in days. The scent of spring rain drifts through the open window. He can breathe. He should feel relief. But the hollow ache beneath his scar is heavier than anything he has known—neither from the surgery, nor from the illness that once ravaged through him. It's an emptiness that doesn’t belong to his body alone.
He shifts against the sheets. The world outside his window looks new, washed pale by morning. A breeze slips through the curtain, gentle as a sigh. He closes his eyes and feels it pass through him.
Jesse enters quietly, a cup of coffee cooling in his hand. His eyes are swollen, but his voice is steady. “You’re up early.”
Taiga offers a faint smile. “Couldn’t sleep.”
There’s a long pause before Jesse sets the cup down on the bedside table. His gaze lingers on the pale bandages over Taiga’s chest, then shifts away. “You should take it easy. The doctors said your lungs are clear.”
“Clear,” Taiga repeats, tasting the word like something foreign. “That’s good.”
He presses his hand over the scar, feeling it beneath his palm. “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he adds, though his voice falters at the end.
“That’s the point,” Jesse says softly. The sadness in his tone makes Taiga look up—but Jesse is already at the door, pretending to check his phone.
He visits often but says little. Sometimes Taiga hears him making hushed calls in the hallway, the quiet bureaucracy of grief. He gives Taiga space—letting him feel the room, the quiet emptiness—leaving small slips of paper in place of words: crude maps and shorthand notes.
One afternoon, Jesse leaves a folded note on the bedside table. “For when you’re ready,” he says softly. No more, no less.
Taiga’s fingers tremble as they brush the paper. He recognizes the handwriting instantly, though it takes a moment for the truth to land. These are Juri’s last words. He’s gone.
The letters are uneven, written by a hand that will never hold a pen again. He traces the inked letters with his thumb, the faint pull of sorrow already gnawing at him, though he cannot name it.
Slowly, carefully, he sits up, scarred chest pressing against the thin hospital gown. Every movement is deliberate. He breathes in, exhales, learns the shape of his body again, and finally unfolds the note.
Taiga—
I used to think loving you was my punishment for wanting something I could never keep. But now I know—it was the only way I learned what it meant to live.
If you’re reading this, then I couldn’t stay long enough to see you remember me. That’s alright. I’d rather you breathe without me than stop breathing for me.
Loving you was the most exquisite form of self-destruction. But I’d do it again, every time.
The words press against him—neither memory, nor feeling—but an echo of something lost. He folds the note carefully.
There is no sweetness, no recollection of Juri’s laughter or warmth, only the hollow ache of absence and the faintest trace of flowers lingering in the air.
When he is ready, guided by Jesse’s instructions, he steps outside. Early spring greets him: bare branches, hesitant green shoots, a wind that carries no scent of lavender but hints at new life. Taiga’s recovery is fragile, tentative, yet inevitable. The world stretches ahead, indifferent and alive.
He stands in the quiet, Juri’s last words pressing against his chest—a fragile tether to a love that once burned bright and fierce enough to bloom, unreturned but indelible. He hesitates, thumb tracing the paper’s edge.
He remembers nothing of Shirota’s frantic touch, nothing of Juri’s warmth, nothing of the nights threaded with fear and tenderness. Yet the ache of absence is familiar, a hollowness that refuses to fade.
Taiga trudges forward, each step measured, careful. His chest rises and falls evenly now—steady, clear—but beneath the surface, a pulse whispers of love he can no longer call his own.
When he reaches the location, a small clearing tucked behind the old train tracks, he unfolds the note again. The ink is smudged, faded in places, but these words cut through the quiet:
"Loving you was the most exquisite form of self-destruction."
He traces the line with his thumb, the paper trembling in his grasp.
For a long moment, he closes his eyes. The wind brushes against his face, carrying no scent of flowers, no trace of the past, only the clean bite of spring air. He breathes in, exhales, and lets the emptiness settle. Somehow, he is alive. Somehow, he continues.
Epilogue
Somewhere far from the city, flowers are in full bloom. Shirota stands at the edge, coat pulled tight against the wind. He tells himself he isn’t thinking of Taiga—but the habit persists, a tether of memory and unfulfilled love that refuses to unravel.
The wind shifts, carrying the sweet, heavy scent of lavender into his lungs. He breathes it in, slow and deliberate, feeling the tug in his chest—not pain, not longing, not hope—but recognition. Somewhere, once, love had passed through this air, threading its way between lives. Carnation and lavender entwined, fleeting yet eternal.
For a moment, he imagines Taiga’s laughter on the breeze, soft and far-off, a memory of something that might have been. He closes his eyes, exhales, letting the quiet fill him. The petals stir at his feet, brushing against his boots like whispers from a world that has moved on without him.
“Breathe easy,” he whispers, unsure if he means it for himself, Taiga, or the ghosts of what could never exist. The wind answers nothing, carrying only the quiet ache of love—sacrificial, unreturned, yet alive in its absence.
Shirota exhales once more, and for the first time in years, he lets himself feel the weight of the world lift, if only slightly. The air is still sweet. The flowers bloom. And life continues, fragile, hollow, and unyielding.