Fate, Strings, and Flowers (Slow Updates)

Everyone knows that there are very obvious signs of fated love.

There are those who have their fated love's first word to them marked on their skin. Those people have red strings attached, binding their soulmate together.

Then there are people who only have their fated lover's first words to them marked on their body. These people usually have an entire phrase on their body rather than a single word, and it's usually a very unique phrase. These people have golden strings attached to them once the two fall in love.

And lastly, also the usually forgotten ones, the ones who have only blue string connecting them to another person, however that other person cannot see the blue string. See, blue is a dreaded string color. It means true unrequited love, to love someone forever but to never get their love back. They usually kill themselves before meeting fate or they wait for the illness known as the Hanahaki Disease (or the Flowers of Death as known by kids) to take them.

What's the Hanahaki Death? Well, it's rather interesting. It begins when a blue string falls into their unrequited love. Over time, beautiful varieties of flowers of love and lust bloom from within the body, slowly killing the host like a parasite, depriving them of the needed nutrients and sometimes not letting the poor soul breathe. However, the final blooming flowers are always the same. A single Higanbana (a Red Spider Lily), the flower of death, blooming in crowd of white lillies.

Many notice right away when the illness starts to take root, since one would cough up little amounts of flower petals and will progess to more over time, to the point where there are too many petals in the throat to cough up, often briefly suffocating the poor lover.

As time went on, the medical field got better and now have a surgery that can remove the rooted illness, however, when one takes the surgery, they will forget everything about the one they fell for, and the blue string will continue to exist. After a while, a cycle began. Fall in love, get the flowers, surgery, blue string, and fall in love again with the same person. The cycle won't stop until the surgeries stop, or you die.

This hellish fate of blue strings are why the mothers who can see their child's string usually abort the children with blue wrapped around them in the womb. Because they love them too much to see them wither away to a painful love.

So what happens if blue string lives to find their love but a protective mother keeps him away from love?

Well, it's fate.

All she can do is put the pain off to a later time or pray that it won't hurt too much.

But what if he loved another blue string with words too? What if he loved his best friend? What if his best friend loved a girl with the red string of fate?

Well, it's just one hell road of pain along one of the many petals along the red lily that'll consume them all.