The Hanahaki Club: Episode 1
Episode 1: Losers in Love, Part 1
Summary:
Hassie, Remi, Emery, Merryn and Taran have one thing in common—they’re all reluctant members of an unpopular club: The Hanahaki Club—a weekly support group for losers in love. Each member has the same rare genetic flaw that means their unrequited love is killing them—literally, slowly and beautifully—as hanahaki flowers fill up their lungs.
With all five of them under the age of twenty-one, they’re much too young to die over something so common and embarrassing; so, somehow, together, they must figure out how to go from losers in love to survivors.
The options are simple, really. Find love. Fight it. Forget it. Or fail… and fall to it.
Episode 1: Losers in Love, Part 1
Emery
Pink and red splattered against the white porcelain of the toilet bowl, blood-coated petals sticking to the shiny surface, some of them sliding down into the clear water and turning it a shy rose, as the sound of muffled retching echoed around the cubicle. Emery sucked in another stuttered breath, felt the itch in her chest flare again and coughed hard once more, her fingers gripping the toilet seat as she lurched forward over it, head almost disappearing into the bowl. A single, whole flower, slightly blackened and withered at the edges, and slimy with spit and clumps of blood, finally slid up her throat and onto her tongue and she spat it straight into the toilet water, where it spun elegantly like a waterlily on an ornamental pond.
“Frick,” Emery hissed, reaching for the toilet roll and tearing off a ream to wipe her mouth and chin. “That’s gross.”
Dropping the used paper into the toilet and heaving herself unsteadily to her feet, she closed the lid, slumped on top of it and activated the flush. Rummaging in her school bag, she found her inhaler and took a couple of deep puffs, listening carefully to the silence around her as she waited for her breathing to calm and her rabbit heartbeat to subside.
That had been a close one. Thirty seconds earlier and she’d have splattered blood and petals in the corridor outside her maths classroom, in front of everyone. Thankfully, her peers had shot off home at the sound of the final bell and no one else had been in the toilets when she’d crashed through the door and locked herself in a cubicle. This disease was a frickin’ nuisance, but Emery wasn’t going to let it beat her. She was going to fix it somehow—without the aid of a scalpel—and hopefully, today would help her significantly with that.
She shoved her inhaler back into her bag, checked the time on her phone and then got to her feet and let herself out of the cubicle. Briefly checking in the mirror that she didn’t look like she’d just dry heaved a bloody flower out of her lungs, Emery headed out into the empty corridor and towards her locker to grab her helmet and coat.
Her bicycle was one of only a few left in the rack when she arrived to unlock it and the last of the buses were already pulling out of the layby as she walked her bike to the gates. As she paused to fix her helmet, Emery noticed a group of three girls standing by the crossing just outside the gates, chatting and laughing like they had all the time in the world. One of them was perched on the seat of her bicycle, one foot on a pedal, whilst the other kept her steady on the pavement. This girl was wearing a dark-teal waterproof jacket with high-viz silver stripes on the arms and she’d swapped her polished black school pumps for a pair of pristine-looking trainers; her leather backpack was slung over her shoulders, and a helmet, the same colours as the jacket, hung from the handlebar of her bike. Her dark-blonde hair was swept back from her pale oval face in a neat plait, and she flashed small, perfectly white teeth as she chatted with her friends— relaxed and smug and clearly in her element at the centre of the group.
Lila Jensen.
President of the debating and chess club. Vice-president of the Modern Foreign Languages Society. Treasurer of the book club and robotics club. One of the most popular writers for the school magazine, regular soloist in the choir and the absolute bitch who thought she was guaranteed the position of Photography Club President next year.
Over Emery’s cold, dead body.
Which… to be fair, was looking fairly likely if this disease had its way.
Emery checked her watch. Frick, frick, frick! She was going to be late. Hastily, she mounted her bicycle and pedalled towards the crossing, which was just turning green for pedestrians. Swinging purposefully close to the trio of girls, so that she made one of them flinch out of her way, Emery shot across the road and sent a quick glance over her shoulder to catch Lila’s face wrinkling in annoyance. Emery flashed her teeth in what she hoped was a clear ‘eat my dust, psycho’ grin and set off at her usual racing pace towards her next club meeting.
Did it count as a club? Emery belonged to eight school clubs. She was president of two of them; vice-president of one; treasurer of another; and social secretary of yet another. And she WAS going to be president of the photography club next year. Five of those eight clubs she unfortunately had to share with Lila—who was also a member of a total of eight school clubs. Wherever Emery signed up to a society, Lila signed up too; whenever Emery started up a new club, Lila put in an application to create another as well… as if she were trying to out-do Emery in extra-curricular prowess. It wasn’t enough that they were already pitted against each other in the academic rankings; Lila just had to dominate outside of the classroom too. Their rivalry had been going on for a few years now, but it had got so bad that Mrs Grealie had banned both of them from joining anymore clubs. Eight, she had insisted, was too many as it was, a ninth was off the cards—they needed to take a step back and get some perspective. If they wanted to join another club, start another club, or run another club, they’d have to drop one first. So, they’d both been restricted to eight clubs, on the penalty of being banned from them all if they tried to join any more.
But that was school clubs. Emery had a ninth club now, outside of school, that she had just signed up for. She would have loved to rub that in Lila’s face, but unfortunately this wasn’t a club she wanted to brag about. In fact, she’d die of humiliation if her classmates found out about this new club and why she belonged to it.
Did it even count as a club? Technically, it was a support group. A support group for those who shared a rare genetic disorder. For those who spat blood and petals and flowers every day. How many of them would there be? And would any of them be like Emery, whose case was even rarer than the typical hanahaki case? Would she be the only one with unique circumstances? She would bet money that no one else had her specific complication.
Did that make her a freak amongst freaks?
Emery grinned to herself as she signalled and took the next left-hand turn. Surely that made her a good candidate for a leadership role? Did support groups have hierarchies? Could she put that on her C.V. one day… President of the Hanahaki Club?
Remi
Remi ignored her phone as it buzzed on the table next to her. Instead, she clicked her tongue a couple of times and continued moving names into different slots on the duty rota on the screen in front of her. After another ten seconds, the phone fell silent and Remi coughed softly against the back of one hand before scrolling through the rota to double-check her work. It was just typical that, despite asking the prefects before the Christmas break for details of their spring term commitments, she was only now getting emails asking for changes to the new rota because someone had Maths intervention on a Monday morning, another two had to attend Design & Technology coursework catch-up on Wednesday lunchtimes, and yet another had a part-time job they’d just started and therefore could no longer do after-school duties. Every one of them had known about these changes before the term had started and still hadn’t bothered to let Remi or Gio know before they’d organised the new rota.
How hard was it to answer an email? Remi had even created an interactive chart where all they’d had to do was tick the boxes for the times they couldn’t do. Only nine of the twenty-two prefects had bothered to respond to the chart. Three had ignored the chart and simply sent her a list of days and times, but hadn’t clarified whether these were times they could or couldn’t do, so she’d had to chase them up and had only heard back the night before they’d returned from the Christmas break.
Remi’s phone started buzzing again and she sighed as she saved her changes to the document and set about emailing it out to the prefect team, whilst the phone continued its persistent ‘rzz-rzz’ on the table. By the time she’d sent the email, the phone had stopped ringing again. After double-checking her calendar for upcoming assignments and replying to an email asking about the Spring Festival committee, Remi shut down her laptop and finally picked up her phone. She ignored the four missed-call notifications and sent Gio a quick message to let him know the rota had been changed and the degree to which she intended to unleash the wrath of hell on any prefect who dared to challenge it.
Sometimes—at least three times a week—she wondered why she’d ever wanted to be Head Girl.
Gio responded promptly with a laughing emoji and then a devil face and fire emoji, which was his way of saying that, as Head Boy, he would fully support her hell-fire rage should it become necessary to inflict it upon their woefully incompetent prefect team.
As Remi was in the middle of replying, her phone rang again and this time, with a roll of her eyes, she answered.
“Mum?”
“Where are you?”
“At school. Just finishing up some work.”
“You’re going to be late.”
Remi huffed quietly as she packed her laptop into her bag. “I’m not,” she said. “I’ve got ten minutes before the bus leaves.”
“And how long will it take you to get to the bus stop?”
“Six minutes.”
“Remi—!”
“I’m leaving now.”
Her mother sighed heavily. “Look, Remi, I know this is embarrassing for you, but your symptoms are only getting worse. You can’t afford to have an operation right now. You’re finishing your A-Levels and you’ve only got until June before—”
“Mum, I don’ have time for this, I have a bus to catch.”
“I’m just saying that exams aren’t far away—”
“Mum, I have to go.”
There was an exasperated pause on the other end of the line and then: “Let me know when you get there.”
Remi let herself out of the Prefect Office and started down the empty corridor to the exit. “I will.” She raised the back of her hand to her mouth again and coughed gingerly. “I’ve really got to go.”
“Okay. Make sure you make the most of the session because this is—”
Remi coughed twice more. “Mum!”
“Okay, okay. See you later.”
“Bye, Mum.”
Remi hung up and pressed a hand to her chest against the tickling in her left lung. Stopping by the exit, she swallowed hard and then held her breath for five seconds, hoping the tickle would die down of its own accord. When she released her breath, there was no shifting sensation under her ribcage and no urge to cough.
Remi paused to check her half-written message to Gio, frowned as she hesitated for a moment, and then deleted it before shoving the device in her blazer pocket and stepping out through the doors into the January gloom.
Don’t be pathetic, she told herself. You don’t have time for that. You have a disease to beat, you’ve only got five months to do it and this support group, apparently, might be the only hope you have of succeeding. Don’t screw it up by being so embarrassingly weak.
Next time: Episode 2—Losers in Love, Part 2
Teaser:
Taran glanced at the clock. He’d been on time, but it was now four thirty-five and Anabelle had said she was expecting four more attendees. Had they changed their minds? Decided this was too stupid and humiliating, and they’d be better off staying at home and smothering their feelings with junk food and video games? Shit, that’s what he should have done. Screw Cassie and her threats. No way would she really talk to Kai. Probably. Shit.
The Hanahaki Club Index
Welcome to the index page of The Hanahaki Club. Please scroll down to find links to each published episode. If you need any help, let me know via the message button at the bottom of the page.
Author’s Notes:
Emery and Remi: the over-achievers in the group. Next week you’ll get to meet the others!
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Next week: Episode 1—Losers in Love, Part 2
PJ
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Stunning writing, especially the imagery and use of colour, and very real characters! Very happy I stumbled on your story!
Brilliant writing as always PJ…..I’m just frustrated that I can’t scroll to the next instalment, feel a huge craving to know what comes next and anxiety that I’m short on patience and how can I distract myself long enough before the next issue.
Thank God for the Dying Fall, such beautiful original concepts 🥰