The Hanahaki Club: Episode 31
Episode 31: Dates, Mates & Fakes, Part 5
So far…
Taran lied to his friends and told them he had a girlfriend, so now he is fake-dating Merryn, who agreed to help him out only if he attends the hanahaki support group with her.
Episode 31: Dates, Mates & Fakes, Part 5
Taran
A glob of rain slid off Taran’s hood and landed on his phone screen. He brushed it away with his thumb and tried to cradle the device closer to his chest to protect it from the hammering downpour. This was a bad day to do this. Correction—any day was a bad day to do this. If he sent Merryn a message now to cancel, would she get it in time? He should just tell his friends he met his imaginary girlfriend online and they’d broken up already. There was a strong chance they wouldn’t believe him, and he’d probably be mercilessly teased about exaggerating his relationship status until they were all old and wrinkled and missing most of their teeth, but they wouldn’t be able to prove anything, and it would be better than getting caught faking it with someone he barely knew. It wasn’t really fair to drag Merryn into his mess either, even if she had been the one to suggest this ludicrous plan in the first place. He should text her and cancel. Definitely. Right now.
Taran held his phone flat to his chest and glanced around at the gathering crowd. It had rained heavily for nearly three days in a row and the paving around the turning circle was riddled with puddles that had started as singular reservoirs but were now joining up to form a singular wading pool. The gutter a few feet away was overflowing and a small stream was rushing alongside the curb and down the hill towards the bike sheds. Taran’s trainers made a squelching sound as he shifted uncomfortably on his spot where the Number 72 bus was due to stop in a few minutes. God. January was the worst.
He should cancel. It wasn’t too late. The Number 36 wasn’t here yet either. He could easily shuffle along a few metres and hop on his usual bus home before Merryn got here. Taran was just about to move, when he caught sight of two figures strolling casually towards the turning circle, hand in hand, heads lowered as they navigated the watery terrain. Even in the crowd of coats, hoods and umbrellas, he’d recognise those two anywhere: Kai in his dark blue waterproof, and Cheri in her metallic grey puffer coat. They stopped at the spot for the 36 bus, Cheri with her head turned up towards Kai as she chatted animatedly about something, whilst Kai tried to shield her face from the rain with one arm. It was clear they were completely absorbed in their own world—their mood not at all dampened by the weather.
Taran’s gut twisted unpleasantly at the sight and he turned away to swipe open his phone. This was definitely the worse day to do this. They weren’t going to notice him in this crowd of miserable, soggy students anyway—not with everyone hunkered down in coats and hoods, and not with eyes only for each other.
A figure suddenly appeared at Taran’s elbow and he narrowly avoided an optic trauma on the point of an umbrella as he lifted his head to see who had stepped so close.
“Shi—!”
“Sorry!”
The umbrella jerked back back and then up, until it hovered over Taran’s own head, and he warily eyed it’s bright sky-blue cover, spotted with white-outlined raindrop shapes, before he made eye contact with the owner.
“Didn’t mean to nearly blind you,” Merryn said, smiling brightly, and raising her voice a little to be heard over the sound of the crowd and the rain. She nodded at Taran’s phone, which he was still gripping in the small space between them. “Were you going to call me?”
Taran glanced down at Merryn’s matching bright sky-blue wellies, which were almost luminous in gloom of the late afternoon, and felt both jealous and slightly offended. He looked back up at Merryn’s smile, at her face flushed from the cold, at the wet patch on the shoulder of her coat where it wasn’t fully covered by the umbrella, at the multi-coloured scarf—still as monstrously fluffy as always—and the way her hair was partially tucked into it at her nape, and felt a strange, renewed sense of courage. “I was just going to check you were still up for this,” he said.
“Not getting cold feet?” Merryn asked.
“Only literally.”
“Are your friends around?”
Taran jerked his head in the direction of where Cherie and Kai were huddled together several metres away and Merryn peered around his shoulder to catch a glimpse, tilting the umbrella in the process so that it nearly brained Taran on the temple and he had to grab the stem to right it.
“In the silver coat, right?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
The Number 72 appeared at the gates of the campus, the yellow glow of its headlights blurring together to sweep like a single lighthouse beam on the rain-rippled ground. There was a shift in the surrounding crowd as students moved to form an eager queue.
Merryn looked up at Taran with a questioning tilt of her head. “Are you sure about this? Last chance to back out.”
Taran grimaced. Was he sure? Hell, no. Did he want to get on the other bus with Cherie and Kai and face questions about his ‘girlfriend’, whilst his best friends cuddled up together on the back seat and he tried not to cough up his shredded heart all over their laps? Right now, he’d rather impale himself on Merryn’s obnoxiously loud umbrella.
“I’m sure,” he said.
The Number 72 slowly pulled up next to their section of the turning circle, its juddering engine adding a bass layer to the drumming of the rain and the murmuring chorus of the surrounding crowd.
Merryn nodded. “Okay.” She threw a look over his shoulder again and then leaned forward and grabbed a hold of the side of his hood to bring his face down the short distance between them. Taran felt her hair tickling his cheek and her breath fanning warmly against the shell of his ear, as she whispered, “Come on then, loser.”
The next second, she had let go of his hood and was turning to join the scraggly queue for the Number 72.
What the hell? What was that for?
There was no time to question such unnecessarily weird behaviour—who was the loser now?—since the bus had opened its doors and it was a rush to board and get out of the rain as quickly as possible. Once they were on the bus, he followed Merryn to a nearside seat and settled silently next to her as she leant an elbow on the window, cradled her head in her hand and turned her head to grin at him. Taran raised his eyebrows queryingly in return and shifted his bag on the floor between his feet. As he brushed back the hood from his head, and leant back in his seat with a sigh, his phone vibrated in his hand—once, and then a second time—and he quickly swiped it open to find two messages from Cherie.
C: Today, 15:41—your gf’s cute
C: Today, 15:41—i like her wellies
Next time: Episode 32—The Third Session, Part 1
Teaser:
“That can’t be a true story,” Remi protested.
“It is,” Hassie confirmed. “I read about it too.” She was tempted to add that it wasn’t even the record for the most number of hanahaki cases in an individual patient—some poor woman, who died in 1913, had had eleven separate manifestations of the disease—but then decided against it: this probably wasn’t a helpful tangent to encourage.
Anabelle seemed to think so too as she swiftly changed the subject. “So, Remi, how has your week been?”
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:
I’d like to dedicate this episode to the British weather.
I’ve never done a story with so many POVs and so many storylines before—I’ve never done a weekly serial before either!—so if you don’t mind sharing, I would really love to know if you have a preferred character or storyline from this series—let me know in the comments below, or you can send me a private message using the button below.
Next time: Episode 32—The Third Session, Part 1
PJ
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