Chapter Text
“I don’t get it,” Gon said numbly, staring unblinkingly at the vibrant and blood-smeared flower petals scattered across their lunchroom table. They were as beautiful as they were deadly. “How can someone not love you, Killua?”
“There are different kinds of love, Gon,” Killua answered, and his tone held the faintest trace scorn. “Think about it: there’s familial love, right? That’s what you have with your aunt and what I have with my sister. Then there’s…friendship. What you and I have. And, finally, romantic love. Being in love is different then just loving someone, and that’s what causes Hanahaki.”
The words echo over and over in Gon’s mind. In love, Killua said. Killua was in love with someone, but they didn’t feel the same way. And Killua—Gon’s best friend, the most important person in his life—was slowly dying for that love.
One day, once Killua’s unrequited love grew strong enough, these petals would clog his throat and he would stop breathing. Killua would be gone, forever. Gon’s heart lurched at the thought and the cafeteria blurred as his eyes prickled.
“It's okay, really,” Killua said and Gon jolted.
“How—how can you say that?!” he snapped, white-hot anger washing over him. He didn’t care how Killua felt—he wanted to find Killua’s unrequited lover and shake them, demand how they could be so blind to how amazing Killua was in every single way and force them to love Killua back, to save his life because Gon couldn’t—
“Because,” Killua said simply. “I can’t change how I feel. I don’t need my feelings to be returned to love him, y’know? At this point, all I can do is support him for however long I have left.”
“So, it's a guy?”
Killua rolled his eyes. “Don’t try anything, Gon. I’m not telling you who it is and you’ll never find out. So just drop it, okay?”
Gon scowled as Killua went back to his lunch, unwrapping a chocolate bar as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. Like he hadn’t just told Gon that he was going to soon die of a highly fatal disease.
I’ll find him, Gon swore to himself silently. He would find the person Killua was in love with and somehow get him to fall back in love with Killua and save Killua’s life.
Gon couldn’t accept anything else.