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Hanahaki Disease

 Hanahaki Disease
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Hanahaki Disease is a fictional disease where someone begins coughing up flower petals because they have unrequited feelings for someone. The flowers can grow in the stomach, lungs, or heart, though it is traditionally in the lungs. Hanahaki Disease is a painful, slow disease that often develops over months, if not years, and begins with coughing up a few petals, and grows in intensity and pain until the victim is coughing up entire flowers, at which point the disease has reached its final stages. If not treated, the disease is fatal. It's primarily an online phenomenon that appears in Fan Works, but it has appeared in original works as well.
Hanahaki Disease originates from Japanese works. The word hanahaki is a fusion of the Japanese words hana ("flower") and haku ("throw up"). The first usage of the trope is unclear, but it was popularized in Japanese Yaoi Genre fandoms before spreading to Korean fandoms and then other international fandoms.
This trope is popular because it has a lot of melodramatic angst potential, while also being pretty. Death by Hanahaki Disease is tragic but beautiful - the victim is killed from within by something as beautiful as flowers. Haunted by their unrequited love, the person usually tries to cover up their illness. They'll leave behind trails of bloody flowers, which are both horrific and aesthetically pleasing. Flower Motifs are often used, which adds to the symbolism. The flowers are frequently associated with their unrequited love interest: it could be their favorite flower, their favorite color, a flower they're named after, or something along those lines. (So, for example, if Bob is in love with Sakura, he might cough up cherry blossoms.)
Despite how deadly Hanahaki Disease is, it can be instantly cured if it turns out the other person likes the dying person back. It can also be cured by surgery, but this cure often means that the person will lose their feelings for the person they love (a double-edged sword that amps up the drama). Alternatively, the person being operated on will lose all memory of the person. If, for some reason, it can't be cured, it sometimes can be managed with medication (though this is not seen too often), but it never fully goes away.
If the sick character witnesses the person they are pining for being lovey-dovey with someone else their symptoms may worsen.
The trope carries some Unfortunate Implications, as the person being pined for is either forced to return the victim's feelings (something that cannot truly be forced from someone and that no one should feel obligated to do under any circumstances) or be responsible for their death. Alternate versions of the trope have been proposed to avoid these implications, either by making the disease an inconvenience rather than life-threatening or by shifting the disease's trigger to the victim not confessing their feelings without regard to whether the other person returns their feelings or not. Others have suggested widening the disease to things besides love, like bottled up emotions or trauma.
Sub-trope to Incurable Cough of Death, Hopeless Suitor, Flowers of Romance, and All Love Is Unrequited. Related to Body Horror and Victorian Novel Disease. If an LGBT character coughs up relevant flowers, see Queer Flowers.
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Hollow VA (Web Video)
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DBTropes
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The cover of chapter 45 of Tokyo Ghoul:re shows Kanae vomiting and choking on rose petals. This is two chapters after Eto tortures him with a manipulative Breaking Speech that exploits his unrequited love towards Tsukiyama.
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 Tokyo Ghoul (Manga)
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Wonderlab: There is an Abnormality based on this concept, known as the "Staining Rose". The rose desires only one specific person that satisfies the conditions to manage it to "resonate" with it. If anyone besides that person manages it, or if that person neglects it for a certain period of time, the rose will inflict those outside of its Containment Unit with a contagious disease that makes the infected cough up red rose petals until they die. Word of God states that Staining Rose is not based on Hanahaki Disease, but the side effects from managing it improperly resemble this trope.
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 Hanahaki Disease / int_49ff762
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Played with in Torchwood "Small Worlds", where a man dies from what appears to be this (complete with Vomit Indiscretion Shot) but it later turns out to be The Fair Folk protecting a child from the unsavoury character. The feelings are obviously unrequited, but in this case that's definitely a good thing.
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 Hanahaki Disease / int_4f045dec
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Chicken, Fox and Flowers has Mingjue start suffering from this after he notices that Xichen and Meng Yao act like Sickening Sweethearts with each other, but not with him, which he takes as evidence that they don't care about him nearly as much.
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 Hanahaki Disease / int_70483e88
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Cheekface's "Next To Me", a cheerily upbeat song about heartache, has a line about our unfortunate singer "getting nauseous and puking up flowers" as part of the trials and tribulations of an unrequited crush or breakup.
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Danganronpa: Memento Mori: Haruhi turns out to have the disease, requires medication to alleviate her symptoms, and as her condition worsens she coughs up more rose petals. Uniquely, there is no indication that unrequited love was the cause.
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 Danganronpa: Memento Mori (Fanfic)
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In the Pokémon: The Series one-shot forget-me-not, Misty gets the disease because of her feelings for Ash.
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 Hanahaki Disease / int_e21a006
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The BTS AU fic the weight of love, or idol's disease presents a scenario where the people getting Hanahaki Disease isn't the one in love but the loved one. As the title indicates, is quite common among entertainers, and a legitimate problem for entertainment companies as they want their talent to be loved enough to become popular but no so loved that it endangers their livehood. Companies try to reduce the risk by concealing every personal info about their talent (even their legal names), and music labels rarely debut soloists going for multitudinous groups instead (as fans will divide their love and attention between the members), but even those measures aren't always enough.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

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Fanfic Tropes
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Flower Garden Index
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Index Syndrome
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Indexitis
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The Newest Ones in the Book
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Unrequited Love Tropes
 Cheekface (Music) / int_e84b5cf4
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Hanahaki Disease
 Seraphim Slum (Video Game) / int_e84b5cf4
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Hanahaki Disease