![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
SEVEN VICES, WEEK 1, MONDAY EVENING
Takao feels terrible as he goes up the stairs after dinner. Even physiologically, in the world of the flesh where it's been exactly one day, his schedule has been all thrown off. No running in the morning, no pool exercise at any time in the day - and dinner does nothing to make matters better. It sits strangely in his stomach, with the gap growing between his eyes and his brain and that clock. There's no helping this. He can't go out for an evening run.
That's the only reason he's not going back outside, he tells himself as he ascends the stairs. Nothing to do with the situation. He won't even think about it. "The killing game"? Yeah, no, those words don't mean anything. It's only a game if nobody gets hurt. After that happens, you get some other shitty thing that doesn't even deserve a name. By the time he's on the landing, Takao has noticed the time getting distinctly worse. He's faintly afraid of what will happen when he falls asleep. How will his nightmares feel? Can he finally get time to seem like it's flying instead of dragging? Or will he spend entire days listening to the sound of Shin-chan's tears hitting the ground, in the dark hallway, without seeing his face? The first week feels so funny now, how he'd thought they had never before been apart for so long.
In this terrible transition from tenfold to hundredfold fugue, he sees the shadows stretched out by the moonlight on the cheap carpet several subjective seconds before making the connection to their owner: Youko, where she rather reasonably belongs on the first floor. Animal metaphors are pretty common in the Japanese high school boys basketball scene; he hasn't heard of any foxes, though. Takao wonders, with her budgeting and cunning, whether she would make a good manager. Greed is better for that than Wrath, but makes coach seem like a slightly unlikelier position. It's a good idea to keep in the back of his mind; talking to her is an immediate even better one, he concludes, just about an hour after leaving everybody downstairs.
"Ready to get some nice, refreshing sleep, Youko-san?"
That's the only reason he's not going back outside, he tells himself as he ascends the stairs. Nothing to do with the situation. He won't even think about it. "The killing game"? Yeah, no, those words don't mean anything. It's only a game if nobody gets hurt. After that happens, you get some other shitty thing that doesn't even deserve a name. By the time he's on the landing, Takao has noticed the time getting distinctly worse. He's faintly afraid of what will happen when he falls asleep. How will his nightmares feel? Can he finally get time to seem like it's flying instead of dragging? Or will he spend entire days listening to the sound of Shin-chan's tears hitting the ground, in the dark hallway, without seeing his face? The first week feels so funny now, how he'd thought they had never before been apart for so long.
In this terrible transition from tenfold to hundredfold fugue, he sees the shadows stretched out by the moonlight on the cheap carpet several subjective seconds before making the connection to their owner: Youko, where she rather reasonably belongs on the first floor. Animal metaphors are pretty common in the Japanese high school boys basketball scene; he hasn't heard of any foxes, though. Takao wonders, with her budgeting and cunning, whether she would make a good manager. Greed is better for that than Wrath, but makes coach seem like a slightly unlikelier position. It's a good idea to keep in the back of his mind; talking to her is an immediate even better one, he concludes, just about an hour after leaving everybody downstairs.
"Ready to get some nice, refreshing sleep, Youko-san?"
no subject
The way Youko perceives the world now - dream-like, everything wrapped in and slowed down by an invisible liquid - only makes it worse. What's to come is beginning to genuinely frighten her. She really will have to act quickly, before she can no longer act at all.
To that end she waits, meditating, in an empty corridor for people to come her way.
When Takao arrives, and unaccompanied, Youko almost smiles.
"Very..." She bites her lip and glances downwards, looking for all the world like there's something else she wants to say but isn't sure she should. "Well... I suppose there's only one way to find out if this extends to ours dreams, doesn't it..."
no subject
That's the weird part of sleep - by definition, you can't force it, or decide when to start and stop. Without the rigor of real practice to set into his bones, hours will probably pass with him lying awake in fear.
If they find out something disturbing, he really will have to run at night more.
"Can't be helped, though, can it?" He laughs. "We don't want to stop sleeping forever and pass out somewhere outside the hotel room, and get in trouble." The rules have engraved themselves into his memory, as much as he'd like the opposite.
"I mean, if you're that curious, I could totally wait for a while and wake up Youko-san to see how it was."