Work Text:
Though the windows were wide open, the air in the classroom seemed suffocatingly still. Its weight muffled the sounds of pencils scraping on paper and of bags being searched for their contents. Even the sharp crinkling of plastic bottles could not disrupt the strange veil of quietude that had settled over the students present.
Youji lifted his head slowly and glanced around the room.
There was no sense of pressure inside his head and no popping in his ears at the motion, which meant that he was, for once, not experiencing a sudden spell of dizziness. Carefully, he moved his eyes all the way to the left, then all the way to the right and back again without turning his head.
He felt no pain. It wasn’t a migraine then either.
Youji looked around once more. No one in the room appeared to have interrupted their tasks to assess the odd situation like he had. Strangely enough, any hushed conversations that normally would have taken place during class seemed to have died down as well.
Feeling somewhat bewildered, Youji lowered his gaze to his worksheet once more, only to find its contents entirely illegible. The notes he had written in pencil looked strangely smudged, warped even, and bore no resemblance to his otherwise clean handwriting. The black ink each task had been printed in had formed blotches of varying size and opacity on the muddy shade of the cheap and flimsy paper, as though it had been soaked through with water. Youji tentatively placed his fingertips on the otherwise undisturbed worksheet that was lying down flat on his desk the way only dry paper would.
But sure enough, his fingers came away wet.
A strange smell clung to them that resembled neither the scent of printer paper nor that of fresh ink. To Youji, it seemed unnervingly organic.
Carefully, he brought his hand closer to his nose, taking notice of how shaky his movements were. When he took a shallow but sufficiently deep breath just the way he had learned in chemistry class, his chest suddenly tightened as though he had exerted himself to the brink of complete exhaustion. Operating on reflex alone, he inhaled sharply and the strange smell flooded his head immediately. It was neither sweet nor overly unpleasant, but the tingling persistence with which it crept into the crevices of his nostrils until it seemed to reach into the cavernous space inside his skull, where his squirming brain painfully recoiled from it, made him feel utterly nauseous. For a moment, Youji’s surroundings vanished from his sight and only the eerie sensation of being filled completely by the earthy odour remained.
Then, his body responded.
A horrible throbbing erupted below his ribcage in a place he had never even been aware of before. Somewhere between his stomach and his intestines, an ache was spreading.
Of something springing to life. Flowering with ample production only to wither away again in a single wheezing breath.
Youji spasmed on his chair.
Once.
Twice.
He grasped the wooden seat and dug his fingers into the hard surface until the indescribable scraping in this new, horrifically unfamiliar part of his body subsided to a degree that was at least somewhat bearable.
The room had returned to him now.
The sounds remained muffled but the familiar sight of the blurry blackboard helped Youji take breath after steadying breath. His head was pounding with the pulse of his heart, but still there was no pain. With utmost care, he directed his gaze down to his worksheet. His handwriting was legible now, the characters forming neat rows with even spaces between them. Each task was visible in crisp stark black against the greyish paper.
Youji exhaled. His chest felt lighter. The churning activity in his body could now be attributed to a budding stomach ache or perhaps gnawing hunger. Things he had experienced before.
Lifting his eyes one more time took a tremendous amount of effort, but through the exertion, Youji could sense that his overall state was improving. It was a sensation he knew to look out for and he recognised its signs with uncanny accuracy these days.
Gently, the room drifted into focus and just as the last thin veil of mucus had been blinked away, Youji found himself gazing into a pair of amber eyes. Their unrelenting intensity would have unsettled him on any other day, but now the steely glare proved unexpectedly comforting. Deep within his mind, Youji felt an anchor settle.
The trembling of his hands finally stopped. The suffocating scent was drained from his head and his heart went as still as the quiet stagnant air in the room, before it resumed a steady calming beat.
Youji blinked. Tetsuo did not.
Youji blinked again, then held Tetsuo’s firm gaze. He felt no anxiety and no discomfort.
Only a vast sense of stillness and serenity.
When Tetsuo turned around to face the board again, Youji heard the sound of the bell announcing the end of the period.