Chapter Text
You are sitting in your chair.
No, not sitting. You are perched, positioned — or, dare I say, reclining. You are the god of this room, and this room is a battlefield, and your chair is your throne, and your clipboard is your sword. Trust. Technically, you are a therapist. Are you legally qualified though? Debatable.
The air is still.
The fluorescent light above you flickers once, ominously. You take a deep, solemn breath and prepare for yet another therapy session. You are, frankly, exhausted. You’ve been here for two hours, thirty-five minutes and seventeen seconds, and in that time, you have diagnosed five people with narcissism, one with delusions of grandeur, and two with schizophrenia.
You’re on your third carton of apple juice. You feel powerful, invincible. (Also mildly bloated.)
Isagi Yoichi enters.
He walks in like a normal person, his average walking pace of 3.04 mph further demonstrating his normalcy. His posture is upright, his hair styled in a stereotypical manner. His teeth are neither perfectly straight nor crooked, simply standard molars for a standard human. His eyes, however, are the eyes of a man who has thought about every choice he's made since kindergarten and regrets all of them equally.
You stare at him for a few seconds as he blinks, waiting for you to acknowledge him. Looking back down at your clipboard, you question him flatly. “Name?”
“…Isagi Yoichi.”
You nod once, curtly. Your expression is disappointed, as if this is the worst possible answer he could have given. There’s no purpose, really, to doing this. Your choice to unsettle all of your patients is purely for your own satisfaction.
Isagi shifts in place, clearly unnerved.
“State your problem?” you ask him.
Isagi hesitates. You practically feel the hesitation radiating off him. Then, at last, he speaks. “I think I overthink.”
“Go on,” you whisper encouragingly.
And so he does. He starts to……… rant?
“On the field. Off the field. Before matches. After matches. Before breakfast. After texting someone. Sometimes I replay conversations in my head and write them down and rewrite them again. I think about what I could’ve done better in a play weeks after the match is over. Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about a pass I didn’t make. And then sometimes when I finally stop thinking, I panic because I’m not thinking. So I start thinking about why I’m not thinking, and then — ”
You rise from your chair with solemnness. You start to pace. You do not need to pace, but you feel it is appropriate for this situation. It adds cinematic tension, trust. You whirl back around to face Isagi.
You point at him. “You,” you declare, “are scared.”
He blinks dumbly, confused. “...of what?”
You gesture vaguely but don’t elaborate on anything. Truth is, you are not at all qualified for this job in the slightest and have zero idea what you are doing. You continue pausing dramatically, all while making prolonged uncomfortable eye contact with Isagi. “Have you considered therapy?”
Isagi blinks rapidly again, appearing even more confused than before. “I — I thought this was therapy.”
He stares at the door and contemplates escape. Except he’s too polite. That’s his fatal flaw. Noticing his inclination to leave, you nod at him. “Go on, you can leave.”
And so he leaves.
Session over.