Empath

Chapter 2

William MacAlistair opened his eyes slowly. His bleary vision revealed stars on the unfamiliar ceiling above him. It took him a moment to remember where he was. He sat up, and all of the events of the day before came flooding back to him. He remembered that he was sitting in the dusty bedroom that belonged to a boy who died. Despite having slept on the floor, he felt surprisingly well-rested. He assumed this was a result of cutting out Anabelle's emotions last night. He felt much lighter now. Since he hadn't been around people in so long, it had been a while since he had to cut. He hated having to do it, but he knew from previous experience that cutting was the only method that succeeded in releasing those stubborn emotions from his system.

It took Al a second to realize that Yui was awake. He was laying back in bed, with his fluffy head propped up on pillows. His knees were bent, and his piano fingers tapped away at his smartphone. "Morning, Al," he said chipperly. He took a quick glance over at Al before looking back at his phone. There was a pleasant smile on his face, which Al had begun to surmise was his default expression.

"Good morning," Al grumbled. His voice was even more gravelly than usual. He cleared his throat. "Texting a friend?"

"Nah, just making some final adjustments on my website," Yui said.

"Website?"

"'Course," Yui replied, as Al got up and walked over to the side of the bed. "Gotta get myself out there somehow, right? Now that I'm here in Shining City, I'm bound to get more patients!"

"Patients," Al repeated, incredulously, as he rolled his eyes. He laid a hand on the little bedside table and leaned over Yui's shoulder.

"Just a sec," Yui said. "I'm almost done editing." He leaned forward and sat up.

Al took notice of the back of Yui's hairstyle for the first time. It was a rounded, slightly choppy bowl cut, with the underside buzzed. Al had a weakness for undercuts. He briefly imagined running his fingers upward along the short, soft fur and slipping them under the curtain of longer hair, letting the strands massage between his fingers. Oh shit, he quickly snapped himself back to reality. He couldn't believe he was fantasizing about this kid. He noticed he had a slight erection. It's just morning wood, he repeated to himself three times over.

"Alright, here it is," Yui announced. He turned to Al, got really close, and held his phone in front of him.

Based on Al's initial impression of Yui, he would have expected his website to greet visitors with a huge high-quality photograph of Yui gazing seductively at the camera, with an awkward slogan like "fuck your trauma away", so Al was pleasantly surprised to see that the web page looked like that of a normal therapist, which is something Al had become all too familiar with over the years, due to his sister, Meredith, helping him find help online. "This actually looks really nice," his voice softened as he sounded mildly impressed.

"Thanks," Yui smiled. "This is how Anabelle found me."

Al touched the screen and scrolled through the page as Yui held the phone in place. Seeing Yui's thin, delicate fingers next to his own thick digits made him feel huge and awkward. It made him wish he wasn't so hulking. He had a hard time pressing links on the touch-screen, since he was used to using a flip-phone. He felt embarrassed and a little ashamed of both his size and lack of dexterity. He certainly wasn't tech-savvy either.

Yui saw Al's face scrunch up in frustration while he tried to click on the appointment form. "I got it," he said, trying to suppress a giggle. He pressed the little link that led to forms for the patient to fill out. The first one was a typical depression scale chart, something that Al had gotten frighteningly high numbers on when he filled them out years ago.