Yuichiro didn't know when it started.
All he could remember was gradually losing his mind with each passing day. Each painful day.
The whispers, the shadows, the noises. Yuichiro knew ghosts and such didn't exist. The only explanation was that he was going insane.
He barely slept anymore. Every time he fell asleep, he'd see red eyes and blonde hair. That same face haunted him every night. So he remained awake, as much as he could.
His life consisted only of work— his shitty job at a convenience store. He barely got his high school diploma, so college was out of the question. Nor did he have money to cover the expenses. No parents, no siblings...no family at all. Yuichiro was entirely alone.
But he didn't feel alone. Not when there was the constant feeling of something lurking behind him. Like he was being watched all the time, but he couldn't see the stalker.
He thought about calling the police some nights, when it got particularly bad, but he feared what they'd do to him when they realized just how much he'd lost his mind.
Yuichiro was losing more and more of himself each day. He needed help.
So he sought help. A small clinic with a few psychiatrists not far from his work. He went there every Wednesday after his shift ended, to see Dr. Hiragi. He looked forward to those days the most. Dr. Hiragi was so pleasant to be around. Yuichiro felt as though he might love the man.
Surely, the doctor would find some way to fix him. After all, psychiatrists were the most sane in the world.
Yuichiro dreaded his shifts at work, but he dreaded returning to his dingy apartment more. After a long shift, he was ready to collapse on his bed and sleep the rest of the day. But he couldn't do that.
Yuichiro couldn't sleep.
So instead, he bought a few groceries before leaving work. Nothing too grand, since he was barely able to cover his rent and utility costs. Even though his rent was considered cheap (due to how crappy it was), minimum wage didn't get him very far.
He ended up purchasing a couple packs of ramen and some bottled milk. Lately, he barely got hungry so he never spent too much on food. However, after a long shift and having had no lunch, Yuichiro knew he would need to force himself to eat dinner. Hopefully it would stay down. Some days, he would throw up violently after eating. Every time he did, he always felt like someone was holding his hair back. But it was just his imagination.
As soon as he arrived at his shitty apartment, Yuichiro got to work with making his ramen. When it was cooked, he took the bowl to the living room and put on one of the few channels he got. It was some old cartoon that he had never seen before, and even though it wasn't funny at all, Yuichiro wasn't sure what else to watch.
It wasn't like his brain was processing what he was seeing. He just stared at the screen absentmindedly as he dipped his chopsticks back into the ramen bowl and shovelled it in his mouth. He got like that often— just staring off into space and not being present in the moment.
He was snapped from his daze when he heard his phone ring. There were only a few people who had his number: his boss, landlord, and Dr. Hiragi. Yuichiro scrambled to grab his phone and his heart skipped a beat when he saw it was the doctor.
"H-Hello?"
"Hello, Yuichiro," Dr. Hiragi's smooth, honey-like voice said.
Yuichiro swallowed thickly. "I-Is something wrong?"
"Not at all, I just wanted to check up on you and see how you're doing."
Yuichiro felt his cheeks grow warm. "I-I'm..." he trailed off, unsure how to respond. He wasn't fine, anyone could tell, so there wasn't any point in lying.
