Asphyxiation

Black Ink Seeping Through - 4

Noboru's heart would not cease its sudden onset tachycardia. Its palpitations pounded against his ribcage and he could feel the pulse beating in his neck surge to greater heights. He felt dizzy as he departed for his homeroom. There was a borderline feverish heat overtaking his face and searing the tip of his ears. There was no room for introspection, no room for coherent, rational thought — there was only the anxiety possessing his fingers; the perspiration erupting along his skin.

His shin collided with a desk leg; he stumbled and found himself in his homeroom class. He carefully picked his way across the half-filled room and deposited himself in his assigned seat. Noboru's eyes found the clock above the doorway. He stared at the red second hand as it moved gradually around the numbers. He remained in a sort of trance, heart thumping and mind strangely vacant. Usually, Noboru had too much noise in his head, but now there was nothing.

A strange thrill circulated throughout his nervous system. It felt like ages had passed, but the second hand had barely crossed half the numbers. A mere thirty-second window. Noboru blinked and tried to return to himself. His attempt included methodically removing the supplies he would need for his first class of the day. He was slow to retrieve his notebook, he was even slower in flipping through it. His neatly written notes on organic chemical reactions filled half the pages, in a dark decorative ink. It lacked the careless smudges and smearing of his numerous sketchbooks, as if the boy treated the notebook as a separate artwork in its final stages.

Too soon did he run out of pages. When he reached the first blank one, his hand paused in the air for another short window of time. Then robotically he reached down for a pen — and that was when the concept of time grew hazy for Noboru. He was only aware that one moment he was unscrewing the cap of his pen, the next the bell chimed, class began, and a vague, structured lesson slipped by his awareness. At the end of the class, Noboru was left with fifteen pages — not filled with notes — but filled solely of drawings of Y/n. Y/n waving at Noboru. Noboru's hands shook as he roused from his daze and thumbed through the roughly inked images.

There were tiny variations in the placid smile on the (h/c) boy's face, slight degree differences in the exact angle of Y/n's face when he met Noboru's eyes, and there were many versions of Y/n's hand, half-poised in a tentative wave. Many corners of the pages were dedicated in sketching only Y/n's hand. Noboru's eyes studied the tiny cross-hatched shadow of his wrist bone, the crinkles of his knuckles, and faint bulge of the veins on the underside of Y/n's barely exposed wrist. Noboru's fingers tightened around the notebook, his eyes feeling trapped; his mind feeling trapped. Caged and allowed only to focus upon his subject.

Noboru couldn't stop trembling; couldn't stop his heart from beating wildly out of control. He had never felt so possessed by a passion. He had never been so seized by a need to capture another's likeness. But even this frightening trance paled in comparison to the heat Noboru could feel radiating off his face. He pried one hand off the notebook and reached up to his own face. His skin was burning.

This isn't... Noboru's thoughts spiraled without direction. He quickly shut the notebook with a loud snap. He shoved it clumsily in his bag and hid it beneath his other books and folders. But it didn't help. The image stuck with Noboru, seared into the back of his eyelids. Y/n waving at him; noticing him. Noboru was no stranger to obsessions... but he was a stranger to this. Because this was — this wasn't an obsession. At least not the kind he was accustomed to. Obsessions did not cause his heart to race; obsessions did not catch his skin on fire.

He was obsessed in the way he hunted down records of classical music until he found the precise version and movement that eased his sensitive ear. Obsessed in the way he did not mind drawing a single fruit a hundred times until he perfected his abilities and communicated his impression of the subject.