Arcane Sequence: 1987 (WLW)

November 23rd, 1987: Off-Day

This novella contains mature language.

Yua stared blankly into the files on her kitchen island and sighed in puzzling defeat. She'd decided to take the day off a week ago when she found out her parents would be arriving today, but she was also thankful when she awoke that morning and didn't have to go back to her office. It was bizarre that it felt so unsterile and wrong to be in that room anymore and she had half a mind to find a new office to rent.

The upside: Ryan wouldn't know where to find her. It was a very good thing she held all the power in her relationships with her patients as far as where her loft was truly located. Something about having her office only a few feet away from her loft made her feel somewhat protected and safe in the past. In complete control over it all. Now, not so much.

The downside: She would have to change her routine and she really liked having a set schedule the majority of the time. It was everything. Just what she needed most days and it had always felt just right. Also, being able to be called on such short notice by her patients or setting up spontaneous sessions would be much more difficult without living right across from her office. However, now it just felt idiosyncratic to hang onto her routine when it no longer held its previous worth.

Not since Jaime moved in...

Jaime was an irrefutable disruption and at first she thought her to be rather negative one with how easily Yua felt herself changing so rapidly. That said, now she felt different. All because of that one small, yet immensely powerful touch.

She lifted her hand and stared at it recalling the usual burn. Generally, when anyone touched her or she touched them, any type of touch whether holding a hidden meaning or completely innocent, caused a burning to her skin. The only person who it hadn't was Carrie and that was because Yua had grown used to her over time. Jaime was...different. Yes, it was still there when she'd grasped onto Jaime's hand yesterday, but it died away rather quickly. Maybe too quickly. She wasn't sure if she should be afraid or ecstatic. Was there a happy medium or was it okay to feel both?

Either way, when she touched Jaime, she felt protected, sure of her own welfare and that she wouldn't let her get hurt. She also felt a bit pathetic for letting herself fall into such a position. She really had no idea who Ryan was at all.

The session had started out with him apologizing for his behaviour in their previous session and ended with him going down an even more treacherous road. The proverbial rabbit hole, so to speak. However, this one wasn't somewhere he was capable of escaping once his deeds were done. Yua should have seen it coming, but the man that transitioned from sheepish to malicious in a single instant was captivatingly horrifying. She didn't know how to react when he touched her and his presumption that she was sleeping with Jaime was even more disturbing. Not because of the idea that sleeping with Jaime would be a bad thing, it wasn't something she ever really thought about as sex held no appeal for her, but it was more the fact that he was projecting his own problems onto her turning them into hers in the process.

If he showed up again, that would be the end of her and Yua was afraid to even leave the loft. Yet, she had to and the fear was crippling the closer it came to her parents arrival time.

What if Ryan was outside, laying in waiting for her to rise from the building?

Yua shivered, then thought back to Jaime again. Just recalling the warmth of her hand, its softness, made her calm. Maybe she was just kidding herself into thinking she didn't want, or rather, need to get to know Jaime better. Everything about her caught her interest and that in and of itself was paralyzing. Fascinating, but paralyzing all the same.

She had extremely enjoyed their dinners together, but last night that hadn't happened. Ryan crashed into their newly forming routine and she hated that. Plus, she would be having to deal with her mother's nagging very soon and wasn't in the mood to hear more lectures on finding a respectable husband so she could have children and stay at home. Or about her lack of weight loss and obvious weight gain.