Tanaka sits with his back against the wall, head tilted back as he waits for the moment of weakness to pass. He should able to walk up the stairs without it leaving him out of breath, dizzy and feeling faint. But it does.
It is relatively new however, that he actually feels so dizzy he needs to sit down, so faint that when his vision darkens to black for a few seconds (longer and longer each time it happened) that sometimes he wasn't sure if he'd even fainted or not.
His head was too heavy on his shoulders and he worried that if he leaned his skull too far back, his neck would be too weak to lift it back up. Sometimes, it was. But he refused to think about it when he was forced to cradle the back of his head and lift it up with his hand until it was upright again. There was nothing worth thinking about.
Mealtimes were hell and Tanaka could see a few options, none of which were particularly feasable.
He could eat and feel the food heavy in his gut, dirtying him.
Someone would look over him approvingly, but would say nothing.
He could not eat, but feel even worse. Dizzy, sick.
Satou would frown, mouth twisted in ugly annoyance.
Sometimes, Tanaka would go to bed and wake up heavier than when he went to sleep. It had begun to happen with increasing, frightening regularity. He wasn't even certain if he was killing himself, his body just dying in the middle of the night, or if someone else had been in to reset him to a more viable state. His ribs returned to being hidden behind a layer of fat, muscle and skin.
The task of carving away at his body from the inside interrupted once more by something so trivial as death. Except, losing weight wasn't his goal; Tanaka wasn't sure what the goal was supposed to be.
The others try to get him to drink his calories. He knows they do. They know he's more likely to consume it if it's liquid, so they add sugar to his coffee and offer him thick, heavy soups but he knows. So Tanaka lets it sit beside him and go cold. He pretends to forget about it and everyone else pretends to forget about it too, because it's just easier to operate like that.
Sometimes they make comments about his weight, drawing attention to how thin he is, taking deliberate care not to actually mention how little he's eating. As though they're trying to assure him, 'Yes you're thin, we know, you don't have to keep doing this,' and it's not always malicious, though sometimes it is.
It makes Tanaka want to scream, makes him want to hit things because he doesn't know how to say, 'It's not about my weight,' he doesn't even know if that's what he actually wants to say. He doesn't know how to explain it to men who just don't understand, that he can't.
He can't, he can't explain why he can't eat the foods they put in front of him, can't explain why some foods are okay one day and unimaginably disgusting to him the next. He can't explain why the food they put in front of him wants to make him heave. He can't begin to describe why it reminds him of shit and dirt full of live, scuttling insects, and all sorts of other repulsive substances that no sane being would ever willingly consume, because it just does.
It would raise more questions than Tanaka himself knew how to answer and it was a such a struggle, a constant struggle that he didn't know how to deal with. How was he supposed to explain something that he had no understanding of?
So he just let it be.
He didn't eat the foods that others could swallow but made his stomach churn. With his head constantly aching it made it hard to think, to focus enough to remember what foods he could actually allow himself to eat, so he just didn't.
Fish was usually safe.
Yet, this time, when it so much as brushed his taste-buds, Tanaka could feel a knot in his throat coil up tight and he had to push himself away from the table, fighting the urge to double over and choke up stomach acid and bile. A familiar sensation hit the back of his mouth as the muscles in his throat made him retch. Eyes were on him, invading, judging.
Tanaka took a few deep breaths to steady himself, eyes closed as he exhaled the tension. Someone clapped a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to be supportive but Tanaka knew whoever it was didn't understand, none of them could- he didn't understand.
At least, he thought, Satou hadn't been there to watch him.
This time, at least.