"Lieutenant! Didn't I tell you not five minutes ago to take Number Twenty-Five to receive his medications?"
"Ah, yes, s-sorry, Hajime." The paperwork in Seiratou's hands fell to the surface of his desk as he jumped out of his chair and bowed in apology to his supervisor before scurrying away in the direction of cell thirteen.
He'd been spacing out far too much in the past week, forgetting things, screwing things up, and Hajime was becoming noticeably irritated with him. More so than usual, that is.
How could Seitarou, with his spectacular memory, be forgetting so many things these days? It was frustrating and puzzling for the supervisor of building thirteen, and it was becoming troublesome enough for him to contemplate the possibility of something being wrong.
Because something obviously was wrong with the young man in his charge if he was making such uncharacteristically careless mistakes.
Seitarou hadn't been sleeping well lately, and the dark semi-circles beneath his eyes testified to this truth despite his lies about being perfectly fine.
After the initial incident, he'd moved through a haze to close out his shift and return home. When he found himself in his small apartment, he couldn't recall how he'd gotten there. Presumably by first taking the light rail, and then...
One moment he was in his small living room, the next he was in the shower, tugging at his hair with his fingers, compulsively combing it out as he let the water flow until it turned cold. Combing his hair had always calmed him, so when he was especially anxious, it was his go-to coping mechanism, like a nervous habit. He managed not to do it while working, partly because he'd been working there long enough now to have control over his habit when he was on-duty. Besides, his job at Nanba Prison and the inmates there only ever made him nervous, not truly anxious for the most part.
But now...
Dressed in his sleep clothes, his signature stars set aside, Seitarou sat on his bed at eight in the morning, dead exhausted, but using a towel to dry his hair and a soft bristle brush to gently brush it through, stroke after stroke as he stared into space and tried to fill the strange void in his mind.
What was he forgetting?
He was forgetting something important...
Why did he hurt so much?
Stroke, stroke, stroke...
Why had Mitsuba's perfume tainted the air of the night duty room when he awoke?
He should put some music on, to soothe his scrambled mind...
Seitarou fell asleep while brushing his hair, sunlight peeking in through the cracks in the blinds, and while he slept, his mind leaked his locked memories to him through dreams.
"So beautiful..." a flirty voice whispered into his ear from behind.
Searing pain that brought tears to his eyes and made him want to scream. He opened his mouth, but no sound would come out. He tried to move, but his body wouldn't obey.
What the hell is going on?
Somebody, help me!
Help!
Seitarou lurched awake, his breath catching in his throat, his heart pounding like he'd been running a marathon. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't get a grip. The sounds of choked sobbing filled the room as Seitarou grappled with the fear filling his mind.
I can't breathe!
Focus, Seitarou! You've been breathing your whole life, you can do this!
In... out... in... in, in, in—can't—!
His labored breathing was painful enough to make his eyes water. He choked between hiccuping sobs, scrabbling with bare hands and feet against the bedspread as he fought the overwhelming fear of human contact that his nightmare had left him with.
How much longer? I'm starting to feel light-headed, and all this choking is making me nauseous...
Why can't I just make this stop?!
By the time Seitarou felt like he could breathe again, it felt like he'd been hyperventilating for an eternity. He lay still for a while, just catching his breath and waiting for his stomach to settle. God, he felt miserable. He pulled an extra pillow to his chest with one shaking hand, squeezing it tightly.
"Hush now, child."
No!
"You're so tight, I'll bet you never even slipped a finger down here, did you?"
Stop! I don't want this!
"No need to be so coy, darling."
Don't call me that!
"I know you're loving this as much as I am."
Seitarou hugged the pillow more tightly, trying to make the voices in his head go away.
Somewhere inside his mind, he knew the truth of what had happened. He knew exactly who had done what to him, and he knew where and when too. The rest of his mind simply refused to accept this, preferring to slough off the unpleasantness as a fiction. But his subconscious mind knew the truth, and every time he closed his eyes for sleep, Seitarou was plunged back into nightmares of a body at his back, a voice in his ear, and a weight crushing him into the mattress.
Perhaps it was some kind of hard-wired survival instinct: his subconscious mind was warning him of the dangers a particular individual presented to him, because if Seitarou decided to deny the event, he'd only be putting himself in danger.
Every night since then, each time Seitarou tried to sleep, nightmares plagued him, disturbing his slumber and keeping him awake while making what little sleep he did manage to get rather unrestorative.
He was getting clumsy at work, spacing out in ways that he couldn't prevent. He simply couldn't stop himself. He was always quick to apologize, quick to explain away his misunderstandings and inattention.
Never did he confess to having an actual lapse in memory, though that was part of the problem he was having.
"Lieutenant, I need you to hand-deliver these documents to building three for me." Hajime handed Seitarou a sealed envelope across the desk, the younger man accepting it with a nod. "Supervisor Mitsuba is expecting these, so please deliver them to him directly."
"Yes, Supervisor. Right away."
Come on, stay focused, Seitarou urged himself as he stared at the back of the sealed envelope, which was blank but for the watermark of Nanba Prison. He was so afraid of forgetting what he was doing that before he left the guards' office of building thirteen, he paused at his own desk to write a reminder on a sticky-note of what he needed to do. He pasted it to the back of the envelope, then dutifully set forth on his mission, pushing aside the qualms he had about seeing Supervisor Mitsuba again. Surely the supervisor wouldn't try anything in broad daylight, would he? Besides, if he'd been drinking, then the alcohol had probably influenced the supervisor to do something that he would normally never attempt while sober.
He was safe, Seitarou reminded himself, even as his gloved hands shook.
He was safe here.