Chouji's dreams crash down around him as he wakes, drenched in cold sweat, curled over his empty stomach and a hunger so powerful it is indistinguishable from nausea. The chain bites painfully into his flesh in this position; he unfolds himself and lies flat on his back. Immediately, a slow burning behind his ribcage reminds him that his churning stomach is full of undiluted acid. Groaning with frustration, he forces himself to sit up, ignoring the contraction of the chain as he does. Shikamaru stirs beside him, but does not wake.
It's too tight – bruises ring his waist, blending seamlessly into the fading marks Ino left on him a week ago. But it isn't tight enough, either, and that's why his hunger is so terrible. Until he can tighten the chain another link, he won't eat. He hasn't eaten in over twenty-four hours.
The training session this morning – yesterday morning, dawn is breaking outside – had ended in disaster, with Shikamaru and Ino refusing to speak to him or to each other by the end of it. Ino and Shikamaru still aren't speaking, though both have already apologized to Chouji. He had not been angry with either one of them, and isn't the type to hold a grudge even if he had been.
It hadn't been his fault, really. Several days of intense training and a severely restricted diet had weakened him more than he could have foreseen – how could he have known? Hunger is a new feeling, and he couldn't have known that he had overdone it. Collapsing had probably been inevitable, though it would have been nice if he hadn't hit the tree stump with his head on the way down. Thankfully he had only blacked out for a moment. Of course, upon waking with blood in his eyes and Ino screaming in his ear, he soon found himself wishing he'd stayed unconscious.
Ino had excoriated him for being so out of shape, shrieking and cursing and crying – a diatribe far more disturbing than her performance at the barbeque grill. Chouji recognized the shrill note of fear in her voice – it must have seemed as if her worst predictions were coming true – so he spoke softly, holding his split forehead together in one hand, gripping the spinning ground with the other, all the while trying to convince her that he was only tired and hungry. The senselessness of it all lit up Shikamaru's already badly frayed nerves like a fuse, and the resulting explosion had been cataclysmic. Projectile-like invectives shredded them both, with expletives Chouji had never heard him use before and words he didn't understand. 'Puerile' he had managed to look up. Most of the others went right over Chouji's head.
In the end, Shikamaru and Ino had both stalked away, seething, too caught up in their own thoughts and rage to remember Chouji's gaping forehead. He sat quietly on the ground for several minutes before attempting to rise; when he did stand, he nearly fell over again, concussed and weak. After he staggered off the training grounds, some little kids had panicked over all the blood and brought one of the nearby shop owners to cajole him into going to the hospital. Sakura had made short work of him, and not even a scar remained when she finished. The concussion she could not heal so simply, so after thoroughly inspecting the injury, she had sent him home with strict instructions to return in the morning and to take it easy for a week.
Ino had dropped in that afternoon with her apology, pale, unnaturally subdued, quiet, and contrite, but it was late in the evening before Shikamaru stole into his window. The troubled shinobi left the casement wide open as he made his apology; the cool night air stroked Chouji's freshly washed hair with gentle fingers. His words were sincere, if brief, but he quickly sank into a quiet self-loathing that hurt Chouji more deeply than any words spoken in anger ever could have done.
So black was Shikamaru's demeanor, and so deathly somber his eyes, that Chouji could not in good conscience allow his friend to leave. It was the kind of bleak desolation which cultivates ill thoughts and desperate deeds, the shadowed ground in which even good men may wither and die. Chouji feared it, not for himself, but for Shikamaru, who had become so firmly rooted in its barrenness. In no mood to deny Chouji anything, Shikamaru had flung himself down on the bed beside him. Neither had spoken since.
Chouji slips into the bathroom and opens his robe to reveal the discolored, distended flesh that spills above and below the chain. He stares at it for a moment, thinking it is a proper metaphor for the weight of his broken promises, for the ugly presence of his failures. As he fusses with the clasp, pleading with it to move the last centimeter that would bring it to the next link, the link he'd assigned to his stupidity in allowing Ino and Shikamaru to see him so weak, he realizes that physical hunger and the desire to eat have become separate entities. The great white beast howls for want of food, but the thought of eating sickens him. Even as he craves something to take the edge of the painful gnawing in his gut, the thought of willfully adding to the bloated flesh only nominally restrained by the chain disgusts him. It's become synonymous with failure, with broken vows, with a loathsome self-indulgence that doesn't care about anything but its own slavering appetite.
The clasp won't reach, and he would cry for frustration, but he starts to hyperventilate, unable to pull a full breath with the pressure of the chain restraining his diaphragm. He forces himself to breathe normally, to stay his tears, afraid he may wake Shikamaru. This one thing he wanted to do for Ino, to lose weight, this one simple thing to ease her mind, he's failing at this, too. He is still eating too much, or not exercising enough, if the chain won't grant him this single link of forgiveness. And yet part of him still wants to eat, wants to rest when he should be up, moving, running off the fat of accumulated failures, of self-gratification.
He hates it, he discovers with a shiver, hates the fat and the hunger screaming below his ribs. Me, it cries, take care of me. I need, it moans. I want! Me, me, me. Selfish, selfish, selfish.
He straightens and finds his bloodshot eyes in the mirror. Two links, he swears, taking a slab of flesh between his fingers and pinching it viciously. He won't eat at all, until he can tighten the chain another two links. The one for his stupidity in allowing his friends to see him suffer, when they are already so consumed in pain and grief. The other, for his selfishness.
He leaves Shikamaru sleeping in his bed, restless, at loose ends and unhappy even in slumber. Pulling on his armor to conceal the ugly bulges of flesh, Chouji goes through the empty window and begins to run. He will lose weight for Ino, he swears, forcing his exhausted body to move, to subsist on the shallow breaths the chain permits. He will make Ino unafraid. He will be stronger, he will develop the will and the resolve to force Shikamaru to face his addiction, the ability to hold his fragile friends together. He is fat and lazy and weak and selfish, but he will be better. Ino and Shikamaru need him to be better. He has to be better.