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Chapter 4

You weren't starving yourself.

That's what you kept telling yourself.

You were in Korea, and the food here was different, and the food here was spicy and that's why you weren't eating because you were picky and didn't know what you liked here.

That's what you kept repeating in your head.

You were in a cafeteria, you went to the right place to get food. There had even been a place with macaroni and cheese on the menu.

But they were out of mac and cheese for the next fifteen minutes... Thirty minutes ago.

Now you were settled, and anxious and you weren't feeling like moving. No matter what you told yourself you couldn't get the urge to get up.

You weren't even hungry.

God, why weren't you even hungry?

You hadn't eaten all day. You should be hungry. But a single thought had meant that you suddenly had lost your appetite.

I've been eating too much. I shouldn't eat so much.

And just like that, it was over.

Your hunger was gone in a flash. The past few days all you had done was eaten one meal, and you hadn't been hungry at any other points in the day.

You went from eating 2000 calories to maybe 800, and the influencer? A single passing thought.

You weren't overweight. You weren't anorexically skinny. You didn't have a problem with your weight or anything of the sort. You didn't like people watching you eat, but that didn't usually stop you from eating.

The power of your own mental influence had never been this intense before.

You had told yourself not to snack so much before in the past. You had a bad habit of eating too much when you got your hands on snacks. You got really bad cravings for really random sugary sweets a lot too, and if there was snack food around you couldn't keep yourself from eating some.

You hadn't had a craving since the eating problem first occurred.

Someone in the cafeteria stood up, sharply pushing back their plastic chair as they did so. The resulting sound was a loud screech that made you jump a little looking in that general direction. The person didn't even seem to notice that they had made such a loud noise. They were laughing and smiling as they walked. Clueless to your mental state.

You tried to focus back in on the book you were reading.

Horror.

You had been very interested in horror recently.

Short films, long movies, short stories, web comics and more. You couldn't focus on anything unless there was a scary scenario running through your head. The monotone words of someone recalling a story in which they were almost kidnapped had become the only thing that could keep your idling brain entertained recently.

You couldn't do anything unless you were focusing on some sort of twisted horrifying scenario.

You had never been interested in horror stories before. In fact, horror used to genuinely terrify you. Over the years you had built an immunity to the scares. Jump scares didn't get you much anymore. No, the ambiance was what was scary. Build a creepy scenario, and it sent chills down your spine.

A loud laugh ripped you from your thoughts. You looked to the side and noticed that there were two businessmen standing near you, having a conversation. You were surprised that you hadn't noticed them before. They weren't quiet and they were stationed pretty close to you.