Nemesis, Vol. 1

Fresh Air

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The sound of the vintage wall clock punctured the awkward silence within the room. Each ticking noise often reflected the hesitation of speaking. Yuki looked up at the clock every few seconds in anticipation of leaving this gloomy place, a place where no one truly wants to be. 

Across from Yuki sat a woman in her mid-thirties, no later. While she was the only other person in the room, attention towards her was minimal. Yuki typically lost himself gazing at the spiral rug placed beneath the glass table that separates him from the woman. The rug had an obscure design; it carried a swirl-like pattern of orange and red that would hypnotize anyone caught in its glare.

"You need to start going outside more, it'll convince me that you're well enough to stop these weekly meetings."

Yuki, still hypnotized by the abstract rug, wasn't aware that the woman had broken the silence. He tended to sink beneath his blue mesh track jacket whenever words remained trapped on his tongue. A jacket that carried the stains of adolescence, it's what he was comfortable in when thoughts often accompanied by pain would arise.

"You need to start getting more sleep too. I feel for you, your father was a good man but he would want you to get through this."

Yuki thought that his hair was more than enough to signify that he was getting too much sleep since the passing of his father. The mentioning of him dragged Yuki out of the never-ending trance, which soon enough made him drift to the old wall clock; possibly looking for significance or even purpose in everything that filled the stale room. 

Much like everyone else who arrives at mandatory therapeutic sessions, he didn't want to be there, especially when he couldn't even mutter his name. Sleep was the only thing that made the pain go away.

"Yeah, I know." Yuki muttered.

His voice remained raspy from screaming through the hollow walls within his empty home, but the woman had assumed it to be nothing more than the growth of a young man.

"Promise me you'll at least try to go outside more."

"Sure."

Yuki dismissed her offer by giving her what she wanted to hear.

"Alright, it looks like our time here is done, I'll meet you again next Sunday and maybe you could tell me more about your friends then."

Yuki and "friends" were as compatible as oil and water. He was once a sociable person before all this, in fact, one could say he was an entirely different person before the accident.

"Yeah, I'll have to ask them if they mind though."

An obvious lie hissed from Yuki's mouth but was received as nothing more than an honest response.

"Alright."

Yuki gets up off the sofa as the woman opens the velvet door to her office. Finally, the moment has arrived that he thought would never show, the moment of departure. An hour and fifteen minutes probably felt like an eternity while he dazed into the outer limits of his mind in the hypnotization of the obscure rug underneath the glass table. 

Awaiting him on the other side of the velvet door sits Trivy, Yuki's companion and one of the few leaves left on his family tree. Trivy is a small droid Yuki built when he was younger and stood no taller than one foot. The sight would be adorable to the unaware, dangling their feet off the step that was placed just outside the woman's office like a hopeful toddler.

"Finally, you're done Yuki, you were in there for an hour..."

"Well, you know it was an hour last time and the time before that right?"