Mental Paradox

A long and trying day was what it turned out to be. Questions that wouldn’t end kept haunting the mind. Turning left, turning right, at each side it was inescapable. It was no longer a curiosity. The problem came from something deeper. Something self taught, something learned or maybe it was inherited. There was no telling.

That was the problem.

Where did it come from? Where did it originate from? Was the source the original? Did the desire take on life of its own? That life threatened to consume all. It had already haunted all thoughts. Anything else ground to a halt.

Hour after hour the all-consuming thoughts swirled around. Answers failed to surface, making only more questions. Distraction only survived for so long. Work should have been the consuming part of her life, not the other way around. There was enough to latch on to keep her thoughts busy. She had plenty to do still. Yet it wasn’t enough anymore.

One simple unknowing slip had sent her mind into turmoil. The need to analyze and put the pieces together overwhelmed her mind. Worse for Yumi, it all came from speculation with nothing but circumstantial evidence.

‘What is the truth?’

Chapter 568 - Mental Paradox

She survived the evening with poor productivity, but completed work. The normal focus and drive that she found to be a boon to her crippled her now. Nothing but problems existed in her head. And worst, they all craved understanding. And more so, the worry that she became that which she fought to suppress was only too real.

She had no proof that their goal was to have this be their method. Yet she couldn’t deny the reality that she had become like them in an effort to defeat them. They had what she wanted, yet she became them. It didn’t sit right with her.

Laying in bed, she could hardly find herself tired with her mind raging in thoughts. “What am I doing? This is crippling me… I can’t function like this, but if there’s any truth to it should I even be doing this? Should I be looking for an escape? Do I need to break free from this? Is that the right course?” Suddenly, the world felt like a prison rather than a trial.

Yumi didn’t know what to make of it all.

“Mizuno?” Kasuse said, finally breaking through the wall around Yumi, “Are you back to reality?”

She blinked and stared up from her desk to see that Kasuse stared down at her about half a meter away. She looked around seeing that she was in her office, the place of work. ‘Where’s my bed? Was I asleep? Am I dreaming?’

“Mizuno? You feeling alright?”

It all felt real to her. ‘I don’t think it’s a dream… Was I so out of it that I lost time?’ Yumi pressed her hand to her forehead as her body slammed her with fatigue suddenly. That gave her enough certainty to know. “Not as much as I thought, apparently.”

“What’s wrong you’ve been kinda out of it since yesterday.”

“Family troubles,” she answered, a not completely inaccurate answer.

“I’m sorry. If you need some time off, you can probably ask.”

Shaking her head to try to find her focus. “No, I just need to be better disciplined with myself. I lost focus.”

“Hey, don’t push yourself.”

“I need to pull my weight.”

He leaned in to speak quietly. “You’re not the only one on the team. We can handle things for a day or two if you need some personal time.” The concern on his face was genuine and wanted to see her back to being healthy.

“Thanks. If I feel I can’t keep going I’ll consider it. But I’d like to try to keep going.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.” It made it hard not being able to clearly answer him. It was times like this that having her friends around helped. She could talk freely and maybe find some resolution between her emotional and her logical halves. The battle between the two currently left her as the major casualty in the crossfire

She was grateful that he came to her though. It had at least for the moment cleared her mind of all thoughts. Before they started to fill back in, she tried to put everything on the project. Though she couldn’t even remember where she had left off. It took her far longer to find her place, but it seemed to be working, even if a little.

Struggling through the day, she battled with her own mind. A concept that she thought silly until she found herself in the middle of the war. It took all of her awareness and concentration to notice when her mind started to wander into dangerous territory. The effort taxed her mental energy, draining her far more than she expected. Long hours were no longer possible for her.

Sleep felt like it could be dangerous as well, but necessary. She had already lost time. The morning remained a complete blank, not even a hopeful blur. How she arrived to work or ate, she could only guess that it was routine enough that she went through the motions.

‘I can’t function like this… I need to find a resolution…’

There was nothing that she could think of to end the stalemate because there wasn’t enough information. Worst for her, she had no way of getting new data. So she sat stuck with the virus implanted in her brain without a vaccine to kill it.

She called up Yuki again needing a third party to talk it out. However, it went to voicemail. “He’s not at work...is he working late?’ Yumi just went to bed since she couldn’t get through to him. Troubled and painful sleep would have been generous descriptions for what she dealt with that night. She might have been asleep, but there was nothing about that became restful.

Morning arrived, she believed. She felt half dead at this point. The sleep didn’t remove her fatigue. She could function, but that was about it and claiming it was functioning seemed a little optimistic in hindsight. Yumi got her work done, she felt, but it definitively felt off. She consumed everything she had to stay focused and it ran her energy dry as if she syphoned from her life now.

A few messages were left for Yuki during the day. She wanted to be sure to actually talk to him tonight. ‘I need a release from this. It’s so stupid, but I can’t break away from it...Why is it hurting me so much?’

Evening came once more without any sort of answer from Yuki beyond an affirmative. She called him the moment that she left the building only to hear a phone going off nearby her. It was odd and distracting that she turned around.

“So much for it being a surprise,” Yuki said with a smile.

“Yuki?!” Confusion and excitement poured straight into her head, erasing everything. She oddly felt revived from it and leapt out hugging him. So much relief washed over her. “What are you doing here? Yumi pulled away realizing that it was actually Yuki and processing what that had to mean.

A small laugh came from reacting to her. “I couldn’t exactly wait at your apartment. I didn’t know where you lived. You never told me.”

“Oh I guess that’s right.”

“But I had your business card. So I knew where you worked. I moved around my days to come over.”

“But why? You could have just called. I know it’s not far, but still.”

“I got the feeling that a phone call wasn’t going to be enough.” He walked up next to her. “Heading home?”

“Oh right! Yeah, I guess I’ve got company.”

“Hope you cleaned the place,’ he teased.

“I hardly live there. So there’s not a lot of time to trash it up.”

“You got food?”

“A little.”

“Well you can relax and I’ll make dinner.”

She looked over at him as they walked down the street. “Since when could you cook?”

“You forget that I cooked most of your meals in Sumiko’s world for you?”

Looking a bit sheepish, a lot of that time was a blur more so with the distance. “Right… You did. It’s been so long!” She could only recall some vague thoughts or memories of those days. There was a feeling that she missed his cooking, but couldn’t remember it. It gave her a bit of a melancholy mood. But she turned it around to focus on the present. “Then I get to enjoy it again.”

Arriving at her home, she showed him around the place briefly, even with the mess that it was in or rather unpacked state. It was a brief show, but it put her in a cheerful mood that she lacked for the last few days.

Back in the living room with just a simple couch and table, not even a TV, Yuki looked around in a final pass. “It’s a huge place. Crazy what you can afford.”

“It only feels that way because it’s mostly empty.”

“Then we should fix that.”

“Not tonight though,” she grinned.

“Alright, you park yourself here and I’ll start cooking.” He patted the alone chair at her counter to the edge of the kitchen. Yumi could look in while he was working away. Immediately, he went in to start searching for pots and getting familiar with the kitchen.

Yumi sat down just staring at him. Her mind finally felt at ease. Nothing came to her, she just found herself smiling. Time could stand still for the next year she doubted that she would feel like she lost anything.

“So what’s wrong?” He found a pot, though looked a little disappointed with how things started to shape up with her kitchen. He had to go searching around in a box to find some utensils that hadn’t even been taken out.

Her grin disappeared as the days past flashed around in her head. At least, she seemed to have the focus not to be dragged into it. “It’s something that I didn’t count on. And no it’s not MIki.”

“Something to do with the trial?”

“Sort of, but you’re closer to it, like always. It’s a little unnerving how much you realize things.”

Pulling out what food that she had in the fridge, he started to arrange things while the stove heated up. “Comes with the territory. My powers require analytical and observational skills, so it’s a bad habit. So what is it more specifically?”

“Someone at work told me that I was acting like Aya. And that triggered something in me that I didn’t count.”

“Well you had to expect that to happen, Yumi. You’ve literally been learning what makes all the personalities tick and gaining their strengths.”

She nodded to him and leaned a little to the right on the counter. The same thoughts repeated in her mind the last few days. This was nothing new. “Yeah I know. But it’s more than just that. It made me wonder if this has been their objective the whole time. They want my body because they think I’m weak. They think that they would do better in charge. But things aren’t well suited for them right now.

“So what if they put together this whole thing. Even whispered in my head making me think that this was my idea when it was just theirs. What if they’re trying to mold me into something that they can easily control? What if by learning about them, I become them. And I'm no longer me?”

Yuki moved around the pot as he poured in some oil with things heating up more. He could start cooking soon. ‘So she still hasn’t put the last piece together...I thought with Aya that she had all the pieces. She seemed to have solved the riddle, but now she’s complicated things. It should be up to her to figure it out, not me to tell her...what should I do?’