I have not slept again. I found myself pacing in the patch of lawn just beyond my verandah at the hour of the lark. Tracing the same few steps over and over again, trembling violently and breathing every breath as if it were to be my last. I was exhausted but I could not stop; I felt beset by some sort of compulsion as if, were I to stop pacing, the House would fall. There is no logic to this. How is that I can walk around in the middle of the night as if I have the energy of a young child and yet when I need to be active, I cannot motivate myself even to eat...?
I do not know when I collapsed onto the ground but I do remember the faintest glimmer of dawn creeping up the eastern skies... my face pressed into damp spikes of grass which felt like thorns ravaging my cheek and I felt the dew sinking into my nightgown, slicking it to my skin. I heard the birds rise and announce the day but their song seemed unusually shrill as I remember it sounding when I had been smoking.
Is that it...? Have I somehow taken a pipe and forgotten it? Is that why Seira and Atsuko continue their torture? The two of them dragged me from my chair and hauled me into the Banquet Hall again last evening. It did not matter that I screamed at them that I would not wear my hair in the courtly style, that it was perfectly fine as it was, or that I wept as they made up my face, smearing the kohl the minute it touched my eyes. Seira informed me matter of factly that I could carry on as I pleased, that it did not matter how long it took, I would be eating in the Banquet Hall and that since the entire House had been told to wait for my arrival, my behaviour would serve only to starve the House. My behaviour... my behaviour...! Can they not see my distress? My anguish...?
I could not have been more humiliated had they held the food to my mouth as mother did when I was very small... I sensed the eyes of the House on me. Not openly, of course, no one would have dared but I caught the sly whispers and the sideways glances when they thought I was not paying attention. I am sure that I caught the faintest of smirks on Izumi's face and I felt surprised that she was not on my platform helping Seira to make me suffer.
The noise of the gossip clashed with the musicians in the Hall and the clattering of crockery rose into a painful cacophony until I clutched at my head crying out in pain. And still, Seira held my arm and forced me to eat. I could not even say what was on the menu; each mouthful, no matter how small stuck in my throat causing me to gag and retch and still, Seira sat there like a statue, watching me implacably with an expression that said I should try to leave at my peril. Eventually, I could bear it no longer; my stomach lurched and I knew that if I did not get out of the Hall, I would likely vomit on the table. I rose sharply and wrenched my silks out of Seira's grip, tearing the sleeve at the shoulder and I ran, stopping only when I arrived at the bath house where I leaned against the door and brought up everything I had eaten.
I had no choice then, but to bathe and although the water soothed me slightly, it really did not still the growing ball of anxiety that still roils in my stomach. I do not know how I came to be back in my chamber or how I came to be attired in my nightgown, I only know that I found myself pacing on the lawn in the dead of night, still crying.
But I cannot have been smoking; I would know if I had felt the weed slip down into my lungs because I would feel relaxed now and I feel anything but... I so desperately need a pipe but I do not think I even have a pipe left after Nanami destroyed the last one... If I think on it, perhaps I will remember a stash somewhere... I so wish I could have those days of oblivion back... to lie in my bed and simply float above myself knowing that nothing mattered.... and feel... nothing... What I wish more than that, is that I had a friend who would stand for me and only for me no matter what... I so wish... I had a friend...
