I drew a lot of the feel of this chapter from the book House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski... specifically the chapter on Echo. This isn't really surprising, because that book and the Haunted album by Poe (whose singer/writer is Danielewski's sister. I've also obviously working on a albumfic for it.) seriously scream Subaru.

I never dream of his gentleness.

Tenderness is not what I think of while I'm awake, alone in my bed, biting my lip as my world goes dark and I try not to cry out his name. Nor later, while I'm asleep, and he is so vivid that sometimes I wake up, convinced that he's there in the darkness, watching me.

The absence of it is akin to what I imagined it must be like for the fallen angels in western mythology, when faced with the denial of their God's love. The pain is constant, sharp, and oddly comforting. Sometimes it seems that it's the only thing that's left inside of me. The only thing that reminds me that I'm still alive.

And... the only thing that I have left of him, this denial of love that once I thought was mine. It is my only connection to him now - one measured in its negative space, absence rather than presence.

He never left Tokyo, I know that. Yet in all these years, I've never seen him, or any direct evidence of his presence. The city is large, but still, one would think that I would have seen him at some time... at a store, a train station. Our paths should have crossed, especially giving that our careers keep us in many of the same circles. I began to believe that he must have been avoiding me, deliberately.

And that gave me some sort of hope, twisted and fragile that it was. After all, would you actively avoid someone you regarded in the same light as a mere object?

It is the only thing that allows me to believe that he feels some sort of emotion for me, if only mild dislike. Given that, am I really insane to value his absence, hold it as something precious?

I've called myself sick before. But lately, I've begun to think that term is misleading. This obsession has worked its way inside of me, made itself part of my bones. I don't think can be cured, not anymore. It has to be burned out, utterly destroyed.