"What the hell was that?!"
I screamed out right into the soft cushion of my pillow in hopes of muffling what would be otherwise a desperate scream.
That's right.
What the hell was that?
A question that many philosophers pondered over the ages, a question that many young men would often find themselves asking after stumbling on their chance with whatever girl they had a crush on.
In this particular case, however, I genuinely had no idea what the actual fuck was that!
'Was she coming onto me? Or am I just projecting my instinctive wishes over something that was mere coincidence, a side-effect of her actually trying to help me out?'
I gritted my teeth before pushing my face even deeper into the pillow… Only to sense the faint, distant aroma of the same scent I could feel around the girl, likely, of her perfume or shampoo or something.
'Oh right, she was on this bed just until recently…' I thought, throwing my mind for a loop once again as I started to recall the details concerning the fairy-like girl who just so happened to be straddling my lap while hugging me tightly and sucking on my…
"Shit, this isn't helping at all," I muttered to myself as I rose up from the bed, too scared of the possibility that if I allowed my thoughts to wander for any longer, I would end up sniffing my sheets with passion in hopes of catching just one more whiff of Claire's scent.
'Keep it together, man! Aren't you a grown-ass adult?' I thought, trying every avenue, every angle, every possible approach to get myself to calm down.
I even went as far as to consider going to the bathroom for a moment to clear my body and thus mind… Only to end up gritting my teeth and abandoning the idea.
There were only a few things that I've learned during my five years at the institution… But the consequences of giving to one's desires, self-satisfying them, and then falling into a state of lethargy afterward…
'Eh, I never thought things would end up this way just because I tried to seek some damned help…' I thought, sitting down on the edge of my bed, only to then slide down to the floor and stare ahead at quite the mess left after my crafting process.
By now, most of the beginner sets were either fully exhausted of their resources or left with just a tiny bit of scraps. The only exception to that rule was the runesmithing and formation-making sets, each consisting of a bunch of tools and, in the case of the formations, a pretty much untouched vial of thick, dark ink.
"There isn't much left of anything, huh?" I summed my findings out… Before patting my hands down against my knees and getting to work.
This time, however, rather than trying to craft something out of pretty much nothing… I simply started to clean again, hoping that this pretty much mindless activity would save me from the bother of the vivid memories I made just recently.
Bit by bit, the mess on the floor, the scattered materials, single-paged leaflets, thin pamphlets, marks of scattered ink… While each of those only contributed a little bit to the overall mess, when combined, they turned my room pretty much back to the state it was in before I decided to do better.
Thankfully, maybe because it wasn't my first time doing so, the process of clearing the entire thing out took me merely a fraction of the time I needed when I did it for the very first time just a day ago. Not even the added process of sorting and then nicely organizing everything out took as much time as I thought it would.
Which was one big fuck-up all in its own right. Because as great as it was that I could now clean quickly and efficiently… What else was I supposed to do now that I've completed this task?
'To think that getting good at something would be so annoying,' I thought as I, once again, started to recall various sensations that Claire, knowingly or not, imposed on my brain and engraved so deep into my memory I just couldn't think of anything else. And now that I was deprived of the task to occupy my thoughts…
"Well, shit. I guess it's time to go for the nuclear option," I muttered to myself as I grabbed my phone… And launched the powerful, mighty app that was as useful as it was scary. An app filled with nothing but short-form videos on every topic a human brain could conceive.
A supreme tool for wasting time, occupying one's thoughts, and eroding one's own ability to keep focused. A tool I've previously used to look up various guides and tutorials. This time, however, I simply went to the main page and started scrolling, desperate to find something that would occupy my thoughts for long enough for the vivid memories of Clarie's pressing herself against me to fade away.
It was a decision that helped in the short term… Only to back-fire tragically when I started to encounter the videos that pretended to be anything but what they really were - a bunch of skimpily dressed girls doing all sorts of activities only serving to showcase the bounciness of their exposed body parts…
I scrolled the first video of this kind away…
But I didn't do so quickly enough. A fatal mistake that the app's algorithm picked up instantly, soon flooding my feed with more and more content that only served to remind me of the very thing I wanted to exclude from my thoughts.
'Shit, I really have no other choice but to get back to crafting, do I?'
Putting the phone away, I cast a short glance at the now well-organized remains of the things I've brought from Claire's shop.
Sure, there were enough tools, leftover materials, and instructions left for me to try crafting something else. In fact, just reading through the thicker pamphlets that came with runesmithing and formation-drawing sets would take a while. But…
But I was tired.
As tired as I would be after hours upon hours of slamming my fists against the wooden target… if not actually more!
More, it wasn't just the physical kind of exhaustion, even if that played a part too. Right now, it was my brain that was exhausted, be it from my attempts to figure out what I was doing while meditating, due to meditation itself or just constantly trying to learn more before doing my best to figure out how to put the theory I've just read about from leaflets and pamphlets into practice.
I was in a state where just picking up the tools to try crafting would be akin to overexerting myself, going beyond the healthy limits. I could tell that, as enticing as it could be, it wasn't the proper way to do things.
But…
I couldn't go to sleep when all my thoughts only served to make my junior stand at attention, right? The risk of me turning over to my stomach and ending up with the sort of injury that just the thought of was enough to make even the toughest man shiver in terror…
"Normally, this would be an excuse to laze around, but…" I gulped my saliva down before taking a deep breath and picking up my phone again. "But I guess I can do something unhealthy every once in a while, can't I?"
This time, rather than just allowing the feed of the app to dictate what I would be watching, I've actually searched for the general term "simple crafting recipes" before scrolling for as long as it took for me to find something I could create with whatever materials and tools I had left.
Rather than rushing into action, though, I rested my back against the bed's edge and watched the video manual of the process again and again, all the way to the point when I memorized every single detail included in it.
"Now, just in case I start to meditate again," I muttered to myself as I switched the mode of the app from a consumer of the content to a producer before setting my phone down and hitting the record.
'Now then,' I thought, glancing over to where I've left the half-opened pamphlet about formation marking, open on the page with the dictionary of runes - not all that different from the runes used in rune-smithing - to confirm whether or not my memory served me right.
'Okay then.'
I started by picking up a formerly scrapped piece of cardboard, one of the few leftovers from when I turned the emptied pizza boxes into an actual material, before grabbing the painting brush and dipping its hair into the thick ink of the formation-drawing set.
Before long, I could sense my consciousness fading away as I started to cover the piece of cardboard with intricate markings, all the while arranging them in a mathematical-formula-like arrangement. A moment later, I whipped out my scissors and separated the painted part of the cardboard from the rest, before repeating the process. And then again. And again.
This idea came from what little I learned about programming back in school. An idea to turn simple runes into actual expressions… functions of sorts. With those at hand…
As I concentrated more and more, falling into the rabbit hole of creativity and active creation, my body started to give out signs of exhaustion. Yet, at the same time my forehead covered in sweat, sweat that soon started to fall all over the place, on the floor, on the phone, and, if not for my quick save, even on the function plates I'd already prepared, my consciousness started to fade away, pushing the task of creativity onto the unconscious part of my brain.
More and more half-products came out, only for me to pile them up to the side. My phone flashed, likely my sweat messing up with its touch-screen. My consciousness reached the point where I was pretty much about to fall asleep…
Only for this last step never to happen.
Just like when Claire sat down on my lap and sucked on my neck, I failed to fully lose my consciousness, ending up in a half-awake state of meditation, with my hands doing whatever they wanted all the while my mind was reduced to just a passive observer of the events.
'At least I'm recording everything,' I thought, perfectly aware of just how little I could grasp of what my meditating brain was actually conjuring up only to then push my body to turn its ideas into a reality. 'This way, I will be able to go back and try to learn more of what I did than just grasping at the straws in the state I'm in right now!'