022 : Sympathy Crime
His eyes sprang open, but he couldn't see anything; Adachi-san was below the low edge of his peripheral vision, just an edge of dark hair against the backdrop of the ceiling. All he could hear was Adachi-san's breath, fast and rough and ragged. His own breath wasn't just thin this time -- it had cut off altogether. He was suffocating, trying to draw in even one faint painful breath and getting nothing at all. His Adam's apple worked glottally, in bobbing spasms, and his hands opened and started to claw at Adachi-san's again, but too late, too late. They were too weak, couldn't get any traction. For a space of choking seconds his exhausted mental fog broke open in a brilliant flare of panic-brightness, and he thought in a tight mounting spiral of hysteria, He's not going to let go, he's going to keep doing it, I'm not going to live through this, he's not going to stop he's not going to stop he's going to just grab it tighter and tighter until I can't --
sympathy-crime sympathy-crime sympathy-crime I'm addicted.