Paprika Read Online Free

that he wouldn’t suffer an anxiety attack while he was in the bar. Of course, he couldn’t afford to be complacent. An attack could occur at any time, and the knowledge of that merely added to the problem. Ironically, this was the only cause of his anxiety that could be identified with any certainty. That terrifying sensation of not knowing when an attack would occur was just as loathsome as the attacks themselves, events that would have brought the strongest of men to their knees.
    The first occurrence had been about three months earlier, shortly after lunch one day. Noda had been sitting in a taxi on his way back to the office after a meeting. At first, he just felt dizzy. Then the back of his head began to feel heavy around the neck muscles, and his head started to spin. He’d previously suffered mild bouts of dizziness due to shoulder stiffness. Thinking it was one of those, he tried to ease his anxiety by massaging his shoulders. But then ominous words like apoplexy and stroke started popping up in his mind. A number of his contemporaries had been dying of such afflictions recently. He’d also heard that many people die of stroke after “selectively disregarding” precursor symptoms that must have been present beforehand – in other words, refusing to acknowledge the inevitability of aging. He started to feel nauseous. It was a really terrible feeling. He imagined that he might collapse and die right there and then. The anxiety of that thought made him break into a cold sweat. His heart suddenly seemed to be beating faster. The sound of his pulse grew louder. Fear made his breathing shorter. His throat began to feel parched. To his credit, he summoned up enough willpower not to cry out to the taxi driver for help. On the contrary – he stiffened his limbs and made no sound at all, in an attempt to conceal the attack. He even surprised himself when he thought about that later. And when at last the attack had subsided, his concern shifted to when the next attack would occur. Perhaps it was a stroke of good fortune that the first one had happened in a taxi. But what if the next attack came while he was at work? The very idea sowed the seeds of a new anxiety. Something had to be done. And while he was still thinking about what that something might be, the second attack occurred while he was at work – the very thing he’d feared most of all.
    Luckily, he was in his own office, which he’d earned as Director of Development. As he struggled to bear the anxiety and pain, Noda was struck by two conflicting desires – one, to cry out for help, and the other, not to be seen by anyone. The telephone didn’t ring, and no one entered his office during the attack. But if it had rung, if someone had walked in, he would definitely have asked the other person for help, whoever it might have been. His fear of dying was far too great to do otherwise.
    Noda knew it was considered bad for sufferers of mental disorders to read books about their condition. Even so, he bought several volumes on the subject and, while his wife and son were asleep, secretly took them out and read them. The first thing he discovered was that his symptoms resembled something called “anxiety neurosis.” But he remained in the dark as to the cause, or whether there was any chance of self-treatment.
    Noda also discovered that there were drugs called anxiolytics, which were often effective in treating his condition. He knew he would need to see a doctor to get them. But he vacillated, not wanting the world to know he was seeing a psychiatrist. For some reason, he didn’t hit upon Torataro Shima right away. Then he discovered, in another book, that anxiety neurosis can sometimes progress to other mental illnesses like schizophrenia, temporarily at least, owing to diminishment of personality. It was then that he finally made up his mind to see a doctor. He thought long and hard; he had to find one who would respect his privacy, a clinic he could visit