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The night’s cold hand passed over him, dragging the young man further into a deep torpor. His leg stung like multiple needles pressed against his rough, consumed skin, making his hands clutch around the rifle’s metallic body in a sudden spasm. Breathing was hard.
But he was a soldier.
He was a hunter.
He was a matagi.
His eyes had witnessed men in worse shape, clinging to life with all their might. He gritted his teeth to suppress another painful fit coming from his aching leg.
“Can’t see any foxes around.”
A husky voice cut through his fogged mind, making him look up. He couldn’t make out much of the face staring him down, just a few features lighten up by the moon’s gentle shades.
“You should rest for a while.”
The other man’s hand moved to one of his shoulders and stroked it with his thumb, in a gruff yet kind motion. It was comforting.
“I don’t need to.” Tanigaki found the other’s look amidst the darkness, staring at the gleam those eyes let out. He frowned, as if he had to prove the man wrong, to show he was able to deal with the pain, with the cold. Tanigaki sensed a lingering wish of forcing an I’m fine out of his lips, as if to try putting on a façade of stubbornness would somehow help his cause.
The old man’s response was an unexpectedly soft chuckle, to which Tanigaki thought he probably didn’t want to rise any unwanted red flags for the surrounding animals. But that hand stayed in place on his shoulder with a firm grip.
The warmth of it passed through the cape, through the uniform. It must have been some kind of tactile hallucination his body was experiencing, the matagi reassured himself.
And yet, his mind cut blank for a few minutes, the span of a blink, to find himself facing upward to the sky. The mystery of such a faraway darkness reflecting down in his pupils, as his head rested on the deathly freezing ground, covered in hard snow. He noticed the warmth of the hand on his shoulder had moved on in his stomach, finding their dog resting his head on him.
His leg hurt.
The silence falling over his body made him uncomfortable, as if moving down on his back had turned the world upside down in a terrifyingly odd twist of perspective. His hands were still holding his rifle as he fought the urge to move on the side and throw up.
Silence, he believed, could transform you into a tree. They had taught him such; stay silent, stay put, become a tree. But the roots he was planting on that icy terrain were weak and sickly.
For a moment, he closed his eyes and saw the war.
Saw his brother-in-law’s dilapidated being telling him he was sorry, apologising with his last breath. He closed his eyes and his sister was sitting on the veranda, back facing him. She was just a girl –
he closed his eyes and saw his mother crying, no, don’t go, Genjirō, stay.
Tanigaki flinched in his trance as the callous hand was back, on his forehead this time. His eyes opened wide to stare at the shadow of the older man over him; the light shone on the still black beard and his now greying hair.
Nihei Tetsuzō spoke.
“Calm down.”
The man’s thumb caressed Tanigaki’s skin as his face grew hotter, believing it was a side effect of his aching leg.
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The matagi frantically clasped the rifle in his hands, as if those words weren’t soothing but scary, ominous. He wondered if they just happened to be a figment of his imagination, his mind travelling somewhere in the frigid Hokkaidō night.
“I like you, matagi boy.” Nihei scoffed, a puff of air escaping his mouth as his hand patted Tanigaki’s head, “That’s why I won’t let you die on these mountains.”
His white teeth appeared in the darkness, a smirk painting his face rougher.
“That grave is mine.”
A sense of dread enveloped Tanigaki.
He felt the urge to say something, anything, but as he parted his lips to speak, nothing managed to come out. Silence. That’s how his people lived.
Nihei moved his hand to caress his dog’s back while the animal rested peacefully on Tanigaki’s stomach. He gave his back to the younger man.
It reminded him of one of those earlier feverish visions.
Tanigaki fell asleep for a couple of hours, looking at that back with his hands on his rifle.
--
Tanigaki woke up, holding Nihei’s rifle.
It had been a while. He usually never slept embracing his weapon, it just laid about ready for use if there was any need to but in the past couple of days, he had felt a heavy weight on his shoulders. He walked the woods with his companions; Inkarmat was nice to talk to, she liked him. Cikapasi was as active as any other kid his age would be, the boy liked him.
And yet, he felt alone.
The world around him was changing, there was no time to be sentimental. The stakes rose higher; his rational side scolded him. But he couldn’t leave those thoughts unattended for too long, they would eventually force their way out as tears. It wasn’t something Tanigaki wished for, especially not in front of any of the people he knew.
There was something ridiculous in the way one man he barely knew had touched his soul. Nihei Tetsuzō had an indescribable influence on the way he perceived hunting, people. Time.
And he hadn't even been an incredible orator, or a philosopher. He had just been one man walking the Earth, killing bears and dying in the mountains.
Dying.
Looking at the old Murata rifle, Tanigaki couldn’t help himself but wondering how many times Nihei had held it. How many times he thought about his son holding it, lost in wars.
Tanigaki couldn’t help himself from seeing that old man dead before his very eyes, as he was trying to survive his own poisoned body. The way he touched the lifeless corpse of a then rumbustious man, chanting for his soul to be reborn in the lands he so much loved.
His eyes were used to see corpses by then. Mangled, disrupted, distorted corpses. Nihei Tetsuzō’s wasn’t anything he wasn’t prepared for.
But it had struck him.
Like the bear hunter’s whole existence.
It might have been the leftover of the poison running through his veins, but the profound devastation of that death had never left him.
As the night came and his companions were asleep, he would pick up the rifle and drown himself in that man’s memory. Holding it made Nihei’s ghost real.
In a way, Nihei was keeping his promise.