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IT’S ON DAYS LIKE this when Touya lets the memories consume him.
Sunlight playing across the cloth that hangs around his house, those sheets that were a blessing and a curse, vividly scarlet under the light and so painful to look at.
The breeze sends ripples through the fabric, and Touya looks away.
He has to, because if he doesn’t, the ache in his chest is too much to bear.
* * *
He registers, in this order, the splay of red wings in the morning sun, the rapid beating of a heart many times smaller than his own, and the metal twisting cruelly around a thin leg.
Touya hesitates.
The things he touches… they don’t normally turn out okay, even when he tries his best, and maybe it’s better to take the bird to someone else, someone who’ll be able to heal the animal and nurse it back to health.
But then the bird—a hawk?—turns imploring eyes to Touya, and something inside him breaks.
He picks it up, tiny and so fragile against his skin, and the thrum of its heartbeat is a constant pulse fighting for it to live.
So under winter morning sunlight, Touya carries an injured hawk into his house and gathers the tools he needs to pry off the metal trap around its leg.
It’s slow going, and a delicate process. One wrong move could break the bird’s leg beyond repair, but Touya’s hands are steady, and he works to get the metal off with a focused precision. The racing of its heart does not slow in the slightest, but the bird doesn’t move, holding still, like maybe it knows that Touya’s trying to save it.
He loses track of time.
When he finally gets the metal off the hawk’s leg, his fingers are shaking. The hawk stretches its wings, tilts its head, then folds them again as Touya picks it up with calloused hands and carries it outside.
“Don’t get caught again,” he warns it, setting it down on a tree stump. “Freeing you was a pain.”
The animal screeches, almost indignantly, then shakes out those brilliantly red wings and beats them once, twice.
Touya shields his eyes against the sun as the hawk turns to a glowing red speck against the blue sky.
* * *
The wind is angry.
It howls against his house with a vengeance, rattling his windows and sending snowdrifts rushing against the walls. Touya double-checks his windows, and by the time he’s done with that, the soup is boiling, so he ladles it out of the pot and lets its warmth soak into his skin.
He doesn’t hear the knocking at his door.
It’s not until he’s nearly drained his soup, and he’s wondering why the wind seems so hellbent on opening his door, that he realises oh shit, there’s someone out there, and he unbolts the door with hasty fingers only to send a freezing gale straight through his house.
The fire sputters out.
The man in front of him smiles through chattering teeth.
“Got room for one more?”
And then he promptly collapses.
Touya stands there, shellshocked for a second, then his body moves. He drags the stranger inside—his skin is icy—and he slams the door closed before any more sleet ends up on his floor. He throws a blanket unceremoniously at the half-dead man, rekindles the fire, then fills up a bowl of soup.
At the smell of food, the man seems to regain some of his energy.
He drinks the soup. Touya stares.
“Who the hell are you?” he finally asks, and the man glances up, cheeks full. He swallows.
“Keigo?” he says, but it sounds more like a question.
Touya raises an eyebrow. “Just—Keigo?”
The man offers him a grin.
Touya takes him in.
Messy hair, though that might be just because of the raging wind outside, and there are a few flakes of snow already melting all over his face and clothes. His eyes are a tawny gold, like the glow of the sky on warm summer days; a welcome change to the bitterness of the winter outside.
“Then you can call me Touya,” he says. Keigo hadn’t offered his family name, so he doesn’t need to, either—besides, all the Todoroki name brings him is a look of disbelief, and more often than not, criticism.
Keigo drains the rest of his soup and sets the bowl down.
“Thanks for taking me in,” he says, grin as bright as the fire. “I’ll repay you somehow.”
Touya waves a hand in an I don’t care gesture. “It’s fine,” he says. “Just get inside before the storm hits, next time.”
Except Keigo doesn’t have the chance to do that, because the storm continues to rage, unrelenting, for the next three days.
Normally, on stormy days, Touya hunkers down and loses himself in his work. Blacksmithing is a difficult profession, and more often than not, it leaves painful burns on his arms with very little payoff. Even though he’s been doing this for years, it had taken him a majority of that time to save up for this house, and even so, it’s still a humble residence.
After all, there are better blacksmiths out there—his services are mostly for things that are difficult to ask for with the more well-known smiths.
Keigo makes him forget about his work.
His smile fills the space like it belongs there, and brings a warmth to his house that the cold metal never did. Touya did have a habit of skipping dinner some nights, sometimes to save money and sometimes because he simply didn’t have the time, but with Keigo here, he finds himself making more time to sit at the hearth, warm bowl in his hands, and listen to Keigo’s animated chatter, always talking about something mindless, always managing to put a smile on Touya’s face.
It’s pleasant.
They fall into a routine.
Keigo wakes up first, and he makes breakfast, which, with Touya’s frugal pantry, is usually oyaku and pickled vegetables. (When it happens for the first time, Touya manages to hide his surprise at the fact that Keigo can even make a dish—given his happy-go-lucky attitude, he would’ve pegged him more for the type to wait for someone else to cook for him.) By the time Touya’s up, breakfast is in a steaming bowl on the table, and they eat it together while watching the storm outside, pummelling at the house like it’s never going to stop.
After that, Keigo busies himself with tidying.
Touya doesn’t understand Keigo’s fixation on keeping the floor absolutely spotless, and he vocalises this on more than one occasion, but Keigo always brushes him off with an easy smile.
“Least I could do to repay you,” he says. “Besides, having a dirty floor is bad luck.”
Touya gives up. Keigo cleans.
Night falls, and by this time, there’s usually some passing remark about how this storm is surely sent by the gods, because there’s no way it could’ve lasted this long if it were natural, and Touya complains that no one will come to buy his goods in this weather.
Keigo grins, eyes glinting in the firelight.
“Terrible luck,” he says.
It’s nighttime. He’s tired. The words tumble out, unbidden. “Or good luck,” he says, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. “I got to meet you.”
Keigo doesn’t speak for a while.
Touya quells the fire and turns to go to sleep.
* * *
“I can’t believe you don’t have any chicken. How do you live like this?”
“You think I can afford chicken?”
“True, but, still—”
“Until you actually earn some money, stop complaining.”
Keigo pulls a face.
He shuts up and eats his rice.
* * *
Touya’s supplies are quickly dwindling.
Even by himself, skipping meals sometimes, he only just manages to scrape by, and now, with two mouths to feed (and one seemingly insatiable appetite), he’s down to his last cup of rice, an egg, and a near-empty jar of pickled vegetables.
Keigo is hanging up the blankets to air by the fireplace while Touya cooks the rice, then cracks the egg over the top. He puts the pickled vegetables in a dish on the side, then announces that dinner is ready.
Keigo’s eyes light up at the meal. “I’m starving!”
They sit in front of the fireplace. Touya stretches out his hands and lets the warmth soak into his palms.
Beside him, Keigo pauses in his eating to glance up at him, eyes full of questions. “You’re not eating?”
Touya shrugs. “I ate earlier.”
“Without me?”
“Get over it.”
His stomach chooses that exact moment to let out a rippling growl.
He can pass it off as the crackling of the fire. Maybe.
Keigo’s eyes narrow.
Never mind.
“You haven’t eaten, have you?” Keigo says, more a statement than a question.
“I’m not hungry.”
“And that wasn’t your stomach?”
Touya winces slightly. “No—mind your own business.”
Keigo looks down at his bowl, half-empty, pickled vegetables nearly all gone, and he pushes the remaining meal towards Touya.
“I’m not hungry, either,” he says, no room for argument in his tone. “Actually, I’m really tired. Finish my dinner for me?”
It’s unfair, because with eyes as pretty as those, there’s no way Touya can deny them, but he’s just about worked up the willpower to shove Keigo’s dinner back at him with the latter stands up, stretching his arms above his head.
“I’m going to sleep.”
And that’s that.
Touya finishes Keigo’s dinner.
* * *
There’s no breakfast the next day.
Instead, Keigo stands next to the window, looking at the snow outside, and when Touya comes up behind him, his face lights up.
Touya’s pulse stutters.
“You’re up!” he chirps, expression so bright that Touya has to squint. (Maybe that’s just the morning sunlight.) “I’ve actually got a favour to ask of you.”
“What, letting you live in my house for the past three days wasn’t enough?” he asks, but already, he’s given in. Keigo could ask for the moon and Touya would find some way to ensnare it.
Keigo smiles easily. “It’ll be useful, I swear. I just need a loom.”
“A loom?”
“You’re not hard of hearing, right?”
Keigo takes the punch to his shoulder, grinning the whole time, and they both pretend to ignore the grumble that comes from his stomach. Touya sighs. “Wait until the end of today.”
And he gets to work.
A loom isn’t difficult to make, considering the projects he’s undertaken before. In his haste to get it done, he chalks up a few scrapes on his forearms, but by the end of the day, he’s just about finished.
Keigo looks at it with an expression that’s difficult to decipher.
“You know, I’m a blacksmith, not a carpenter,” Touya says, nudging him. “I think I did a pretty good job.”
“You did,” Keigo agrees. “Thank you.”
“You’re still not gonna tell me what it’s for?” Touya asks, eyeing the contraption. It’s well-made, even if he does say so himself, but it could definitely be improved upon with better-quality wood.
Keigo doesn’t seem to mind. “That’s a secret,” he says. “You’ll find out soon enough. Just don’t look when I’m weaving.”
“You don’t have any thread,” Touya points out.
Keigo doesn’t appear to think that’s a problem. “Promise?’
Touya sighs. He really needs to work on his willpower. “Promise.”
Keigo grins. He drops the subject, instead digressing to talk about how the snow will let up tomorrow, and when Touya asks how he knows, all he does is smile conspiratorially.
“The air pressure,” he says, as if that’s an explanation.
Touya lets it go.
* * *
In the morning, Touya is greeted not by the slant of tentative winter sunlight, nor by the howling of the ever-present wind he’s gotten used to over the last few days.
Instead, it’s the sound of wood clicking against wood, alongside the sound of faint machinery squeaking, and Touya wonders how the hell Keigo is already functioning so early in the morning.
Still, he remembers Keigo telling him not to look when he’s weaving, so he throws the pillow over his ears in an attempt to block out the sound for a solid thirty minutes before he realises that it’s hopeless and reluctantly hauls himself out of the toasty blankets and worn mattress.
Sure enough, the snow has let up.
It coats the ground in a glittering white mass, sunlight sparking off it in bright flashes, smooth and powdery soft.
If Touya were younger, he might’ve jumped into it.
(Still, he has his dignity to maintain, and he refrains from doing so.)
Apparently, Keigo does not give a single damn about dignity, because there’s the soft slide of the door opening, then Keigo stands beside him, breath fogging up in the air and eyes reflecting all the fresh snow, and—
Touya’s breath catches, because he’s never actually seen Keigo in full sunlight before.
His hair is effortlessly tousled, gold strands nestled among the amber, and his eyes—god, they’re sunlight itself, all warm and honey-coloured, like all the heat in the universe has been compressed to just those irises, and he could get burned, but all he wants to do is to get closer.
Keigo inhales deeply.
And leaps straight into the snow.
“Hey!”
Touya raises a hand to shield himself as snowflakes fly everywhere, landing on his face and sending pinpricks of cold shivering throughout his body. Keigo laughs. The sound is melodious.
“What, scared of a little snow?” he teases.
Touya furrows his brows. “No—”
His sentence is cut short by a snowball. Straight to his face.
Oh, he’s so dead.
That winter morning, surrounded by the calm serenity of trees and the cold stillness of the air, they find themselves having the snowball fight of a lifetime, laughing themselves out of breath and collapsing in tired piles on the snow once they’ve burned all their energy, and Touya’s heart is lighter than it has been in a long time.
He catches Keigo’s eye, and it settles back into his chest with an almost audible thump.
“I won,” Keigo grins.
Touya groans and sends a spray of snow into Keigo’s eyes.
“In your dreams.”
* * *
Keigo doesn’t emerge from the weaving room for three days.
He doesn’t stop to eat, doesn’t stop to drink, and through the thin walls of the house, Touya can hear the steady tick of wood for hours on end.
Just don’t look when I’m weaving.
He lets loose a frustrated sigh and adds a log to the fire.
They are—or rather, he is, because Keigo hasn’t eaten for the past three days—subsiding on the few edible plants he can find around the area now, which is to say, next to nothing. The thick layer of snow means sparse vegetation, and although he doesn’t have to worry about other animals competing for the food, it does mean that more often than not, his stomach is growling and his concentration is starting to fade.
On the fourth day, Keigo emerges.
He looks positively exhausted, and Touya doesn’t even register the bright red cloth in his hands at first.
“Sell these at the town,” is all Keigo says, pressing the cloth into his hands. “They’ll fetch a high price.”
The fabric is soft and silky against his skin, light as a cloud and somehow cosily warm at the same time. He wants to ask Keigo so many questions, but he takes one look at the man’s face, all tired eyes and a weak smile, then he rolls the cloth into a careful bundle before he makes the trip down the mountain.
As Keigo had promised, they attract a large amount of money.
The townspeople crowd around him, gathering closely to see the sheets woven from a material smoother than silk, as vibrant as autumn leaves, and softer than the powdery snow around them. The cloth is gone within minutes.
He makes the journey back with empty arms and a full pouch.
The townspeople had paid him a decent sum of money; it’s more than Touya has seen in a long time, and with it, he buys food to restock their dwindling supplies—rice, oil, vegetables, eggs, soy sauce, even chicken.
Keigo is asleep when Touya slides open the door and gently sets down the food.
He goes straight into the kitchen to prepare dinner.
The storm has let up, but the air is still bitterly cold. Touya tosses the chicken into an earthenware pot and covers it with water, leaving it to simmer, then chops up the vegetables—spring onions, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, and cabbage all turn steadily into bite-sized pieces, and by the time the broth is done, the vegetables are just about ready.
Keigo continues sleeping.
Touya almost doesn’t want to wake him up. Lying like that, he looks so peaceful, hair haloed around his head and body buried under a mound of blankets. Still, he can’t help but notice the way his cheeks are slightly hollower than they were before, and he reaches for Keigo’s shoulder with a gentle hand.
“Hey,” he says, shaking it slightly. “Dinner.”
Keigo opens his eyes. He smiles.
“I’m starving.”
They sit at the fire, warmth soaking into their bones while the broth simmers cheerfully on top. Touya adds in the vegetables, and there’s time for them to just sip at the soup while they wait for the vegetables to soften. Outside, the wind starts to pick up again.
“The cloth was hot property,” Touya says. He leans forward to scoop vegetables into his bowl. “I didn’t even finish spending all the money I got from it.”
Keigo beams, draining his soup and refilling his bowl to the brim. He picks out the chicken pieces and adds them in. “You even got chicken,” he hums.
Touya rolls his eyes. “Only to make you shut up.”
“It’ll take more than that to make me shut up.”
Touya sighs in annoyance, but both of them know it’s fake, and when Keigo starts laughing, it takes a beat, and then Touya joins in as well.
He could get used to this.
* * *
The money lasts them for about a good week, and even though the storm has since let up, Keigo seems to show no intention of leaving. Touya doesn’t mind.
Supplies are still supplies, though, and when they’re nearly out of food and money again, Keigo shuts himself back into the weaving room, again making Touya promise not to look, and emerges three days later with a roll of fabric that’s somehow even more beautiful than the last time.
There are clouds woven subtly over the cloth, seeming to almost move, and the material is just as warm and light as last time.
“You know the drill,” Keigo says. His smile looks positively strained this time, and Touya doesn’t hesitate before making the trip down.
Just like before, he’s almost immediately crowded by the townspeople. What’s different is that this time, there’s a man in front of him with side-swept blond hair and a face hidden by a blue fabric. (In fact, his whole body is covered in said blue fabric, and that, coupled with his long, thin stature, is enough to make him look, frankly, like a walking pencil.)
The snappy remarks are on the tip of Touya’s tongue.
He manages to bite them back with an effort at the heavy-looking pouch the man holds out to him.
It’s more money than Touya has ever held before, and on his way home, he has to keep checking that the pouch is still secured around his waist, that it hasn’t disappeared. He buys tofu, more chicken, another sack of rice, and the dinner they eat that night is so hearty that even Keigo announces that he’s stuffed after they finish eating.
“There was a draper today,” Touya says. “He paid a crazy large amount for your cloth. Must be nice being rich.”
“We’re not too bad ourselves,” Keigo points out.
Touya gives him a sideways smile. “Keep eating like that, and you’ll have the body to match your words.”
He jerks his arm away when Keigo tries to punch it.
“He offered us even more money for another length of your cloth,” Touya continues, standing up and collecting both of their bowls. He brings them to the sink and starts to wash them, and Keigo comes up behind him to help him dry the dishes. It’s easy and natural, both of them falling into routine.
“When did he want the cloth by?”
“New Year, I think,” Touya says. “You’re probably tired, though. You don’t have to.”
Keigo doesn’t respond immediately, just drying the dishes, and at a glance, Touya isn’t sure if it’s just the lighting, but Keigo looks as if he’s gotten paler.
“It would be nice to have a little extra money at New Year,” Keigo muses. “We could have osechi ryori.”
Touya finishes rinsing the spoons and passes them to Keigo. “You don’t have to strain yourself. We’ve got enough money.”
The grin that Keigo gives him is bright, determined—and exhausted. “If we earn a little more money now, we can take it easy later.”
He can’t argue against that, even if he doesn’t like it, and Keigo brushes off his protests, anyway.
The moon rises in the sky, a silvery crescent against the inky sky, and Keigo shuts himself back into the weaving room, the soft sound of wooden machinery lulling Touya to sleep.
* * *
This time, the loom stutters and pauses.
It’s not the steady click of wood; it starts and stops in erratic stretches, slowing down far more than it speeds up, and with the sound of the faltering loom echoing through the house at all times, all Touya can think of is how strained Keigo’s smile had been and how his skin has lost its vigour.
He doesn’t mean to break his promise.
But when that strained smile becomes all he can see behind closed eyelids, a burning intent sets itself alight in him, and he’s not going to watch as Keigo works himself to death just so they can have a little more to eat each night.
He’s not letting that happen.
He balances the apple slices on a plate, pausing outside the weaving room for a moment. Beyond the door, the loom squeaks, the intervals between the sounds of the shuttle moving back and forth becoming longer and longer. At one point, it stops, and Touya’s pretty sure that’s the faint sound of panting on the other side of the door.
He steels his nerves. Makes sure the apples are still there. Slides open the door.
And freezes.
Touya stops breathing.
For a second, time grinds to a halt.
Then, the plate crashes against the floor, shattering into a thousand glittering shards.
Time jolts forward again, and Touya’s brain denies his eyes.
Sitting there, vivid red cloth trailing out from the loom, all the pieces fall into place and out of place at the same time, and Touya understands how somehow, Keigo has been creating cloth out of nothing.
Wings.
Keigo has wings.
Touya remembers to breathe.
They’re the same brilliant red as the cloth, the colour of glowing embers in the fire. There are feathers entwined with the wooden contraptions of the loom, being woven into thread, and suddenly, how the cloth always feels smoother than silk and lighter than air makes perfect sense.
Keigo doesn’t move.
His voice cracks when he speaks. “You promised. ”
Something inside Touya’s chest breaks a little, and he takes a step forward, but already, Keigo is too far out of his reach; he’s lost him, he’s lost him. Maybe he was right about the things he touches not turning out okay, even when he tries his best.
“Keigo,” he says.
He knows he’s too late.
But he can’t stop himself for grasping at feathers, heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears as he reaches to prevent the inevitable, tries to turn back the clock, and his hands close on empty air.
Keigo’s golden eyes aren’t accusing.
They’re apologetic, which is maybe even worse, and then they’re gone. In his place is a hawk—the same hawk he’d rescued so many mornings ago.
Only those red wings remain, vivid in the winter morning sunlight. And with a screech, even those are gone.
Touya stumbles outside. The wind starts blowing again, little flecks of snow and hail sending stinging pain against his cheek, but he hardly notices, looking up into the sky.
A speck of red grows smaller in the distant sky, far out of reach, far too late.
“Keigo,” he says. His voice is swallowed up by the wind, whipped from his throat and tossed carelessly up into the air.
You still haven’t finished that ridiculous amount of chicken. You haven’t eaten your osechi ryori. You wanted to stay for the new year.
The cold against his skin makes his entire body numb, but he doesn’t care. And maybe the storm that day really was bad luck, because it was too cruel to have swept Keigo into his life only to snatch him away again in a moment as fragile as winter sunlight and just as fleeting, an ephemeral incidence that was always destined to be a memory.
Their first meeting flashes back into his mind, a simpler time, before they’d known each other and before they’d made promises to each other.
It’s too late for him now, but he still remembers the metal twisting around a thin leg and the iciness of Keigo’s skin, the smile in those golden eyes and the laughter that had filled his house.
You promised.
He inhales the freezing air, looks up to the coldly empty sky.
“Keigo,” he says to the wind. His voice is snatched away.
There’s no answer.