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‘Come with me to track down Saejima,’ Majima had said. ‘It’ll be fun!’ he’d said.
And it is pretty fun, Kiryu has to admit.
They check into a luxe room at a swanky lodge high on a snowy mountainside and spend their first few days there lounging and lazing and generally neglecting the assigned task. Majima seems wholly unconcerned with actually retrieving Saejima like Daigo had instructed and treats the errand more like an excuse to go on a long vacation with his recently reunited partner. They eat expensive meals paired with rare liquors, sleep as late as they please, and indulge in long, explicit dips in the suite’s attached hot tub.
Kiryu can’t remember the last time he’s ever felt this relaxed, so he isn’t especially surprised when Majima’s phone rings late in the afternoon on the fourth day of their Tojo sponsored sabbatical and he hears Daigo’s voice crackling out of the earpiece from across the room. Majima assures him he’s doing everything he can to track down his kyoudai, his tone admirably sincere even as he bares his gums in a scowl and rolls his one eye like a teenager. Kiryu has to smother his mouth with a palm to keep from laughing audibly and blowing Majima’s cover.
Once Majima smooths things over with Daigo, they bundle up and make their way out of the lodge. After a quick consultation with the GPS on his phone, Majima leads the way and Kiryu follows without complaint. They trek along the mountain side-by-side, sticking to a well-trodden path stamped into the snow by hikers and hobbyists before them, and impressively only devolve into a single, brief snowball fight. (Kiryu reluctantly concedes when he discovers Majima has escalated to packing rocks into his ammunition; it’s not worth it.) After walking for a little over an hour, Majima pauses and studies his phone again, then takes a hard left off the path.
“Think we mighta passed it,” he grumbles after a moment.
Kiryu shrugs and follows.
They walk for another twenty minutes, straying further from the obvious trail, the number of trees around them slowly multiplying in density. Majima steals increasingly agitated glances at his cell before he finally halts them again. He pounds out a text message and receives a reply in the form of a near instant phone call. Kiryu knows it’s Nishida on the other end of the line when he hears the way Majima barks into the device and feels a little relieved they’ll have accurate directions shortly.
He wanders a few yards away while Majima hashes things over with Nishida. As Kiryu takes another step, his foot nearly slides out from under him; he jerks forward with an awkward twist, swings his arms stupidly, and somehow manages to regain his balance. Majima locks an unimpressed eye with him, and Kiryu puffs out a small, embarrassed laugh just as the ground beneath him groans and splinters and suddenly gives way.
The hidden sheet of ice he’d unknowingly wandered onto shatters, and he plummets straight down into churning rapids below. For a split second, he hears Majima shout and recognizes the expression of terror just beginning to cross his face — but then the back of his skull clips the jagged edge of the fissure and sparks erupt behind his eyes. Consciousness flees him as the lurking current sweeps him some unknown number of yards down the riverbed.
When Kiryu comes to, he finds himself sprawled crookedly on his back, splayed across a collection of sharp stones and partially submerged beneath a few inches of icy water. Through some stroke of luck, or perhaps divine intervention, he appears to have been propelled away from the main channel and deposited in a shallow distributary. He remains lying on his back as he shivers and stares vacantly upwards and ponders the meaning of his apparent immortality.
Once enough feeling returns to his battered limbs and the cold becomes a more immediate concern than his existential crisis, Kiryu hauls himself to his feet with a groan and begins the aimless march back upstream to find Majima. His head throbs ceaselessly, and his vision flickers and dims, but he simply soldiers on. Heavy crystals of ice form along the hem of his jacket and the seams of his boots, while his waterlogged clothes invite large clods of snow to accumulate and stick to him, weighing him down with every step forward. Time and distance blur as he forces his body to keep putting one foot in front of the other, fueled by nothing more than a stubborn refusal to stop.
Eventually, he hears a familiar shriek, and the sound severs the last taut line still towing him forward. The instant Kiryu knows that he’s done his job — made it just far enough to allow Majima to find him — relief surges through his veins like a paralytic. Matter immediately reasserts dominance over mind, and his body folds upon itself as he drops into an unceremonious heap.
Kiryu blinks slowly as consciousness filters back into him. It takes far too long for him to understand that he’s draped over Majima’s back, and even longer to notice that it isn’t Majima’s body trembling beneath his burdensome weight — it’s his own that’s violently shivering as Majima carries him determinedly through the snowfield. The realization should worry him more than it does, but he finds it too difficult to attempt to focus on any singular thread for long. His thoughts drift unintentionally, lazily floating through his head like wisps of smoke.
He wonders what Haruka’s doing.
“Dunno. What do ya think she’s usually up to ‘round this time?”
It looks to be dusk, so Kiryu assumes she’s probably preparing dinner for the others. Or maybe they’re all sitting down to eat together.
“Oh, yeah. Makes sense. What… uh, whatcha think she’s makin’ tonight?”
Kiryu has no idea. Maybe fish? They used to eat a lot of fish. He wonders if Yuta has any talent for catching the fish that swim in the shallows near the orphanage.
He misses Okinawa.
“I know ya do.”
He wonders if he’ll ever get to go back. He’d like to see the beaches again — to lie on the sand and soak up the warmth of the sun. Right now, he feels like he’ll never be able to get warm again.
“Would ya quit with that? We gotta be almost there by now. Bet we find a cozy little cabin just over the hill. Probably got a great big fire goin’.”
That sounds nice. He can’t really feel his body anymore.
“Hey, you’re fine, okay? Just gotta hang in there a little longer.”
He’s trying; he really is.
“I know, Kazuma. We—we’re almost there, I promise. Stay with me…”
He doesn’t want to stay. He wants to go back to his orphanage, and if he can’t have Morning Glory, then he’ll take Sunflower. It would be a relief to see Nishiki and Yumi and Yuko again.
“Okay, I hear ya. But that’s… that’s for later, okay? Still need ya here for a while.”
And he knows that’s always the case. There’s always something here he’s needed for. His chest aches and he wants to sob, but can’t summon the energy, so instead he makes do with the thin lines of hot tears that leak silently from his eyes and feels like a fool.
Majima says nothing.
Saejima stands on the porch of the modest cabin he’d rented, arms laden with split logs for the hungry fire just inside, and stares at the picturesque wilds before him. The sun has almost finished its descent into the horizon; its last rays brush at the edges of every sparse tree and craggy snowbank, casting their shadows in long stretches across the white, and even as the final sliver of sun finally sinks behind the earth, the grounds still appear illuminated. The snow muffles most ambient noise, generously absorbing the unnecessary vibrations before they can pollute the freezing air, and his senses feel like they’re sharpening merely by virtue of location.
Perhaps this is what enables him to spot the strange smear that crests the furthest snow-capped hill and to hear the far off crunch of boots on fresh powder. Saejima exhales a resigned breath in a humid cloud, nearly a laugh but not quite, and wonders what could have possibly driven his kyoudai to come and track him down. No one else is privy to his location, and even if they were, no one else would bother with the hike all the way out. He stands for several seconds and merely gazes at the distant shadow, and as it grows closer, he realizes his brother isn’t alone. There’s no question who the body draped on Majima’s back must be; there’s only one person he’d bother dragging all the way out here — only one person who’d tolerate being dragged.
Saejima doesn’t spare a second thought. He tosses the stack of wood from his arms and bolts across the snow.
“Majima!” he shouts, closing the distance between them in great leaping bounds. Majima lifts his head at the call and offers a weary grimace before he staggers to a knee. The exhaustion that causes him to stumble is obvious, but it’s secondary to the mask of anxious fear plastered plainly on his face. Its source is immediately apparent once Saejima reaches his side and sees the state of his charge.
“Take him,” Majima pants out.
It doesn’t need to be said. Saejima is already gathering Kiryu’s slack body and slinging it over his own shoulders. Instinct summons a pool of revulsion deep in his stomach when he feels the cold of Kiryu’s skin and the stiff jut of his limbs; the second the thought blooms within him, Majima must know it.
“He ain’t fuckin’ dead! He was just talkin’ to me. C’mon!” Majima snaps. The outburst seems to reinvigorate him, and he rises upward and onward in the cabin’s direction.
“What the hell happened?” Saejima asks as he marches right alongside him with Kiryu’s limp weight across his back.
Majima shakes his head and scurries ahead, scrambling up the few steps of the porch and holding the door open wide. “Just—we just gotta get him warm. He’s fine.”
Kiryu burns from the inside out, pinned beneath too many layers of suffocating blankets. He keeps trying to push them away, but it’s a futile effort; his arms only respond in weak, clumsy motions. The first time he frees himself, the blankets simply curl back up around him immediately.
“Knock it off. You’re still freezin’.”
He’s not; he’s sweltering. Kiryu can’t remember ever being this hot, and he thinks even the companionable chill that he’d carried along in Nagasugai would be preferable to this. He tries to recall the feeling — the constant frost that built up within him as he’d adapted to a life absent of warmth.
“Ya don’t gotta worry ‘bout that anymore.”
But he still does. He still thinks about the frigid temperature inside his taxi more often than he cares to admit, and he still thinks about the moment he heard Majima’s name over its radio. He remembers the absent sting of the cold that had numbed him all the way back to Kamurocho and the icy moment he’d stopped worrying about saving anything for the return trip.
Kiryu feels a scalding hand on his forehead and hears a soft sigh. “All that shit was a long time ago, alright? Everything’s okay now.”
An unstoppable shudder rolls through him, and he realizes the heat that’d choked him just minutes ago has fled. He’s so cold suddenly; his teeth click and snap as they chatter and another shudder follows the first, then another and another, until he’s shaking continuously.
“H-hey, the hell’s wrong with him?!”
“Don’t panic. It’s a good sign he’s shiverin’ again. Means his body’s finally tryin’ to warm itself up on its own.”
It doesn’t feel like a good sign, Kiryu thinks.
He hears a brief squawk of astonished laughter and opens his eyes to see Majima hovering over him, staring down at him with an expression he can’t decipher.
“Wh-what?” Kiryu hisses out. His body continues to shiver aggressively, and he suspects it probably lessens the impact of the scowl he shoots at him. When he tries to sit up, Majima places a palm on his chest and insistently pins him down.
“Know where ya are yet?” Majima asks. His voice comes out brief and sharp, but Kiryu can see the rigid clench of his jaw and the exhausted sag of his eye beneath his knitted brow.
His gaze lingers on Majima before he casts his eyes to scan his surroundings. He lies on a futon that’s parked next to a wood stove in the corner of a modestly sized room; planks of honey-colored lumber cover the walls, and the ceiling above vaults upwards, supported by dark beams. He smells something warm and savory wafting through the air, and when he tilts his head to look past Majima, he spots Saejima standing in the open kitchen across the room, pointedly busying himself stirring a pot.
Kiryu focuses before answering, intent on delivering his response free from any shiver-induced stutters. After inhaling a wavering breath, he says “Cabin,” in a brisk, quiet gust.
Majima nods, and the look on his face softens by a single degree. “Good. Ya remember what happened?”
“R-river.” Kiryu lets his teeth rattle for a moment. “Cold.” He’s not sure if it’s a continued reply to Majima’s question or an additional confession of his current status, but it’s effectively capable of being both, so he leaves it at that.
He’s unsure of exactly how long passes, but at some point he hears Saejima announce he’s heading outside to gather more wood for the fire. Majima stares down at him and moves his hand from Kiryu’s shoulder to his forehead, the same scalding touch as before. Even as he continues to tremble, Kiryu leans into the contact. He quickly finds that it’s not enough for him right now though, so he slides a shaking hand out from under the blankets and paws clumsily at Majima’s bent knee.
“You’re w-warm,” he mumbles. “Need you.”
Majima expels a huff and an unintelligible mutter, like it’s some kind of imposition, before he peels off the overlarge sweater he’s wearing and crawls under the blankets with Kiryu. He wraps him up tightly in his arms like he’s rising to meet some kind of challenge. “Happy?”
“Mm.” Kiryu presses closer and tucks his head against his chest. Majima exhales a deep breath and readjusts his embrace into something a little less antagonistic; he bows his head down on top of Kiryu’s and holds him until the shivers subside.
Kiryu is just on the hazy cusp of sleep when Saejima slams the door open, wild-eyed, rifle in one hand, clutch of rodents in the other. “Ain’t gonna believe how many rabbits I caught out there! You’ll be feelin’ better in no time, Kiryu.”