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The first shot is a calm one, almost hesitant, calculated between short breaths. During a fraction of an instant, after it breaks the air, the world is quiet, expectant.
The second is a violent one, the finger rushed against the trigger. It reverberates inside their chests, restarting the sound where the other had stopped it.
Seconds after the fire, another sound, a visceral cry, pierces the afternoon and, a hundred meters from where the two men wait, a deer collapses in slow motion, its neck bending towards its chest, pushing the body forward with it. Its legs yield under the weight short after, but the joints hold it just enough to give the impression that the animal is still unaware of its own death.
At last, with one last faint noise, it falls to its side, staining the snow red.
The man that holds the second rifle doesn't look at the results of his bullet, examining, instead, the first shooter, who's still clutching his rifle, the barrel pointing at the unmoving animal. He studies the soldier's stance with trained eyes; the way he holds the weapon, the tilt of his head. For a few seconds, he considers correcting the mistakes he catches on his posture. In his mind, he sees his hand guiding Sugimoto's with the patience of a teacher, relaxing the visceral grip the soldier has on the rifle, helping him readjust its end into his shoulders.
"You missed" he says instead, his voice low and detached.
"I'd've hit it on the second shot"
"Wasn't gonna bet our dinner on hope" he answers absent-mindlessly, focused on Sugimoto's tone, the timid layer of relief under his words. He frowns, almost visibly, annoyed at the weakness he believes hides behind it. "You've done worse" He feels the words forming at the bottom of his throat, but he swallows them before they slip through his lips.
Sugimoto looks at him for a brief second, waiting for something in the other man's silence that he knows it's there, but Ogata no longer looks at him, walking, instead, towards the animal, his weapon cold against the back of his neck. The soldier follows him short after, his steps loud behind the sniper, crushing the fresh snow while he walks. He has his eyes fixed on the sniper's back. His shoulders seem stiff, their movement tense under the white cloak.
The soldier is aware that he had moved the rifle during that last second. He doesn't remember when he had decided to do so but, even before he fired it, he already knew he would miss the shot. Even if he was aware the animal would die either way. Even if he knew that Ogata would hit it a second after, he had decided to gift him a fraction of life.
His lips form a thin line, and he wonders if Ogata knows. If another death on the sniper’s shoulders weights anything at all. If escaping that responsibility is selfish or just human.
They reach the animal not long after, and Sugimoto kneels by its side, cutting the skin and muscle as the child has taught him. Ogata sits next to him, taking the canteen from the soldier's backpack. It's a simple gesture, a familiar one, as comfortable as the silence they're in.
Sugimoto doesn't look at the sniper when, after some minutes, he raises one hand towards him, asking for water. His eyes search for nothing somewhere in the distance. His other hand, still holding the knife, runs over his face to get rid of the drops of cold sweat under his nose, staining his cheek with a thin trail of fresh blood.
He only looks at Ogata when he feels the weight of the canteen on his hand.
"I'm almost done with what we can take; 's not much, but we wouldn't be able to carry it all either way," He says after a long gulp "but we'd better hurry if we want to reach the camp before the sun sets" he gives the canteen back to Ogata, and the other man drinks again.
"We won't be reaching it at all" Ogata stands and gives a soft kick to the carcass "we followed it for hours." He nods at the sun, already close to the highest mountains "We'd be better off looking for somewhere to spend the night"
Sugimoto glimpses at the horizon, calculating how much light they still have left, and focuses, once again, on the animal, digging the knife deeper than before.
"It should be good if we hurry" he grunts "Help me pack what's ready" the knife points at the limbs and the pelt by his side. "I just need to finish with the neck"
"Do we really need the head?"
"Asirpa-san likes the brains."
"Asirpa'd like it even better if we don't freeze to death." He spits but he sits again next to the other man. He knows the soldier is reluctant to spend the night with him, at least like this, when there’s no urgency in the act, no need to come back to the others, no excuse to disappear. But Ogata never cared; part of the familiarity he has grown to have around the soldier is born out of that distrust he feels around the sniper. It's something Ogata can recognize. It's predictable, comfortable, it's the hue that has tinted every human touch he has experienced. So, he doesn't argue, unwilling to fight against Sugimoto's wariness, to get rid of that known comfort. Some hours walking at night, pretending there’s a reason for the frantic rhythm they’ve imposed themselves, are better than lifting that barrier.
He takes the meat and starts packing it, ignoring the soldier while he does it. Sugimoto lifts the head not long after and ties it to his bag, looking briefly at the sniper before he starts walking in silence.
Ogata gives one last glance towards the sun, its light already starting to disappear from behind the mountains. With a sigh, he adjusts the meat on his back and follows the soldier.
It's already dark when they abandon the first half of the forest, and it's only half an hour after that that a thin, intermittent, rain starts falling on them, but they keep walking in silence. They both feel the cold numbness biting the end of their feet, making every step harder, but none of them says a thing. Both the numbness and the cold made themselves a home inside their bones at the continent; they are familiar enough. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to talk about.
Still, Sugimoto knows the sniper hates the cold as much as himself, because the only nights where Ogata had let him close were the cold ones, as if his body couldn't survive the winter without his heat. He knows his lover hates the cold, because every other time, even in the brief touches they allow the other, his skin has crawled away from him.
"We're close" Sugimoto says out of something similar to remorse, breaking the silence. "An hour at most". He points at the narrow path before them. "That's the first cliff we passed"
Ogata gives him a low grunt, not far behind.
Had Ogata always hated the cold? The soldier knows he didn't. There was a time where it meant a change of season, a background noise. But its meaning had been altered somewhere deep within those first months in the trenches, when the continent's winter refused to leave space for spring. He remembers the thin uniform they gave him, and the first jacket he stole from a man as cold as everything around them. As cold as the night biting the tip of his feet.
He tries to change his thread of thought, knowing that it'll only lead him back there, but he's soon looking at that first man's eyes, hearing the sound of his bones moving under a skin that was suddenly too loose around them, protesting against the man that was stealing their owner's last hope for warmth.
And it starts again, as it always does, a memory stepping on top of another, covering Sugimoto's eyes only to be pushed aside by a new one, filling his lungs with the smell of thousands of wounds, bringing back a mountain of dead eyes that look back at him, and, over all of them, a familiar sound; a whistle cutting its path through the air. A promise of violence.
Another sound, almost a prayer, escapes his mouth.
There are no bombings in Hokkaido.
A mantra he has repeated so many times its meaning has been lost and it no longer sounds like any known language, but, still, he keeps muttering that deformed prayer.
There are no bombings in Hokkaido.
Indifferent to his plea, a distant explosion reverberates inside his chest and covers his voice.
There are no bombings in Hokkaido.
Another one, a closer one, follows the first.
There are no bombings in Hokkaido.
He sees the sky illuminated, yellow, red, bright white, behind him. He sees the blood of the men tinting the snow, and he feels his heart, racing inside his chest.
There are no bombings in Hokkaido.
He breathes in the smoke, and it lingers on his tongue.
There are no bombings in Hokkaido.
He keeps walking (there has never been any other option) but, when he looks again at his side, he sees the trenches again, their sides towering over him. He closes his eyes for a second, as if that could get rid of their unbearable presence. The path feels more familiar now. The wall at his right grows bigger and, when he looks at the hand he had used to guide himself, instead of resting on fresh snow, he finds it buried in the continent’s mud. The soldier violently moves it away and cleans it against his coat.
He feels his unsteady breathing, his heart pounding inside his chest, but he keeps moving, only to stop a second after, when he sees himself in front of him, as if he was looking at a stranger.
He's sitting, his back stiff against the trenches' wall. The low light makes it hard to distinguish, but he doesn’t need it to see the white strap crossing over his chest.
He knows he's younger, he must be, but he looks older than he remembers.
He notices the way he hugs his legs, how timidly his hands hold each other. His face, still unscarred.
He looks younger than he remembers.
The soldier forgets where he stands for a second and walks towards himself, unsure about what he could say to a man he feels so foreign, wondering if they could even speak in a common tongue. He manages two unsteady steps, forgetting that this is a dream, that there's nothing to say, that the man before him died years ago.
But his eyes are fixed on himself while he walks, and, an after what feels like an eternity, in the brief second that separates the two of them, an unlucky step sends his body forward, and he feels the gravity calling him, gripping him from somewhere inside his stomach, his foot slipping towards the cliff.
His brain leaves the old wounds to prepare for the new ones and the trenches, their pale reflection on the snow, finally disappear. He's back again at the forest, the bright lights of the bombings muted by Hokkaido's dense night. He catches one of the lower branches of a nearby tree, and he feels the cold bark burning where it scratches the tender skin. At last, he balances himself.
Barely an instant before he fully understands what has happened, or what he's doing, Sugimoto turns instinctively to the other man, searching desperately for his figure in the dark, his lips already parting to warn him about the ice beneath the snow.
But Ogata is already falling.
When his eyes meet the soldier's, they're curious, as if they're still trying to understand the shift of the horizon. Sugimoto, still holding the branch, reaches for him, but his hand meets with an empty space that feels too dense around his fingers.
The first thing Ogata notices is the soldier's expression during his fall; panic barely contained.
The second thing is the pain he feels.
The third thing, the pain he doesn’t.
He reckons, rationally, that it couldn't have passed more than a few seconds, that he hasn't been lying on the snow for hours, but, during the time while his body doesn't respond, the world moves at a different speed. He feels his lungs, completely emptied by the impact, burning him from inside, his chest collapsed on itself. The movement of his heart, almost unbearable, lifts his ribcage, in a sort of tortuous dance, fighting to find its space again. He's certain he can see his clothes moving with it, that he can hear its beating against the skin (for all he knows, it's all that can be heard from where he lies). He wants to grab his cloak and get it away from his neck, as if lifting the cloth could take his breathing back, but his arms lie lifeless at his sides. He pushes his head back, against the cold ground, his mouth open wide and moving desperately, looking for air.
His eyes move without a direction, searching around for something that could give them answers. He looks up, at the edge of the path, where there's still snow falling from where he slipped.
The burning pressure in his chest starts creeping up his neck and towards his face, around his eyes, pressing them from inside. His vision is blurred by a thousand lights inside his pupils, almost blinding him. He no longer recognizes the edge of the cliff, nor the snow falling, nor the man that still looks at him from above.
He moves his head again, banging it against the ground, knowing it won't fix anything but refusing to lie motionless to die.
At last, with an empty noise, his lungs move on its own after that eternal instant, trying to refill themselves, fighting against a pain that makes the sniper afraid of looking down and discover that they lie outside his chest. (He reasons that that couldn't be the case, as the snow wouldn't allow them to burn with that intensity).
He gasps, swallowing as much air as he able to, and time restarts again around him, his body finally contorting, escaping the ache of the broken ribs.
The soldier's voice starts to echo in his ears, but the rest of the pain is awakened at the same time as his limbs, and it numbs anything that's not his own body screaming.
Sugimoto looks down. The dim light of the moon is barely enough to understand where the sniper has fallen, but, even without its help, he sees the unnatural stillness of the other man. There's a moment where he believes Ogata lies dead on the frozen floor, and during that time he relives all that had happened since they killed the deer, looking for the signal that he should have known was there, that would had made him able to avoid this. He opens and closes his fists, his hands trying desperately to hold onto something they could mould, that could finally make them useful.
And, when he catches a glimpse of movement at the bottom of the cliff, he starts running towards the hill at his right, without a second thought, his body jolting before he realizes its movement. Forgetting about the war, about himself, about the ice behind his feet, about the immense distance that has always separated both of them. He moves fast, dodging the branches out of instinct, and managing to do so out of luck. He shouts something, but he doesn't understand his own words, waiting for an answer that doesn't come.
When he finally gets to the other man, he sees him gasping, his arms grabbing his chest.
“Stay still.” He pants, humiliated by the worry soaking his words.
The sniper tries to talk, but his lungs are still reluctant to let go of the air inside. Sugimoto kneels next to him, and his hands feel the other man, pressing slightly at the places where Ogata flinches.
"The shoulder's out of place." He places his hand over the sniper's side "Maybe a broken rib" he mutters. "Can you breathe?"
As an answer, the sniper inhales deeply. Sugimoto listens closely, searching for the known sound of a punctured lung. He hesitates for a second before moving a hand towards one of the legs.
“Do they-”
“I can move them” Ogata interrupts him. His voice is rough, but the soldier sees his body relaxing with it.
"Can you walk?"
"Not yet" he coughs, flinching again.
"You'll freeze if you stay here."
"You’ll too."
"I can leave." Sugimoto holds Ogata’s arm, and the sniper closes his eyes. “Ready?”
The other man moves his head so its further away from the shoulder, as if that distance could numb the pain.
“Just do it already.”
Despite of his best efforts, his shout echoes through the forest.
When he opens his eyes again, Sugimoto is still holding his arm, and Ogata knows it'll hurt before he does it, but even then, maybe because of it, he violently moves it away from the soldier.
"You're acting like a child"
"Three hours walking at night to avoid being with someone you've fucked twice," the sniper examines his ribs, pressing his side, pretending that the pause between phrases is due to that distraction and not because of the pain "I'm not the one acting like a child."
They both know that's only half a truth, but Sugimoto stays silent as the sniper uses his shoulder to balance while trying to get back on his feet. He feels the soldier's hand cautiously pushing his back to help him, and a part of him, the weaker part, lets his weight rest against it. After he manages, at last, to stand on his feet without wheezing, he starts limping towards the base of the cliff, looking for somewhere that could serve as a refuge.
"It's your fault to begin with" he continues after a couple of tortuous steps. "D'you expect me to be all sweet about it?"
"We could've reached them." Sugimoto answers, examining the other man's movements, relieved to see that each step is steadier than the last.
"How?" Ogata points with his right arm, the one unharmed, to the moon. "It's been a fucking hour since the sun set." He spits at Sugimoto's direction and starts walking again. "I can't climb that hill. Start looking for a place to sleep."
"You stay here" Sugimoto points at a rock that could serve as a windshield for a smaller man "I'll come back for you."
Ogata complies for once and sits, looking at the soldier's figure until it merges with the forest, distracting himself from the pain, moving his fingers, trying to convince himself that they still obey him, afraid that stopping them now would mean that they will rot away.
Sugimoto comes back for him when Ogata is almost asleep, his body crystalized in the same position the soldier has left him in, his hands still fighting to move.
“You’re freezing” Sugimoto mutters while moving his good arm over his shoulder. “I’ve found a cave. S’not big, but we can light a fire.”
The soldier takes most of Ogata’s weight on his back, looking for a box of matches inside his pocket, moving it nervously between his fingers when he finally finds it.
When they reach the cave, Ogata is almost capable of moving his legs on his own, but he still feels the muscles fighting against him, trying to abandon themselves to the comfortable quietness of the snow.
The soldier places him against the wall and comes back short after with wood that's far too wet to burn as fast as they need it to.
It's been two hours since the two men found refuge, and barely some minutes since Ogata decided to stop trying to sleep. He had been jumping between memories, being thrown around by a voice that reminds him of his own mortality. He opens and closes his hand, repeating the movement until it's as natural as his breathing, even if less painful.
His left hand examines his ribs again, but his eyes look at the soldier.
Sugimoto fell asleep long after the sniper did but, unlike him, the soldier managed to keep himself inside the nightmare that now makes his body tremble. It shudders so slightly that a man less familiar with the soldier would have thought that that shivering is an illusion caused by the light of their fire, that burns as fragile as everything they have created together.
Ogata wonders if an immortal man can be afraid of his own death, and if his dreams mirror his own.
Without understanding the movement of his own hand, he reaches for the soldier, shaking his shoulder just enough for him to wake up, and he feels a question burning inside his throat.
Sugimoto opens his eyes when Ogata's arm is already back on his lap, as if nothing had happened. The sniper waits by his side, opening and closing his hand.
The soldier sits up, resting again one of the irregular walls next to Ogata, feeling it scraping his back but refusing to move, calming himself with the brief touch of his arm against the sniper's.
They remain silent for some time, listening to the quiet sound of each other's breathing and the low hum of the fire. Ogata parts his lips a couple of times, unsure about talking to the soldier, unsure about why he wants to.
"What were you seeing back there? Before I fell." Ogata's voice finally breaks the quietness of the night. "You weren't there."
The soldier glances at him and, maybe it's because he's still navigating the nightmare, maybe it's because it's late at night. Maybe it's because he can feel the sniper's body warm against his, because he believes he hears something within Ogata's words. Maybe it's because winter makes men weak to the touch.
He doesn't know why, but he answers.
"It came back." He stops, reluctant to continue, not knowing what words could give it a silhouette that could compare. He wonders if that's enough, if the sniper understands. But the other man nods before Sugimoto says anything else, his cheek moving against his arm. "You see it too?"
"We all took it here” Ogata answers.
He has never considered Ogata weak, but, when he looks at the hand that clutches the cloak, all he sees are delicate bones. The sniper's eyes are closed, reviving the times he almost died, the sounds of the bombings waking him up at night, the smell of the damp soil that was lifted with the explosions and that now finds him inside caves like this one.
Sugimoto, his head against the sniper's shoulder, plays his part; getting lost in a crowd of men he has killed, in their faces, their voices, the weight of their bodies falling to the ground.
But none of them talk about those things that always murmur at the back of their heads. Instead, they complain about the trench's cold. About those first months of war where all they could think about was the hunger, about reasons to keep moving a body that weighted like a curse. Things they could touch, that had a defined shape, that felt somewhat gentler than the presence that flooded every day, night, and corner. So, they keep talking, dancing around the topic of death, waiving a net around it so dense that nothing could ever reach it. They still feel it; it's at the edge of everything they tell the other, looking at them from the bottom of their throats, waiting for a word that it can cling to, that it can bite.
"Were you even aiming at it?" The sniper asks after a particularly long silence, pointing with his head to the deer's head at their feet.
"No." Sugimoto answers. Ogata looks at him from where he sits, his cheek brushing the soldier's neck, and studies the face of the man whose hands are as stained as his, but whose sins weight double. He frowns, confirming in his head what he already knew; that death might be a sin, but the guilt it brings is a blessing.
"You'll starve like that"
"I knew you'd do it." Sugimoto smiles, a movement so small it’s barely perceptible. Ogata, by his side, frowns.
"Even a child could have made that shot"
The soldier smiles again, now facing the other man's neck, and an image crosses his mind.
"Did you hunt as a kid?"
Ogata nods, briefly, both aware of the new born tension that grips his body.
"Your parents must've been happy" Sugimoto says, tentatively, knowing that there's a limit to how much he can force the sniper. Ogata hesitates for a second before answering, surprised by the question.
"They were" he finally says.
"What did she cook with it? Your mother" The soldier moves a bit, so his back rests again against the cave "I could eat some homemade food."
Ogata lets the words slip out of his mouth, unsure about where they come from.
"It depends. You shoot what you can find, but she was a good cook." After a pause, he adds "My father always liked it."
Ogata sees before his closed eyes the life he weaves for the soldier, and keeps talking, adding details to a life that could have been true, feeling gentle arms holding his, guiding his steps, familiar skin on his own.
The soldier nods while he speaks, and, if there's something in Ogata's story that feels off-key, odd details born out of how foreign he feels the life he's moulding, of love only known by second hand, he's kind enough to play along.
But, soon enough, Ogata feels a known pressure growing inside, and his skin feels too tight around him. He sees himself in his story, the child he was, looking back at him with eyes he doesn't recognize, and the question, the only question that he has always heard at the back of his head, comes back at him.
Can a body grow any different when loving hands give it a shape?
Could have he been a different man? No child is born that broken, but he believes there's a time where a body stops allowing a change of silhouette.
But he can lie. He can pretend, even if it's only for tonight. Even if it's only because he understands vulnerability as wounded flesh, and right now his body aches when the soldier holds him. So, he can allow himself this, to slip into a costume that's too stiff around his body.
He turns to face Sugimoto, ignoring the pain on his side, and searches for something inside his eyes.
The other man's hand travels through his back, a movement so gentle he almost misses it, barely an echo. There are certain touches the sniper has never allowed, aware that they would crawl under the flesh, making the broken mechanism screech inside with every attempt to restart it. They havr always felt like that. Like a message that comes from too far away, like looking at it all from behind a window. Seeing it all, unable to reach it. But, tonight, he takes Sugimoto's arms, and orders him to touch his skin in a way he can feel, that can break the glass. The other man stops when the sniper winces at the pain from his sides, but he murmurs in his ear, begging him to keep moving.
They know they don't love each other. They just share the same hunger. A need to be held. To feel warmth. Humans, at least while it lasts. And Ogata takes what he knows Sugimoto can give, while wondering what the soldier takes from him, if there's anything to take at all.
When Sugimoto opens his eyes again, the sniper is looking at him, dead eyes shining bright for the first time since they met. There's an enchanting force behind that light, calling him from a depth the soldier might not be able to reach. But there's a promise at its bottom.
Sugimoto feels a thorn growing from inside his chest, piercing the muscle at its path. His heart will keep pounding against it, only to be hurt again, to make the wound deeper. But he only knows pain, so he throws himself again into those eyes, knowing he'll keep diving until there's no air left for him.
Ogata bites the skin of his lover, and Sugimoto throws his head back. There's power in seeing a man like him consumed by desire. There's power in being a willing prey.
So, this night he'll let him close, close enough that the edges of their bodies blur each other, as if fusing with another could make room to fill with himself, as if the lies he had told could grow inside another body.
At the end of the night, with the sun already breaking the sky, the man that was once Ogata falls onto his lover without a sound, in slow motion, as a prey that's still unaware of his own death, and rests his head in the other man's chest, relishing on its warmth.
By his side, his hand rests motionless.