Chapter Text
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“Nirei!”
Suo’s voice falls on deaf ears. It’s his classmate that charges into the white-blue and black-green rampage, but it’s his brother—his brother from the dojo—that he sees tackling a man, the man who stabbed his right eye, the man who pushed his mother and swung at her and--
Pressure builds behind his eyepatch. He blinks, and Nirei’s falling. He blinks again but it’s his brother on the floor now, and now that pressure is in his throat, and it’s hard to breathe. Hard to think. Members of KEEL surround Nirei like an impenetrable fortress, two-by-fours clutched in their hands and a crazed look in their eyes. The same look in that man’s eyes. The man who had turned to him next and didn’t seem to care at all about the blood pouring down Suo’s face.
His eyepatch feels warm and wet and wrong. The stagnant air of KEEL’s hideout sours into a coppery tang and the stench of booze, and something cold and rotten spills into Suo’s veins. He hates that man. He hates the woman who invited him into their home. He hates them both so much; it doesn’t matter that the coat clenched in his hand doesn’t belong to that man, that his mother and brother aren’t here. He’s seeing two things, but the one thing he sees, the one thing that will always haunt him, is all he can focus on.
That’s the first time Suo realized that he was trapped—buried six feet under, and no plant can thrive in frozen ground.
That’s the first time Suo realized that his winter would never end.
And it’s happening again.
“Are trees really still alive in winter, Master?” a ten-year-old Suo asks in a small voice.
“Yes, they are,” is his master’s simple, matter-of-fact answer. When Suo’s brow furrows, he says, “You disagree.”
Suo turns away from the lush, pinkish canopy of cherry blossoms only to find his master already facing him, and with a sparkle in his eyes that always means he knows exactly what Suo’s really thinking.
“Master,” Suo starts, delicately brushing his fingers through the long, golden tassels of his earrings. “No, it’s childish. I know they’re alive.”
His master waits with a warm, gentle smile that eases the tension in Suo’s shoulders. He often forgets that, with his master, he’s allowed to say stupid things (though his master always corrects him—the man doesn’t believe in the word ‘stupid,’ to put it simply).
“They don’t look alive,” Suo finally confesses. He sighs, a short, heavy thing that makes his shoulders feel lighter.
His master’s hand, aged and calloused by countless fights, cups Suo’s shoulder. His touch is soft and soothing, like the warm, dappled sunlight spilling through the cherry blossoms. “When you think of the word ‘life,’ what comes to mind?”
“What’s a lil thing gon’ do t’me, huh?”
Suo doesn’t answer. He never does. Drunkards never listen. But this time, it’s because his throat is too tight, and everything—his eyepatch, his Furin uniform, even his skin—feels so wrong. He wants to peel the skin off his body, or crawl out of it.
Behind him, a woman trembles in fear. He knows he needs to protect her, but he can’t move.
Suddenly, the drunken man is in Suo’s face, and his breath reeks of booze. “Huh? What’re gon’ do t’me, huh? I’m jus’ tryna have a lil fun~”
“We’re just havin’ fun ‘ere, Hayato. Go back to your room.
Suo hears two women crying, and all the color drains from his vision. His house was always dark; his mother didn’t open the windows, because she didn’t want their neighbors to see the trash littering the floors or the dirty dishes piled on the kitchen counters and dining table. His body locks up. It’s like everything inside of him just shuts down. He can’t breathe again. Can’t think.
Pain explodes across the side of his face. He stumbles and the alleyway spins and spins like a carousel until his head smacks the brick wall. His teeth vibrate, the ragged surface picks and scrapes off his skin, and blood—red, hot, heavy—trickles down his chin. His eye aches beneath the eyepatch, and he can’t tell what’s in front of him. This man has two faces.
More pain, across his shoulders, up and down his spine, behind his eyepatch again. He hears his name; he hears his mother scream. A hand grabs his head. Nails dig into his scalp. Fingers slip under the strap of his eyepatch, and through the colorless static, he catches the glimpse of a knife. Something inside of him snaps. He grabs the hand restraining him and twists, twists until he hears a pop, a snap, then a scream, and then he throws the drunkard down onto the concrete.
Suo towers over him.
He didn’t stab his eye.
But he looks like the man who did.
He doesn’t know who he’s looking at.
Or why he hates him so much.
He thinks he should break his fingers, one at a time—turn that hand, the one that tried to take off his eyepatch, into something unrecognizable.
Because some people really don’t learn their lesson unless it’s beaten into them.
At least, that’s what Suo learned.
What does life look like?
“It’s bright,” Suo answers. “And colorful!”
His master’s smile widens.
Suo’s answer is the same.
And this isn’t what life looks like. Red, purple, blue—Suo shouldn’t only see those colors when he’s punching someone’s face in. But every other color fades to gray.
And sometimes, gray is all he sees.
That’s how he knows he’s frozen in time.
Gray.
Winter.
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