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The snow against Giyu’s bare skin is bitingly cold. His fingers are turning blue and have long since gone stiff, and his feet aren’t faring much better, trapped as they are in his soaked socks. His breath no longer clouds in front of his mouth as it once did, and the trembling across his body has shifted quite noticeably from being caused by the cold on his skin to being the cold in his muscles. He feels hot, like he’s burning all over, like that one time he was trying to help his sister cook and poured scalding water all down his arm.
No. no, he can’t think about her. He can’t. Thinking about Tsutako makes his feet still, and opens wider the pit in his chest, which is threatening constantly to swallow him whole.
It would be so easy to let it, and the promise of release is nearly enough for him to give in. But he cannot, because she wouldn’t want that, and she fought so hard for his life, she owes it to her to keep walking. To keep pushing, even if it’s getting harder and harder.
Giyu doesn’t have much by way of fat on him, due to living with a sister who didn’t exactly have very much money for food. Back home this made him unathletic, but wasn’t an actual problem. Out here, it’s guaranteed to have already shorn his chances of survival in half.
Though, it doesn’t look like it’s going to matter very much at this rate. He’d never been in these woods, and they seem to go on forever. He thinks he’s been walking in a straight line, but how is he to know? What he does know for certain is that he’s lost in the middle of an unfamiliar forest, in the dead of winter, and the sun is going down, which means he’s been walking for many hours. His belly is empty, and he’s burning with cold.
When he trips over something, a log, a rock, he doesn’t even guess, and lands in the snow, he makes no attempt to rise. He can’t muster the strength to push himself up, but beyond that, he cannot gather the will. That hole in his chest grows larger and larger, eating away at his spirit and everything that makes him Giyu.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Giyu, only in his own mind as his lips have frozen shut around his chattering teeth. ‘I wanted to make it.’ He didn’t, not really, but it feels like what he should say in case someone is able to hear his dying words. He hopes no one is. Tsutako died all by herself while he hid in a closet and let her. He deserves to die here, in the forest, alone and unheard. Even if it isn’t what she would want.
It’s not instant, death, apparently. Giyu had thought it was like blowing out a candle, the light gone with one breath. Quick. But it is not, and he lays there in the cold for some time, his chest struggling more and more as the sun continues to sink, bathing him and the trees he calls company in soft oranges and pinks.
His eyelids finally begin to drop when the shadows are growing long enough to cover him. But then there’s a rustle. Snow shifting. His frozen, sinking heart isn’t immune to fear, but the adrenaline isn’t enough to put him on his feet. Something is nearby, probably something hungry, and all he can do is hope it kills him fast. The rustling grows louder and quicker, more hasty, as it clearly approaches. He has enough energy to flinch as something warm- hot, even- touches his shoulder. There’s another sound, too garbled to be made out, and just as Giyu is finally being dragged under, a head of hair the color of peaches and a lavender eye crowd his vision.
Then it’s finally over.
Sabito was looking for a rabbit or a fox or something equally small to bring back for dinner, so coming across a boy laying on his front in the snow, pale as a ghost with blue fingers, is a shock.
The boy doesn’t react to his touch beyond a near imperceptible twitch, and he does not answer any of Sabito’s calls. It’s hardly surprising, considering he feels like ice beneath Sabito’s palm, and he’s clearly been out here for far too long. His eyes shut just as Sabito leans down to see them, and they do not open. The boy is dying.
Sabito has never been one to sit and wait, he is a boy of action, therefore scooping the boy into his arms and tossing him over his shoulder, the way Urokodaki has done when Sabito is too tired from training to drag himself inside. He runs as fast as he can with the snow reaching halfway to his knees, back towards his master’s home.
He reaches the door with the sun pouring the last of its light against his back. He throws it open, already shouting desperately for help. His master wastes no time meeting him.
“I found a boy!” yells Sabito, panicked in a way Urokodaki has never seen. “He’s cold.” An understatement, but Sabito doesn’t know how to handle this at all.
“Lay him by the fire,” Urokodaki commands, always level headed in a crisis. He grabs some spare blankets to lay on the floor faster than Sabito can amble over and set the boy down, giving him a place to do so. He’s as gentle as he can be, arranging his head such that it’s pillowed atop a bunched piece of blanket. “We must be slow about warming him.” Urokodaki orders. “This is severe frostbite, and if he gets too warm too quickly it could cause shock. You’re going to retrieve a bowl of water and multiple washcloths.” Sabito nods and wastes no time standing up and rushing away. He gathers the water and rags as fast as he can without spilling and returns to find the boy stripped of his clothes and buried in blankets.
He’s instructed to soak the cloths in the water and lay them on the boy's neck, armpits, and groin. Sabito does so, praying silently all the while that his chest continues to rise. If he was too late again, too late to save another life, he doesn’t know how he could forgive himself.
“Do you think,” he starts, as his master is sitting back on his heels and telling him they’ve done all they can for now. “Do you think that he will be alright?”
“Only time will tell.” It’s an unsatisfying answer, but he expected that. Urokodaki guides him up and out of the room, bringing him to the kitchen for a bowl of the soup they were to have for dinner. “I surely hope so.”
Giyu feels far too warm when he wakes. The burning sensation is distracting for barely a moment before a somber disappointment overwhelms all else. He’s awake. Alive. His sister is nowhere in sight, and he’s quite certain that the afterlife is not so physically uncomfortable.
“You’re awake!” cheers someone to his right. He turns as best he can, and sees the boy with peach hair that he’d nearly thought was simply a figment of his imagination.
“I am,” croaks Giyu.
“We saved you,” says the boy. Giyu does not thank him, though he should. “I’m glad you lived.” Giyu isn’t as enthused, but he does not say that because it is rude. “I’m Sabito, who are you?”
“My name is Giyu Tomioka,” replies Giyu.
“It’s nice to meet you, Giyu.” This sentiment, Giyu will eventually agree with, days in the future when he has regained the feeling in his extremities and is told he is safe and will be fed. Weeks in the future as proper meals build him back into a boy rather than the shell he had become. Months later, when Giyu holds a sword and swings for the first time. Years later, when he is given purpose by a boy named Tanjiro and his sister, whose desire to live and fight reminds him of that boy who saved him.