Ink Stained

106: remember the promise*

約束を覚えている

Shin found her a few minutes after the drizzle turned into a downpour, soaking her to the bone. She was curled up against the base of the tree, eyes blank, tears of blood long washed away, body drained as she trembled from the cold and stared out at nothing.

He didn't say anything as he knelt by her side, rainwater dripping from his hair down his face. He was getting as wet as she. A distant part of her thought that she should tell him so.

He lifted her chin to make her look at him. Her glazed eyes returned his frank regard, and she thought, Say something.

She said nothing.

Without a word, he picked her up in his arms. She huddled against him, seeking the warmth permeating from his body despite the chill of the air around them. Her head rested on his chest, and when she closed her eyes to savour that warmth, they burned like white-hot pokers were drawing lines against the back of her eyelids.

She didn't know where they were going until she slowly opened her eyes again when Shin set her gently on a wooden chair. She blinked, blearily taking in the unfamiliar room; the closed laptop on top of a desk set close to the window overlooking the grey mist hanging over the forest like a suffocating blanket, the closet in the wrong corner of the room, the painting of an old village on one wall. She didn't have a painting in her room.

They were in Shin's room.

No sound can leave this room, Kuniumi whispered from where she hovered, far and near, here and there. None will hear what you say, or he says.

Something stirred in her then, a little twisting in her gut, a vague hint of solace. She remained staring woodenly at the puddle of water pooling at her feet as he left the room, returning a minute later with three fluffy white towels, as well as her pyjamas. He knelt down in front of her and took her sandals off, and her soggy socks, then straightened as he laid one of the towels on her head. She stared at his dark hair slick with rainwater, wanting to reach out and touch it to see if it felt like silk, the way it looked.

She didn't. Her eyes refocused on his, and he gave her a small, sad smile as he started to dry her wet hair, gently wringing the water out until her head was surrounded by a white cloud.

The question came slowly to her, the way a foggy image of someone from the past would when you found yourself thinking of them after a very long time.

Does he know?

He suspects. He saw her enter the house with a face of death.

Her stomach tightened at the memory of Yukiji's heartbreak painted so clearly, her every weakness exposed.

She and Kuniumi watched him stand again, silent as he walked to his closet and pulling out the heaviest, warmest haori she thought she'd ever seen before returning to her. He wrapped the second towel around her hair, still dripping despite his admirable efforts to dry it all without shining a sun on her head.

"Butterfly," he said quietly, kneeling on his haunches in front of her. "You need to change. You'll get sick."

She didn't respond. A worried frown pulled at his brow, and he reached out and cupped her cheek in his palm. He leaned forward and touched his forehead to her cold one. She looked into his eyes, blue shifting into a red that didn't scare her so much as Yukiji's had.