.
"Senpai!"
Shinta shouted. He started, started to run. His muscles clenched - to run up to Akira, to tear the man away - to run away, with or without Akira.
He couldn't move.
Snow.
It was a woman.
Black eyes searing him, holding him.
He couldn't move.
Her arms lifted around Kiyosato-sempai's shoulders, enclosing him in a fold of white fabric (snow), a cascade of black hair.
Shinta sucked in a breath to shout again, and the air froze inside his chest.
The snow maiden turned her eyes, then her face, back to Akira, as though Shinta had never interrupted.
Akira bent his head down to her.
Something like smoke, something like steam passed from his lips to hers.
She kissed him.
He kissed her.
A cocoon of silence all around them - Shinta and Akira and the woman. Shinta shouted and swore, soundless. The couple did not flinch, did not move.
Snow swirling around them, silence caressing them, as he held her and she touched his face and she breathed in his life as they kissed.
All Shinta could do was watch, horrified.
He saw that she was beautiful.
He couldn't move.
.
Finally something shattered.
Shinta blinked.
The woman was gone, and Akira was lying on the ground, covered by an inch of snow. Dead. No - alive? Perhaps alive. Shinta bundled him into his own cloak and dragged the older boy back to the cabin as quickly as his muscles could move him, cupped his hands over the chapped skin and breathed to warm it.
Long hours while Akira only seemed to grow colder.
.
Morning saw the storm break - a cold blue sky and a distant, indifferent sun. The blinding brightness of the snow.
Shinta tore himself from the wood pickers' cabin to find the way back home. Too much wasted time stumbling over snow-covered roots and rocks, smashing his frozen fingers against branches in his path.
Trying to escape the memory of those eyes.
Her black eyes.
Shinta met an old man and his son - the woodsmen - on the path, told them to rush ahead. "The daimyo's son was caught in the storm - hurry!" They asked no questions - they dropped their bundles of sticks against an old tree and ran on.
Shinta reached the mansion, gasped to the servants and retainers that the daimyo's son had nearly frozen to death - "barely breathing," "no fire," "the woodscutter's hut," "might still be alive."
His knees hit the earth of the courtyard before he had finished speaking.
His words tangled in his throat.
The woman.
The snow.
The kiss.
Her silent, solemn face.
Her black eyes.
Her eyes.
Shinta closed his own eyes and lost all thought.
.