4
"You don't have to carry me, Obi. I can walk," Shirayuki protests, trying to wriggle her way out of her knight's arms.
"Your boots are already full of snow, aren't they, Miss?" he responds dryly, clutching her closer to his chest. He somehow managed to convince her to keep wearing his coat, and as for carrying her, well. Simply picking her up and ignoring the resulting complaints worked well enough. But he needed to get her indoors—and warm—as quickly as possible.
"Haha ha..." Shirayuki quietly laughs. Obi was right, after all. She points her toes towards the sky and knocks her heels together, dislodging more white fluff. The snow on the ground was nearly at Obi's knees, if she tried walking in this mess it would only pack the snow surrounding her feet to ice.
"Please tell me you are at least wearing stockings," Obi sighs.
Seriously. Just how stupid was he?
He should have known better than to try and run from her.
"I always wear stockings to bed. I can't sleep if my feet are cold," Shirayuki retorts, glad for one small victory.
She settles in his arms, giving up on making an escape, then cups her pink fingers in front of her mouth, warming them with her breath, rubbing them briskly together, slowly curling and unfolding and massaging the stiff joints.
Obi watches her movements closely. Her current half–frozen state was his fault too. Granted, running through a snowstorm in one's nightshirt was not the greatest decision, but that's just how she responded to these situations. Miss was fully capable of moving mountains to correct a misunderstanding—she wasn't about to let something as insignificant as proper attire get in her way. Seriously.
"Do your hands hurt?" he asks, softly.
"A little," she frowns into her fingertips. "—But nothing is frozen!" she quickly reassures him, tucking her hands back into the sleeves of the borrowed coat. It was almost laughable, how big it was on her slender frame. But it was warm, with the residual heat from Ob –
"Obi, aren't you cold?" she looks up at him suddenly, concern flooding her features.
He glances down at her face—his eyes immediately lock on the scar and he forces himself to look away.
"This is nothing, Miss."
"But—" she begins to protest –
– and he hastily cuts her off. "Really, I'll be fine. We're almost there."
"What?" she turns her head and squints through the snow, searching for a landmark, spying the Checkpoint gate. "No we aren't, Scholar's Street is—"
"We're not going to Scholar's Street."