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The path narrows as the pines lean in closer and closer, their snow frosted limbs creaking in the wind. Yuuta Okkotsu walks the path with a cautious tread, his sword sheathed but his hand resting on the hilt. Old blood clings to the seam of his coat like a scar.
He’s been wandering, since the war ended, without a place to call home. Though ended feels like a lie, even to him. There’d been a victory declared, sure, but it had left ash in his mouth. He hadn’t even been able to remember what he was fighting for by the end. The front lines are no longer piling with carcasses, at least, but there are still skirmishes. There’s still danger. The future of the world still pulls at the edges like stitches around a festering wound, hisses around the edges of all the conversations, as people try to heal fractures that pit brother against brother.
The village up ahead reveals itself to him gently. Half-submerged in mist, its rooftops crouched under snow. There must be hot springs nearby, as steam rises from further into the town like breath from a sleeping beast. Lanterns swing cheerfully from doorframes, carved with runes he doesn’t recognise. A wind chime tinkles in the cold.
He’s been told that the healer here is strange. That he never speaks and only takes in the truly broken.
Yuuta knows that applies to him.
He drags his aching body through the village, passing weathered villagers whose eyes are as shuttered as their windows. They glance at him, then away, murmuring just loud enough for him to hear in the muted quiet of the snow.
“It’s that uniform you know… The Special one. Bet that sword’s still got hot blood on it.”
“That sword… Isn’t that Okkotsu? Those lot always bring ghosts with them.”
“He won’t remember…”
He brushes their words aside. He’s used to them by now. He’s used to people talking about him like he’s not there. He doesn’t flinch at his own name uttered on strangers’ lips, the pause when they realise who he is, the stutter in their breath as if they fear he’s here to end them. He breathes in a lungful of icy air, gritting his teeth as his leg aches yet again.
A small girl peeks out from behind her grandmother’s skirt, watching him. Her eyes glow faintly violet. Another war-marked child. She flinches when she sees the crest on his uniform. Yes, probably less than a year ago, someone like Okkotsu being here would have meant she’d have been torn away from her family for conscription.
There’s the ghost of a sensation around his wrist. Like the tug of his sleeve. Déjà vu floods him. A prickling sense of having stood here before, boots sinking into this same snow, throat just as dry, but with someone’s name just on the tip of his tongue.
He looks towards the house at the end of the lane, in the direction of that strange tugging. It sits alone, where the ground gives way to sulphur springs. Smoke curls from the chimney in tight spirals. This is where he’d heard the wind chime from, though he hadn’t expected the wind chime to be made of teeth (animal he hopes) strung together with bone beads and copper.
The healer’s hut looks like every other healer’s home. But he’s certain it’s not. Yuuta can’t explain why his heartbeat stumbles. He tells himself it’s just the cold playing with him, just the injury acting up, as he makes his way down the lane.
This matches the descriptions everyone gave him in the city for this healer, after all, and this is the only reason he’s come so far on foot so late in the year.
He reaches the door and brushes the snow off his cloak and hair before he raises his hand and hesitates. His fingers twitch. Déjà vu hits him all over again, but then he shakes his head and knocks anyway.
The door creaks open, and Yuuta is struck by the smell of verbena, and something fainter, more familiar, something that smells somehow like home and sunshine. Yuuta sees warm light spilling onto the snow, washing the bright white amber.
Then a figure steps into the frame, slim, robed in dark blue, with blond straight hair that hangs in his eyes. Yuuta’s breath catches in his throat.
The man seems around Yuuta’s age, early twenties, but there’s something timeless about him. Something bone-deep and tired. A soul that has weathered too many winters. His eyes are a beautiful deep lavender, unreadable in the dim light, but when they meet Yuuta’s, something flickers in them.
The man’s mouth is covered behind a thick scarf that he has wrapped so only the eyes peek over the top, but Yuuta is sure that the face underneath it is beautiful.
They stare at each other for a moment. Yuuta feels it, the thrum beneath his ribs, the ghost of a feeling that he can’t place. He should know this face, he feels, but this is the first time here. Something in him shudders, like a cello string that has been plucked by accident.
“Healer Inu-?” He coughs, his throat tightening around the word as his vision blackens around the edges.
The man’s eyes widen, just a flicker, then narrow again.
He tries the name again, “Inumaki.” This time the syllables feel like broken glass on his tongue. He blinks as his breath stutters. There’s something wrong with his head.
Inumaki nods, once. His hands move in slow, deliberate shapes and Yuuta realises it’s sign language. He realises, with even more shock, that he understands it.
He doesn’t know how. He’s never learned it. Is this some spell that the witch has cast on him already so he knows?
You’re hurt, aren’t you? Come in.
Yuuta doesn’t move. “Do I know you?” His voice sounds hoarse to his own ears.
Inumaki’s hands still, dropping listlessly to his sides. His face remains neutral, or what Yuuta can see of it does, but his eyes look like something is crumbling behind them.
No. Inumaki’s hands sign that forcefully, then he huffs, shaking his head as though frustrated before raising his hands again and signing. It’s just déjà vu. You’ll get it a lot here. It’ll pass.
Yuuta isn’t sure why the ground seems to tilt under him at that. He sways, and Inumaki catches his elbow before he can stumble. The touch his gentle, but strong. Yuuta blinks at him. The contact burns.
He wants to ask more, but the words tangle in his throat. He stutters out apologies, introductions, explanations as to why he’s there, but Inumaki just patiently guides him inside out of the cold without saying a word.
The warmth hits Yuuta first, humidity stronger than any he can remember but laced with herbs and the faint mineral tang of the hot springs beyond. Yuuta exhales shakily, the cold curling off his shoulders like a phantom releasing its grip on him.
The house is modest. No unnecessary flourishes. Each object within feels like it was chosen for some purpose or other. The walls are woodened and aged, the floors scuffed in familiar patterns of well-worn paths around the space. Lanterns throw a honey glow across low shelves that are carefully lined with labelled jars, vials, and dried flowers hanging from the beams. The scent of rosemary and yuzu drifts from the kitchen.
Inumaki says nothing as he leads Yuuta through. Yuuta guesses perhaps he can’t. He seems to be able to hear him well enough, or perhaps he can lip read, but he hasn’t said a word since Yuuta arrived.
There’s a low table, two cushions on opposite sides. A kettle is over the fire next to it, just starting to whistle. Inumaki puts on a thick glove and takes the pot off the fire, resting it on the stone beside it before discarding the glove.
The whole space is spotlessly clean, though Yuuta thinks he doesn’t feel sterile. No, it feels like it’s tended to, like someone’s been waiting for a visitor to arrive.
As Yuuta casts his gaze around further, and Inumaki starts to transfer the hot water from the kettle into a tea pot, he sees the doorway to another room. He can see a single teacup on the window sill of the room beyond, a book face-down on the bed with its spine cracked. There’s a blanket draped over the bed that looks like the coziest thing he’s ever seen.
Though Yuuta notices that by the end of the bed, there is a sword rack. It’s empty.
Yuuta doesn’t know why his heartbeat feels uneven, but he feels like this place has been prepared for a guest and that somehow that guest is him.
“You live here alone?” Yuuta asks, trying to keep his tone casual.
Inumaki looks at him. That flicker again, and Yuuta realises that it’s pain he’s picking up in those eyes.
Yes. Since the war began.
Yuuta nods slowly. “I’m sorry.”
He apologises on reflex but he notices how Inumaki recoils, spilling hot water all over the heart. It sizzles as it hits the fire and turns into steam. Inumaki coughs, waving his hand in front of his face to dispel the steam.
Yuuta moves to the cushions by the low table and slowly lowers himself down. Inumaki sets a tea cup in front of him before he sets the teapot down. Yuuta reaches out, brushing his fingers over the edges of it, then freezes. There’s a faint symbol in the glaze, no bigger than his little fingernail. His throat tightens and something in his bones aches. He knows that sigil. He’s held this cup before, he knows it.
His voice breaks when he asks, “Have I been here before?”
Inumaki doesn’t answer straight away, his hands are busy with pouring tea. He sets the teapot down finally, his shoulders taut. His eyes don’t meet Yuuta’s, but even Yuuta can see the tremor to his hands as he signs.
No. Don’t worry. This feeling will pass when you’re well.
Yuuta waits while the tea is poured before he speaks again. The silence stretches long and thick, like steam that clings to his skin. It’s so hot in this place compared to outside, and Yuuta feels sweat prickling at the back of his neck.
He eventually lifts his cup with both hands, blowing to cool the liquid inside. It smells vaguely herbal, but he shouldn’t be surprised. This is a healer’s hut after all.
“It’s my leg,” he says finally. “An old wound. One of the last battles of the war.”
Inumaki tilts his head slightly, hands poised to sign, but he doesn’t interrupt.
Yuuta sees that as permission to continue, voice low. “The medics in the city said it’s healed, but it’s not. Something’s still there. I can feel it at night sometimes. Like fire in the marrow of my thigh bone. It pulls when I move wrong. I think if I tried to run on it, I’d collapse.”
He hesitates, then guesses that Inumaki is a healer and must be used to things like this. He stands, starting to undo his belt. Inumaki’s eyes widen and he starts making a STOP STOP STOP gesture.
Yuuta pauses.
“Don’t you need to see the wound?” he asks.
Inumaki’s eyes are wide, and the tips of his ears are bright pink. Yuuta watches as the healer closes his eyes for a moment and breathes deeply through his nose, before slowly inclining his head.
Yuuta nods, and pulls off his sword belt, putting it carefully on the table. Inumaki watches the sword like it’s a snake, before his eyes skitter to the side. Like he’s determined not to watch Yuuta undress.
“I was told you could fix things… You know… Curses like this. Things that normal medicine can’t reach.”
It doesn’t take long to undo the lacings of his pants and push them down his thighs low enough to reveal the ugly scar that branches up his leg from ankle to thigh. It pulses faintly with a dark sheen, like ink dispersing in water.
Yuuta starts when he feels cold fingers brush against it, Inumaki leaning over the table to inspect the leg.
This isn’t natural. Inumaki’s hands pull back to sign quickly. The pain is in your soul, not just your body. That’s why it lingers. The hot springs here are on top of a ley line. Combined with my powers, I should be able to heal it good as new.
Yuuta pulls his trousers back up as Inumaki leans back, before lowering himself to the ground once again.
The hot springs can be… difficult.
“Difficult?” Yuuta repeats, tilting his head.
Inumaki nods. One hand hovers over his own chest, where his heart is.
The spring holds… Inumaki pauses then fingerspells the word. Echoes. If you let it in, you get what you need to heal. But you can’t lie. It also shows what’s been buried.
Yuuta swallows hard, his fingers tightening around the teacup.
“I’m not afraid,” he says, though his voice doesn’t sound convincing even to himself. “I just want it to stop hurting.”
Inumaki holds his gaze for a moment, then he stands, moving to one of the shelves near the back of the room. He selects a small pouch of herbs, and gestures for Yuuta to follow him.
You’ll get what you need best if you soak at twilight. That’s when the spring will be closest to the memory of that wound. I’ll guide you.
Yuuta watches how Inumaki’s shoulders move under the drape of his robe as he opens the backdoor of the hut, the way his body speaks even where his voice does not. He doesn’t understand how the rhythm of it feels so heartbreakingly familiar.
He rises to follow. “Guide me, huh?” he attempts lightness in his tone. “That makes you sound like a spirit or something.”’
Inumaki pauses in the doorway, then he gives Yuuta a wry look, not quite amusement but close.
Maybe I am.
Yuuta steps outside again, expecting it to be cold, but this close to the springs, there’s a heat to the air that isn’t found anywhere else. The springs are shrouded by skeletal trees on all sides, the rising steam catching the light from the hut in golden particles through the air. The stone path leading to them is mossy and uneven, but green and brown rather than white with frost.
Yuuta steps to the edge of the spring before he takes off his boots and socks, carefully tucking them away. Next, he discards his cloak, spreading it on the ground to strip off his gambeson and trousers. He stands in his undershirt and underwear and wonders if he should take those off too, but decides against it.
He steps barefoot right to the edge now, the hem of his undershirt swaying against his thighs. The water ripples unnaturally. Beneath the surface, something faint glows, something that’s not light but that Yuuta can’t determine the source of.
He exhales and then the stillness of the water is disturbed as Inumaki lobs the herbal pouch into the water.
Inumaki is kneeling beside the pool, and he unravels his scarf from around his mouth. Yuuta sees the markings on his face, those around his mouth that denote that Inumaki is one who can use Cursed Speech. That explains it then. Why he won’t talk.
Inumaki’s hands are pale in the fading light, beautiful as his fingertips glide over the water. He taps the surface of the water one more time before he sits back on his haunches and looks up at Yuuta, gesturing for him to get in.
Soak until your bones remember. Breathe until it hurts less. Don’t imbibe any of the water, it’ll poison you. Speak only if you absolutely must.
Yuuta nods and steps in.
The heat is immediately unbearable. It scalds through the old wound in his leg, seeping in to his joints and tearing through his nervous system like a forest fire. He grits his teeth, lowering himself fully into the water, wondering if he’s actually come to the house of the wrong witch and Inumaki intends to boil him and eat him.
But then the pain fades, and it leaves something different. His joints relax, for what feels like the first time, letting go of the tension within them, leaving softness instead of stiffness.
He slumps into the water with a breathless sound he’s pretty sure he’s never made before.
Inumaki remains just behind him at the pool’s edge, hands folded in his lap. His eyes haven’t left Yuuta’s face the whole time.
The world slips sideways.
Yuuta sees something in the steam. He squints at it.
It’s his own hand, but not. It’s him. Younger. Trembling. Reaching for someone in the dark. Words. A voice. Tears that belong to someone else’s eyes. A promise made under the cover of blood and fire.
“I don’t want you to forget- “
“I need to.”
The vision vanishes as quickly as it came.
Yuuta jerks forward, water sloshing.
Inumaki moves instantly, one leg splashing into the spring as his hands press against Yuuta’s chest to stop him from pitching forward. Once he’s sure that Yuuta isn’t going to pass out, one hand presses against Yuuta’s temple, the other brushes sweat-dampened hair from Yuuta’s face.
It’s such an intimate gesture that Yuuta feels his face flush with colour even as he realises he’s leaning into that touch. He’s been touch-starved most of his life. Now this handsome stranger is touching him so gently, he can’t resist even though he knows he should.
“I saw something,” he breathes. “I was… I was holding someone I think.”
Inumaki doesn’t answer, but his eyes (Gods, his eyes are so purple) are full of something raw.
Yuuta’s heart beats hard in his chest. There’s something here he can’t shake. He just can’t get rid of the feeling of déjà vu. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
Still, he gets no answer, just Inumaki’s hands stilling in his hair.
The pain in his leg has dulled, but something else aches sharper now. His chest, his throat, the place behind his eyes where his dreams have rotted for years now. The spring bubbles around him like its come alive.
Stay here a bit longer. Inumaki signs. You’re close. The spring will help.
It’s not an answer, but Yuuta nods, swallows, and sinks back down into the water.
This time, the vision isn’t a flash. It feels fully real. Carving into him.
A kiss in the rain. Blood on someone’s lips. A scream of rage that he hasn’t heard in years, Rika’s rage, unchained and erupting.
He flinches. A gentle hand slides over his chest, steadying him. Inumaki’s fingers are pressed over another jagged scar, one that doesn’t belong to some cursed wound, or not exactly. It’s one he never talks about, one he’s not even truly sure how he got. He knows it was given to him by Rika, the night that everything went wrong.
But she would never tell him how, or why, and he could never remember.
Yuuta stares down at the water, watching the scar over his chest warp in the reflection. Inumaki’s hand doesn’t move. The silence stretches and Yuuta’s not sure if his eyes are burning because of the steam or something that was buried deeper rising to the surface.
“That’s enough, isn’t it?”
Inumaki withdraws his hand slowly, though the warmth of his palm against Yuuta’s skin warms hotter than the springs.
He waits until Yuuta’s eyes settle on him again before he signs:
For tonight, yes. The spring has stirred too much of what sleeps, so it’s best to stop for now. Let your body rest and your soul settle. Return tomorrow. I’ll prepare the next ritual.
Yuuta nods slowly, though the thought of leaving feels absurd, like stepping out of a dream made for him. But his limbs tremble, overtaxed by something akin to grief.
He grips the edge of the pool to steady himself as he stands, water cascading off him. His shirt clings tightly to him, sticking to every ridge of his body as he shivers in the cold. Inumaki doesn’t look, gaze averted, but he holds out a thick robe for Yuuta to put on to dry himself, before turning around.
Yuuta watches Inumaki’s back for a long moment. “Thank you.”
Inumaki’s shoulders hunch up a little before he turns slightly. He’s halfway through a signed sentence that Yuuta only catches the edges of.
-worth saving.
Yuuta doesn’t understand, so he just nods and gets dressed.
*
The days pass in snow and steam and stillness.
Yuuta returns to the springs each twilight, as instructed, and each time the water feels a little less like its trying to boil him alive. The pain in his leg lessens, though a different kind of ache builds in his chest. Less physical, but more persistent.
He stays in the village, as he was told to. He sleeps on a futon laid out by the widow who runs the local shrine, rises with the mist in the mornings, and wanders the icy paths around the village, keeping wolves and bandits at bay.
His path always takes him to the healer’s hut around midday. At first, it’s under the pretence of asking about the rituals in greater detail, about the next treatment. But by the third day, even Yuuta has to admit, he’s here to see Inumaki himself.
Inumaki doesn’t speak, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t communicate.
With his hands, with his eyes, with his posture. And increasingly, with his expressions.
The first time Yuuta burns himself on a scalding cup of tea, Inumaki arches a brow, signs hot, and grabs a handful of ice from outside, forcing it into Yuuta’s hand. Yuuta blinks at it, unsure what to do. Inumaki just give shim the most deadpan look imaginable and then shoves it onto the slightly blistering skin, ignoring Yuuta’s hisses as the ice cools the wound down.
“Okay, okay, I guess I was being an idiot,” Yuuta grumbles.
Inumaki’s mouth crinkles at the edges, seemingly satisfied that Yuuta realised this.
The next time, it’s chilis in the rice. Not enough to really be too spicy, but Yuuta hadn’t been expecting it. He chokes halfway through a bite, and glares up at Inumaki over the rim of his teacup. Inumaki feigns innocence and signs: It’s a delicacy of the region. Yuuta suspects that it’s Inumaki’s way of suggesting that he can’t eat for free, but the healer refuses his money at the end.
It leaves Yuuta realising that, perhaps, the healer had been teasing him.
Yuuta doesn’t know when it happens, but at some point, the silences stop being awkward and start becoming warm instead. Companionable. Inumaki works in the same way that snow falls, with grace and patience, and always with purpose. He dries herbs with care, sorts talismans carefully in little chests where they’re meticulously labelled, and tends the outer perimeter of the springs with a weathered old broom and a scowl that Yuuta is beginning to suspect is performative.
Once, when Yuuta offers to help string up some tried yuzu peels, Inumaki hands him the string and a needle with an almost exaggerated sense of ceremony. Then proceeds to tangle the thread so thoroughly that it takes Yuuta ten minutes just to untangle it.
When Inumaki laughs, it’s wheezy and breathy, like he doesn’t do it often. It’s the best sound Yuuta thinks he’s heard in his life.
Yuuta finally gets the thread free and stabs at the yuzu peel with the needle. “You’re not as serious as you pretended to be on that first night, are you?”
Inumaki glances up, eyes all innocence over the top of his scarf. Me? He signs, blinking sweetly.
Yuuta snorts, going back to his work, but his ears feel hot.
Later, they walk together through the upper ridge paths, where the cedars bend like old men. Inumaki points out frostflowers, brushing the cerulean petals with the backs of his fingers. He doesn’t pick them, just flicks them gently and watches as they freeze over in delight.
They come to a narrow bridge, and Inumaki pauses at the edge of it. Yuuta steps onto it first, not realising he’s not following, and is half way across before he turns to see Inumaki watching him, expression unreadable.
Yuuta isn’t sure what makes him do it. What makes him reach out his hand, as though to coax Inumaki like he’s an animal. Whatever possessed him, it works, because Inumaki takes an unsteady step on to the bridge and then quickly scurries across it, his head down.
Neither of them says anything, but when they descend the path, he feels Inumaki watching him again. His gaze lingers too long, as if he’s reading something in Yuuta’s movements that Yuuta himself can’t see.
That night, as Yuuta leaves, he tries again to explain the feeling he has when he’s around Inumaki.
“I still feel like I know you.”
Inumaki doesn’t respond, not in sign or gesture. He just looks at Yuuta, his eyes soft and unreadable, and closes the door slowly, like it might break if he closes it properly.
The wind chime clatters on the edges of Yuuta’s memory as he walks back to the village.
*
Yuuta’s fingers are sticky from peeling yuzu, the rind curling like paper in his hand. The scent has clung to everything, the steam in the kitchen, his fingertips, and the edges of Inumaki’s sleeve where Yuuta has tugged on it a few times to get his attention.
Outside, the snow is falling sideways, blown by the wind. Inside, the light is golden, flickering. Safe. For the first time since the war began, Yuuta realises he feels safe.
Inumaki moves in practiced silence, pouring them tea with the same grace he always seems to have when he’s not goofing off.
“Hey,” Yuuta says softly. “Your magic. Is it always like… you know? The springs? Because you have the Cursed Speech markings, and I thought that was based around words and- “
He realises he’s rambling and his mouth clicks closed. Inumaki doesn’t look up from the teapot.
Yuuta nudges a yuzu peel with one finger. “It is words of power, isn’t it? So, you have to say something to use it?”
He’s not sure what answer he expects. He just knows it’s been on his mind. Inumaki never speaks aloud, he signs everything so precisely, and Yuuta feels it in his bones when those signs settle in the air. He’d give anything to hear Inumaki’s voice, just once.
Inumaki sets the teapot down. His shoulders are still in a way that says the door to this conversation isn’t even remotely ajar.
It’s dangerous.
Yuuta leans forward, willing to accept even something so small in offering. “Dangerous to me?”
Inumaki looks at him, eyes deadened. To anyone I care about.
Yuuta’s breath catches. He could interpret that. He could think of himself as someone that Inumaki has come to care about. And that’s why Inumaki, even now, doesn’t speak around him. Even when it would be easier.
“Is that why you don’t speak? Ever?”
Inumaki raises his hands, holding them before himself for a long time, looking at them. He then nods to himself and quickly signs:
I don’t want to hurt you.
There’s something underneath that. Something ragged that Inumaki doesn’t want Yuuta to reach. Yuuta can see it in the way he looks away, starts fussing by gathering the yuzu peels into a pile. Yuuta watches the way his thumb trembles slightly as he picks up some of the peel, watches the shadows fall on his hair as the lanternlight shifts.
It's not just caution, Yuuta thinks, it’s sadness. There’s sadness here. An old sadness, an echo of a scream.
Yuuta doesn’t ask anything more, just drinks his tea. It’s all at once bitter and sweet and floral. The kind of taste that lingers, even if you want to forget it.
*
The springs had been difficult tonight. Yuuta had wobbled his way into the hut, unsure why all of a sudden, his leg wasn’t cooperating. Inumaki steadied him, helping him to the cushions in front of the fire, bringing him pillows and cushions and blankets and building him a nest.
“I’m sorry. I’m being a big baby. I can just rest a while and then- “
Inumaki taps his hand hard to show that he’s trying to say something and Yuuta looks up.
No. Stay here tonight. You can stay warm by the fire and honestly, I think what I’ve built here is better than my bed anyway.
So Yuuta stays. He eats the dinner that Inumaki presents him with, nikujaga that warms him from the inside out, and then settles in to sleep when Inumaki retires to his own room.
The night is quiet at first.
The wind has died down. The soft crunch of snow sliding off the roof is the only sound in the dark. The hot springs bubble gently beneath the earth, murmuring through the floorboards. Reassuring sounds, ones of nature, not of humans or the battle field.
Yuuta shifts in his nest. The blanket smells like dried lavender, and it should be comforting, but something has started to itch beneath his skin.
All of a sudden, he’s warm. Too warm. Like the spring’s heating his blood from the inside out. His leg throbs. Then-
Screaming.
It’s not in the room.
He’s running. Through smoke and rain and the sound of someone sobbing. Buildings are burning. A hand slips from his grasp. There’s blood in his eyes. In his mouth.
And she’s there – Rika – in all her monstrous, wild, howling glory. She wails with grief turned to hunger.
He feels her rage in his ribs, the heat of it, the helplessness against it, the moment his own voice and will fails.
And at the centre of the maelstrom, someone else is falling.
“Toge!”
He wakes up with the name on his lips, breath coming in sharp, panicked bursts. The blankets have twisted around his injured leg tight enough to cut off circulation, his shirt damp and sticking to him with sweat.
The door to Inumaki’s room bursts open. He stands there, silhouetted by dim lamplight from beyond. His scarf isn’t on, his robs hastily thrown onto his body and slipping off his shoulder. His expression is, for once, completely unguarded, and Yuuta can see the concern lined into every inch of his face.
Yuuta sits up, chest heaving, blinking through the afterimages of the dream. “I-I saw- “
Inumaki crosses the room in three strides, kneeling next to Yuuta. He doesn’t touch, but his hands hover near Yuuta’s shoulders, as if unsure if contact will anchor or shatter him.
“I saw you,” Yuuta whispers. “You were falling. I tried to grab you but I – Rika – She- “
His voice cracks. The dream is already slipping like ash through his fingers.
Inumaki puts a hand on Yuuta’s wrist, drawing his attention back to his hands before he lifts them up to sign.
I’m sorry. Memories sometimes loosen at night if the spring’s magic dislodges them a bit. You’re not in danger.
Yuuta stares at him. “Your given name. It’s Toge, isn’t it?”
Toge’s hands don’t move.
Yuuta leans forward, bracing a palm against the floor. “Why did I scream your name like I was losing everything?”
Inumaki’s gaze drops. Still, he signs nothing.
And Yuuta doesn’t push.
But as he lies back down, trying to calm his breathing, he can see the shake in Inumaki’s shoulders. As he stands up, as he takes a few steps backwards, as he picks up his scarf that had been discarded earlier and wraps it tightly around himself and slips away without a word.
*
Yuuta finally sleeps.
Not deeply, he twitches from time to time, brows furrowed, his hand twitching like he’s reaching for someone. But his breathing evens out and the feverish sheen on his skin cools to a soft, moonlit glow.
Toge creeps through his own home, kneeling at the edge of the blankets, and just watches. He doesn’t move. He’s not sure that Yuuta might wake if he does. He was always such a light sleeper.
Still, after a while, Toge’s knees hurt and he has to carefully sit cross-legged. He pulls his scarf off to pile it in his lap.
His hands hover in front of him, half-forming signs before he thinks better of them and starts again. Like he’s practicing to say what he really needs to say in front of a Yuuta who can’t respond.
Who is Toge kidding? He can’t respond anyway.
He reaches out, fingertips hovering just above the thin cotton of Yuuta’s shirt, above the scar that is carved into him by a love turned monstrous. The place where Rika’s rage broke Yuuta, the boy that Toge had once loved so fiercely he would have died for him.
Did die for him, in his own way.
Toge’s hand trembles.
The words gather on his tongue like blood. The first set he swallows like blood. The second set come out as a breath, not aloud, just hissing behind his teeth. It’s a name, a spell, a plea. A curse with a reversal clause he knows he’ll never speak.
He could break it now. One word, and the dam would crack. Yuuta would remember everything. Everything.
The rain.
The kiss.
The argument in the street, hands shaking as they held each other like goodbye.
Yuuta’s voice, hoarse and raw. Toge’s eyes – stupid, broken-hearted, terrified.
It had been the only thing that Yuuta had ever begged of him.
Toge’s hand lowers another inch.
His fingers ghost the shape of that scar, feel the heat trapped beneath the wound. The springs don’t realise that they’re trying to heal something they can’t. The springs don’t differentiate between the cursed wound in Yuuta’s leg and the one on his heart.
Yuuta shifts in his sleep and Toge’s breath catches. He pulls his hand back, clutching it to his chest.
When he’s certain that Yuuta won’t stir again, he wraps the scarf back around his mouth and retreats.
He doesn’t remember crying, but when he wakes up, his pillow is still damp.
*
The village market is small, a half dozen stalls at most, set up in a little circle where the snow has been trampled flat. Steam drifts in lazy swirls out of nearby vents in the ground, keeping the cold just enough at bay for traders to linger in the cool air.
Yuuta doesn’t come often, but Inumaki asked him along this time with a pointed look and a motion that could have been interpreted as you need fresh air.
So he follows.
They move through the stalls side by side, the way that they always seem to be now. Their shoulders brush sometimes. Inumaki points at vegetables, or dried roots, and Yuuta tries to guess what each one is used for, pretending not to notice how smug Inumaki gets when he corrects him.
At the far end of the market there’s a merchant who is selling trinkets. Relics that have lost their homes during the war, runes burned into bones, coins that hum with faint protective charm work, a broken lantern that still holds warmth. They’re profiteers, and Yuuta usually avoids them, but there’s one item that draws Yuuta’s attention to it.
A shard of polished obsidian, no frame, just a jagged oval like a tooth.
“That’s cursed,” the merchant says, pulling on his pipe. “Shows truths and all that. A real ‘careful what you wish for’ item.”
Yuuta tilts his head, studying the surface. It reflects the sky first, pale and shifting under the burden of snow, then his own face. He’s thinner than he remembers being, and his hair has got longer. His eyes still have their dark circles, but they’ve lessened a little.
And then something behind him shifts, and he sees a scene playing out in the background that isn’t the marketplace at all.
A bridge.
Himself standing there, breath fogging the air. Across from him, Inumaki, scarf half torn, face streaked with blood. They’re arguing. Yuuta can’t hear it, but he sees the way he reaches out and Inumaki flinches. The way his younger self – he’s certain he’s younger and not older here – shouts something. Inumaki turns away.
The reflection flickers and Yuuta’s breath freezes.
Then a hand slams down, knocking the shard off the table and smashing it on the floor.
Inumaki.
Yuuta watches, mouth open, as Inumaki dumps the contents of his coin purse onto the angry merchant’s table and storms off, ignoring the angry shouts that follow him.
Yuuta calls after him: “Toge-?”
Inumaki’s shoulders go up, but he doesn’t stop.
Later, after the market has emptied, Yuuta returns to the healer’s hut. He expects to find Inumaki inside, but he’s not. He’s outside in the garden, kneeling between bare herb bushes and a patch of vines. There’s frost in his hair.
He doesn’t turn when Yuuta steps forward. His shoulders are shaking.
Yuuta could speak. He could ask.
But something tells him not to.
So he lowers himself to the ground at Inumaki’s side. Doesn’t touch him. Just sits. Just breathes.
Inumaki eventually slumps against him, half-frozen, nose and eyes red, and Yuuta carries him inside. Puts him to bed with hot honey and lemon, and stokes the fires until he’s sweating through his shirt.
*
It starts one afternoon, low clouds curling over the ridgeline like a bruise across the sky. The air goes still. Yuuta still goes through with his twilight bath, because Inumaki says its nearly over now. That the wound in his leg will be healed soon.
He’s keen not to outstay his welcome, even though he desperately, desperately wants to.
By the time his spell in the baths is done though, the storm has started to pick up. By the time he’s dried off and ready to depart, the storm has truly set in and has become a full, raging blizzard.
Wind claws at the eaves of the house, the windows rattle in their frames like bones against a drum. Yuuta opens the front door and stares outside miserably. He can’t even see the garden gate from here.
Inumaki puts a hand on his shoulder and shakes his head, using his other hand to press the door closed and ushers Yuuta back inside.
Yuuta stands awkwardly in the centre of the small room, his hair still slightly damp and clinging to the back of his neck. Inumaki pulls all the shutters tight, lighting extra lanterns as though it will make the space extra cozy.
“I can sleep on the floor again,” Yuuta offers, rubbing the back of his neck. His voice comes out softer than intended, thinned by something he can’t put a word to. “I don’t want to be a burden. It’s your house.”
Inumaki stares at him flatly across the room, then moves with clear, deliberate irritation.
He signs sharply: Don’t be stupid. The bed’s big enough.
Yuuta flushes. “It’s not that I- I just thought-“ He stammers, gesturing vaguely at the floor. “I don’t want to overstep and I stayed on the floor before- “
Inumaki raises an eyebrow. He then puts his hands on Yuuta’s shoulders and pushes him towards the bedroom. He only lets go when Yuuta’s knees hit the edges of the bed, almost overbalancing. Yuuta watches as Inumaki flops down on it, patting the top of the fluffy blanket.
You’ll get sick. You nearly undid all my good healing work last time you slept there. His signs are smooth, and professional, but then his face changes to something a bit more smug. Besides, you keep falling asleep in that chair by the fire after dinner and then you snore.
“I don’t snore,” Yuuta grumbles, then stops. “Wait. Why don’t you wake me up if I’m snoring?”
Inumaki doesn’t reply, he just turns his back and busies himself with arranging the bedding so that it’s spread out to cover both of them.
Yuuta’s ears burn as he toes off his boots and sheds his outer layers, folding them neatly. The wind outside seems to have gotten louder now, a steady hammer against the sides of the hut. But inside, the fire crackles softly. The room smells like ginger, and lavender, and the pervasive scent of verbena that comes from Inumaki himself.
He lowers himself to the left side of the bed. It’s warm from where Inumaki was recently sitting on it. It smells like him.
He turns to see Inumaki pulling off his scarf. Of course, he doesn’t sleep in it. Yuuta can see the curse marks around his mouth in the low light. There’s something intimate about it, about watching the cloth be stripped away, and the light flicker against lips that are so rarely seen.
Inumaki catches him looking and tilts his head in question.
“Nothing,” Yuuta lies quickly, flopping back against the bed. He tries not to think about how hard his heart is beating, louder even than the wind outside it seems.
Inumaki reaches over him to lower the lamp light, then slips under the covers, arranging them over Yuuta.
There’s a moment, just a moment, where their knees brush and Yuuta entertains the fantasy of tangling their legs together, of pulling Inumaki towards him by the waist, of smothering his face with soft, butterfly kisses.
Inumaki doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t move closer either. Neither does Yuuta.
“Inumaki,” Yuuta begins, then rephrases. “Toge. Tell me. Have we met before?”
Inumaki’s expression crumples, and Yuuta wishes he’d said nothing. Wishes he could do anything to take that question back. He shouldn’t have asked that. He shouldn’t have said it. Not now.
He’s about to apologise, about to take Inumaki’s face in his hands and tell him, truly, how he’s been feeling. Why he keeps pressing this. How his heart is so filled with gratitude, and warmth, and affection, for the other man and he can barely breathe around it now.
But instead Inumaki opens his mouth and Yuuta gets to hear his voice for the first time (again, his mind whispers, again).
“Sleep.”
*
It happens just before dawn.
The sky is still dark, washed indigo and bruised pearl. The storm has broken, but the wind remains, whistling sharply through the trees. It carries the scent of something wrong.
Yuuta is half-asleep still when it starts. He hears it first. Not a scream. A snap. A sound that doesn’t belong in this sleepy little mountain village. Something brittle giving way. Then shouting. The sickening sound of a wall breaking apart.
He’s already moving before his mind catches up. His clothes are thrown on, his sword in his hand. His bare feet are stuffed into his boots. He flings the door open, surging with adrenaline.
He doesn’t check to see if Inumaki has followed, but he knows from the hurried scuffling sounds that he soon will. Good, the village will need its healer.
The village is in chaos.
One of the outer houses has crumpled. A warped figure towers in the mist, long-limbed, mouthless, eyes like burning pits but shining violet. A curse. And not a pretty one either. This thing has fed on others. This thing is smart.
A child screams and Yuuta doesn’t think.
His cursed energy flares to life, white-hot and wild, crackling through the air and making the snow swirl in eddies around it. The energy sears through the air, pulsing with the raw intent to protect.
And then it comes. The voice that always comes when he uses his powers, when his cursed energy flares and he reaches that pinnacle of strength.
“Yuuta.”
Rika.
She’s the hiss of rage, spilling from a wound in his soul so deep he doesn’t know how to be rid of her. The air twists, and for a second, it’s like the monster in front of him feels her too.
Yuuta doesn’t pause. He barrels towards the monster, faster than thought, slashing across its midsection. The curse shrieks, flailing, its claws gouging through a nearby tree. Yuuta plants himself between it and the rest of the village, sword raised.
Another surge of cursed energy ruptures the earth at his feet, and it’s her voice again, loud this time, delighted at being free again just as she had been in war.
“It wants to hurt Yuuta. Let me destroy it.”
He stumbles. His head pounds. The scar on his chest burns. Behind him, someone shouts. Someone whose voice he’s only heard once before but dreams about constantly.
Inumaki.
A single syllable.
“Don’t.”
It cuts through the air like a blade through silk, the strength of Inumaki’s cursed speech.
And just like that, the storm inside Yuuta stops. Rika’s presence within him flickers, then fades. She’s not gone forever, but she’s placated, soothed. Back where she needs to be, nestled inside him.
Yuuta turns, and his vision clears in time to see Inumaki standing between him and the villagers, hand holding his scarf down from his face, bloodied spittle on his lips. His fingers tremble, but his eyes are locked on Yuuta.
Wide. Afraid. Sad.
The curse had begun to recoil, sensing something stronger now, but it’s not gone. Its body twists and writhes, something akin to tentacles unfurling from beneath shredded skin. It’s hungry. And angry.
Inumaki doesn’t flinch. His eyes lock with Yuuta’s, and the space between them. Yuuta nods once. And then they move.
Inumaki makes a gesture with one hand that Yuuta doesn’t know and yet instinctively his hands go to cover his ears. The next moment, Inumaki’s voice is reverberating around them, at once soft and overwhelming.
“Fall.”
The curse slams into the ground like it’s been yanked by an invisible chain. Snow explodes outward. The creature twitches, stunned, but not dead. Not yet.
Yuuta bursts forward, sword glowing with cursed energy. His breath clouds the air as he leaps, driving the blade straight into the creature’s side. It lets out a shriek that splinters the air, but even injured, he swipes at Yuuta to knock him away.
Yuuta hits the ground hard, the breath knocked out of him as he tries to roll.
Inumaki’s hands are flying through signs. Behind you! Left!
Yuuta spins to his feet just in time to catch the strike, gritting his teeth. “No talking unless you have to. Focus on getting this thing down!”
Inumaki gives him a look that could be called a grin, if it weren’t so exasperated. Then he signs: But what if these are my last words?
Yuuta’s blood runs cold. They fall into rhythm somehow, like an old pattern slotting in to place. Yuuta’s cursed energy flows instinctively around Inumaki’s commands. Inumaki’s speech, the precise moments that he does use it, become precision strikes.
“Break.”
“Fracture.”
“Still.”
The final blow comes from Yuuta. He drives his sword up beneath the curse’s chin, channelling all his cursed energy through the hilt as Inumaki kneels beside him and mutters a final word:
“Shatter.”
The curse bursts apart, splattering Yuuta, Inumaki, and the assorted villagers who had stood, gaping at the two of them as they fought.
Yuuta glances at Inumaki, who is wiping off his face with a disgusted look, spitting blood out onto the snow.
“Did we do that… on our own?” Yuuta asks, slumping into Inumaki’s side.
Inumaki slowly inclines his head, then raises hands that are shaking with exhaustion. We’ve done that before.
Yuuta’s heart pounds so hard he can’t hear the wind anymore.
*
They don’t speak on the walk back to Inumaki’s hut. Yuuta keeps sneaking glances though. At the way Inumaki is favouring his left arm, at the fresh blood that is seeping through the edges of his sleeve, at the silence that is heavier than usual.
Inumaki doesn’t look at him at all.
When they reach the hut, Yuuta insists on helping him take off his outer robe. “You’re shaking,” he says, gentler than before. “You can’t hide it now we’re indoors.”
Inumaki signs nothing. He just turns and disappears through the back door towards the springs.
Yuuta follows.
Steam curls up into the morning air. Yuuta watches as Toge unravels his blood-stained scarf, then begins to strip methodically. His movements are clinical, clearly just intending to get in the healing waters, but Yuta can’t look away.
His shirt is soaked with sweat and blood. When it’s stripped away, purple bruises blotch his ribs. There’s a long gash that runs from collarbone to sternum that Yuuta can see is still oozing and fresh.
“You should sit. I can mix the herbs,” Yuuta says, his voice thick.
Inumaki hesitates, looking back over his shoulder, then nods.
Yuuta dashes inside, making sure he definitely gets the correctly labelled pouch of herbs, and then returning to the water. Inumaki is sat in the springs now, only his eyes and nose above the water.
Yuuta sheds his clothes quickly, without modesty. He’s past caring at this point. He steps into the water naked, biting back a curse as cuts, scrapes and bruises meet the hot water.
He sinks until he’s shoulder to shoulder with Inumaki, steam veiling the air between them.
The water trembles.
Yuuta blinks. “Toge?”
He doesn’t need to finish, Inumaki is already reacting, eyes sharp, body going rigid. A ripple of energy surges round them as Inumaki scrambles to get out of the springs but its too late. Too late.
They were on a bridge, rain drumming on the wood like a war drum. The sky cracked above them. Yuuta’s eyes were red-rimmed from exhaustion and fear, his blade heavy in his hand.
Toge was already bleeding.
You’re not going! Toge was signing furiously, his whole body tense. Don’t throw yourself into this. You don’t owe them anything anymore!
“They need me,” Yuuta snapped, his voice cracked. He couldn’t meet Toge’s eyes. “I need to keep people safe. I need-“
Toge stepped in close, grabbed Yuuta’s hands. He signed desperately, violently.
I need you.
Yuuta looked up just as Toge surged forward.
The kiss was messy, desperate, the kind of kiss that people have when they’re sure it will be their last. Toge’s fingers framed Yuuta’s jaw like it was something precious, like his fingertips brushing against it might dent it.
I love you. Toge signed it against Yuuta’s chest. Again and again and again.
And then Rika rose behind Yuuta. Jealous. Screaming.
Her cursed form monstrous and betrayed, feeding of Yuuta’s negative emotions like a parasitic lover. The bridge cracked under her weight.
“Rika – Rika, stop!” Yuuta screamed, throwing himself in front of Toge.
Too late.
Rika’s claws slashed through the space between them. Blood sprayed.
Toge went down with a gasp, but Yuuta went down harder. The wound tore across Yuuta’s chest – Rika was hurt too, she didn’t mean it, she loves Yuuta. She had only wanted to kill what was hurting him.
With every ounce of self-control that Yuuta possessed, he forced her back inside him. Away, locked down, where she would never, ever hurt Toge again.
Yuuta looked up through blurry eyes. Toge was cradling him, face pale with horror, blood soaking into his robes. Yuuta reached up with one shaking hand, brushing Toge’s hair away from his face.
“You see… I can’t stay…” Yuuta choked out. “If I stay, I’ll ruin you… If I try to love you… She’ll come back. She’ll kill you.”
Toge shook his head, hands raising to furiously sign out a denial. Don’t say that. Don’t say that.
“Make me forget,” Yuuta whispered. Tears spilled down his face. “Please. Please make me forget that I loved you. So I can keep you safe.”
Toge shook his head again, violently. Don’t ask me that. Please don’t ask me that.
Yuuta grabbed Toge’s hand, stopping him from being able to use any language but his words. “Please.”
Toge’s lower lip wobbled, then he bent forward, pressing a kiss to Yuuta’s forehead.
“Forget.”
The cursed speech twisted in the air and Yuuta screamed.
*
The air still crackles from the spring’s energy.
Yuuta sits at the low table in the healer’s hut, his hair still damn. His hands are clenched in his lap. He can’t stop shaking.
Toge enters with fresh bandages and stops short at the sight of him, unmoving.
“Toge,” Yuuta says quietly, lifting his head. He doesn’t know how he’s keeping his voice steady. “We need to talk.”
Toge slowly sets the bandages down and then pads across the room to Yuuta, sitting down next to him so their knees are almost touching. He waits. He’s been waiting, hasn’t he? For years.
“You did it, didn’t you?” Yuuta’s throat tightens.
Toge doesn’t blink.
“You made me forget you.” The words escape him like rust. “I asked you to make me forget you and you did.”
Toge lifts his hands, his signs slow and careful, like he’s trying to pick the precise ones for what he means to say.
Because I loved you more than I hated losing you. Because you asked me to.
Yuuta exhales shakily. It feels like getting stabbed. “You loved me so much you erased yourself from me. Because I was a coward who asked you to.”
Toge doesn’t nod, but he doesn’t deny it either. He just waits again.
Yuuta leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “You thought that it would keep me safe too, didn’t you? You were right. I was dangerous back then. I couldn’t control her.”
Toge flinches, only slightly, but enough for Yuuta to see it.
“I didn’t know what she was capable of. But I learned, during the war. I had a mentor, he helped me. Learn how to control her, that is. How to channel her into something that doesn’t maim everything I love.”
Toge’s hands twitch, but he doesn’t interrupt. Yuuta presses a hand over his own chest, to the scar there that Rika had given him, that he now finally remembers when and how.
“She’s still in me, of course. But a shadow of what she was. I know the shape of her now. Her grief, her fury, her jealousy. But she doesn’t control me like she used to.”
He meets Toge’s eyes, his own raw and wide, and Toge finally raises his hands again. You didn’t ruin me with her. But making you forget me… That nearly did.
Yuuta trembles like a flame caught in a draft.
“I thought if I lost you, I’d burn the whole world down to get you back. And I would have been right back then.”
They stare at one another across the space, then Yuuta reaches out, his fingertips tracing the cursed marks around Toge’s mouth. He sees those purple eyes dart to his own lips, as if unsure if he’s allowed to even hope. Yuuta leans in first, enough for their breath to mingle.
The kiss isn’t desperate, but it does try to make up for everything that was lost. It’s hesitant, and gentle, and afraid of itself, like it might collapse under its own weight. Yuuta’s hand raises to Toge’s cheek, brushing against the still damp tresses of his hair. Toge sighs softly, leaning into the touch.
For a moment, they just breathe into each other.
Time can’t rewind. It can’t fix what’s broken. But something in the softness feels like it belongs.
“I remember you.”
Toge closes his eyes, his hands finding Yuuta’s and squeezing them tightly.
“Say my name.”
Yuuta doesn’t need to be commanded, doesn’t need the cursed speech to help his lips form the words as they find Toge’s again and brush against them.
“Toge,” he murmurs. “Toge, Toge, Toge. I remember you.”