Perpetual Snowdrift | 152332018

Believe You Me

Hands bound, legs chained, kneeling on the floor while your eyes adjusted to the warm incandescent light that lit the tiny room. It was so warm, hot even while you felt the sweat on your brow.

"Hello," cooed Gojou, arms hugging around the back of a wooden chair, legs straddling with that playful smile. "Glad you're awake."

"Huh?" You groggily sighed, looking around the room in a haze, surrounded by parchment paper, but not any kind. They were inscribed with some handwritten calligraphy, some that you had seen in temples often.

Weren't you trapped under the tea house not too long ago?

"You collapsed from the cold before my associate arrived," explained Gojou, staring at you still with that blindfold. "We've just been keeping an eye on you since then."

How... ironic, you thought, the warmth radiating against your skin like a kindling fire.

"Do you remember what we talked about at least?" he asked, his head resting on his arms atop the back of that wooden chair.

"About curses, sorcerers," you started through bated breath. "And about Yuki?"

"Oh? You gave it a name?"

"She never had one," you quipped, choking in the warm air.

"Well, at least you remembered the important things then. So, you'd understand that you're set to be executed."

"What?!"

You pulled at your wrists, finding that you were bound entirely in chains, each link warm against your skin, pressed like branding iron.

"Sorry Sweets, the elders found you too dangerous to be running around freely," explained Gojou nonchalantly. "And you deserved to be told before they proceeded."

"Executed? Who uses that word? I'm not a threat!" You protested, each movement causing the chains to sear into your skin.

"On the contrary, you would've been fine up until you absorbed the Yukinko."

"What did Yuki do to anyone?"

"It almost choked you, didn't it?"

You stopped yourself from another rebuttal, mulling over Gojou's words yet also agreeing to his sentiments. Yuki, the Yukinko, the "invisible friend" that had been with you since that winter storm, had all but turned antagonistic, if not malevolent the last you saw her before she was consumed by fear. You imagined her to be a ghost rather than a figment of your imagination. Some had thought she was a trauma you humanized in some way because of that day in the storm, but you knew she was special somehow.

She thought you were too.

"But it can't be helped," continued Gojou, breaking through the silence. "A pact of this nature out of the elder's control is pretty damning. Even with your side of the story they weren't convinced."

"My side?" You questioned, staring up at Gojou who plainly smiled down at you. "You didn't tell them that-"

"I said every word you told me while we were waiting out that invasion," he interrupted with a smile. "Old men who have no heart, what can I say?"

You stared at the blindfolded man who, despite this warm room, looked comfortable straddling his seat with not a drop of sweat on his brow. To think he was just a mere customer, strange in his outfit but who were you to judge. That day surrounded by all manner of insanity, creatures and faces you could have imagined in your darkest fears as a child, set you on another path when they congregated the tea house in swarms.

It was what that woman had predicted when you made that promise to her in the snow.

Your breath grew heavier the more you breathed, choking on the thick air with no reprieve from the heat. You couldn't feel the chill on your skin, or the light tones of ice crackling in your ear.