Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 41: Rose: Hakkoda-San

Their hostess at the ryokan was quite pleased to learn they were coming back the next week. Rose was learning there were all sorts of nuances to the way people said yes, especially in Japan. Saying 'No' outright was nearly unthinkable and unspeakable both, so you had to interpret just what they meant when they said 'Yes'. She judged the innkeeper's reaction to be genuine—especially since Yukie made a sizeable cash deposit. Winter was not their busy season, and likely the extra income was most welcome.

The next day, the sky was as clear and blue as a morning glory in bloom, with hardly a wisp of a cloud anywhere. This meant the snow glare was ferocious. Luckily all three of them had ski goggles and sunglasses. Luckier still, the main road had been plowed, and after breakfast, they were on their way to Mount Hakkoda.

"There are a few mountains in Japan that, when you speak of them, you don't call them a mountain. Mount Fuji is one of them," Yukie said, in English. "It's written 'Fujiyama'," she wrote the kanji in the air with her finger, making the strokes for 'mountain', "but when you say it out loud, you speak of it as if it were a person. 'Fuji-san'.

"It ties in with Shinto, which is the old religion of Japan, much older than Buddhism. Shinto holds that everything living has a kami, which can mean a spirit, an essence, or a god. It varies in context. Quite a few things that are not technically living also have kami. Fuji-san is one of them, and Hakkoda-san is another. You'll see why. It's definitely a place with personality. If there is any place in Japan that still has a yuki-onna, she will be living here. It's practically her natural habitat."

"Really? Why?" Rose asked.

"Hakkoda-san isn't simply one of the snowiest places in Japan, it's one of the snowiest places on Earth. First off, it isn't actually a single mountain—it's an entire range, with about twenty peaks and several wet lands. What with the mountains rising up from the ocean as they do, and the arctic winds coming down from the north, pulling up moisture as they go—by the time the air currents reach here, they are primed to drop all of that water in the form of snow. What we saw yesterday was not a major event. It was comparatively mild. Where better to find a yuki-onna than a place with so much snow? But there is more. A yuki-onna is not just the kami of snow. She is a force of nature and an aspect of death. Specifically, freezing to death."

"Which explains why she's a beautiful woman," Slade commented. "When you're freezing to death, or very near to it, the pain goes away. The cold goes away. You start getting very tired, to the point where you just want to sit down and rest. It's one of the most peaceful, gentle deaths you can find. I speak from personal experience here-I've come closer to it than anyone alive."

"What? Where was that?" Rose turned to him.

"Antarctica, during one of those alien invasions. I crashed a spaceship here on purpose, set the engine core to melt down, and walked away."

"Was that the one where the aliens all had red discs on their heads, and no lips, just needle-teeth?" she asked.

"No, the one where they had tentacles on their faces," he replied.

Yukie shuddered. "The race that launched a thousand hentai jokes," she murmured. More loudly, she asked, "But how did you survive?"

"Thanagarians found me—Hawk-man's people. But we're off topic. Hakkoda-san. Wasn't there some great military blunder that happened there?"

"Yes, there was, and it involved dozens of men freezing to death, which is the connection to the yuki-onna." Yukie replied, and paused. "I liked what you said about death by freezing being a beautiful woman because it is so gentle and peaceful. It was most poetic."

He made a small scoffing sound, but he looked a little bit pleased, too. "On with the story."

"In 1902, Hakkoda–san was the site of the worst mountaineering disaster in modern history. On January 23rd, a unit of two hundred and ten men from the Imperial Army's Eighth Division set out from Aomori as part of a training exercise to see how well they could deal with extreme weather conditions in case Russia shelled the coastline. The first day was supposed to be an easy march of only twelve miles, only as far as the Tashiro Hot Springs."