cartographer

by demios

Summary:

From churning mire surfaces the limp neck of a duck in his grip, the branching antlers of a decapitated stag, an unmoving body through the lens of his binoculars. He greedily drinks it in with the pads of his callused fingers, this still-breathing hunting trophy.

Ogata stares death in the maw.

They never found his grandparents after they disappeared.

Ogata can scarcely recall their faces. His grandmother received him like one of the stray animals that lingered near the house, occasionally bringing her grandson treats from the markets when their coffers allowed. His grandfather, in contrast, never seemed happy that the daughter he sold was back in Ibaraki, discarded by a man and left with a bastard child. 

Ogata remembers him as a coarse, stern man. Where his grandmother was the one who scooped another meager helping of rice into his bowl, his grandfather was the one who spent long hours in the humid Ibaraki summer teaching him how to wield a firearm. It was from him that Ogata learned how to aim, how to mitigate the recoil, how to temper the instinctual flinch that came with watching blood spray from a once-lively corpse.

His memories of sniping game are framed by the lush forests surrounding his grandfather’s house, given depth by the fetid decay of autumn. Ogata is no stranger to hunting in winter, either, but he never indulged in the pastime amid the dark, towering trees of Hokkaido. Until whispers of Tsurumi’s grand machinations surfaced, there was little incentive to stray from Otaru proper.

Ogata is undaunted by the silence and plains of white. The chill cutting into his bones was a constant companion during the war and he maintains his composure the same as he did then. Ogata feels the warm cloud of his own breath travel upwards from his perch on one snowy slope. His features remain stony as he slows the tempo of his own breathing.

A tap on his shoulder makes him release the tense muscles holding his rifle in position. He offers an open palm - waits, then retracts.

He presses a handful of snow into his mouth, feeling the way it melts on his tongue, grazes the scarred tissue on the inside of his cheeks. The action is not entirely necessary now that he only hunts animals, but something distantly settles at indulging the habit. He chews slowly, the click of his crookedly healed jaw loud in his own ears like a freshly loaded cartridge. The cold unmoors him from his own body. He suppresses a shiver.

Briefly, he wonders: is a sniper who lost both of his eyes still a sniper? 

Ogata lacks an opportunity to bring this theory to fruition, and he has a vague suspicion there will never be another. He shifts his focus to the task at hand. In his mind’s eye, there is the shape of a boy hunting ducks in a sea of tall grass, the rifle too large and clumsy for his small hands budding with fresh calluses.

He squeezes the trigger without hesitation.

-

It was Yuusaku who helped him steady the barrel. Unlike his grandfather’s hands, which were wrinkled and scarred each time he roughly corrected Ogata’s posture, the icy, pale flesh remained unblemished by the cruelty of war.

The growing cacophony of his own castigation threatened to split his head open, but reprieve was in sight. Two pairs of hands should have sealed his descent. Ogata stared down into the black emptiness of the muzzle, a childish curiosity overtaking him once he positioned his blade on the trigger. He was in Ibaraki again, standing in that too-large house, silently transfixed as his grandfather offered him his favorite rifle. So this was what it was like to be on the other side of his weapon.

It was impossible to miss. Had he moved his wrist a moment sooner, he would have been a filial son finally greeting his father in Hell.

And yet, he cast his unfocused gaze upon the Ainu girl with blue eyes.

The first time Asirpa’s arrow wedged itself into his eye socket, Ogata remained lucid enough to savor her fragile resolve dissolving into horror. What kind of face would she be making now? Even if her features were muddied by the way his vision melted and swirled at the edges, some part of him wanted to know if there was fear, regret, or despair as she clung to the roof of the train. 

Did she finally understand? If nothing else, he wanted to leave her with that parting gift. A glimpse into the abyss for the light that she gave him.

In the end, Ogata never saw it. 

A jolt of the carriage caused his grip to falter, the trajectory of the muzzle skewed from its mark. There was no sound of a bullet to smother the raging sea crashing against the inside of his skull. The unforgiving length of metal thrust deep into his remaining eye with a sickeningly wet noise, making a bloody, oozing mess of the socket. The shock of pain was enough to cut through his fitful delirium, bringing him sharply back to the present.

Even if he wanted to live, it was too late to change his course. The poison from the girl’s arrow sapped his remaining strength, the burning in his flank now spread to the rest of his body. His pulse thrummed like a frightened rabbit’s as the cold shadow of death loomed over him. Lying there and gasping for breath like a fish plucked out of the water, Ogata could only hear the warped rush of wind as the train raced ever closer to Hakodate and the distant crow of Yuusaku’s voice, laughing.

“I killed your father,” Ogata reminded her, lying on his back in one of the thatched huts in her village. 

It was the first time he dared to speak in her presence. Asirpa softly talked to him for days, weeks, just barely buoying him above unconsciousness as she replaced his bandages and smeared medicine into his wounds. 

He could never fathom what expression she bore each time she woke him from dreamless sleep and coaxed him upright. Perhaps it was resentment, anger, barely concealed until she could subject him to one of the gruesome punishments crafted by her people. Or perhaps it was something closer to pity - he she heard his desperate, bloodied howls over the roar of the train that day? If she did, she made no indication of it.

The hands tending to his hurts stilled. Ogata expected to bear the weight of her fury, bared teeth from this wolf pup digging into him like another arrow aiming true. This weakened, there was little he could do if she chose to redress the balance. He would accept her judgment without resistance.

Instead, quiet fell over her for several long moments. Ogata counted the number of slow heartbeats resounding in his ears until he could sense movement again.

Asirpa set aside the bowl of bitter-smelling poultice in her grasp. “Aca was prepared to die the day he left our kotan behind - perhaps even the day he left his homeland. He knew he would never leave Abashiri, which was why…”

Why Wilk offered up his child? Taught her how to hunt, how to survive? Crushed her under the weight of these unwanted blessings? Kiroranke, too - no matter how noble he thought his intentions, he wanted to plunge her into the center of chaos. 

That, at least, Ogata could understand when Kiroranke came to him under the cover of a moonless night. He wanted her to see this wretched world with her own eyes. Only someone like Sugimoto would have wanted her to spend her days in ignorance.

Asirpa let out a slow exhale, steadying herself. He pictured the rise and fall of her shoulders, her small frame holding her head high. “It was merely a matter of when.” 

She held her silence after that. There was no absolution in her voice, no fresh hatred seeping between the quiet syllables. The hands sealing his wounds were attentive and clinical, without the slightest hint of a tremor. As if Ogata was one of the kills she reverently skinned and gutted so many times before.

Ogata turned his head towards the source of the warm palms on his pallid skin. One of his eyes was cut out by Sugimoto, and the other… of course, Yuusaku wouldn't let him make that decision for himself. Their existence would always remain asymmetrical; an immutable truth since their birth. Ogata vaguely sensed light and shadow when Asirpa moved lower to check the pound of flesh carved out of his side, but little else.

Though darkness threatened to swallow his field of vision, what survived proved to be enough. Even like this, she still possessed that resilient flicker of light - no less radiant despite the blood staining her hands. He could imagine her eyes, the shade of a placid lake, unwavering and proud. He was grateful to never see them again.

When she rose to her feet, he reached out and blindly clutched the hem of her robe. “Take me hunting with you.”

-

When Asirpa accompanies him on hunting trips, she paints for him the vivid canvas of Hokkaido with her words, verdant splashes of color blooming and dying with each plant and tree she describes for him. She regales him with stories of the kamuy they cross paths with, how they descended upon this earth to indulge in its bounty, and how each fresh kill sent them back to their home in joyful celebration. Ogata receives the clear tones of her voice like a vessel, letting her practice for the foolhardy scholars that occasionally visit her kotan and the swindling bureaucrats she will have to bargain with each time she leaves the mountains.

She does not shamelessly take shelter under the material of his cloak like she did on their journey to Karafuto, but the soft pad of her boots are never out of earshot when Ogata listens for her among the din of the forest. She tells him how the seasons breathe through sounds, smells, taste, as if there is any point in telling this to a dead man.

When Sugimoto is the one he trudges behind, he describes the terrain like the sprawling fields of war. He gives Ogata the bare minimum, enough so he doesn't crack his jaw a second time on the sheer cliffs cradling the nearest river. 

Step over this root. Duck under this branch. There's animal shit there, don't step in it. 

There are a host of reasons why Ogata prefers Asirpa’s company when he takes to the hunt. Sugimoto is a lousy shot, gives sloppy estimates when pointing Ogata in the direction of prey, and draws his ire when his bullets ricochet off bark and stone. But Ogata supposes there is one advantage of having Sugimoto lead them around the snowdrifts and amappo set by hunters earlier in the season.

Asirpa is the one who guides his hands with her own, showing him how to weave snares and fashion traps. Sugimoto gruffly lets Ogata do what is second nature, holding no pretenses about the only skill he’s ever cared to hone.

Thirty ken, slightly northwest, Sugimoto had said, lowering them into the cover of sparse brush. An Ezo deer foraging beneath the snow. 

Amateur’s distance. Ogata strains to listen for anything after the first gunshot, making a conscious effort to stay his hand from reaching for the bolt handle. His sense of hearing was always keen as a child, lending him an advantage when the Seventh Division was unceremoniously sent out to die at Port Arthur, then Mukden. But here, the dense covering of snow threatens to swallow up anything that is not a gunshot or explosion. 

No shrill, wounded cry signaling a half-assed job. Ears pricked, Ogata picks up the dulled sound of something disturbing the snow in the distance. It’s difficult to tell if the deer’s legs had buckled under its own weight, or if it had simply startled and retreated deeper into the mountains. 

Sugimoto doesn't immediately curse and give chase, springing from their spot like a pouncing tiger to finish the deer off. The tense mass of muscle crouched next to him slowly relaxes, standing up. Ogata lowers his rifle, waiting for his reluctant spotter to make his report.

“It's dead,” Sugimoto informs him without any approval in his voice. 

The empty cartridge falls into the snow. Sugimoto makes no mention of which vital area was hit, but familiar satisfaction makes Ogata silently preen regardless. He slings the rifle over his shoulder and rises to his feet, using the ekimnekuwa Asirpa’s uncle carved for him for support.

“That's a surprise. I thought we’d waste another gallbladder's worth of ammo before bringing anything back,” he deadpans in response.

Sugimoto ignores him. Ogata mentally adds the taut pinch of his brow when he huffs through his nose. He follows Sugimoto like a wraith when he sets off to collect their kill, silently counting the paces until the other’s cadence stops. 

The snow crunches under Ogata’s weight as he takes a few cautious steps forward. When his hiking stick nudges the give of the carcass, he kneels down, placing a splayed palm in its thick fur. No rise and fall of breath beneath its flank. Asirpa’s words flit through his mind - how each yuk was destined to be prey, their bones and flesh living on in her people’s stomachs and hands while the rest was left to nourish the soil beneath their feet.

He stands back. His palm does not come away wet and warm.

Sugimoto makes a contemplative grunt from what Ogata surmises is the other side of the rapidly cooling body. 

“It's getting dark,” Sugimoto says grimly. Winter descends upon Hokkaido with a vengeance, glutting itself on the scarce daylight filtering between the conifers. Even with his limited senses, Ogata can tell the blinding reflection from the snow is quickly waning. “I saw a kuca a little while back. We should rest there until morning.”

Ogata offers no protest, making a short hum of agreement. His days are devoid of a rigid rhythm now that the only one barking orders at him is Sugimoto. He's not in any hurry to return to the kotan.

Another walk, this time with both of them dragging the deer through the snow by its lithe legs. Once at the kuca, Sugimoto makes to hang it from a tree to keep it out of reach from foxes. Nights around Otaru are cold enough that the meat will keep, saving them from one of Asirpa’s scoldings. Ogata vaguely considers it a pity that her favorite part won't be quite as fresh when she scoops it out of the skull.

He lingers a moment longer before ducking inside of the hut. A hush has fallen over the already muted stretch of forest, running water some distance away adding a steady crackle beneath each capricious gust of wind. 

The sound of rending flesh cuts lushly across the clearing as Sugimoto sinks his knife into the carcass. There’s no hesitation, no wasted movement, no crooked snag on matted fur. Sugimoto neatly severs the tissue connecting muscle and skin without waxing poetic about it like the Ainu. No matter how much he longed to start anew, proof of his true nature was etched into his hands.

Instead of a deer, Ogata envisions Sugimoto flaying another tattooed corpse with the same spirited efficiency. A grisly giddiness unfurls in the pit of his stomach, a dirty, brackish draught to break the unrelenting monotony of tasteless cold scraping the inside of his nose and mouth. Damn monster.

-

Ogata pulls his cloak around himself after he settles into the kuca. The low ceiling and cramped walls do little to faze him; he's been crowded into worse conditions before. With the branching firs blocking the icy breeze threading through the trees, he regains some feeling in his sutured cheeks. He inhales the stinging scent of pine. Stray needles stick to the hem of his clothes and he absently picks them off.

The space behind his eyelids is an endless stretch of nothingness. Like this, he's suspended in his own body, stranded over a frozen sea without the ebb and flow of a tide to solidify where he ends and the world begins. He itches to stick his hands into the guts of the deer. 

The ekimnekuwa rests on the floor next to him on one side and the rifle on the other. Without fail, he chooses the rifle.

Ogata hefts the weight of his firearm in his grip. After the battle en route to Hakodate, Sugimoto groused about needing to replace most of his supplies, including his gun. Whether it was because he didn't have the coin for anything newer, or because it was the only model he could trust in his clumsy grasp, he ended up with another soldier’s rifle and bayonet long after the war. 

That’s fine with him. Ogata is the same way - he could measure the distance between the stock and barrel of a Type 30 by touch alone. He checks it over to keep the blood flowing through his hands. The pad of his thumb reads the ladder sight’s graduations, confirming what's already cemented as muscle memory. 

He brings one knee to his chest, then steadies his elbow flat on it, forming a makeshift rifle rest. Ogata sets the barrel in place, letting the weight of it ground him. He still favors his right side, though it doesn't make a difference now that both of his eyes are useless. The prosthetic in his right socket gives him the semblance of a functional eyeball at first glance, his eyelid fitting over it without issue. The majority of the time, he keeps his mangled left eye covered to not unsettle the children in the village.

He aims the muzzle at the entrance of the kuca.

Was it wise of Sugimoto to leave his firearm with him? He’s told him before - Never take your eyes off your weapon, private first class. In most cases, Ogata would be at a disadvantage. A Type 30 is too long to be a decent substitute for a revolver and Sugimoto has the bayonet at his hip. In a situation like this, Ogata could break the hiking stick into neat pieces, tie together one of the bear traps that Asirpa placed at the mouth of their dens. When Sugimoto poked his head into the kuca, it would be impossible to miss a second time.

He knows exactly what kind of person Sugimoto is. This armistice would not last. A sniper rarely makes the first move, cautious to the point of cowardice, but it would be better to bring this farce to a close himself. That damnable wraith doesn't show his face here, probably pissed off that his last attempt at dragging Ogata down with him had ended in failure. At least he has his brother’s blessing in this regard.

…Right now, though, there would be little point in it. Acting on a passing whim would leave him stuck here to freeze to death. 

Ogata lowers the rifle, hooking his finger on the safety to maneuver it back into place. Huh. Looks like Sugimoto did end up listening to him about performing frequent upkeep on his weapon if he was going to swing it around with brute strength.

Idly, Ogata wonders if he can convince Sugimoto to pilfer a Type 38 from town. Not from the stingy weapons dealer who’s started gouging for ammo clips, but from the barracks of the new regiment stationed in Otaru. Central Command was careful to snuff out any remaining seditious elements, especially now that they were aware of their lack of control this far north. They replaced the Seventh Division’s void with complacent creatures, those who were content to sup on the meager compensation they received after the war. The soldiers currently patrolling Otaru aren’t ballsy enough to brave the Hokkaido wilderness without good reason. There’s little chance they would be disturbed.

A dulled impact beside him stirs Ogata from his morbid reverie. The back of his hand brushes something familiar - a deer pelt, now rolled up and held together with a thin length of rope. Sugimoto didn't spend long tanning the hide, working quickly before darkness fell swiftly over the forest. If Ogata ran his finger on the underside of the skin, there would probably still be scraps of fat stuck to it. 

“We’ll have to float the rest down the river, but if Retar is the one who ends up scavenging it, I don't think Asirpa will be too mad,” Sugimoto says in lieu of a greeting when he crawls into the hut. 

Without wasting any time, Sugimoto digs through his mess kit like a soldier with only a few minutes to spare before leaving his encampment. The perpetual motion of soot-covered bodies coalesces behind Ogata’s eyelids, indistinct from how many times he’s borne witness to the scene. The bluish tint of first light, half-asleep groans of smothered annoyance and dulled pain. Starved dogs not wanting to waste a single grain of rice. 

No Asirpa to feed him the foreign, wet textures of a fresh brain or eyeball, or trusting him with a sharpened knife to make citatap. Just Sugimoto dutifully mincing some of the small animals they found in the traps.

“Here. Eat.”

From the first scalding sip, Ogata can tell the miso-flavored kam ohaw is half-finished, impatience evident in the way Sugimoto roughly pressed the bowl into his palms. The bones of the citatap have not fully soaked into the broth yet, but Ogata isn't some spoiled Tokyo brat who can't stomach his meals without Honshu rice. He eats mechanically. Click, click, click. Bolt open, bolt closed.

There isn’t much to say between them after eating. Ogata’s distaste for camping in close quarters hasn’t waned since his return. Even in the winter months, he chose to seclude himself when they made camp, preferring a secure vantage point over the warmth of another body. Not like the cannon fodder huddling together in the trenches, knowing they’d be the first to lead the charge. Not like his brother and that bloodstained banner of his.

The silence is palpable without the sound of his own labored breathing and the thrum of his pulse fighting to keep him warm. The glow from the flame makes the darkness settled in his left eye turn reddish. He blinks consciously with his right eye, anchoring himself to the faint smell of smoke wafting upwards. 

The only reason Sugimoto had been the one to trail after him was due to unexpected visitors the kotan received the night before. Tanigaki and that fox-woman came to Otaru without warning, wanting to give their thanks to Asirpa’s grandmother for their first child and coveting her blessing for another. Her already crowded cise shrank further once the plumpened Matagi and his family were welcomed inside.

Ogata didn’t care for the affair. The irony of sharing the same cise with the man he had tried to snipe through its windows was not lost on him. His presence received cursory acknowledgement from Tanigaki aside from the initial shock of finding him still alive, and he preferred it that way. Ogata kept to a corner of the room that the firelight didn't quite reach, dispassionately eating his food undisturbed until Asirpa tugged him in front of the fire pit. 

There was nothing particularly unusual about hosting guests in the kotan, yet Ogata felt as though he was a voyeur.

His career as a sniper had, in essence, primed him for being privy to a person’s most vulnerable moments, if not more. But this was different from peering through his rifle sights and catching his prey unguarded. The endless conversation and peals of laughter grated against his ears, the scent of cooking suffocating the inside of the cise. His throbbing head couldn't hold it all, fit to burst into a gooey mess like overripe fruit. There was too much noise, too much movement. Too much life. Hearing voices fawn over the fox-woman’s permanently swollen belly and listening to the babbling of the toddler at her hip made something bitter and viscous coagulate shallowly beneath the surface of his pallid skin. 

The lingering undercurrent of agitation festered the longer he stayed. He didn't dare lift his sightless gaze. He was in Karafuto again, delirious from fever in an Uilta tent, the crisp sound of a drum hammering into his temples. His eyelid worked over the prosthetic at uneven intervals and he stiffly cradled the bowl in his hands until it was no longer warm. 

He remained a phantom in their midst. Soundless and still.

The following morning, he slipped out of the village in the quiet hours of dawn. He promised Asirpa a kill after she pinched Sugimoto awake. 

The fox-woman offered one of her fortunes to divine the success of their hunt. He declined, keeping his expression obscured by the hood of his cloak.

From across the kuca, Ogata can feel Sugimoto’s gaze boring into him. Evidently, it’s too cold for him to flip through one of the vapid magazines he occasionally stuffed into his pack.

“I can't understand what you're thinking,” Sugimoto finally says. 

Every time Sugimoto opens his mouth, it's nothing less than ham-fisted and clumsy. There hadn't been a need to understand when they were trying to kill one another. Sugimoto seemed content to keep to the little trick he picked up during the war, the one that had a higher rate of success than depending on divine protection and noble blood. Kill those who wanted to kill you first. 

Ogata regards him with a silence that says, obviously. “What's there to understand?” 

He does chores around the kotan with dexterous fingers. He takes his meals without complaint. He brings back meat. They eat it gratefully. 

“Are you trying to repay a debt?” Sugimoto sounds disapproving, like he wouldn't be satisfied if Ogata settled on that as an answer.

“I’m not Tanigaki.”

“Then why…” 

Ogata shrugs. “Why do you think?” 

He had been careful to keep his options open during the hunt for the Ainu gold, but there were few places he could turn to now. If Central miraculously chose to acknowledge his involvement, Ogata has a hunch they would have used him as another scapegoat for the chaos Tsurumi had sown. Lieutenant General Hanazawa was truly a generous man, offering up both of his sons. 

Sugimoto clicks his tongue harshly . “I don't know. Did you like the taste of salted yuk brains that much?” Ogata pictures the furrow of his brow and his scarred lips twisting into a scowl. 

Ogata feels his mouth pull into a half-grimace, warping the scars on his face. He shakes his head. “You've heard the rumors in Otaru, right? Even the nishin fishermen have started gossiping about it. They're trying the remnants of the Seventh Division in Central for insubordination, even those who weren't part of the Twenty-Seventh Regiment.”

It was to be expected. Tsurumi was a cunning bastard who had connections that spanned further than his immediate command. The Seventh was a convenient pariah after already being disgraced in the wake of the war, but Central would have to prune their ranks across all branches if they wanted to cut out the rot. No doubt they would have their hands full for the foreseeable future.

Sugimoto’s voice tenses at the mention of the Seventh. “There isn't anything to betray her for this time. Don't make her regret giving you a place to stay.”

A flash of teeth, a facsimile of a cat’s snarl. “Sugimoto the Immortal sure knows how to hurt a guy’s feelings, huh?” Ogata retorts, annoyance seeping into his flat tone, “They'd take me into custody on sight.”

Although, it's not like his current circumstances are any better. Wryly, Ogata thinks there is little difference between being thrown into prison for his collusion with the Seventh Division and the way Sugimoto regards him like a jailor. 

“You're trying not to get caught? You're practically useless to them now,” Sugimoto snorts. Ogata imagines Sugimoto sizing him up like a piece of fresh game - like the skinned deer hanging just outside of the kuca, bloodless and gaunt.

“You'd be surprised at what they would do to save face. How about it, Sugimoto?” He levels the other with an even look, fixing his nonexistent gaze on where he approximates the man to be. “How many days do you think it would take until Asirpa noticed I was missing?”

Ogata read the reports once, out of curiosity. It had taken six, nearly seven days for his grandparents. By then, the spring rain flooded the fields around his grandfather’s house and washed everything away, any trace of them buried under the scent of petrichor. If Sugimoto played his cards right, it wouldn't be hard to frame it as a hunting excursion gone south. 

His hands were tied under Asirpa’s watchful eye, but if Ogata was recognized by upstanding soldiers who were combing the mountains for poachers? Well, he's no Escape King. Justice would run its course. His fate would be finally severed from Sugimoto’s own.

He thinks of the deer again, limbs stiff from the cold and dark eyes unseeing.

Sugimoto could even reap the rewards if he chose to. A bear pelt sold for four yen at most. The majority of hunts weren’t fortunate enough to bring back one unscathed. Ogata never learned what became of the Ainu gold aside from the existence of the land deed, and Asirpa never spoke of it. If Sugimoto still needed money for that woman of his back home, the hide of a deserter who betrayed both his regiment and Central would fetch a greater sum than the measly profit he made off skinning animals.

Were he in Sugimoto’s place, that would be the cleanest way to deal with an eyesore. When Asirpa inevitably asked, he could weave some tearful lie about how Ogata went willingly, and that there'd be no point in looking for him because he'd be on the first ship to the mainland before long. Asirpa wouldn't argue with that; it was only right he was locked in a dark cell and left to waste away like Noppera-bō.

The little drama playing in his mind ends when Sugimoto noticeably balks, stirring from his patch of floor on the other side of the kuca. “I wouldn’t- I won't do that. Not unless you give me a reason.”

Haven’t I given you plenty of reasons? Laughter pools shallowly beneath his breast. Ogata covers his eyes with one palm, letting out a long, full-throated sigh to stifle it. “I'm convinced this must be a dream, or Hell.”

The air shifts when Sugumoto bristles, suddenly wary. “What makes you say that?”

“I have yet to be proven wrong,” Ogata says simply, smoothing back one stray lock of hair, “And I’m not sure which would be worse.”

A rough edge enters Sugimoto’s voice. “You should be dead.”

Ogata knows this is the truth. He'd been the only one repeating the syllables in his mind until they were etched behind his useless eyelids; not even Asirpa, who pulled him from the shore of death as its dark waters lapped at him, made any remark on it.

Ogata doesn't answer. His line of sight slides to somewhere just beyond Sugimoto, as if searching for those accusing phantoms to echo the same words. 

Without the poison coursing through his system, they no longer manifested in sharp relief. Did they have the comely face of his brother with blood pouring from his bullet wound, or his mother with her expression blankly distant, mirroring the feathered corpses he laid at her feet? Or was it his father’s disgusted eyes staring back at him through a curtain of bright pain, the same ones that were half-plucked out of his own head? Ogata can only chase the vague impressions left by his fugue state, holding fast to the certainty that he was meant to join them.

To hear it spoken by someone else solidifies it like a curse. Sugimoto is right. He should be dead. That was the conclusion he came to on the roof of that train, wasn't it? 

Sugimoto exhales through his nose, the sound of his nails scrubbing roughly through his hair drawing Ogata’s attention back to the present. “I wanted to leave you there to bleed out. Asirpa was the one who asked Shiraishi to take you. She… I don't know what she was thinking then, and I still don't.”

“She meant to kill me.” There was no mistaking her intent.

His brother preserved his hypocritical existence until the very end. Ogata watched the bloodlust devour the light in her innocent eyes, the taint taking to her unstained hands. Relief overcame him the moment her arrow found its mark.

By tethering him to this rotten earth, did she hope to salvage some of her purity? Or did she want him to serve as a reminder of her festering guilt? It would prove a futile endeavor when she was already burdened with the future of her people. He thought her precise and efficient from the way she hunted, abhorring needless waste. Now, he sits on the floor of her cise, fletching her arrows and skinning her kills.

“She still wanted to save you after everything.” Sugimoto pauses, sucking in a breath. When he next speaks, a low tremor makes the cadence of his words unsteady, one that Ogata can only interpret as barely-suppressed rage, a beast that had yet to rip open its muzzle. “All I know is that Asirpa can see a world where someone like you can exist. Don't turn your eyes away from this, too.”

Ah. So that's how it was.

“I see,” Ogata’s lips twitch upwards. “Hell, then.”

Ogata has no chance to react - Sugimoto lashes out, gripping his arm and pulling him forward. Nauseous satisfaction lurches in the pit of his stomach. Sugimoto’s fingers sink into him like pliant mud after the first rain of the season. Ogata knows firsthand how easily Sugimoto wields violence, how it still lurks beneath the docile veneer he adopted since retreating to the obscured settlements around Otaru. Even through the thick material of his sleeve, he anticipates the dark bloom of bruises and the dull crunch of bone to follow.

The Ainu described everything in cycles - the turn of the seasons, their gods that descended from the heavens, return of flesh to the fertile womb of the earth. It's only fitting that Sugimoto would kill him here, in the place they first met.

“Here!” Sugimoto’s voice is strained when he barks at Ogata, low and raw. There it is, the sound of a beast wearing human skin. “Feel for yourself! Burn this into your memory, Ogata!”

The meat of Ogata’s palm collides with chilled metal. A trained shiver instantly travels up the length of his arm. 

His mind hastily works to discern what kind of weapon Sugimoto unsheathed that managed to escape his notice. It’s not the barrel of the rifle, which was kept close at Ogata’s side. It can only be his sharpened bayonet or the flat of his folding knife. Ogata grits his teeth and tries to draw back, to put any kind of distance between them - then finds himself too corporeal to slip free of Sugimoto’s ironclad vise.

There wasn't any contest when it came to a physical fight. How could there be? It was Sugimoto the Immortal, after all.

Ogata reveled in the heady rush of adrenaline that accompanied Sugimoto’s savagery, whether he was on the receiving end of his decisive brutality or watching him mercilessly butcher men through his ladder sights. Violence was a means to an end; grotesque displays weren't anything to be impressed by, and Ogata detested wasting bullets. All men could kill if given the chance, if placed under the right circumstances, if given the right reason. He learned as much during the war.

A sniper had no interest in becoming intimate with his mark, but he found himself enraptured by how Sugimoto used what he considered a weakness to his advantage, risking his own body to viciously sink his teeth into prey. In Sugimoto's monstrous fortitude lay a tenuous balance between callously efficient and purely animalistic. As if he was merely fulfilling his role as a hungry weapon. 

The fascination he held just moons before feels distant now. Bereft of sight, he's no better than an animal choked in one of Asirpa’s snares. His muscles have atrophied from disuse, leaving him soft and vulnerable. The scar on his stomach burns. It was what he sought after goading the girl twicefold, yet the same gratification eluded him.

A flash of icy panic washes over him, settling in the base of his skull. He feels himself sweat out what little heat has curled up inside his body. He doesn't think to sling hot embers from the smoldering fire at Sugimoto’s face, or claw out his eyes with blunt nails. He doesn't think to pick up the rifle right behind him. 

Cold fear seizes him - a final, inelegant betrayal by his own body, a humiliating reminder that it exists at all.

What are you waiting for, Sugimoto? You wanted to be the one to relieve her of that burden. You wanted to be the one to kill for her. Finish your duty- 

The growl catches in his throat, acrid and gritty, another of his body's paltry attempts to preserve itself. Ogata’s crooked jaw sets, creaking loudly in protest between his ears. He thought the instinct long beaten out of him, but the shape of his own mortality resurfaces keenly, a miserable arrangement that had yet to cease since death last closed its maw around him.

Moments pass glacially. Pain is noticeably absent.

Ogata forcibly centers himself. No metallic scent of blood cutting through the wisps of smoke, no sharp ache radiating from his hand. All of his fingers are intact when he flexes them, curling around Sugimoto’s weapon. The surface is rounded and smooth, nothing like a blade. The wan heat from Ogata’s clammy palm begins to warm it.

“You shot me here, remember?” Sugimoto holds Ogata’s wrist in place. His grip smothers the bluish rivulets carrying his racing pulse. “I’m still alive and you are, too. Stop pretending otherwise.”

“Here…?” Ogata repeats tonelessly, swiping over the metal with his thumb. He recalls the recoil of his rifle amid the rain of signal flares, bringing his binoculars to his face and following the path of his bullet with a half-suppressed eagerness. He’d gotten Sugimoto on the edge of his head, but this doesn’t feel like another scar.

“The bullet passed through my skull. They had to cut out part of my brain,” Sugimoto curtly elaborates before releasing his hold. 

A metal plate. Ogata hadn’t been aware he was keeping this hidden beneath the brim of his military cap. He cared little for the finer points of Sugimoto’s fortuitous survival after fleeing Abashiri. He favored prudence, keeping his guard up when he knew the consequences would doggedly pursue him all the way to Karafuto. 

Ogata lets his touch linger, committing the shape to memory. Remorse does not stay his hand. 

His fingers slowly probe the area around the plate, mapping the planes of Sugimoto’s temple and brow. He finds the leather strap affixing the metal to his head, then the soft patch of Sugimoto's hair where it meets his scalp, the wild locks another bristling animal pelt. Sugimoto’s skin is slightly damp under Ogata's dry touch. Ogata remembers him stinking of sweat and blood during their uneasy alliance on the way to Abashiri; it's far too cold for the scent to carry now.

Men discarded themselves in the war, one way or another. Shaved and whittled away the parts that would not serve them, cast away the pretense of guilt and honor. Bared the truest, basest iteration of themselves, struggled to cloak themselves in human skin after sinking into that fathomless nadir. Even if Sugimoto wanted to go back to that woman of his, there was no way to go back to the person he was before Ogata’s bullet pierced his skull. The perpetual sense of being distantly unmoored settles at the thought. An immortal could die. Ogata had been the one to kill him.

From churning mire surfaces the limp neck of a duck in his grip, the branching antlers of a decapitated stag, an unmoving body through the lens of his binoculars. He greedily drinks it in with the pads of his callused fingers, this still-breathing hunting trophy.

Nostalgia darkly coagulates like old blood sloshing around in his empty eye socket, souring his newfound spoils. The grievous injury Tsurumi sported after the war mirrored Sugimoto’s own. Ogata hadn't been the one at his side in Mukden, hadn't seen the flesh seared from his face and his skull cracked open by shrapnel. He could only distantly make out the shape of the sleds being hurriedly pulled across that frozen river, unsure of which of one held the First Lieutenant’s body.

The Tsurumi who came back to the Seventh from the land of the dead was off-kilter and vicious, his virtuous mien scored away to reveal the monster that lay beneath. Lost a part of his frontal lobe, he cheerfully announced to any superior who asked, donning the silvery mantle over his exposed forehead. The blast seemed to have sheared away the supposed potential he saw in Ogata, too, fruitless promises freely leaking out of him alongside that disgusting brain fluid. 

Underneath the metal plate, he imagines Sugimoto’s skin to be scarred with the same ruddy shade and uneven ridges. Aconite-riddled memories trickle back to him, giving rise to the firm set of Tsurumi’s shoulders as he resolutely strode towards the first car of the train. 

Ogata watched him meld into the purest blue overhead, the only thing holding steady as the landscape of Hokkaido turned into a smear on a canvas. A fine day to take what belonged to him from the first.

Through the veil of giddy mania, Tsurumi’s figure looked as gallant as his father’s, abandoning him there to die. It wasn't the first time he'd been sent out by Tsurumi’s hand to treat with death, no - but the glorious sway of fate convinced him it would be the last.

Perhaps Ogata could find a sliver of relief here, still beholden to the stubborn embers searing the yawning cavity beneath his sternum. For all the times he wanted to sink his claws into the soft, exposed tissue between Tsurumi’s lightless eyes, to etch an indelible wound of his own. A passing urge makes his fingers twitch. It would be simple to unclasp the strap around Sugimoto's head, dig his nails in until warm wetness gushed out and soaked into his skin. To take what would forever lay out of reach.

He doesn't, of course. Sugimoto would break his arm again without hesitation. The phantom pain rears its head when the recoil reverberates through his bones, threatening to shake them apart at the fault lines. 

He removes his hand and settles back on his haunches, curling his fingers around nothingness when he pulls it back to his side. 

Night was suffused with life during the warmer months, the incessant chirping of insects and shuffling creatures in the undergrowth a constant in his fitful sleep; in winter, the chorus is choked into silence. The interior of the kuca is quiet enough that Ogata can hear Sugimoto’s breathing - steady, if begrudging, likely regretting letting him this close to make a point. 

A half-formed morsel of contempt nearly tugs at his lips like a hooked fish. What, you wanted to show me your brain injury? Is that the reason you've become soft and stupid?

He would be content to leave it at that and remain a morose fixture on the opposite side of the fire, but there is an element that whets his curiosity. 

It was a grueling task to adjust to using a rifle left-handed. He’d forced himself to acclimate, stalking around the lake behind Hijikata’s hideout before dawn. Every escaped bird sailing gracefully over the dewy grass and calm waters reminded him of the throbbing hole in his head. 

Without his left eye, even that indignity is not afforded to him. Ogata has been here many a time in the throes of war: lying prone with a low-simmering dread pressed up against his organs, caked in filth and swaddled by the biting cold. Blankly staring down the length of his weapon and waiting for any movement through his sights, finger poised to pull the trigger when the sun illuminates the ravaged landscape of Manchuria. The only difference is that first light never comes.

There is no foothold for him when his brain endlessly dredges up the past in a circuitous attempt to stitch together the present. It is nothing less than disconcerting, fruitlessly concealing a sense of stagnation. Decaying. He realized this long ago. The rest of him had yet to follow suit.

It’s why he finds it strange, the sudden gnaw in the pit of his stomach. Nothing that could hold a candle to the consuming tenacity that guided him to Hakodate, but a flicker that minutely stirs him from apathy nonetheless. Knowing the single mark he engraved leaves him unsated. He wonders, idly, if there was more proof of his flawed existence carved into Sugimoto’s flesh.

He held no regard for his own body, let alone others. Scars, too, were mundane when he was intimate with the ways men could be maimed and mutilated. Then again, perhaps it wasn't strange at all. Ogata relishes the solid weight of a firearm in his grip, carefully nurturing the promise of violence in each one. Weapons are familiar - and what greater weapon is there than Sugimoto the Immortal?

Across from him, Sugimoto has drained his pitiful reserve of insipid remarks. The intensity of his lurid gaze does not wane as he catalogs Ogata’s every movement. Waiting for Ogata to repent, or to retaliate for the way he'd been manhandled. Surely Sugimoto wasn’t naive enough to hope for an apology for what transpired at Abashiri.

A beat passes. No significant upheaval. Ogata roughly estimates the distance between Sugimoto and the intermittent crackle of the fire, the sheltering walls of the kuca, their provisions littered on the ground, the bundled pelt of the deer. He drags his husk forward in cautious increments as if crawling through the muck of a trench, pine needles sticking to his palms and firelight wavering in his periphery.

The tempo of Sugimoto’s breath stutters when he realizes how close Ogata is now, no doubt unnerved by an eyeless ghost soundlessly forcing its way into his space. Ogata keeps his movements purposefully sluggish and weighted, telegraphing where he might fumble for purchase so he doesn't startle Sugimoto into snapping his neck.

He draws upon rote memory to navigate the endeavor; to him, there was little difference between seeking out Sugimoto’s warmed body and blindly groping for corpses to bury in the frozen earth. His marksman’s aim lands on something solid and covered in cloth. Ogata rests his palm at the anchor of Sugimoto’s knee, then splays his hand over his thigh, feeling the firm muscle jump beneath his touch even through the layers of fabric. Sugimoto himself does not flinch, never yielding to the yoke of mortal fear, candidly walking in the shadow of death as if searching for a place to die. 

From there, it's but a matter of making a calculated estimate vertically; Ogata adjusts his reach for the way Sugimoto’s frame is taller and larger than his. He finds the plane of one broad shoulder with his palm, then the other. His fingers latch onto the thick material of Sugimoto’s coat, scattered imperfections along the worn surface calling to mind sewn up bullet holes and stab wounds, the familiar sight of dark blood seeping freely into the fabric. He cranes his neck slightly upwards to conjure the semblance of looking Sugimoto in the eye.

“Ogata…” His name is a warning; Sugimoto’s tone suggests he’s been exercising a measure of restraint thus far. “What are you doing?”

“You told me to see for myself,” Ogata starts, his voice softer with the lack of distance, “If I wanted to gouge your eyes out, I would’ve done it already.” He pauses to punctuate the statement, giving Sugimoto a chance to push him away. 

Sugimoto’s words drip with suspicion when he cocks his head, a subtle shift in corded muscle under Ogata’s palms. “And if you end up changing your mind?”

Another reason why he prefers Sugimoto’s presence like the awareness of a tender bruise. “You’ve taken on a blind man before with your dick hanging out. I'm sure you could manage.”

Sugimoto exhales pointedly through flared nostrils, a palpable wave of annoyance keenly closing the gap. Ogata immediately recognizes it as the one he looses when he has to bitterly swallow his childish pride and admit the other's words have merit. He mentally adds the displeased scrunch of Sugimoto’s features at being reminded of that harrowing ordeal, dry amusement evaporating as quickly as it takes shape. 

There isn’t a need to say anything more. They're both aware of who would stand a chance at the mercy of the snow and cold. Ogata suspects Sugimoto magnanimously decided not to wrest him into another hold only because he’s forced to maintain this semblance of civility for Asirpa’s sake. The thought should grate against Ogata’s nerves; here, it works to his advantage. The prospect of bringing Sugimoto the Immortal to heel is one he intends to savor on his fallow palate.

A weight of finality settles into his limbs as he strays from Sugimoto’s shoulders to the weathered material of his scarf, the edges slightly frayed. The only barrier between him and Sugimoto’s exposed pulse, ripe for Ogata to seize between unrepentant teeth. Ogata’s shadow eclipses the warm light radiating from the fire. Darkness sharpens, then solidifies, a heavy blot of spilled ink across his vision. He squints out of habit, as if it would let bring Sugimoto's face into focus from the dim nothingness. This, too, he has a growing disdain for, memories becoming indistinct the longer he left them untouched.

Time dilates in the way it does in the aftermath of an unlucky shell, the crevices between moments saturated only by the inextinguishable rhythm of his own thrumming pulse, the rasp of shallow breath being drawn into his lungs. 

A persistent pull in his hindbrain tells him he’s staring a predator in the maw. Not like the faceless, desperate soldiers he cut down on the battlefield or the crafty Russian who followed him across Hokkaido, but like one of the restless matakarip cursed by their hunger. Sugimoto is closer to a wen kamuy than any of the beasts in the mountains, crawling out of his grave in the ocean and haunting the forests. 

Ogata swiftly quaffs down the burgeoning instinct and holds fast to the heady draught of claiming what is rightfully his. He keeps his hands steady. He keeps his voice even. “Don't move.”

Ogata frames Sugimoto’s face with his palms, scar tissue grazing against each other. A shudder winds its way up the notches of Sugimoto’s spine at the initial contact and sends his temples prickling. Revulsion, maybe. Or just a natural consequence of the way Ogata’s hands can't seem to be rid of the chill of a corpse.

It occurs to him, belatedly, that he doesn't know what Sugimoto looks like now. Sugimoto’s presence is marked by the low timbre of his voice, always layered with wariness when Ogata is within earshot, robust with mirth and fondness when it mingles with laughter in the distance. Ogata senses his bulk carefully treading around him like a bear stalking in the undergrowth, the only one who knows just what this blind sisam is capable of no matter how defanged. Ogata is reminded of him through the fierce turn of weather in the mountains, when the ache of his empty socket burrows into his brain, making him rub over it with the heel of his palm, flit over the eyelid with the pads of his fingers and anticipate dark, syrupy droplets clinging to them. He thinks of Sugimoto with each irritating click of his jaw.

He can make vague approximations with the scraps that enter his periphery. He catches remarks about Asirpa catching up to Sugimoto’s height, the girl now harder to stow under his arm like a rolled-up cot. Sometimes, she fusses over him, using the sharpened keepsake from her father to shear his unruly hair when it gets into his eyes. Other times, she prods him with an off-handed observation that his body is padded with the beginnings of fat. There's a grain of truth to Asirpa’s teasing - Ogata finds Sugimoto's jawline and thumbs over it, his youth slightly returned. It was to be expected now that he didn't need to devote every waking moment to survival.

The impression of Sugimoto’s face twisted in anger - that bright, driving force - seared a brand into his memories. Across from him, Sugimoto’s features are not immortalized in a vengeful mask between Ogata’s hands. His skin is not stretched taut in fury, no bulging veins or lips pulled into a snarl. Sugimoto goes uncannily still between Ogata’s hands, conflicting with the image he held of Sugimoto always moving, running, fighting. Even in their sparse moments of reprieve, he would be scrutinizing their surroundings, hovering protectively around Asirpa, tossing and turning in his sleep. 

He imagined this once, in the slipshod fantasy he wove for the girl amid a raging blizzard: Sugimoto wan and pliant in his grasp, the life quietly leaking out of him. Ogata took little pleasure in recounting the unfamiliar lie on his tongue. The same holds true here - Sugimoto holding his breath as if bracing himself fails to quell his growing annoyance.

A frozen deer, or a beast biding its time to strike?

Sugimoto hardly bothers to hide his disdain, but did he truly think Ogata would snuff out the warmth thrumming beneath his skin? Did he think of Ogata as a punishment or fetter, the role of wraith inherited from his brother? Does he think of Asirpa’s clear, resolute call the first time they met, halting him just before he sheathed his bayonet between the rungs of Ogata’s ribs?

For a brief moment, he genuinely wonders - “Is it that unpleasant for you? I haven't done anything yet.”

The question stirs Sugimoto back to life from where he’d been locked in rigor mortis. His posture straightens with a jolt, his eyelids blinking in surprise under Ogata’s touch. The graceless movements of someone who's let his guard down. Ogata would chide him for it, if not for the fact that he's within prime distance to have a finger bitten off. 

Sugimoto has yet to swat his hands away, carefully angling his head so it stays bracketed by the cage of Ogata’s pale fingers. One might think it a show of obedience, but Ogata feels the ebb and swell of his body as he takes a measured inhale, then exhale. The calm before a storm coalesced on the horizon, the charged tang of salt and metal, a familiar sight born on the distant shores of Ibaraki. He can taste the impact already, the low rumble of thunder in his throat, the warm ghost of blood and bile welling up between his teeth.

“Just get on with it,” Sugimoto finally grouses through a huffed breath. There's no heat behind it; Ogata finds himself almost disappointed.

Still, Sugimoto’s griping emboldens him, promising to be more engaging than skinning another frigid animal carcass with numb hands. Ogata privately considers the best way to needlessly drag out the affair before sliding his touch lower along his jaw, unearthing a rounded ingress in the flesh stretched across Sugimoto’s chin.

“I don't remember this,” Ogata murmurs. The end of it, he thought, had been neatly resolved, washed out to where the sky met the sea like the rest of the debris that used to be Hakodate Station. 

In the last dizzying flickers he held of Sugimoto’s face, they met with teeth bared and voices wet with blood, the roar of wind drowning out their baying. Sugimoto’s face had been a nasty piece of work. Once he fled from Goryokaku, it was doubtful he had any chance to pack his wounds with leaves or smear bear fat on them. In the short time Ogata observed the fortitude of Sugimoto the Immortal up close, he recovered from many a wound without leaving too prominent of a scar, but it was only fitting that day left its mark on him. 

As for the scar itself - the shape is too unwieldy for a soldier’s bullet. That, and it would have definitely shattered his jaw on impact. Ogata briefly entertains the thought with a sudden petulance: Sugimoto’s jaw painstakingly pieced back together like his own, a permanent reminder just below his ear each time he ate citatap or ohaw or anything else Asirpa killed for him.

Sugimoto’s nose wrinkles in disgust. “That creepy twin stabbed me with a pair of chopsticks.” 

Ogata turns over the words in his head, dredging up a name and a face. The Nikaidou twins were one of the first to agree to his proposal without needless deliberation. Ogata discerned their motives were relatively simple, despite the way they furtively kept to themselves. Leave the army and the remote shithole that was Hokkaido.

It goes without saying that his plan to incite a rebellion was a lame babe plucked from the womb, drowned before it could take its first breath. Ogata paid the remaining Nikaidou little mind after he groveled his way back to Tsurumi’s side. It wasn't until he caught glimpses of the chaos at Goryokaku that he realized the surviving twin was still kicking. He's a little impressed, though he suspects that wasn't the case for long if he crossed Sugimoto on the battlefield.

The sight of the two identical figures standing shoulder to shoulder in the barracks lingered in Ogata’s periphery. His brother tried to do the same in a crude imitation, eagerly searching for a mirror in Ogata’s impassive expression. No matter how much Yuusaku wanted to pretend they could stand on equal footing, the difference in their ranks was clear. And still, he'd made a point of taunting Ogata with that amicable facade of his. The Nikaidous, at least, openly embraced their violent nature. Not like his brother, who wept and pulled him into his arms, all while telling Ogata a bastard like him shouldn't exist. A fantastic display of willful ignorance.

If Ogata had been the one to die at Port Arthur, somehow sniped from his perch or blown to pieces by a grenade - would he have gone mad with grief, too? Of course not. Yuusaku had their father’s noble blood coursing through his veins, the very same that left his mother’s corpse to rot in Ibaraki.

“Hm,” Ogata blandly offers as an afterthought. Sugimoto's jaw works under his fingers as he speaks. No omnipresent click when it hinges itself back into place. A pity. 

He catalogs the left side of Sugimoto’s face without fanfare, his touch drinking in the same planes effortlessly drawn from the well of memory. The occasional thin scar embedded in the flesh fails to elicit any significant interest from Ogata’s roaming hands; probably shrapnel and splinters from the steel coffin of the train, left to the stinging deluge of salt water. Nothing by his hand, nothing as proudly borne as the bullet in his skull.

The only other blemish marring Sugimoto’s face is the one neatly bisecting his features. The pad of Ogata’s finger catches on the ridge of the scar and Sugimoto involuntarily shudders, the scar tissue still sensitive after all this time. Ogata imagines it as an ivory reindeer bone in the hands of an Uilta soothsayer, scraped clean and forged in fire. He traces over the indentation like an ill portent cracked into the surface, as if it would reveal to him another damning truth. 

He ignores the crossroads that leads to the seam of Sugimoto’s lips. Instead, he rests his thumb on the bridge of Sugimoto’s nose - a clean shot right between the eyes. Ogata stills his breath. Listens for a fleeting pulse between the thin layer of skin and cartilage, silently hoping to find the tempo off-kilter and erratic.

Sugimoto’s features bunch up around Ogata’s touch in bemusement, the broad muzzle of a wolf pulling taut. His gaze is steady, fixed on Ogata. Prepared to counter any possibility of an icy finger worming into the dip of his eye socket and plucking it out like a crow gorging itself upon carrion. Were Sugimoto's teeth exposed, deadly like a glint of light caught on the length of a sharpened blade? Ogata unconsciously licks over the back of his own and lets the points dig into the flat of his tongue. The crisp smell of pine fills his mouth when he takes a shallow breath, unable to scent the bloodlust rolling off Sugimoto even from this close. Another denial from the cold, as if unsatisfied with pervading his being down to the marrow.

Ogata deftly skirts his touch away before Sugimoto opens his mouth to complain. There's little else to be gleaned. Ogata grazes the back of his knuckle down the length of Sugimoto’s cheek, silently tracing the ghost of his own sutures and finding nothing. The rest of it is flawless and supple - no gaunt edges and sunken cheeks from the famine they endured during the war.

“She's feeding you well.” That much is already obvious. Ogata was certain he stripped the girl of her innocence the moment she loosed her arrow, but her hands could still mend and nourish even with the burden he gifted her. They were different, after all. She was a blessed child. 

The corner of Sugimoto’s lips quirks upwards on reflex. “Of course she is - she's Asirpa.” 

Indeed, it was because she was Asirpa. The girl loved to hunt, to wrest viscera from her kills, to devour what her kamuy had to offer. 

Her enthusiasm had yet to wane with the callous turn of the seasons. It was, perhaps, why Ogata continued to bring birds and deer at her behest, knowing nothing would be left to waste. It should remind him of a knife excising the punctured, rotten eye from his head, his body dragged through the unrelenting cold of Karafuto, warm water brought to his lips in a futile attempt to keep his death from staining her hands. Yet he finds himself wading through the overgrown fields in Ibaraki with the air stagnant and putrid, thick enough to chew. With every steaming bowl pressed into his hands and whiff of fatty broth wafting from a bubbling pot, a wavering apparition solidifies however briefly in his blind spot, between the ever-present companionship of dark and twilight, trailing sumptuous fabric along the floor and humming softly over the sweltering heat of a stove. He ignores how each meal leaves him fed and famished, the taste always wrong on his tongue. He’s too far north to be searching for any of it.

Sugimoto’s voice brims with fondness, cloying. Ogata’s skin crawls with gooseflesh, writhing maggots threatening to breach the surface, somehow more repulsed than if the sentiment was suddenly lavished upon him. Then, Sugimoto makes a thin, offended sniff, muttering under his breath, “What's that supposed to mean, anyway? You eat the same thing.”

Ogata blinks once methodically, dim firelight catching the glossy surface of his prosthetic like a dead fish. “...It doesn't have to mean anything.” 

He neglects to elaborate, jerks his neck slightly to give the impression of rolling his eyes. He pays no mind to the frustrated curiosity in Sugimoto’s gaze clinging to his movements.

The left side of Sugimoto’s face is what gives Ogata pause when he focuses his ministrations there. Unlike the relatively intact features he mapped moments prior, the shape of Sugimoto’s ears are unmistakably asymmetric. Part of the lobe is missing, as if chewed off by a wild animal. Something that could easily be Usami’s handiwork.

Except Usami died in Sapporo, no better than the hapless deer he struck down in the forests of Otaru. The cheapest piece on the board would have followed Tsurumi to the bottom of Hakodate Bay otherwise. Ogata considers it a mercy for both of them. That country-bred mutt wouldn't have to debase himself with a shamelessly pathetic display, trailing after his owner into the depths of hell. And more importantly, it spared Ogata the displeasure of watching his smugly satisfied expression when he inevitably met his fate.

There had been a part of him, still petulantly gurgling on his own blood, that wanted to see what kind of face Tsurumi would wear when one of his prized hunting dogs died. Would he make the same grandiose declarations of camaraderie and glory he was fond of giving every time their ranks thinned, trimming and flourishing the account of this meaningless war before it was even over? Or would it be the expression he hoped to see worn by a stranger standing over his mother’s covered face?

Regardless, the end result was the same. For all the bravado Usami had shown digging his boot into Ogata’s belly, he became another thoughtless spray of crimson in the distance. All men were crafted from soft guts and tender flesh, easily pierced by bullets and shrapnel. Served him right for thinking his devotion would amount to anything more.

The ripple in his fathomless gaze smooths itself out as quickly as it appeared. The dregs of his budding annoyance abate. Ogata follows them southward.

His fingers brush raised terrain near immediately - a bursting star of scar tissue that made its home in the meat of Sugimoto’s cheek. Ogata’s sightless eyes can only see a flap of skin still fresh with clotting blood, dark red shorn from his tanned cheek and giving way to a flash of white teeth. A stray memory overlaps with the carnage, one of a despondent Asirpa eating a handful of hurep in Karafuto, staining her mouth the same color. 

“And here?” Ogata asks, pressing against the skin and half-expecting his fingers to sink deep into the flesh without resistance.

Sugimoto heaves an arduous sigh laden with exasperation, disturbing the brittle membrane that descended over the kuca like another soundless layer of snow. The gravelly noise sends a steely prickle up the back of Ogata’s nape. He mentally readies himself to retreat a half-step back if Sugimoto meant to buck him off like a foul-tempered horse, lest he find himself in a bed of dying cinders or impale himself on his rifle.

Instead, Sugimoto's tone is incredulous when he finally speaks, as if he’s unable to believe his own words: “The bastard had shotgun shells in his prosthetic leg.”

Ogata silently raises a brow. He hadn't anticipated that Nikdaidou would be as persistent as a rabid hound, laying waste to the landscape of Sugimoto’s face with a round of buckshot. Was that what he wanted in the end, wielding his grief and rancor through a rain of fire? A lasting signifier of his meaningless fury? A face for one he could have found in the mirror? What asinine promises Tsurumi made him, gathering the pieces of him back into his fold, Ogata doesn’t know.

He considers the wound again, a claim so brazenly staked into Sugimoto’s body. Nikaidou was hardly skilled with a firearm in the short time they worked alongside each other. A lucky shot. Nothing more, nothing less. Ogata traces over the scar once, twice - thrice. He finds the same ridges and warped flesh unchanged no matter how many times he traverses the length of it. 

His tepid expression, he is certain, betrays nothing. Yet it remains fixed in concentration, his irritation gradually sharpening with each subsequent pass, unable to smudge it into nothingness. It's not Nikaidou that he particularly cares about. The grievance of another sniping his kill is unwelcome. 

He missed his chance at point blank; atop the train, Ogata’s aim had been erratic with unbridled elation, his body unconsciously falling back into the habits that only served him with two good eyes. He roughly digs the pad of his thumb into the scar at the side of Sugimoto’s mouth, as if it would let him find that crevasse of open flesh and partake from the gooey warmth. He envisions dark flecks of blood caked under his nails, blackening the pale crescents. A buck scratching velvety antlers against dry bark. 

The motion does not break skin, but it's enough to make Sugimoto shiver between his hands. The barely-stifled reaction only feeds into Ogata's low-burning fervor, potently welling up between his mantle of assumed apathy. It differs from the fleeting, malicious glee that accompanies chasing the tail end of impulse, but is startlingly as simple. He seizes it for his own like another arrogantly unfettered bird plucked out of the sky - better than ceding ground to the insistent ache dwelling in his eye sockets.

Hell, he’d said. At the hands of those dogged wraiths and the crippled body that binds him. He narrowed down his existence of his own volition the first time, honed and refined himself to a point out of necessity. Now, the unforgiving, primal cold has come to him again, devoid of incendiary violence. No endless hail of gunfire to contend with his heartbeat, no way to confirm blood and breath still circulated through his emaciated frame, however meager. 

No - it was intent on silently carving from him until nothing remained save a miserable hole in Sugimoto’s skull. 

Displeasure must show on his face, because Sugimoto tenses, muscles coiled in anticipation. Ogata’s ire only curdles at being reminded of his presence, the point of contact between them threatening to singe. 

He wants to take Sugimoto apart by touch in the same way he does a rifle due for maintenance, dismantle his skull and bear witness to the wet, luscious inside, chart the exact path his bullet cut through with a ruthless efficiency. He shot the Russian out of a tree after his departure from Goryokaku; he almost regrets it. Ogata thoughtfully circles over Sugimoto’s cheek again, attempting to retrace the ever-present gossamer thread that connected the end of his rifle to its quarry. Without the Russian here, he seeks to wrest it from Sugimoto, to pull it taut - elicit the granular click of teeth, of a loaded bolt, of the callous pull of a trigger. Anything to test the limits of the supposed restraint that convinced him to stay his hand.

His fingers curl lower, around the jut of Sugimoto’s chin. The texture of Sugimoto’s bottom lip is soft and chapped when Ogata prods at it with his thumb, plump and delicate. In contrast, the scar tissue is rough where it cuts deeply across his mouth. Does he feel the reminder of that fresh wound when he eats, in every word his lips curl around, Ogata wonders. He holds his hand in place, keeping steady as if leveling the long barrel of a firearm, his sightless eyes lowering in consideration. 

To the undiscerning eye, the sight could even appear intimate. Yamaneko, they called him - but Ogata has little interest in this. His mother never passed any of that down to him, never brought any of it into their shoddy, cloistered home. The musk of sex, the acrid stench of sake, the suffocating clouds of tobacco and the trace sweetness of opium from that brothel he lured his brother to - none of it reminded him of her.

He finds none of it here, either. Nothing more than a perfunctory appraisal of collateral damage. Sugimoto’s severe gaze hangs over him all the while, a beast locking eyes with a hunter. If there was any lust in it, it’s in the way a bullet is lustful for the embrace of pliant flesh. 

It's what he makes of the creeping fever that flushes up his nape, pooling hotly at the base of his skull and sending a dizzying, undiluted rush through his throbbing temples. One of the first things he learned upon being assigned to the Seventh was that winter in Hokkaido was unlike ones in Honshu. Fatigue does not gnaw at him, not when the days were short and the waxing moon could be as luminous as a midday sun. It comes as no surprise to him: before the process of decay ended with a final, undignified stillness there was a fester - a perversely vivacious feast in the throes of death. 

This time, there is no cumbersome obstacle of his own body, weighted and sluggish from the snow lining the pit of his stomach. The sudden vigor narrows his mangled pupil into a slit. He swallows, keenly aware of the saliva in his mouth shifting around his tongue. Feels his throat bob with the motion. The unblinking eyes carved into the starch white bark standing guard about them exacerbate the pervasive itch clinging to the underside of his skin. The potent scent of pine lingers in his sinuses.

He releases his hold. “Let me see your teeth,” Ogata says without fully thinking, pulse quickening when he breathes out the words.

It obviously catches Sugimoto off guard, because instead of a reflexive Hell no, he asks, “Why my teeth?”

“Because, Sugimoto,” Ogata starts languidly, as if his words are not inane, “If something tears my throat out, then I’ll be able to tell the difference between you and a starved animal. Plus, I didn't get a chance to look-”  

Ogata leans slightly forward to accentuate his words, close enough to taste Sugimoto’s condensed exhale like a caustic cloud of cigarette smoke. The other squirms in place without the barrier of his hat to take refuge behind, bearing the brunt of Ogata’s eerie, unfocused gaze.

Under any other circumstances the discomfort would only rouse his latent vitriol, but here, Ogata allows himself to derive a paltry satisfaction from it. He was too young to remember the day his father abandoned his mistress. The first time Ogata saw him was a portrait of his father in uniform, gleaming with his merits. His mother, in a rare moment of lucidity, gently stroked the photograph and fondly remarked they had the same eyes. Cold and flat, so fathomless that Ogata couldn't imagine what the man was thinking through that single scrap of paper. Would his mother grieve this, too, knowing the last proof of his bastard lineage was now neatly excised and maimed beyond use.

“At what?” Wariness colors the casual drawl of Sugimoto's voice. With Ogata crowding him against one interwoven wall of the kuca, there is nowhere to retreat. Nowhere to hide. 

“When my bullet pierced its way through that Russian’s mouth.” Ogata feels the corner of his eyes crease when Sugimoto’s breath hitches, hackles raised.

“You… messed him up pretty badly,” A bleak huff of amusement forces itself out of his lungs. “He couldn't talk and had a hell of a time eating anything.”

Ogata hums mildly in agreement. “From that distance and angle, some of his teeth probably shattered.”

“Were you trying to kill him?”

“Someone must have leaked the intel that we were trying to cross the border,” Ogata’s smile tightens mirthlessly. “In that case, he was no different than any other Russian from the war.”

The silence Sugimoto affords him is skeptical. “Even if he chased you all the way from Karafuto?”

“Is that supposed to make him special?” Ogata retorts cooly. “He had orders. I don't hold grudges.” 

That manages to shut Sugimoto up until he barks a disbelieving scoff. “Yeah, right-”

All it takes is a moment - a careless gap in Sugimoto’s guard, a decisive movement, a lack of distance. Ogata sheathes himself in Sugimoto’s mouth with a swiftness only rivaled by a cross Asirpa wielding a wooden spoon.

His first thought is that it’s warm. Sugimoto naturally runs hot beneath the skin, but the soft, vulnerable inside of him is even warmer. It's something that a man would have killed for during those freezing months across the salt.

The girl patiently explained it to him, once. She led his palm over the dense pelt of a deer, one freshly slain with the poison that nearly claimed him moons ago. She spoke of its sacrifice with reverence, as if it hadn't merely been caught unawares in a trap, as if it hadn't struggled to the end, arrested by the same agonizing delirium. As if it wasn't meat without ceremony, not even given the last rites of a kamuy. She neatly sliced through fur and skin to bare its still-warm belly pulsing with viscera and guided his hands inside. This deer died for us.

Ogata is reminded of her words now, his thumbs wedged inside of Sugimoto’s mouth. The slit-open stomach of a deer, oozing the final vestiges of life between its spilled entrails and the slick, yawning maw of a ravening beast - are they not the same to a man bereft of both eyes?

He finds little time to contemplate the revelation, however. Sugimoto’s innate affinity for survival more than compensates for his lapse in attention. His jaw snaps shut around Ogata in a sturdy vise, upper lip curling into the beginnings of a snarl. Sugimoto wraps his palm around Ogata’s bony wrist in a firm, nearly crushing grip. It should spark the same paralyzing fear from before, remind him of the shrinking cage of his own body - yet it remains absent, eclipsed by a burgeoning excitement.

He doesn't flinch as Sugimoto’s teeth slowly dig into his skin. Not drawing blood, but a tangible threat. “Don't bite down, Sugimoto,” Ogata murmurs gravely. 

He's aware he's pushing his luck. Ogata stays nestled in the wet, obscene inside of Sugimoto's mouth, held between teeth to prevent him from sliding in further. What would Sugimoto do to survive this? A rough jerk of his wrist, a root suddenly torn from the earth. Sugimoto could bite off his fingers with ease and sever another tether to this world. Ogata listens, rapt, for what choice he would make. 

Finally, his answer comes. Sugimoto can't talk like this, but he deliberately exhales a stream of breath through his nose - a sigh, Ogata thinks. One to steel his nerves, perhaps, or just a show of exasperation. Regardless, Sugimoto unfurls his hand and slowly loosens his jaw, letting Ogata’s fingers settle deeper into his mouth and rest along the jagged curve of his teeth. 

Ogata’s face splits into something just shy of a shit-eating grin and he curtails the urge to sarcastically tack on a scrap of praise. Did Sugimoto trust him that much, or simply trust in his own ability? The distinction hardly matters to him. It's already a miraculous feat that the paltry amnesty he was granted hasn't been exhausted. 

“Don't worry, I’ll be quick,” he promises with an uncharacteristically chipper touch to his words. He's certain Sugimoto will keep count of every excruciating moment to hold against him. 

Ogata wastes no time acquainting himself with the interior of Sugimoto’s mouth. He finds it no different from loading a rifle in the dark, deftly slotting the bullets between his fingers into the chamber. He can forgive the eyes intently lingering on every stray movement and the thin sheen of saliva soaking into his hands - a minor nuisance to endure when Sugimoto warms him more thoroughly than any fresh kill.

He worms his way to the back of Sugimoto’s teeth, prodding the uneven ridges of his molars. 

“The Russian probably lost these ones,” Ogata notes in a low, steady cadence, as if soothing a spooked horse on the fields of war. 

With each tooth, he presses just hard enough to commit to memory the indentations they leave on the pads of his thumbs. Despite the way Sugimoto recklessly carried himself, his teeth are comparatively intact. Ogata finds himself vaguely enraptured with the shape of them like one might appreciate an obsolete model of firearm: simplistic, but comprised of an efficient brutality. He recalls the meal earlier in the evening, made of strangled game plucked from their snares - thinks of how many little bones from chittering creatures these teeth must have crushed, the meat ground into nothingness.

“You said he couldn't speak after that. The muscles here would have been pierced.” Ogata grazes the scarring embedded in Sugimoto’s cheek from the inside. Though the expanse of rugged tissue is fundamentally wrong, he allows himself the indulgence of imagining the Russian’s bullet wound healing in the same malformed pattern. Another permanent medal of his marksmanship. 

His skin must carry a residual chill even with the fever surging through his veins because Sugimoto shudders around him, pulse stuttering when Ogata brushes his palate. Ogata ignores the innate resistance against his intrusion, digging his thumb into the flat of Sugimoto’s tongue for emphasis. “Maybe I took out a chunk here, too? Little wonder he couldn't eat.”

The offhanded remark seems to stoke Sugimoto’s agitation at Ogata’s leisurely pace; his tongue wriggles uselessly under Ogata’s thumb, only managing to spill watery saliva over the brim of his lower lip and down Ogata’s wrist. The concept of disgust hardly crosses his mind when he cheerfully maneuvers his fingers again, slipping smoothly along the tender inside of Sugimoto’s cheek before resting on the bed of his teeth.

His amusement dampens when he casts his thoughts back to that nameless village in Ibaraki. Ogata is reminded of the nights he spent lying next to his mother on their shared futon, curled against her side. With autumn steadily decaying, he could only think of the clump of rat poison he stole from his grandfather’s shed. He considered it, many a time - silently forcing it behind her lacquered molars in her sleep before winter properly took Ibaraki and what was left of her mind. If nothing else, he could promise her a pleasant dream where his father came back.

He never worked up the nerve to carry it through. Back then, he'd only ever killed animals in the forests and fields. His grandfather impressed upon him that a quick and clean death was best when hunting game. That it was a mercy to prevent needless suffering. He could only see the same in his mother’s favorite kimono fraying at the edges, her delicate hands rife with cuts and burns from cooking all day. Her eyes, unseeing from across the table, no better than the ones Ogata now possessed. She was an animal that had a bullet lodged inside of it, hurt and confused, nearing the end of its life. 

His time in the army, at least, hardened his resolve in that way. The persistent inkling he nursed as a child was laid to rest; there was little difference between killing humans and animals.

Not yet willing to relinquish the exquisite gift of Sugimoto’s mouth, Ogata turns his attentions further up his jaw, hooking his touch on the other’s protruding canines. The shape of these, too, draw forth an appreciative shiver that travels up his spine, as if tracing his finger along the edge of a sharpened bayonet. The promise of skin being torn from muscle, of flesh being torn from bone - his body reacts instinctively, rendering his rusted senses more acute and vivid as he looks this beast deep in the maw. He gingerly traces over the points of Sugimoto’s canines, wondering if a sleight of hand would finally spill bursting, metallic warmth into the confines of his mouth. On the heady cusp of puncturing skin, there is a distant grain of familiarity; he’s been here before, greedily feeding Sugimoto a meal of his own lifeblood.

“In Karafuto, when you cut out my eye,” Ogata starts conversationally, licking over his own lips and teeth as if mirroring the way Sugimoto glutted himself upon the dying tissue in his empty socket. His jaw dully misaligns with the motion. The click resounds in the back of his skull. “You never told me how it tasted.”

He could recreate that scene here, with Sugimoto’s mouth bloody and bared. Ogata’s remaining eye rolled back into his skull between the waves of pain crashing over his body, but he felt it keenly: Sugimoto’s weight over him, a hand fisted in Ogata’s hair so harshly that the ache in his scalp rivaled the one inside of his head, Sugimoto’s voice raw with fury over the howling blizzard nearly swallowing them alive. He hopes the poison stuck to Sugimoto’s gums for a good, long while after he cut out Ogata's eye, the ripe burn of it seeping into every meal he had in the frozen wasteland that was Karafuto.

Ogata savors the semblance of returning the favor, however convoluted. The moist, vulgar sound of his touch scraping through Sugimoto’s mouth could easily be mistaken for a finger decadently dragging through a fresh wound. He feels as though he’s skinning another animal, sinking his hunting knife into the meat. Carving a place for himself between the fat and gristle, another carcass to take shelter inside. Though his callused hands have scoured the terrain of Sugimoto’s face, it proves to be a lacking estimate for the sight that currently eludes him. What would Sugimoto look like here, undone by his hand? He imagines the other’s lips swollen and stretched, spit freely leaking down his jowls - eyes still gleaming with defiance, the rigid set of his jaw forfeiting no quarter. Suits him better than wearing that contented facade around the mountains.

This inevitability became starkly clear the moment he locked antlers with Sugimoto atop the train, irrefutable proof in their blood mingling together. If Sugimoto is a stubborn yuk that rebukes the cycle of life and death that the Ainu held dear, challenging the claim that nothing created by their benevolent kamuy ever truly dies, then Ogata is the inextricable mantle of rotting wood hanging from its neck, bruising its shins with each step forward.

Of course - how could it be anything else?

It could be a wolf’s growl that bubbles from the back of Sugimoto’s open throat, or perhaps a drawn-out whimper from a wounded stag. The aborted sound that vibrates in the cavern of his mouth dies inelegantly, and Sugimoto gargles a question around his fingers, too warm and too wet - and suddenly, it’s thickened blood instead of viscous saliva seeping into his hands. 

Suddenly, it's one last death rattle, a strained, hoarse moan against the smothering embrace of his own body. The one that his mother gasped around her own vomit, frantic light finally returning to her eyes. The one wheezed from his father through the gravelly syllables of a curse, his bound body limp in a pool of his own leaking offal. The one his mind conjures in fitful spells of dreamless sleep, wielding the sickly sweet tones of his brother's voice until it echoed incessantly in his skull.

Ogata blinks. The cacophony disappears, converging and collapsing on itself. Only snow and silence remain. The sweat prickling the back of his neck cools uncomfortably. The absence of his manic fever leaves him with the residual tremor radiating through his fingers. He surfaces from the unforgiving grip of that freezing river again, finally gasping for a burning lungful of air.

What was he searching for, gazing into the abyss of this slack maw. The eye that was now lost and rotting in the far reaches of Karafuto, or the delicate bones of his jaw, thoroughly smashed and reassembled imperfectly? He’d have an easier time flensing the other open and taking from his organs if that was the case. Here, he's just a man with his fingers wedged in a spit-slick mouth; the most he would get is Sugimoto vomiting their hard-earned dinner into his lap.

He finds the warmth suddenly disgusting, the frictionless slide of flesh on flesh nauseating like he's touching the liquefied rot of a corpse in the summer sun, like he's soaking his fingers in a lukewarm pot of nabe. He pulls his blade out of the slit in his father’s belly, the bloody womb he carved for himself.

He pulls his hands out of the deer. 

A rustle of fabric, the labored exhale of a sigh. “Ugh, what was that for?” 

Sugimoto turns his head and spits into some nearby corner of the kuca for good measure. Dryly, Ogata notes that he sounds far too composed for someone who spent the better part of the evening offering up his mouth. 

Sugimoto roughly scrubs his sleeve over his chin again. “Don't think I’m letting you do that again, asshole. You'll lose your fingers if you try.”

Ogata looses an airy huff. He doubts Sugimoto would make good on that threat when it would mean explaining the injury to Asirpa. “Like anyone would want to; your breath reeks.” He reflexively scrunches up his nose despite being unable to smell anything in this suffocating coffin of pine.

Sugimoto starts and sputters - the first indication he’s been knocked off-kilter tonight. “No it doesn't-”

Ogata picks up on the unsubtle sound of Sugimoto puffing into his palm for a whiff before busying himself with his own mess. His hands are still damp with spit, tinged with the lingering burn of a used up cartridge. He quashes the habitual urge to smooth back his hair lest it stick to the dark strands. Instead, he reaches out until his fingers catch on the material of Sugimoto’s jacket and deliberately wipes them on his shoulder, pointedly repeating the motion until adequately satisfied.

Ogata doesn’t remove his hand after the last petulant swipe. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Did the blood of a bastard taste blackened and congealed compared to the elegant swill of a noble's? Could he feel the rot from Ogata’s hands leaching into him from touch alone? Just what had he taken inside himself, immortalized in flesh and bone? 

Ogata can practically hear Sugimoto’s bemusement. “It tasted like blood. What else do you want me to say?” 

Sugimoto nudges Ogata’s shoulder firmly, insistent until he gets the hint to unstick his claws from the thick, slightly soaked fabric. Most people would exercise a hefty swing at his nose after indulging him for this long, but Sugimoto sounds mildly inconvenienced at best. Tired, mainly, from their fruitful hunt and the hearty meal settled in his stomach. They've been on enough hunting trips for Ogata to recognize the signs of his waning attention. 

“Alright. I believe you,” Ogata says, stiff and cordial. He finally pulls away from Sugimoto’s immediate space. 

“...What?”

Ogata clicks his tongue. He slowly enunciates the syllables in case the other’s brain injury decided to flare up again. “You're alive, Sugimoto. Now go to sleep.”

Sugimoto grumbles a complaint under his breath that Ogata doesn't care to decipher. Then, louder: “I’m gonna take a piss.” 

The words are unbalanced when Sugimoto flexes his mouth around them, no doubt still chewing on the taste of Ogata’s hands. He crawls out of the kuca without waiting for acknowledgement. Ogata ignores him.

He feels his way to the other side of the hut with a body too distant and too heavy for a wraith. After estimating where his belongings are gathered, he wraps a hand around the rifle he left neglected. It proves a meager comfort to hold something more solid than himself. He holds it close all the same, as if it would abate the ever-present cold that nestles against his side. 

He wraps his cloak around his shoulders. He shuts his eyes. He voices no complaint. Tomorrow, they will bring the deer back and cut it into pieces, and the rest will return to the earth, swallowed soundlessly by a grave of frost and snow. 

Notes:

the goal was 'ogata sticks his fingers in sugimoto’s mouth’ but apparently i needed a whole premise to get there… i know people who put him in this situation usually want him to heal but it's funnier if he chews off his own leg like an animal in a trap