Chapter 7

"Run, run, run away

Buy yourself another day

A cold wind's whispering secrets in your ear

So low only you can hear…"

Despite its position in the ocean, this winter Japan had finally received a blizzard. The wind howled over the roofs of the buildings, rattling them to their foundations, chilling them to their bones. Piles of snow had formed on the roofs of the empty shops. The wind blew the snow sideways, blanketing the night in a sheet of translucent white.

Niou ducked his head into the confines of his scarf and stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. The city had issued a blizzard alert thirty minutes ago, warning pedestrians to stay off the streets. Niou was supposed to be tucked safely under the covers in his apartment, like the majority of the region, but he hadn't been able to resist the coldness of the storm, the peace in the chaos, the quietness of the in-between. Tomorrow, there would be people shoveling snow off their front porches, mumbling about how impossibly cold it was, and cars waiting in traffic, their horns blasting impatiently through the air. But tonight, it was quiet and still and peaceful. Tonight, it was just Niou, his ghosts, and faded footsteps in the snow.

Tonight, memories of the past followed Niou as he wandered the streets of Japan. He heard the arguing of his parents just outside his bedroom door. When he closed his eyes, he could see the thin line of his sister's light shining out from under his door as she studied in the room beside his. Funny how he used to sneak out to get away from his family, and now that he was finally away…well, I guess it's true, you're never really alone if you have a family, Niou thought wryly.

Around Niou, flurries of ice swirled down, melting as they hit his face. Soon, his eyelashes were coated with snowflakes, pushing down on his eyelids like weights. Niou could barely feel his nose and ears on his face. He had to get off the streets soon, but he didn't want to go home.

The bell hanging above the door of the 24-hour diner chimed as Niou pushed inside, bring with him a gust of chilly air. In the same corner he'd sat in last time, Saito typed on his laptop; a cup of coffee cooling, untouched, beside him while he stared intently at his computer screen. A few other people sat in various corners of the room, using the diner as a brief rest stop on their travels to god-knows-where. They all looked up when Niou walked in. Niou walked over to Saito and slid into the seat across from him.

Saito looked up from his laptop and his chapped lips cracked into a satisfied grin when he saw Niou. "You're here," he said.

Niou peeled off his first layer of clothing and wiped the melted snow from his face with his sleeve. A waitress held a menu out to him but he brushed her off. A part of him wanted to ask Saito, Why are you here?—but he knew what a hopeless question that was if he wasn't ready to answer it as well. Niou settled on silence as the most reliable course of action. He'd let Saito ask him questions and gauge the other boy based on the ones he asked.

"Do you walk into diners just for the sake of not ordering anything?" Saito asked, taking a sip of coffee. His eyes held a spark of curiosity and a twinge of mischief.

Niou inclined his head. It was a boring and poorly hidden attempt at asking the all-important question of why. He rolled his eyes. "Are you writing your novel?"

"Yes," Saito said. "Although since you aren't allowing me to use you, I have had to make some changes. Why are you here?"

There it was. Why why why…

"Why do you cause Tousan and Kaasan so much trouble?"

"Why do you do any of the things you do?"

"Why can't you be like your sister? So hardworking…so good."

Why…

It was the word that made the world spin 'round. A lie the entire world told itself, tricking itself into believing it had a reason for existing. Niou had tried answering why for himself many times—and he wondered what it meant, that he wasn't able to answer it.

"Why do you work so hard?" he'd asked his sister once.

"So I can get a good job. And earn money."

"What's the point in earning money if you aren't doing what you want to do?"

"Because, money makes the world go round," his sister had answered.

But she'd been wrong. It was purpose that made the world spin, that drove the people in it to continue moving. And somehow, Niou thought, he'd gotten caught in the current, was getting pulled along with the crowd.

"Because it is too cold to be outside," Niou said. "Why do you write?"

Saito stopped typing, cocked his head to the side. His eyes stared at his laptop, but there was an empty look in them that hadn't been there before. "Let's go outside," he said suddenly, standing up and slamming his laptop shut. He stuffed it into his backpack and then proceeded to tug on his jacket. As he shouldered his backpack, he turned around expectantly and raised an eyebrow.

Niou returned the gesture, making it clear that he disliked blindly following others.

Sighing, Saito said, "I'm showing you something."

They exited the diner, letting another gust of air blast into the store. Niou felt his eyes tear up as they struggled to stay open against the ruthless wind. Saito marched staunchly up ahead, barely able to fight the wind. Instinctively, Niou swung in behind him, using the other man's body to shield himself from the wind. Looking around for cars, Saito walked out into the middle of the highway and stopped at a black smear in the middle of the road. Niou hesitated for a second, wary and curious, before trudging on after him, the hairs on the back of his neck pricked for any sign of danger.

He stopped in front of Saito and stared down at the creature at his feet. It was a raccoon-fox-cat or something of the sort. Its face was too mutilated to present any sort of coherent likeness to an animal. From the neck down, stripes seemed to run vertically down its body, while tire treads ran perpendicular to those. The face of the creature had been flattened to the street by another pair of tires, as large dotted lines trailed across what appeared to be the snout. The snow around it thinly covered the bloodstain it had left after becoming road kill.

"I found it as I was crossing the street," Saito spoke. "It probably got run over by some traveler trying to escape the blizzard, too scared for himself to worry about some animal on the road. It probably couldn't see because of the snow until it was too late. It was helpless. We're like that too."

Niou didn't look at him, keeping his gaze neutral and glued to the creature.

"Not us specifically. But people. The raccoon and the driver. We're both too blinded by our own worries to think about others, but that same blindness is also the cause of our demise. It's the human condition. We are all too involved in ourselves to think about others."

Niou looked up. Saito's head was bent down toward the raccoon, as though he weren't speaking for Niou's sake but for his own. Saito toed the nose of the animal with his boot, but its face was too fused with the gravel to move. Wiping his shoe on the snow, he met Niou's eyes. He took his hands out of his pockets and blew on the tips of his fingers, which had become red due to the cold.

He said, "That's why I write. Because then I'm bigger than myself. I don't have to always look at things from my own perspective. I get to become one with my characters, I get to see the world through different eyes."

"Saito-kun, the animal right's activist. Writes to keep small animals from becoming roadkill. How noble," Niou deadpanned.

But he got it—what Saito meant by being bigger than himself. It was a classic rendition of the drive for why. Niou couldn't help but feel a numbness taking over. Back at Rikkai Dai, he'd hooked onto the tennis team, found his sense of purpose in the drive for Nationals, for being the best. But not that was gone, and Niou was drifting, drifting, drifting.

"Let's go back inside. It's colder than the ninth circle of hell out here," Saito said. He walked past Niou, heading down the hill to the diner.

Niou followed him with his eyes. Deciding there would be no point in following him back, Niou called out, "I'm not going back." Then, he turned and walked back into town.

Narita stared out the window of her bedroom, watching the snow spiral down in flurries. The wind howled outside, making her house creak and the leaves outside whisper. The noise was loud in a background-noise way, something recorded and listened to before falling asleep. Downstairs, her mother and father were streaming a singing competition on the large TV. The sound of a woman's voice blasting a popular pop song filled the house with music. That was loud in a distracting way. Narita looked down, watching Hasuo try and fail to build a snowman with the powdery snow the blizzard had left.

A text from Gina appeared on her phone, asking her to meet at Simply Delish. Narita hesitated, wondering if she could bear to walk back into the small café. Snow was still coming down hard, albeit it had subsided slightly from the snowstorm of last night. Narita found it unlikely anybody from school would be there, especially this early in the morning. Most of them would be homebound until twelve o'clock.

"Neesan, Papa's taking us to the grocery store. Wanna come?" Hasuo called. He'd come inside while Narita was paying attention to her phone.

"Sure. Can he drop me off at the café?" Narita asked. She texted Gina, I'll be there in ten. She slid off her chair and quickly got dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweater. She grabbed her jacket off the bed and tucked her phone into the pocket.

"Yeah. Hurry up," Yamamoto said. He held the door open for Narita as she ran outside and jumped into the car. He got in after her and pulled out of the driveway.

They drove to a grocery store downtown. Hasuo jumped out immediately as Yamamoto parked the car, cheering about getting a slice of cheesecake from the bakery. As Narita stepped into the snow, she heard someone call her name. Glancing around, she spotted Keiichi looking at her from behind a car. "Hey," she said.

"I didn't follow you, I swear," he said lightly, stepping out from behind the car. "I was just grocery shopping and I saw your car pull in. I wanted to say, erm—sorry, for last time."

"It's…fine," Narita said. She leaned back as he took a step forward. "I didn't mean to turn you down so harshly either." She scratched the back of her head, looking down as a blush appeared on her cheeks. "You caught me by surprise, is all."

She remembered a time when speaking in full sentences in front of Keiichi hadn't been this life-sucking, when he didn't have to hide behind cars before approaching her. It was hard imagining what this encounter would have been like if he hadn't confessed to her and if she hadn't turned him down so harshly. Would she have actually smiled when she saw him? Right now, the mere act of pulling her lips out of their flat-lined position seemed like an awkward attempt at hurdling the confession between them.

"Hey, um…can we talk somewhere more private?" Keiichi asked, biting his lip shyly. His eyes swept from side to side to keep from landing on her.

Narita's eyes widened. The word No formed on her lips, preparing to launch into the air between them, but she stopped herself. She'd already hurt Keiichi once. The least she could do was listen to him for a while. She nodded, followed him around the corner of the grocery store. "What was it you wanted to talk about?" she asked, following the tail of a cat with her eyes as it disappeared into a dumpster.

"I guess I hadn't prepared that part yet," said Keiichi.

Narita stiffened as she felt his hand grip her wrist firmly. She spun around, ready to tell him she'd had enough, but he pulled her closer to him and backed her against a wall. She swung her free hand and scratched his face, glad that she had decided against gloves that day.

Keiichi cursed, "Bitch."

Narita jerked her knee up, feeling it connect with the groin, and tugged her wrist away simultaneously.

"Bitch!" Keiichi yelled louder

Narita ran out of the alleyway without looking backward. She headed directly toward the café, unable to bring herself to go inside the store and act like nothing had happened knowing that Keiichi could walk in at any moment.

She ran a few blocks down and stopped before the entrance of the café to control her breath. She looked in through the window and saw her friends chatting at a booth. As she did, her reflection in the mirror came into focus. Long dark hair, tired eyes—she didn't look any different even though she felt changed.

The story she'd been waiting to tell Gina and Miu died on her tongue as she decided that there was no need to cause a fuss when barely anything had happened. Taking another deep breath, she walked inside and slid into the seat opposite Gina.

"Hey," she greeted.

"So she's alive," Gina joked. "Not still brooding about Keiichi-kun?"

Narita pressed her lips together. "Nope. I'm over it."

"Good," Miu said. "He's a jerk anyway."

You have no idea, Narita thought. Rubbing her wrist where she could still feel the press of Keiichi's palm, she smiled at Gina and changed the subject to something else.

A/N: I don't own Kingdom Come by The Civil Wars.

Please read and review and enjoy.