Fic: Snowbound, Part 4A
Oops, I forgot about this.
Rescue
The wind has died down, but the snow is still falling, when Mori treks out to the garage to meet Hito and Oshiro, the groundskeeper. He stomps through ankle-deep powder; not quite to the tops of his insulated boots, but close. The snow falls straight and slow, and the air feels frozen to stillness.
Oshiro drives the skid-steer loader out first, clearing the drive past the kitchen door, so that Mori can bring his four-by-four up to the steps, and load it with snowshoes, the First Aid supplies, a pile of blankets, and sundry other odds and ends he'd carried down from the attic.
He packs carefully. He doesn't rush. He double-checks the shovels, the pickaxe, the heavy tow strap, and the lift jacks. He checks the snow chains on all four tires, and the pair of short-range radios he and Oshiro will use to communicate between their vehicles. He is the very picture of calm throughout.
He checks his pocket for his mobile. Wireless coverage is generally spotty out here, but if he needs the phone, he'll at least have it. He even checks the lid on the thermos of hot cocoa Sakura-san pressed on him at the last moment, along with some harrowing instructions on the warning signs of hypothermia.
Then he climbs into his Land Rover, closes the door, pulls on his seatbelt, and finds his hands are shaking so badly he can't turn the ignition.
He closes his eyes. Fall apart on your own time. He needs help now.
The radio on the dashboard chirps. "Alright, boss," calls Oshiro. "I'm gonna head out now, nice and easy. Just give yourself plenty of room behind me."
Mori juggles the radio in his bulky gloves, and finds the Talk button. "Understood. Go ahead."
Just follow the loader. Just that for now. Keeping this one goal in sight, he reaches again for the ignition, turns it, and shifts his truck into 4-Low.
**
By the time they reach the bottom of the estate driveway, Mori understands that this could be a very long night. Top speed on the loader is somewhere in the neighborhood of eleven kilometers an hour. But that's on clear asphalt, with the shovel raised.
"Okay, hold up, boss," Oshiro calls. "I'm puttin' the shovel down now." Mori brakes accordingly, and runs the wipers to clear the accumulation of snow from his windshield. It's still coming down. Not thick, but steadily.
"Looks like we got....saa, thirty centimeters? Some bad drifts, though. You stay in my tracks, and we'll be good."
Mori wonders if he should answer, 'Roger that', or 'Ten-Four', like they do in the movies. Then he thinks, all things considered, it hardly matters. "Thanks."
About ten meters out on the main road, the loader stops again, and a thick beam of light plays out across the snow pack from last week's storm, banked high along the right side of the road. Oshiro had packed a heavy-duty industrial flashlight--more like a portable floodlight--he'd found somewhere. Taking his cue, Mori pulls out his own flashlight and sweeps it up the opposite side of the road, checking carefully for the telltale reflection off metal and glass, or any unusual shape breaking the smooth contours of the snowbank.
After a few moments, the loader creeps forward, and Mori follows.
The minutes stretch out painfully. Mori rolls along behind Oshiro, scanning every meter of glittering, unbroken, lumpy white they pass. Outside the beam of his flashlight and headlights, it's pitch dark. After what seems like a long time, his eyes start playing tricks on him.
He slams on the brakes, tire chains grinding into the ice, when he thinks he spots the shape of a tire, poking up from the left ditch.
"You good there, boss?" The tinny crackle of Oshiro's voice snaps him out of his frozen horror. He's panting. The loader is ten meters ahead. Mori blinks and aims the flashlight again, and all he sees is a snow-covered boulder.
He takes a second to make sure his voice will work. "It's nothing."
"No worries. Can't be too careful. We take it nice and slow, and we can't miss anything."
For the first time, Mori recognizes the easygoing cadence of the voice on the radio for what it is: Oshiro is trying to keep him from panicking. And for some obscure reason, it actually helps.
He lets off the brake and eases the truck forward, still holding the radio. "You've done this before."
Oshiro's answer is matter-of-fact. "Most folks who live out here get to do this, sooner or later."
Mori has a feeling there's a story there. Maybe several. And at some future point, he'll consider that further. For now, it's enough to know he has someone of experience on his side.
**
It's the middle of the night, and colder than a sonofabitch in the gazebo. Arai stamps his feet on the steps and tucks his gloved hands up into his armpits. He can see his breath, pluming out in the light of the old-fashioned wrought iron park light nearby. And from somewhere, far down the street, he hears somebody's dogs barking. Big dogs, from the sound of it, with big growling woofs. Newfoundlands, or mastiffs, maybe.
"It's been a long night," says a deep voice in the shadows, and Arai cocks his head, squints at the man walking slowly into the light. He notes the broad shoulders, high cheekbones, black hair slightly disheveled, and his heart wedges itself at a funny, familiar angle against his ribs. He's grinning before he can help it, just a breath a way from his favorite name--
But the man pauses, full in the pooling lamplight, and it isn't Takashi. And that's when Arai thinks, quite distinctly, 'Oh, I'm dreaming.'
The man isn't Takashi, but the resemblance is uncanny. He is the man Takashi could be in another thirty, forty years perhaps. With weathered creases along the eyes, and silver at his temples. A shade softer along the jawline, and stouter through the chest. But his stance, and the sharpness of his dark eyes, those are Takashi through and through.
"Ichigo-sama." He knows this is a dream, but Arai nonetheless feels compelled into a low, formal bow. He wonders at that, and then when he straightens up, he worries for a second. He's heard things before, read stories about people's ancestors showing up in dreams.
"I'm not dead, am I?" he blurts and then, embarrassed, adds, "Sorry to be so blunt, sir."
Morinozuka Ichigo's look of dry amusement is all his own. "Are you still cold?"
"Yeah, it's freezing out here." Even in this heavy jacket, with his gloves on, it's barely tolerable. Why couldn't he have dreamed up a nice fireplace, or a hot spring?
"Then you're probably still in good shape. You'll want to wake up soon, though. Don't want them to miss you, when they come."
Arai has no idea who 'they' might be, or even where he's supposed to wake up. If he concentrates hard, it might come to him, but for the moment, this is more interesting. Hanging out at the municipal gardens with Takashi's great-grandfather. It's cool. He'll have to remember to tell Takashi about it.
"So. What brings you out here, sir?" Because it occurs to him that Takashi might like to know what they talked about.
Ichigo contemplates the lamp post for a bit. "I'm keeping an eye on things."
Ah, Arai thinks. It runs in the family. Takashi likes the short, pithy answers too. When they first became friends, Arai used to feel like he had to roll up his sleeves and work, to get a conversation started. And then he realized that the awkwardness was just him, and he learned to relax.
"I approve of the progress he's made," says Ichigo, and Arai is glad he's had so much practice following along in conversations like this.
"Takashi's worked really hard this year," he says. "Your land, it means everything to him." Although why that should cause him a tiny little twinge inside, he can't say.
"Hm. Make sure and harvest the pears next fall. It should be a healthy crop."
Arai straightens. "Yes sir."
"And take care of the things that grow."
"Right." Maybe he should be taking notes on this.
Ichigo crosses his hands behind his back and turns, and Arai leaves off frowning down the street. Those dogs are really kicking up a fuss. But Ichigo is watching him, waiting, it looks like.
"Anything else, sir?" His legs are going to pins and needles from the cold. He has a strong urge to stretch them out, which is odd, considering he's already standing up. But there's something more important going on, so he tries to pay attention.
"Yes," says Ichigo. "Two more things."
**
The gazebo and gardens have faded, and he's lying in a cramped, freezing space. His legs ache, his back is stiff, and the shivers come in heavy shuddering spasms. His lips are cold and chapped. His eyelids are cold, shit. There's this noise, a growling racket from somewhere. And it's totally, completely dark.
First he tries to stretch his legs, relieve the burning ache, but one foot clunks against something solid, and the other hits a---
"GAHH!!" He yells and flails at the blaring horn, startling him to full awakeness, and it all comes on him at once: the truck, the snow, stuck on the side of the road and freezing to death.
"Flashlight, flashlight..." He feels around blindly, kicks the horn a few more times struggling to sit up, knocking his elbow against the dash. His teeth are rattling like a pair of dice in a wooden cup.
He scrabbles around the seat, the floorboard, feels his way up the dash. But the flashlight is nowhere, and in the swallowing darkness, he pictures the truck, buried under meters and meters of snow, with him at the bottom, trapped alive.
In one crystal-sharp instant, Arai realizes he is just about to completely lose it. He squeezes his fists against his eyes, whole body tremoring, tears swelling and stinging in his sinuses, and what....
What in the hell is that godawful noise? He thinks it's the sound of overwhelming fear, the howling of his sanity cutting loose. It's getting louder, rumbling toward him, and--
Two things happen. He thinks: Snow Plow, and his eyes pop wide open. And that's when he sees the winking orange light of the hazard indicator on the dash.
Oh. And don't forget to turn the lights on. A distant snatch of conversation floating back to him; somebody told him that, recently. And he gets it, now.
"Hey!" he yells, and leans hard on the horn, knocking his hand against the gear shift, the turn indicator, the wipers--ah. The headlights. Because the door could be frozen shut, they won't see him in the dark, and he'll only get one chance at this....
He turns the switch, and nothing happens.
He pounds the steering wheel, grits his teeth and screeches out his desperate frustration. The battery's frozen--damn it!--and the snow plow is practically on him, he can hear it, and in his mind's eye he sees it trundling past, into the night....
Turn the truck on, dumbass, his common sense wakes up and grouches at him.
Oh. Right.
Accessory power, on, and the dash blinks to life, and he's leaning on the horn, flicking the high beams, with the vents blasting frigid air at him, and it's now or never. He grabs the latch on the passenger-side door, and throws his shoulder against it.
**
Wreckage
Mori taps the brakes and grabs the radio. "Stop. I think I hear something."
He switches off the heater, and rolls down the window, as the loader rolls to a halt. Strains his ears, for the dissonant staccato note he'd picked up just a second before.
A few snowflakes hurry in on a draft of cold air, catching his eyelashes, and he smells the frozen crisp night, clouded with diesel exhaust. He listens. Wills the sound to come again. His truck idles quietly, but he'd heard it over his engine. He's certain.
Come on.... He plays his flashlight over the snow, on the right side of the road, and then the left. Studying every crevice, every curve in the soft white. Up ahead, Oshiro's flashlight sweeps the road, the shoulder.
"You want me to cut the motor?" he calls, and what Mori wants is a fan the size of a house to blow all this hateful snow away. He wants banks of stadium lights, to turn the whole section of highway into blazing noonday.
"No," he answers, biting back on his discouragement. He will search this road as long as he has to. Every square centimeter of it, if that's what it takes. He will search until sunup, and keep searching. He won't rest, until he sees Arai with his own eyes, sees him safe again.
"I got nothing here. Let me--whoa, hang on a sec--"
The horn blares out again, long blasts, and Mori is trying to wrestle off his seatbelt, and tune in the direction of the noise.
"I got some headlights on the shoulder, up ahead," Oshiro reports, close to shouting in his excitement. "I'll get past it, and clear the road for you. It's a knee-deep mess up here."
Mori has just pulled even with the grocery truck, tilted half-off the left shoulder, when the door flies open, and a bundled figure tumbles out in a shower of clumped snow, flounders briefly, then clambers upright, blinking wide-eyed into Mori's headlights, and Mori barely remembers to set the parking brake, before he's hauling himself across and out the passenger-side door.
Arai shields his eyes, heedless of the dusting of snow down his front, watching the skid-steer loader make a grumbling, grinding, four-point turn in the middle of the road.
"What the--?" He glances, and then double-takes at Mori. "Ta-Takashi?"
Mori wades through the snow to reach him. He's not feeling the cold, he's not seeing the snow drifts up past the tops of his boots, he isn't aware of anything except Arai, staring dumbfounded at him, wracked with shivers, with his knit cap askew on his head, and Mori's relief is swelling so huge he can barely contain it, now that this painful, rigid compression in him can finally let go.
All the hours of waiting, all the torment and terrible presentiments he's been conjuring, it is all coming loose in him at once. "Are you hurt?" He's overcome by the compulsion to check Arai all over, count every hair on his head, just to prove for certain that yes, he is safe, he really is here.
"N-no, not at all. I--what is th-that, your loader?" He's freezing, Mori realizes, curling in over his crossed arms, teeth chattering.
"We have to get you warmed up," reaching for Arai's arm to lead him. "I have blankets in the truck."
"You're crazy." Arai takes in Mori's gloves, his ski coveralls, the snow chains on the Land Rover's tires. "How b-bad is the road?"
"It was almost an hour from the estate drive." He gets his arm around Arai's shoulders, feels him shuddering. But he's here. He isn't injured. Just very, very cold. "We'll make better time on the way back--"
"Uh, just a--"
"--Sakura-san has called your--what is it?" Mori breaks off, as Arai squirms and cranes back around to assess the grocery truck.
"Aw, man. This is g-gonna be a bitch to dig out."
Mori stares. He can't be serious. "We'll have to come back for it tomorrow. When the sun's up, we--"
"What? No way. I can't leave it out here." Before Mori can stop him, Arai ducks out from under his arm, and stomps back to his truck. "I got a shovel, I'll just dig the tires out, and follow behind you guys..." He leans into the truck, rummages around for several seconds, while Mori stands in speechless bafflement, and finally emerges with a lightweight shovel.
"It won't take ten minutes," he calls over his shoulder, and straightaway sets to work on the nearest front tire.
Meanwhile, Mori is aware of the loader, turned for the trip home, now trundling around past the Land Rover. He's aware of his nerves, stretched to a screaming tension for half the night, all at once fraying.
"This is insanity." He sets off on a march toward Arai. "Please listen, it's too cold. We have to get out of this weather. You're frozen--." He remonstrates, trying to reason with Arai, but Arai keeps his head down, shoveling as fast as possible.
"Once the plows pass," Mori tries, but Arai shakes his head.
"No good. They'll bury it. If they don't see it, they might wreck it."
"I can't let you do this." Mori grabs his shoulder, frantic to get his attention, make him stop for just a moment and see reason. "The truck can be repaired. I'll cover the costs, it doesn't--"
"Don't say it doesn't matter! Money doesn't fix this, Takashi!" Arai explodes, slams the shovel into the snow and whirls on him. He is suddenly furious to the point of tears, and Mori jerks back and freezes in absolute shock.
"God, you just don't--. I know I've screwed everything up, but I have to fix this, me!" Pounding his chest for emphasis. "How's my uncle ever supposed to trust me, if I just go off and leave this? How am I even gonna to look him in the eye again?"
He is shaking all over with anger and cold, and Mori cannot move. He is incapable of any response whatsoever. He has never seen Arai so angry, had no idea this was ever in him. Mori feels like he's been struck in the face, and the blow reverberates through him, sending cracks through the ground at his feet, and everything is crumbling, breaking apart.
"Looks like you could use a hand there, Sport." Mori wasn't even aware of Oshiro sidling up, but there the man stands, with an appraising eye on the grocery truck, gloved hands buried in his coat pockets. "I reckon if we dig out the tires, I could tow you back on the road."
Arai swallows and swipes his sleeve across his eyes, blinking hard. "C-could you? Oh man, I'd appreciate that so much."
Mori, still reeling, just stares at the groundskeeper. Was he the only person here who hadn't lost his mind? And then Oshiro addresses him.
"Morinozuka-sama, would it be permissible for us to use the shovels and the tow strap in your vehicle?"
Now he's speaking deferentially? Mori wonders.
"I think if you and I take the back tires, and Arai-san finishes here, it will go quickly," the man explains calmly. "We can be on the road in just a few minutes. We'll put your back chains on his front tires, and he can drive between us. If that's acceptable to you."
Unfortunately, Mori is in no condition to find any flaw in the plan. All he's certain of is that in his thoughtless urgency, he's blundered across some critical fault line, and offended Arai unforgivably. And he suspects that the only way he can salvage the situation now--or at least avoid making things worse--is by removing himself from it.
"I'll get the shovels," he says.
**
Once he got moving, got his blood flowing again, Arai felt better--a little warmer, at least--but now, he just feels like shit.
"I'm an asshole," he mumbles to Oshiro, after Takashi goes trudging off. "It's alright, you can say it." He knows it's all hopeless now. He can't even believe the words that came out of his mouth--stupid, desperate, scared words. He's hurt Takashi, bad, after Takashi came all the way out here and saved him, in the middle of the night. He hates himself, so much right now.
But it was like, the whole night of being trapped and scared, and the miserable week since he last saw Takashi, and all the worry and discomfort going on before that, it had all rolled over him at once, in a massive black tidal wave, and before he knew it he was yelling and flailing just like crazy drowning people do.
"Eh, so you got a little wound up," shrugs Oshiro, who is surely the most laid-back guy in all of Nagano right now. "You feeling okay, otherwise?"
Arai shoots him a skeptical look. He feels horrible. What's the man getting at?
"You still feeling cold?" Oshiro clarifies, and whoa. Arai shakes off a weird shiver of deja-vu.
"Yeah, I'm cold as hell. Aren't you?"
"With late-stage hypothermia, folks sometimes say they're feeling warm," Oshiro explains. "Can you still wiggle your toes?"
Arai gives it a try. "Yeah." His feet are throbbing like crazy, though.
"Good deal." Oshiro leans over and tugs Arai's knit cap down over his ears. "You're probably fine for another twenty minutes out here. But I'm telling you now," aiming a finger at him. "You start gettin' disoriented or weird, and I'm packing you in that Land Rover with some blankets, myself. We clear on that?"
The man is dead serious now, and Arai nods, seeing that's really his only choice. "Yeah. No problem."
"Cool," Oshiro says, turning just in time to meet Takashi, coming back with the shovels.
Arai's guilt twists in his gut, he feels physically ill from it, seeing Takashi silently hand over a shovel, with his shoulders bent and his eyes averted. Arai watches, and he is right on the brink of taking it all back. Saying, This isn't worth it. This is stupid. I'll go back with you now, if it will make it better. If it would change that stricken, spiritless look Takashi has now. If it would help him straighten up, and look strong and sure again, because that's how Takashi is supposed to be, how he should always be, and even after everything, Arai cannot bear seeing him any other way.
But he knows it's too late for that. He's gotten his way, and now he has to live with it; even though the cost is more than he can stand right now, and he will go on paying it for a very long time. He'd pushed it to this, and now he has to see it through.
Takashi and Oshiro head off for the back of the truck, and Arai looks at his left front tire, and even though what he really wants to do is cry, huge wailing sobs, like a little kid, he sets his grip on his shovel, and starts digging again, instead.
**
The only mercy in the whole ordeal, is that it doesn't take long at all. Oshiro did know what he was talking about, there. They get the grocery truck off the shoulder, and out to the cleared center of the road, and in a significant stroke of luck, Takashi's chains actually do fit the tires. Which is good, because traction is pretty dicey, even where the loader shovel has cleared most of the snow.
Before they all climb in their vehicles to start the long trek back, Oshiro gives them a last talk. He and Takashi will communicate with the two walkie-talkies they have, he explains, and Arai is to drive between them, leaving plenty of follow distance behind the loader. If he gets into trouble, all he has to do is honk his horn, and stop. If he starts feeling too sleepy to drive, or if he gets confused, just stop. That's all he has to do.
And then, because Oshiro is obviously some kind of mind reader, in addition to being a roadside rescue expert, he adds, "Don't think you have to suck it up and be a hero, Sport. It's a lot easier to tow you from the middle of the road, than off the shoulder, after we drag you outta the driver's seat. You got that?"
Arai nods promptly, and says yes, because Oshiro has that same no-nonsense expression he had before, and it's pretty damn sobering. Not to mention that trying to suck it up and be a hero has gotten him into more than enough crap lately; a fact which has been dawning on him, ever since he watched Takashi heading off to help dig the tires out, looking like somebody had burned his house down, with his puppy trapped inside.
Arai is just. So tired. Not sleepy-tired, like Oshiro's concerned about. He's tired of being unhappy all the time. He's tired of guilt, tired of trying so hard to hold things up, hold it together, and failing at every turn. He's tired of everything important slipping from his hands, the tighter he tries to hold on, like out on the beach, back when he was a kid; squeezing fistfuls of sand as hard as he could, and watching it spill out the bottom of his fist, until there was nothing but grit sticking to his sweaty palms.
**
He kicks most of the snow off his boots, and climbs back into the grocery truck. It's going to be a long ride back in his damp jeans, and his face stings from cold and wind burn, but the one bright spot out of everything, is that very soon, he's going to have the heater running. It's not much in the bigger scheme of things, but it's something to look forward to, anyway.
There's a crunching in the snow, just before he shuts the truck door, and he glances back and sees Takashi approaching cautiously, cradling something in his gloved hands, and watching his footing. Arai wonders if it will always hurt this much to look at him, from now on. If it will always slice him open like this. He hopes not, because he really can't take it.
"I forgot this," says Takashi, holding out a stainless steel thermos. "Sakura-san sent it, for you."
"Oh." Arai takes the thermos, not sure what else to do. But at this point he'd do anything at all Takashi asked him. He'd go lay down in front of that skid-steer loader, if it would make Takashi happy. "Thank you."
"It's cocoa. Probably still hot."
"I shouldn't have yelled at you. That was totally out of line." Arai had no idea that would come out of him, until it does. To his further surprise, he finds himself grabbing the sleeve of Takashi's coat. Because he needs to touch him, to reach him, just for one more second, before he slips away completely. "I didn't mean that thing, about the money. I swear, I never thought about you like that."
Takashi frowns very hard at his boots. "I wasn't listening. You were right to be angry."
"Angry?" His dry, edgy laugh takes them both by surprise. "I was scared to death. I just....went crazy. I'm not mad at you."
And now Takashi is looking at him. Searching him closely; for the truth, or for hope, or maybe for the answer to some question locked up tight in his own head. Arai has no idea. Takashi is looking at him, he's not going away, and at this precise moment, that's almost enough.
"Thank you. For coming out here. I really should've said that before. Thank you."
"Everyone helped." Takashi glances down at the thermos, propped on Arai's knee. "We couldn't have left you alone."
And there, yet again, Arai is ridiculously close to choking up. Because it's not himself he pictures being left alone, but Takashi. And he knows, if their positions were reversed, he would have moved heaven and earth, in a blind frenzy, to make sure Takashi was okay. Nothing would have stopped him, and looking at Takashi now, he believes that surely Takashi must have felt the same thing.
A blizzard couldn't keep them apart. Iced-over roads, snow up past their ankles, and the total darkness surrounding them couldn't stop Takashi from reaching him. So what in the hell was keeping them apart before? What was all that stuff that got between them? Did it even matter?
"You're amazing, you know that?" For some reason, it seems important to say this, right now, while he can. It's something Arai has always thought, that Takashi is extraordinary, but he can't remember if he's ever told him. In fact, there are probably dozens of things he's never told Takashi, that he should have. And now he really wants to. He wants that chance back, to tell Takashi all these things that Takashi ought to hear every single day. "You are the best person I've ever met."
Takashi's gaze cuts to one side, and he frowns and shifts his boots in the snow. Arai gets the feeling he'd debate the point, if he trusted the footing between them a little more. Instead, he focuses toward the beam of the truck headlights, and then looks up.
"It's stopped snowing."
"Oh?" Arai cranes his head out of the truck cab, looking up into a dense black sky. No moon or stars, but no snow falling either. And he remembers now, that there are people at Takashi's house, waiting on them to come back, and his uncle is back in town, waiting on any news of him at all.
"Guess we should head out, huh. Let them know we're okay." Or at least reasonably in one piece. Given the last several minutes and the past few months, okay is probably still a long way off.
"Hm." Takashi looks at him steadily for a moment, then takes a short step back. "Be careful. I'll be right behind you."
"I know," Arai nods, and manages to drag up a smile for him. He knows it's a weary, banged-up, tarnished-looking thing. Not his best effort, but at least it's real, this time. And he's not sure why, but for the first time in a while, it feels like something worth hanging on to.
*****
On to Part 4B
Rescue
The wind has died down, but the snow is still falling, when Mori treks out to the garage to meet Hito and Oshiro, the groundskeeper. He stomps through ankle-deep powder; not quite to the tops of his insulated boots, but close. The snow falls straight and slow, and the air feels frozen to stillness.
Oshiro drives the skid-steer loader out first, clearing the drive past the kitchen door, so that Mori can bring his four-by-four up to the steps, and load it with snowshoes, the First Aid supplies, a pile of blankets, and sundry other odds and ends he'd carried down from the attic.
He packs carefully. He doesn't rush. He double-checks the shovels, the pickaxe, the heavy tow strap, and the lift jacks. He checks the snow chains on all four tires, and the pair of short-range radios he and Oshiro will use to communicate between their vehicles. He is the very picture of calm throughout.
He checks his pocket for his mobile. Wireless coverage is generally spotty out here, but if he needs the phone, he'll at least have it. He even checks the lid on the thermos of hot cocoa Sakura-san pressed on him at the last moment, along with some harrowing instructions on the warning signs of hypothermia.
Then he climbs into his Land Rover, closes the door, pulls on his seatbelt, and finds his hands are shaking so badly he can't turn the ignition.
He closes his eyes. Fall apart on your own time. He needs help now.
The radio on the dashboard chirps. "Alright, boss," calls Oshiro. "I'm gonna head out now, nice and easy. Just give yourself plenty of room behind me."
Mori juggles the radio in his bulky gloves, and finds the Talk button. "Understood. Go ahead."
Just follow the loader. Just that for now. Keeping this one goal in sight, he reaches again for the ignition, turns it, and shifts his truck into 4-Low.
**
By the time they reach the bottom of the estate driveway, Mori understands that this could be a very long night. Top speed on the loader is somewhere in the neighborhood of eleven kilometers an hour. But that's on clear asphalt, with the shovel raised.
"Okay, hold up, boss," Oshiro calls. "I'm puttin' the shovel down now." Mori brakes accordingly, and runs the wipers to clear the accumulation of snow from his windshield. It's still coming down. Not thick, but steadily.
"Looks like we got....saa, thirty centimeters? Some bad drifts, though. You stay in my tracks, and we'll be good."
Mori wonders if he should answer, 'Roger that', or 'Ten-Four', like they do in the movies. Then he thinks, all things considered, it hardly matters. "Thanks."
About ten meters out on the main road, the loader stops again, and a thick beam of light plays out across the snow pack from last week's storm, banked high along the right side of the road. Oshiro had packed a heavy-duty industrial flashlight--more like a portable floodlight--he'd found somewhere. Taking his cue, Mori pulls out his own flashlight and sweeps it up the opposite side of the road, checking carefully for the telltale reflection off metal and glass, or any unusual shape breaking the smooth contours of the snowbank.
After a few moments, the loader creeps forward, and Mori follows.
The minutes stretch out painfully. Mori rolls along behind Oshiro, scanning every meter of glittering, unbroken, lumpy white they pass. Outside the beam of his flashlight and headlights, it's pitch dark. After what seems like a long time, his eyes start playing tricks on him.
He slams on the brakes, tire chains grinding into the ice, when he thinks he spots the shape of a tire, poking up from the left ditch.
"You good there, boss?" The tinny crackle of Oshiro's voice snaps him out of his frozen horror. He's panting. The loader is ten meters ahead. Mori blinks and aims the flashlight again, and all he sees is a snow-covered boulder.
He takes a second to make sure his voice will work. "It's nothing."
"No worries. Can't be too careful. We take it nice and slow, and we can't miss anything."
For the first time, Mori recognizes the easygoing cadence of the voice on the radio for what it is: Oshiro is trying to keep him from panicking. And for some obscure reason, it actually helps.
He lets off the brake and eases the truck forward, still holding the radio. "You've done this before."
Oshiro's answer is matter-of-fact. "Most folks who live out here get to do this, sooner or later."
Mori has a feeling there's a story there. Maybe several. And at some future point, he'll consider that further. For now, it's enough to know he has someone of experience on his side.
**
It's the middle of the night, and colder than a sonofabitch in the gazebo. Arai stamps his feet on the steps and tucks his gloved hands up into his armpits. He can see his breath, pluming out in the light of the old-fashioned wrought iron park light nearby. And from somewhere, far down the street, he hears somebody's dogs barking. Big dogs, from the sound of it, with big growling woofs. Newfoundlands, or mastiffs, maybe.
"It's been a long night," says a deep voice in the shadows, and Arai cocks his head, squints at the man walking slowly into the light. He notes the broad shoulders, high cheekbones, black hair slightly disheveled, and his heart wedges itself at a funny, familiar angle against his ribs. He's grinning before he can help it, just a breath a way from his favorite name--
But the man pauses, full in the pooling lamplight, and it isn't Takashi. And that's when Arai thinks, quite distinctly, 'Oh, I'm dreaming.'
The man isn't Takashi, but the resemblance is uncanny. He is the man Takashi could be in another thirty, forty years perhaps. With weathered creases along the eyes, and silver at his temples. A shade softer along the jawline, and stouter through the chest. But his stance, and the sharpness of his dark eyes, those are Takashi through and through.
"Ichigo-sama." He knows this is a dream, but Arai nonetheless feels compelled into a low, formal bow. He wonders at that, and then when he straightens up, he worries for a second. He's heard things before, read stories about people's ancestors showing up in dreams.
"I'm not dead, am I?" he blurts and then, embarrassed, adds, "Sorry to be so blunt, sir."
Morinozuka Ichigo's look of dry amusement is all his own. "Are you still cold?"
"Yeah, it's freezing out here." Even in this heavy jacket, with his gloves on, it's barely tolerable. Why couldn't he have dreamed up a nice fireplace, or a hot spring?
"Then you're probably still in good shape. You'll want to wake up soon, though. Don't want them to miss you, when they come."
Arai has no idea who 'they' might be, or even where he's supposed to wake up. If he concentrates hard, it might come to him, but for the moment, this is more interesting. Hanging out at the municipal gardens with Takashi's great-grandfather. It's cool. He'll have to remember to tell Takashi about it.
"So. What brings you out here, sir?" Because it occurs to him that Takashi might like to know what they talked about.
Ichigo contemplates the lamp post for a bit. "I'm keeping an eye on things."
Ah, Arai thinks. It runs in the family. Takashi likes the short, pithy answers too. When they first became friends, Arai used to feel like he had to roll up his sleeves and work, to get a conversation started. And then he realized that the awkwardness was just him, and he learned to relax.
"I approve of the progress he's made," says Ichigo, and Arai is glad he's had so much practice following along in conversations like this.
"Takashi's worked really hard this year," he says. "Your land, it means everything to him." Although why that should cause him a tiny little twinge inside, he can't say.
"Hm. Make sure and harvest the pears next fall. It should be a healthy crop."
Arai straightens. "Yes sir."
"And take care of the things that grow."
"Right." Maybe he should be taking notes on this.
Ichigo crosses his hands behind his back and turns, and Arai leaves off frowning down the street. Those dogs are really kicking up a fuss. But Ichigo is watching him, waiting, it looks like.
"Anything else, sir?" His legs are going to pins and needles from the cold. He has a strong urge to stretch them out, which is odd, considering he's already standing up. But there's something more important going on, so he tries to pay attention.
"Yes," says Ichigo. "Two more things."
**
The gazebo and gardens have faded, and he's lying in a cramped, freezing space. His legs ache, his back is stiff, and the shivers come in heavy shuddering spasms. His lips are cold and chapped. His eyelids are cold, shit. There's this noise, a growling racket from somewhere. And it's totally, completely dark.
First he tries to stretch his legs, relieve the burning ache, but one foot clunks against something solid, and the other hits a---
"GAHH!!" He yells and flails at the blaring horn, startling him to full awakeness, and it all comes on him at once: the truck, the snow, stuck on the side of the road and freezing to death.
"Flashlight, flashlight..." He feels around blindly, kicks the horn a few more times struggling to sit up, knocking his elbow against the dash. His teeth are rattling like a pair of dice in a wooden cup.
He scrabbles around the seat, the floorboard, feels his way up the dash. But the flashlight is nowhere, and in the swallowing darkness, he pictures the truck, buried under meters and meters of snow, with him at the bottom, trapped alive.
In one crystal-sharp instant, Arai realizes he is just about to completely lose it. He squeezes his fists against his eyes, whole body tremoring, tears swelling and stinging in his sinuses, and what....
What in the hell is that godawful noise? He thinks it's the sound of overwhelming fear, the howling of his sanity cutting loose. It's getting louder, rumbling toward him, and--
Two things happen. He thinks: Snow Plow, and his eyes pop wide open. And that's when he sees the winking orange light of the hazard indicator on the dash.
Oh. And don't forget to turn the lights on. A distant snatch of conversation floating back to him; somebody told him that, recently. And he gets it, now.
"Hey!" he yells, and leans hard on the horn, knocking his hand against the gear shift, the turn indicator, the wipers--ah. The headlights. Because the door could be frozen shut, they won't see him in the dark, and he'll only get one chance at this....
He turns the switch, and nothing happens.
He pounds the steering wheel, grits his teeth and screeches out his desperate frustration. The battery's frozen--damn it!--and the snow plow is practically on him, he can hear it, and in his mind's eye he sees it trundling past, into the night....
Turn the truck on, dumbass, his common sense wakes up and grouches at him.
Oh. Right.
Accessory power, on, and the dash blinks to life, and he's leaning on the horn, flicking the high beams, with the vents blasting frigid air at him, and it's now or never. He grabs the latch on the passenger-side door, and throws his shoulder against it.
**
Wreckage
Mori taps the brakes and grabs the radio. "Stop. I think I hear something."
He switches off the heater, and rolls down the window, as the loader rolls to a halt. Strains his ears, for the dissonant staccato note he'd picked up just a second before.
A few snowflakes hurry in on a draft of cold air, catching his eyelashes, and he smells the frozen crisp night, clouded with diesel exhaust. He listens. Wills the sound to come again. His truck idles quietly, but he'd heard it over his engine. He's certain.
Come on.... He plays his flashlight over the snow, on the right side of the road, and then the left. Studying every crevice, every curve in the soft white. Up ahead, Oshiro's flashlight sweeps the road, the shoulder.
"You want me to cut the motor?" he calls, and what Mori wants is a fan the size of a house to blow all this hateful snow away. He wants banks of stadium lights, to turn the whole section of highway into blazing noonday.
"No," he answers, biting back on his discouragement. He will search this road as long as he has to. Every square centimeter of it, if that's what it takes. He will search until sunup, and keep searching. He won't rest, until he sees Arai with his own eyes, sees him safe again.
"I got nothing here. Let me--whoa, hang on a sec--"
The horn blares out again, long blasts, and Mori is trying to wrestle off his seatbelt, and tune in the direction of the noise.
"I got some headlights on the shoulder, up ahead," Oshiro reports, close to shouting in his excitement. "I'll get past it, and clear the road for you. It's a knee-deep mess up here."
Mori has just pulled even with the grocery truck, tilted half-off the left shoulder, when the door flies open, and a bundled figure tumbles out in a shower of clumped snow, flounders briefly, then clambers upright, blinking wide-eyed into Mori's headlights, and Mori barely remembers to set the parking brake, before he's hauling himself across and out the passenger-side door.
Arai shields his eyes, heedless of the dusting of snow down his front, watching the skid-steer loader make a grumbling, grinding, four-point turn in the middle of the road.
"What the--?" He glances, and then double-takes at Mori. "Ta-Takashi?"
Mori wades through the snow to reach him. He's not feeling the cold, he's not seeing the snow drifts up past the tops of his boots, he isn't aware of anything except Arai, staring dumbfounded at him, wracked with shivers, with his knit cap askew on his head, and Mori's relief is swelling so huge he can barely contain it, now that this painful, rigid compression in him can finally let go.
All the hours of waiting, all the torment and terrible presentiments he's been conjuring, it is all coming loose in him at once. "Are you hurt?" He's overcome by the compulsion to check Arai all over, count every hair on his head, just to prove for certain that yes, he is safe, he really is here.
"N-no, not at all. I--what is th-that, your loader?" He's freezing, Mori realizes, curling in over his crossed arms, teeth chattering.
"We have to get you warmed up," reaching for Arai's arm to lead him. "I have blankets in the truck."
"You're crazy." Arai takes in Mori's gloves, his ski coveralls, the snow chains on the Land Rover's tires. "How b-bad is the road?"
"It was almost an hour from the estate drive." He gets his arm around Arai's shoulders, feels him shuddering. But he's here. He isn't injured. Just very, very cold. "We'll make better time on the way back--"
"Uh, just a--"
"--Sakura-san has called your--what is it?" Mori breaks off, as Arai squirms and cranes back around to assess the grocery truck.
"Aw, man. This is g-gonna be a bitch to dig out."
Mori stares. He can't be serious. "We'll have to come back for it tomorrow. When the sun's up, we--"
"What? No way. I can't leave it out here." Before Mori can stop him, Arai ducks out from under his arm, and stomps back to his truck. "I got a shovel, I'll just dig the tires out, and follow behind you guys..." He leans into the truck, rummages around for several seconds, while Mori stands in speechless bafflement, and finally emerges with a lightweight shovel.
"It won't take ten minutes," he calls over his shoulder, and straightaway sets to work on the nearest front tire.
Meanwhile, Mori is aware of the loader, turned for the trip home, now trundling around past the Land Rover. He's aware of his nerves, stretched to a screaming tension for half the night, all at once fraying.
"This is insanity." He sets off on a march toward Arai. "Please listen, it's too cold. We have to get out of this weather. You're frozen--." He remonstrates, trying to reason with Arai, but Arai keeps his head down, shoveling as fast as possible.
"Once the plows pass," Mori tries, but Arai shakes his head.
"No good. They'll bury it. If they don't see it, they might wreck it."
"I can't let you do this." Mori grabs his shoulder, frantic to get his attention, make him stop for just a moment and see reason. "The truck can be repaired. I'll cover the costs, it doesn't--"
"Don't say it doesn't matter! Money doesn't fix this, Takashi!" Arai explodes, slams the shovel into the snow and whirls on him. He is suddenly furious to the point of tears, and Mori jerks back and freezes in absolute shock.
"God, you just don't--. I know I've screwed everything up, but I have to fix this, me!" Pounding his chest for emphasis. "How's my uncle ever supposed to trust me, if I just go off and leave this? How am I even gonna to look him in the eye again?"
He is shaking all over with anger and cold, and Mori cannot move. He is incapable of any response whatsoever. He has never seen Arai so angry, had no idea this was ever in him. Mori feels like he's been struck in the face, and the blow reverberates through him, sending cracks through the ground at his feet, and everything is crumbling, breaking apart.
"Looks like you could use a hand there, Sport." Mori wasn't even aware of Oshiro sidling up, but there the man stands, with an appraising eye on the grocery truck, gloved hands buried in his coat pockets. "I reckon if we dig out the tires, I could tow you back on the road."
Arai swallows and swipes his sleeve across his eyes, blinking hard. "C-could you? Oh man, I'd appreciate that so much."
Mori, still reeling, just stares at the groundskeeper. Was he the only person here who hadn't lost his mind? And then Oshiro addresses him.
"Morinozuka-sama, would it be permissible for us to use the shovels and the tow strap in your vehicle?"
Now he's speaking deferentially? Mori wonders.
"I think if you and I take the back tires, and Arai-san finishes here, it will go quickly," the man explains calmly. "We can be on the road in just a few minutes. We'll put your back chains on his front tires, and he can drive between us. If that's acceptable to you."
Unfortunately, Mori is in no condition to find any flaw in the plan. All he's certain of is that in his thoughtless urgency, he's blundered across some critical fault line, and offended Arai unforgivably. And he suspects that the only way he can salvage the situation now--or at least avoid making things worse--is by removing himself from it.
"I'll get the shovels," he says.
**
Once he got moving, got his blood flowing again, Arai felt better--a little warmer, at least--but now, he just feels like shit.
"I'm an asshole," he mumbles to Oshiro, after Takashi goes trudging off. "It's alright, you can say it." He knows it's all hopeless now. He can't even believe the words that came out of his mouth--stupid, desperate, scared words. He's hurt Takashi, bad, after Takashi came all the way out here and saved him, in the middle of the night. He hates himself, so much right now.
But it was like, the whole night of being trapped and scared, and the miserable week since he last saw Takashi, and all the worry and discomfort going on before that, it had all rolled over him at once, in a massive black tidal wave, and before he knew it he was yelling and flailing just like crazy drowning people do.
"Eh, so you got a little wound up," shrugs Oshiro, who is surely the most laid-back guy in all of Nagano right now. "You feeling okay, otherwise?"
Arai shoots him a skeptical look. He feels horrible. What's the man getting at?
"You still feeling cold?" Oshiro clarifies, and whoa. Arai shakes off a weird shiver of deja-vu.
"Yeah, I'm cold as hell. Aren't you?"
"With late-stage hypothermia, folks sometimes say they're feeling warm," Oshiro explains. "Can you still wiggle your toes?"
Arai gives it a try. "Yeah." His feet are throbbing like crazy, though.
"Good deal." Oshiro leans over and tugs Arai's knit cap down over his ears. "You're probably fine for another twenty minutes out here. But I'm telling you now," aiming a finger at him. "You start gettin' disoriented or weird, and I'm packing you in that Land Rover with some blankets, myself. We clear on that?"
The man is dead serious now, and Arai nods, seeing that's really his only choice. "Yeah. No problem."
"Cool," Oshiro says, turning just in time to meet Takashi, coming back with the shovels.
Arai's guilt twists in his gut, he feels physically ill from it, seeing Takashi silently hand over a shovel, with his shoulders bent and his eyes averted. Arai watches, and he is right on the brink of taking it all back. Saying, This isn't worth it. This is stupid. I'll go back with you now, if it will make it better. If it would change that stricken, spiritless look Takashi has now. If it would help him straighten up, and look strong and sure again, because that's how Takashi is supposed to be, how he should always be, and even after everything, Arai cannot bear seeing him any other way.
But he knows it's too late for that. He's gotten his way, and now he has to live with it; even though the cost is more than he can stand right now, and he will go on paying it for a very long time. He'd pushed it to this, and now he has to see it through.
Takashi and Oshiro head off for the back of the truck, and Arai looks at his left front tire, and even though what he really wants to do is cry, huge wailing sobs, like a little kid, he sets his grip on his shovel, and starts digging again, instead.
**
The only mercy in the whole ordeal, is that it doesn't take long at all. Oshiro did know what he was talking about, there. They get the grocery truck off the shoulder, and out to the cleared center of the road, and in a significant stroke of luck, Takashi's chains actually do fit the tires. Which is good, because traction is pretty dicey, even where the loader shovel has cleared most of the snow.
Before they all climb in their vehicles to start the long trek back, Oshiro gives them a last talk. He and Takashi will communicate with the two walkie-talkies they have, he explains, and Arai is to drive between them, leaving plenty of follow distance behind the loader. If he gets into trouble, all he has to do is honk his horn, and stop. If he starts feeling too sleepy to drive, or if he gets confused, just stop. That's all he has to do.
And then, because Oshiro is obviously some kind of mind reader, in addition to being a roadside rescue expert, he adds, "Don't think you have to suck it up and be a hero, Sport. It's a lot easier to tow you from the middle of the road, than off the shoulder, after we drag you outta the driver's seat. You got that?"
Arai nods promptly, and says yes, because Oshiro has that same no-nonsense expression he had before, and it's pretty damn sobering. Not to mention that trying to suck it up and be a hero has gotten him into more than enough crap lately; a fact which has been dawning on him, ever since he watched Takashi heading off to help dig the tires out, looking like somebody had burned his house down, with his puppy trapped inside.
Arai is just. So tired. Not sleepy-tired, like Oshiro's concerned about. He's tired of being unhappy all the time. He's tired of guilt, tired of trying so hard to hold things up, hold it together, and failing at every turn. He's tired of everything important slipping from his hands, the tighter he tries to hold on, like out on the beach, back when he was a kid; squeezing fistfuls of sand as hard as he could, and watching it spill out the bottom of his fist, until there was nothing but grit sticking to his sweaty palms.
**
He kicks most of the snow off his boots, and climbs back into the grocery truck. It's going to be a long ride back in his damp jeans, and his face stings from cold and wind burn, but the one bright spot out of everything, is that very soon, he's going to have the heater running. It's not much in the bigger scheme of things, but it's something to look forward to, anyway.
There's a crunching in the snow, just before he shuts the truck door, and he glances back and sees Takashi approaching cautiously, cradling something in his gloved hands, and watching his footing. Arai wonders if it will always hurt this much to look at him, from now on. If it will always slice him open like this. He hopes not, because he really can't take it.
"I forgot this," says Takashi, holding out a stainless steel thermos. "Sakura-san sent it, for you."
"Oh." Arai takes the thermos, not sure what else to do. But at this point he'd do anything at all Takashi asked him. He'd go lay down in front of that skid-steer loader, if it would make Takashi happy. "Thank you."
"It's cocoa. Probably still hot."
"I shouldn't have yelled at you. That was totally out of line." Arai had no idea that would come out of him, until it does. To his further surprise, he finds himself grabbing the sleeve of Takashi's coat. Because he needs to touch him, to reach him, just for one more second, before he slips away completely. "I didn't mean that thing, about the money. I swear, I never thought about you like that."
Takashi frowns very hard at his boots. "I wasn't listening. You were right to be angry."
"Angry?" His dry, edgy laugh takes them both by surprise. "I was scared to death. I just....went crazy. I'm not mad at you."
And now Takashi is looking at him. Searching him closely; for the truth, or for hope, or maybe for the answer to some question locked up tight in his own head. Arai has no idea. Takashi is looking at him, he's not going away, and at this precise moment, that's almost enough.
"Thank you. For coming out here. I really should've said that before. Thank you."
"Everyone helped." Takashi glances down at the thermos, propped on Arai's knee. "We couldn't have left you alone."
And there, yet again, Arai is ridiculously close to choking up. Because it's not himself he pictures being left alone, but Takashi. And he knows, if their positions were reversed, he would have moved heaven and earth, in a blind frenzy, to make sure Takashi was okay. Nothing would have stopped him, and looking at Takashi now, he believes that surely Takashi must have felt the same thing.
A blizzard couldn't keep them apart. Iced-over roads, snow up past their ankles, and the total darkness surrounding them couldn't stop Takashi from reaching him. So what in the hell was keeping them apart before? What was all that stuff that got between them? Did it even matter?
"You're amazing, you know that?" For some reason, it seems important to say this, right now, while he can. It's something Arai has always thought, that Takashi is extraordinary, but he can't remember if he's ever told him. In fact, there are probably dozens of things he's never told Takashi, that he should have. And now he really wants to. He wants that chance back, to tell Takashi all these things that Takashi ought to hear every single day. "You are the best person I've ever met."
Takashi's gaze cuts to one side, and he frowns and shifts his boots in the snow. Arai gets the feeling he'd debate the point, if he trusted the footing between them a little more. Instead, he focuses toward the beam of the truck headlights, and then looks up.
"It's stopped snowing."
"Oh?" Arai cranes his head out of the truck cab, looking up into a dense black sky. No moon or stars, but no snow falling either. And he remembers now, that there are people at Takashi's house, waiting on them to come back, and his uncle is back in town, waiting on any news of him at all.
"Guess we should head out, huh. Let them know we're okay." Or at least reasonably in one piece. Given the last several minutes and the past few months, okay is probably still a long way off.
"Hm." Takashi looks at him steadily for a moment, then takes a short step back. "Be careful. I'll be right behind you."
"I know," Arai nods, and manages to drag up a smile for him. He knows it's a weary, banged-up, tarnished-looking thing. Not his best effort, but at least it's real, this time. And he's not sure why, but for the first time in a while, it feels like something worth hanging on to.
*****
On to Part 4B