Hypothermic Honesty

“Ojo…” Masaki trailed his words, eyes darting everywhere but at Hanako

“Ha-na-ko.”She slipped on the kimono and tightened the sash around her waist.

Masaki eyes glared and surveyed the surroundings.

“Hanako, can you change elsewhere…”

“Is there a problem?”

Scene description - she’s changing her clothes from torn lavender kimono to battle kimono under the same tree masaki confessed his monologue.

Hanako rose, fingers already working at the torn lavender obi.

Masaki jolted upright and snapped his jacket open like a makeshift curtain, holding it between them with both arms locked straight. The motion was so fast he nearly hit himself in the chin.

“Ojo— at least warn me,” he muttered, eyes fixed on the treeline as if snipers were hiding there.

“Ha. Na. Ko. Hold it steady,” Hanako said, stepping out of the ruined kimono. Her voice was flat, all business.

Masaki stiffened. “I am Hanako. I’m holding it very steady.”

He angled the jacket higher, then lower, then higher again, adjusting like he was trying to block the sun. Sweat beaded at his temple.

“You’re shaking,” Hanako noted as she slipped into the white kimono.

“I’m not shaking. I’m… guarding.”

“Good.” She tightened the sash with a sharp tug. “Guard me until I leave this tree.”

The words hit him harder than the changing did. His grip on the jacket faltered for a breath.

Then he steadied it again.

“Masaki, repeat the brief.” Hanako finished tying the last strap on her snowy kimono.

Masaki was still holding his jacket up like a makeshift curtain, arms trembling from the effort.

She had ignored it the entire time.

“The usual,” he said, voice tight. “I catch you after you’re done. At Kanda River.”

“You can put that down now.” She tapped the jacket with the back of her hand.

Masaki lowered it slowly, ears red, pretending he had meant to do that. He steadied her by the elbow as she stretched, trying to look anywhere but at her.

“Good,” she said. “Don’t miss.”

She pulled the Yukikaze hairpin free, letting her hair fall before sweeping it up again with practiced precision and tucked it on the side. Masaki knelt to take out the geta for her. She stepped forward, frost blooming under her bare sole instead of wearing it.

“I wasted enough time changing.” She cracked open the water bottle and poured it out. The water rose, weightless, forming a crystalline mask around her face; the rest coiled around her arm like a living ribbon of ice.

Masaki watched her, jaw set. The earlier awkwardness evaporated under the cold pressure of what came next.

“I’ll race you to the river,” she said. “Don’t be late.”

She didn’t look back as she leapt forward.

- - -

She waded through the park crowd, every head turning toward the white kimono and frost‑masked figure cutting through the summer air. Conversations faltered. Children stopped mid‑step. Her presence carved a path without a word.

At the riverbank, she placed her foot on the water.

“You feel less cold today,” Hanako murmured.

The surface froze beneath her touch, forming a thin, perfect disc of ice. She exhaled once; her breath drifted out in a pale plume that spread across the riverbank like a quiet warning. The temperature dropped. People shivered and backed away.

She stepped onto the disc and pushed off. The water obeyed, parting and propelling her southward. Her speed built with each glide, the river carrying her like a blade drawn along a whetstone.

Kuramae Bridge rose ahead.

A flash of light. Two figures blurred in motion.

“Yukihana‑ikka bitch, you—”

“Shut up.” Her voice was flat, almost bored.

She flicked her hand. The river surged upward in a towering swell, curling around every attacker except Ryuji and Sayuri. Her fingers closed.

The water froze instantly.

Heat drained from her bones in a single, brutal pull.

Ryuji staggered back, drenched in sweat, chest heaving, clothes scorched. “Yukiharu‑san…?”

She raised one finger to her mask — silence.

Then she stepped past him.

Sayuri’s eyes were wide with terror, her breath shallow, her wrists bound with nylon rope. Hanako knelt, frost forming along her fingertips, and sliced the bindings clean.

Sayuri collapsed into Ryuji’s arms.

Hanako stepped back onto her disc and pushed off, gliding away before either of them could speak. But her gaze clung to the sight of the two of them holding each other.

A sharp, unwelcome pang bloomed in her chest.

She couldn’t shake off that vision off of her mind. Minato holding onto Sayuri.

She wanted him to hold him like that.

Was this her being honest to herself?

She would think of things she want to tell to sayuri and ryuji. Then she couldn’t think of anything to say to ryuji.

She couldn’t shake the image from her mind — Ryuji holding Sayuri, the way her body folded into his, the way he steadied her without thinking. It replayed behind her eyes with every glide of the ice disc.

She wanted that.

She wanted him to hold her like that.

The admission scraped against her ribs, raw and unwelcome. Was this what honesty felt like — a truth she had buried so deep it only surfaced when her body was too numb to fight it?

The cold gnawed at her now. Her fingers tingled, then stopped tingling. Her breath came out in uneven bursts, frosting the air in front of her. She pushed more power into the disc, forcing it to accelerate, forcing herself not to collapse.

Focus. Kanda. Just reach Kanda.

She tried to think of what she would say to Sayuri when she arrived. Apologies. Explanations. Promises. Words came easily.

Then she tried to think of what she would say to Ryuji.

Nothing came.

Her mind reached for something — anything — but the cold hollowed out every thought. All she could feel was the ache in her chest, the one that had started the moment she saw them holding each other.

The river blurred. Her vision tunneled. The disc wavered beneath her feet.

She had gone too far. Too much power. Too much heat lost.

But she kept going.

- - -

Her focus thinned before the Kanda River even came into view. The frost disc beneath her feet shrank with every glide, its edges crumbling. The fog she’d carried with her had vanished; the night air felt too sharp, too loud.

She hit the concrete barefoot. Her legs buckled. She tucked and rolled out of instinct, but even that felt slow, distant, like her body was moving through water.

A bicycle skidded somewhere behind her. Tires screeched.

“Hanako.” Masaki’s voice cut through the ringing in her ears. He was already there, catching her before she could fall again.

“Where’s my blanket…?” Her words slurred, soft, almost petulant.

His hands closed around her arms and legs—burning hot against her numb skin. She flinched at the contrast.

“You went overboard. Again.” he muttered, breath tight. “It’s been a while.”

“It’s too bright here,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I want my yuzu tea.”

“Stop being spoiled,” he said, but his voice was low, steady, familiar—the tone he always used when she was fading like this.

He lifted her easily and carried her into the shadow of the underpass. The moment he set her down, he pulled out *her* blanket—the one he had hand‑stitched himself, uneven seams and all, with the little inner pockets he’d sewn in so he could slip hot packs.

He wrapped it around her with practiced precision, tucking the hot packs into place. He’d done this before. Too many times.

Her teeth chattered once, then stopped—not because she was warm, but because she was too cold to shiver.

Masaki rubbed her arms through the blanket, trying to coax heat back into her limbs. “Stay awake. Don’t drift.”

Her fingers curled weakly into the fabric at his chest, clinging like a child.

“I never… thanked you,” she murmured, voice barely a breath. “For all this.”

Masaki froze for a heartbeat, then pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“You can thank me by staying alive,” he said.

- - -

The wail of police and ambulance sirens rolled across the bridge, sharp and rising in that familiar two‑tone pitch that cut straight through the night. Red lights strobed across the Sumida River, scattering in fractured reflections like blooming flowers on the water.

The sound should have been distant to her half‑frozen ears, but it pressed in close, too bright, too loud. Hanako drifted in and out of consciousness, her thoughts slipping like melting ice, impossible to hold for more than a heartbeat.

Faces blurred. Voices blurred. Even time blurred.

Somewhere in that haze, the image of Ryuji holding Sayuri flickered again—warm, steady, unreachable. It stung in a way she didn’t have the strength to hide from.

A fragile, unreasonable thought surfaced through the cold.

When she woke up…

when her hands could hold a phone again…

she wanted to call Minato.

She didn’t know what she would say.

She just needed to hear his voice.