Frost and Flame

Erasing the Paths

The sound of the wind roaring and breaking itself against the corners of the building carried Sayaka back to the cold resort corridor, to her body now in her forties, to the distance between herself and the man who once recognized her in the dark. Her eyes filled with tears, and she struggled hard to hold back the tears that threatened to fall, narrowing her eyes, hoping the darkness and the poor reflection in the window would hide them.

Souta did not move, remaining like a statue facing the storm, but his breathing, which had previously been calm and measured, now sounded deeper, slightly irregular, as if he too had just returned from the same journey through time, to the stifling apartment and the promises made in the dark.

“We never painted those walls white,” Sayaka said, her voice barely audible, partly swallowed by the sound of the wind. “You bought a can of light blue paint without telling me, a week after we moved in. The color of the sky before rain, you said when you showed me the can.”

She saw Souta’s reflection in the window blink rapidly, a small movement that was almost unnoticeable. “And you were angry,” he murmured, his voice deeper than before, “because you had already bought white floor covers, and you said blue and white would look like the Greek flag.”

“But in the end we did it together,” Sayaka said, and now there was something like a smile in her voice, something bitter and sweet at the same time. “And it turned out you were wrong. The paint dripped everywhere. We weren’t careful enough with the edges.”

“The floor was stained,” Souta added, and there was something in his voice now—a small crack in its flat surface, a tone that was almost like a smile, almost like restrained laughter. “Light blue. Shaped like… small islands.”

“For months,” Sayaka finished his sentence, “every time I saw those stains—when the morning sunlight touched them—I remembered that morning. The smell of paint. The radio is playing old songs. You with a brush in your hair.”

They fell silent again, but the silence this time was different. No longer tense or hostile. Softer, more delicate, like the snow that was now falling more slowly outside, like the wind that eased for a moment. The silence was filled with the presence of ghosts from the apartment in Sendai—ghosts of two young people who believed that paint stains on the floor were a beautiful beginning, not a memory that would ache and feel distant a decade later.

“Why are you here, Souta?” Sayaka asked at last, when the silence became too full. The question carried no accusation, no anger, only weariness—weariness from carrying that question for years without daring to speak it. “In Hokkaido? In a place this remote, in the middle of a season when no one comes?”

Souta drew a long breath, his shoulders rising and falling in a movement visible even through his thick sweater. He took time to answer, like someone choosing words very carefully because the consequences were large.

“Because here,” he said slowly, each word weighed, “everything is clear. Cold is cold. You can measure it. Snow is snow—water crystals in solid form, falling at speeds that can be predicted based on temperature and humidity. Storms come and go according to patterns that can be studied, plotted, and understood. There is no… ambiguity. No nuance that can’t be explained by physics.”

“And humans?” Sayaka asked, turning slightly to see his profile in the dim light. “Are we that simple, too? Measurable, predictable?”

“No,” he admitted, and his voice suddenly grew heavy, like conceding defeat. “That’s why… that’s why I prefer snow. It’s easier.”

Sayaka hugged her body tighter beneath the wool blanket. The cold from the window crept through the air, slipping beneath the fabric, finding gaps between the folds. “I’m here for the opposite reason,” she said, staring into the storm. “I want to get lost. I want something big enough, strong enough, extraordinary enough to make me forget everything, even for a while. I want this storm to erase all the paths on the map, all routines, all memories of how life is supposed to go.”

Souta finally turned, looking at her for the first time since they had been standing there—truly looking, not merely seeing. In the dim light from the floor lamps, his face looked older than Sayaka remembered, more tired, with more lines and shadows. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes and his brow spoke of solitude, of years spent watching the sky and data instead of looking into someone’s eyes, of nights alone at remote weather stations.

“Did it work?” he asked, and in his question, there was a hidden hope, a desire he might not admit even to himself—perhaps the hope that he too could find such an escape, something big enough to drown out the voices in his head.

Sayaka shook her head slowly. “No. It just… brought everything closer to the surface. Like when the tide goes out and the rocks that are usually hidden suddenly appear. Everything is there, Souta. Everything.”

Before the conversation could continue, a sound burst the fragile bubble surrounding them—a door from a nearby room opened with a creak. A middle-aged guest, looking sleepy with messy hair, stepped out into the corridor, yawning widely. He muttered “Good evening” in a hoarse, drowsy voice before walking quickly toward the shared toilet at the end of the corridor, not really paying attention to them.

The interruption was sudden and rough, shattering the intimate space they had created. As the man passed, the light from his open room swept across the corridor, briefly illuminating Souta and Sayaka clearly—two people standing several feet apart, isolated in their own suffering and memories despite the physical distance between them being only a few steps. The light revealed details usually hidden in shadow: the creases at the corners of Sayaka’s eyes, the gray hair at Souta’s temples, the way their hands gripped their own hips tightly as if holding on to something to keep it from falling.

When darkness returned after the door closed, the distance between them suddenly felt wider, more impossible to bridge, as if the light had revealed the true chasm.

“I should go back,” Sayaka said, suddenly overwhelmed by the closeness, by the ghosts that felt too real, by the warmth of the memories just now that contrasted too sharply with the cold of the present reality. “Good night, Souta.”

Souta nodded, not looking at her again, returning to his original position facing the window. “Good night, Sayaka.”

She turned and walked back to her room along the same corridor. Each step felt like moving backward into a cage, into a silence heavier than before. When she reached her door, hand on the lock, she looked back once more over her shoulder. Souta was still standing in front of the window, his upright, motionless figure now looking like someone standing watch, a guard gazing into the storm, or perhaps like someone waiting for something he knew would never come.