Frost and Flame

Deciding to Move

Half an hour later, the two of them—separately, yet almost at the same time—decided to move. The air inside the room felt too dry, too still, too full of things that had not been done.

Sayaka took her coat and headed toward the side door leading to the perimeter path. The path had been partially cleared by the staff, a narrow one-meter-wide track encircling the main building.

She stepped into the still-fresh snow at the edge of the path, hearing the satisfying crunch beneath her boots. Each step was deliberate: lift the foot, place it consciously, shift weight.

Like before, when teaching Kaito to walk on slippery ice. Slowly, dear. Feel what’s beneath your feet.

She noticed useless details: the way snow crystals clung to pine bark like tiny diamonds, the wind patterns carving fine, wavy lines across the untouched snow surface, the silence so dense she could hear her own heartbeat inside her ears.

She walked to test herself, to see whether she could still endure discomfort, the cold creeping through her jacket, this enforced solitude.

—

Souta exited through the front door, turned left, toward the more open area beside the parking lot.

His purpose was different.

He took out his portable snow gauge—a professional habit—and recorded depths at various points: 45 cm in open areas, 32 cm beneath overhangs, 58 cm where wind had gathered drifts.

His eyes read patterns: higher accumulation on the northeast side of the building. Consistent with the dominant wind direction. Data.

But at the edge of his awareness, far from the analytical part of his mind, he also absorbed the beauty. The diffused gray light erased shadows, creating a strange two-dimensional world. Ice crystals had formed intricate frozen flowers on the window glass.

The contrast between white snow and the dark green of snow-laden pine trees felt physically real, like a painting sharpened too much.

They walked in opposing loops.

Sayaka turned at the southwest corner, following the path along the side of the building. Souta finished his measurements at the parking lot and turned right, following the staff-made trail along the eastern side.

They saw each other at the same moment, separated by about ten meters, a mound of shoveled snow standing between them.

They stopped.

This time, there was no surprise. Only acknowledgment. Their eyes met and held. Maybe three seconds. Maybe five. Long enough for Sayaka to see that Souta’s eyes were not the ordinary gray she remembered, but closer to the color of the sky that day—gray with a muted blue cast, the color of deep, cold water.

Long enough for Souta to see that Sayaka’s eyes no longer held the light he always associated with her; something was dimmed inside them, like a lamp turned down.

Sayaka nodded, a small gesture barely visible. A simple acknowledgment: You are here. I am here.

Souta lowered his head slightly—not avoidance, but respect, acceptance. I see you.

Then, without words, they continued. Sayaka went on along the western side. Souta continued along the eastern side. They passed each other with enough distance not to touch, enough not to share the same air, enough to feel the faint warmth of one another’s passing presence.

Their footprints in the snow—Sayaka’s neat and evenly spaced, Souta’s deeper and occasionally broken where he had stopped to measure—crossed at the point where they had seen each other. Forming a temporary, fragile X pattern on the white surface.

Souta, after taking five steps, stopped. He turned, looking back at the intersection of footprints in the snow. He stood still for a few moments, his breath forming small clouds in the cold air.

There was a pull in his chest, a strange and illogical impulse to turn around, to follow her footprints, to see where they led.

He clenched his jaw, feeling the muscle in his cheek throb. Then he turned away and kept walking, leaving the intersection to be covered by fresh snow.

—

In her room, Sayaka removed her coat with slow, tired movements. She hung it neatly, brushed remaining snow grains from her shoulders, then sat on the edge of the bed. She looked at her own hands, open on her lap. They were trembling. She clenched them, feeling her nails dig into her palms, then opened them again, staring at the lines as if the answers to all her questions were written there.

Something had shifted today. Not a large change that could be named, but a subtle shift in balance, like snow beginning to melt from the inside rather than the outside. An acknowledgment that they were still in the same world, still breathing the same air, moving between them, still carrying the same wounds that seemed to breathe and live in their own way.

She stood and took a small notebook from her bag—not a beautiful journal, but a cheap spiral notebook with a dark blue cover. She opened it, its pages filled with shopping lists, lesson ideas, and reminders. On a new page, she wrote neatly:

Day 2.

He is like a shadow from another life.

Moving in predictable patterns: observing, counting, avoiding. I know the pattern because it is also mine.

We are cracked mirrors. The most painful thing is knowing this is a choice. That one sentence could tear this wall down. But that wall is also what keeps us from collapsing. A frozen paradox.

She closed the notebook, put it back into her bag, and went to the window. Snow began to fall again, soft and unceasing.

—

In room 312, Souta stood before his own window. His notebook lay open on the table behind him, but he wrote nothing. He only watched the continuing storm, the snow that kept falling, the world moving according to laws he understood so well, and the laws of the heart that remained a mystery to him.

He thought about data and patterns, predictions and probabilities. All his life, he had tried to predict the unpredictable, measure the immeasurable. Yet the one pattern he had never been able to solve was his own heart—the reason he left, the reason he still felt something when he saw her, the reason he was standing here now, thinking about a woman in room 313.

A metaphor formed in his mind, complete and effortless: in meteorology, “parallel solitude” describes two high-pressure systems moving side by side without ever truly interacting. They affect the surrounding weather, create winds, steer fronts, but they themselves never touch, never merge. They occupy the same space, obey the same physical laws, yet remain forever separated by invisible air currents.

It was too precise. Too comfortable. Because that metaphor removed choice. Pressure systems do not choose to remain apart; they simply exist. Humans choose.

He realized that by observing Sayaka like a weather system—recording her patterns, predicting her movements—he was in fact searching for himself. A version of himself lost within the data. And within that observation was an acknowledgment: their parallelism was not destiny. It was a fortress they had built together, brick by brick, made of unsaid things, unasked questions, restrained touches.

—

Night fell quickly, swallowing the resort grounds in darkness lit only by window lights. Sayaka ate dinner alone in her room, a tray delivered from the dining area. She tried to read the novel she had brought, but the words floated on the page without meaning. Her thoughts returned to the dim corridor, to the scent of hōjicha, to the intersection of footprints in the snow.

At ten p.m., the resort was completely quiet. Only the roar of wind outside, the groaning of the building under the weight, and the distant hum of the heating system working against the cold.

Sayaka lay on the bed, eyes open, staring at the dark ceiling. She counted her breaths, as she once taught Kaito when he struggled to sleep: inhale for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts. The rhythm was calming.

In room 312, Souta did almost the same, though with a different purpose. He lay on his back, listening. He counted the intervals between stronger gusts, estimating their speed from the changing pitch as the wind passed different corners of the building. Northwest wind, 20–25 km/h. Increasing.

Two people, separated by a twelve-centimeter-thick wooden wall and a silent ocean of history, lay awake in the same darkness. Each processed the day in their own way—through feeling, through data, through memory. Each recorded emotional observation that would never enter any report or journal.