Growing up, Ogata went into the woods around his grandparents’ house to hunt. It was the best place to find game, but the lines of sight were poor, and it was easy to take down prey at a distance and not be able to find where it landed. Once he lost a piece of fowl that way; he’d stayed out looking for where it had fallen until his eyes could barely make out the looming shapes of the trees around him. He never found it. A waste of shot, and of time. He was supposed to be back before dark, but he’d already figured out that if he told his grandparents he’d gotten lost on the way back home, they wouldn’t ask any more questions.

Sugimoto was from Tokyo, so it was hard to imagine he’d ever been in these types of deep woods before, let alone as darkness was falling, but even so, he lead the way. Neither of them really knew where they were going. For tonight, the aim was to get deep enough into the foothills of the mountains that it wouldn’t be worth Tsurumi’s while to track them down. At least not today. Tsurumi had worked too hard for his window of opportunity to withdraw the troops from under Yodogawa’s nose to jeopardize it for the sake of the two of them. No doubt Tsurumi would send men after them eventually—Ogata was worth too much to him not to try and collect—but by the time the sun neared the horizon without any evidence of the 7th on their trail, they had covered enough ground to be reasonably sure they would make it through the night.

It was slow going, considering they couldn’t walk in a straight line through thick forest. They followed deer footpaths part of the way, but they lost countless minutes stepping over fallen trees and looping around thickets. Thankfully, they were still low enough in the foothills not to have to contend with snow.

After a few hours, Sugimoto stopped in his tracks and turned to Ogata. “Have you heard anything that makes you think we’re being followed?”

“Not that I can tell.” Ogata tilted his head to the side and regarded Sugimoto through the dappled sunshine-and-shadow patterns of leaves on his face. They overlaid his features like a second set of scars. “What would you do if they caught up to us?”

“What do you mean?”

Ogata’s pulse skittered through his neck, and he clutched at the sling strap across his chest with one hand. “Do you have it in you to fire on your former comrades?”

Sugimoto was silent for a few long seconds before he turned away from Ogata and kept walking through the trees ahead of them. “I’m not a nice enough guy to let myself get shot if I can avoid it, no matter who’s doing the shooting.”

Ogata followed him a half-step behind, eyes fixed on the back of Sugimoto’s neck. He had to walk more quickly to keep up with Sugimoto’s longer stride. “What if it’s someone you know? What if the Nikaidous come after us, or Tanigaki?”

“What’s the point in talking about it?” Sugimoto’s voice was low and cold. “If it comes down to it, I won’t hesitate. I remember that much from the war.”

Evening came quicker under tree cover. The sun sent shafts of dying light through the underbrush, creating a second undergrowth of shadows, and after another hour or so of slow travel through the pines, Sugimoto turned back to him.

“We might as well stop here. Maybe you can see better than I can in the dark, but I’d rather not break my neck.”

They couldn’t make a fire without sending the 7th a smoke signal. The weather had been fine that day, but Hokkaido was only warm at night in the peak of summer. Unlike in the trenches, they could slip in close to each other without having to watch their backs.

Only the canvas of Ogata’s raincloak spread out on the hard ground cushioned them from the faintly soggy earth. Even so, he’d had worse. Here there were no rotting bodies, no rats the size of hares; sleep would come easy. Ogata sat cross-legged, ignoring the soreness setting into his thighs.

Perhaps when they got closer to Otaru they could find some hunter’s lodge left empty for the season where they could set up a base of operations: somewhere to sleep outside of the rain and haul back convicts when they found them. If the lodge wasn’t empty, Ogata could make it empty, so long as Sugimoto wouldn’t make a fuss.

“You’re from Ibaraki, right?” Sugimoto laid back with his head on his pack and his legs crossed at the knee. In what remained of the waning sunlight, he cleaned his fingernails with the point of his bayonet.

Ogata glanced at him before turning back to the hardtack he’d retrieved from a pocket. Sugimoto had brought it up once before, even though Ogata had never mentioned it himself. It grated at him. “Who told you that?”

“I met a few guys from that prefecture in the 1st Division,” Sugimoto said. “You’ve still got the accent.”

Tsurumi had said the same thing once, a long time ago; one of his barbs disguised as an innocent observation, as he was fond of doing. After that, Ogata had tried to lose it, and he wasn’t pleased to hear he hadn’t been successful.

“I grew up in Ibaraki,” Ogata replied. “But I was born in Tokyo.”

“Like me, then.”

Hardly. If Sugimoto came into the world with a madam as a midwife, Ogata would have been shocked. Ogata folded the remaining half of the biscuit up and put it away. “What does where we’re from have to do with anything?”

“Just seems funny to me that I don’t know much about you, even after all this.”

“It’s for the best, isn’t it? That way we can’t give each other up so easily.”

“I guess. I don’t know what anyone could get out of us knowing stuff like this about each other, though. Not everything is some big secret.”

“I thought you didn’t trust me. Why do you want to exchange life stories?”

“I don’t trust you.” Sugimoto slid his bayonet back into its sheath and rolled over onto his side, looking up at Ogata with his jaw resting in an upturned hand. “But I’m here, aren’t I?”

Ogata eyed him, sprawled out on the ground, his body held loose. Sugimoto’s legs were crossed at the ankles and his shirt had ridden up past his waistband to reveal a strip of skin striped with scars. He looked almost more dangerous at rest than he did in a fighting stance. He was never complacent. Ogata’s gaze traveled up Sugimoto’s chest and over his arm, where the cloth was drawn tight across his bicep. When he made it to Sugimoto’s head, he was met by a smug look he wanted to make disappear.

“We made it, huh.” The last dregs of sunlight played across the planes of Sugimoto’s face, adding dimensions to it Ogata couldn’t remember seeing before.

“We can celebrate once we’ve made it to Otaru in one piece,” Ogata replied.

“Yeah, whatever. I can tell you’re pleased.”

Ogata tilted his head back to look up at the sky. No stars were yet visible, but they would be soon; the sky was cloudless. He turned back to Sugimoto, who was watching him with an infuriating half-smile on his face, like he thought he knew something Ogata didn’t. Ogata leaned over to push the heel of his hand down over Sugimoto’s crotch, a bit too hard to be pleasurable.

Sugimoto only lifted an eyebrow and placed his free hand on the inside of Ogata’s thigh, stroked it up his trouser seam and then down again to rest above Ogata’s knee. He kept it there, just shy of where Ogata could get anything out of it, the weight and warmth feeling like a promise. Sugimoto bit his lip and said, in a lower, rough-handled tone, “What do you want?”

Ogata lifted his hips up and against Sugimoto’s hand. “You must be dumber than I thought.”

Sugimoto’s expression didn’t change. Sometimes he was a hair-trigger, others it was like nothing Ogata could do would get a rise out of him, and it wasn’t always easy to tell the moods apart. “Just figured now that we don’t have to make curfew we should take advantage of it.”

He really was so stupid. Inside his mouth, Ogata ran his tongue along the backs of his teeth, and he began kneading Sugimoto through the wool of his trousers with the heel of his hand. Sugimoto’s mouth curved in a strange little smile that was gone as quick as it’d come. He still lay on his side with one bent knee propped up in the air and watched Ogata through heavy-lidded eyes. He looked so sure of himself, so sure he would get his, that Ogata almost wanted to change his mind, roll over, and leave Sugimoto to take care of himself, but it would be a shallow victory.

“I’m going to suck your dick. Is that what you wanted to hear?” His own voice was strangely hoarse, but audible.

Sugimoto looked like he was going to laugh for a second, but his face cleared when he replied, “Yeah, sure. That’s something.”

Once he got Sugimoto’s clothes and boots out of the way—Sugimoto shimmied his hips to help him but mostly got in the way, jerking the cloth out of Ogata’s grasp—Ogata knelt between his spread legs. Suimoto was bare from the waist down; Ogata moved in closer and rubbed his cheek against the side of his dick, nosing at it. He intended to take his time, even as the sun was setting around them. When it came to Sugimoto’s body, Ogata knew the lay of the land. Sunlight or darkness didn’t matter much.

Sugimoto's dick was already wet at the tip, and Ogata knew it wouldn’t be long before it was slippery in his hand and against his face. He wanted to taste it, wanted to hold it in his mouth until he memorized its shape, until Sugimoto ceased to be strong any longer. Ogata wanted him to offer up his soft underbelly. Distantly, he registered that he hadn’t blown someone while lying horizontal in years. He looked up at Sugimoto from beneath lowered eyelids as Ogata bent his neck and swallowed him down. A wide hand landed softly on the back of his head. Sugimoto cursed under his breath.

Sugimoto's sweat tasted better than good. Enough for Ogata's dick to stir from that alone. Sugimoto’s cock wasn’t big, but it had a soft, plummy head and a slight curve and was easy to take in all the way to the back of his throat. His throat convulsed instinctively, but he didn’t pull off. Usually, Sugimoto was quiet, but maybe that had just been concern over being caught, because now he muttered strings of nonsense, nothing Ogata could make out besides yes, yeah, oh—, his eyes dark and lacquered over with want.

He kept trying to curl in on himself and Ogata kept having to bear down weight on his abdomen. Beneath Ogata's splayed fingers was soft muscle and almost-hairless skin, boyish and masculine at once. Every time Ogata leaned forward, Sugimoto's cock hit his palate and he suppressed the urge to gag. There had been times in the past he hadn't bothered, when he'd let his body try its best to expel the foreign object jammed down his throat just because it always provoked some kind of reaction—disgust, often, or that condescending appreciation shown by men who thought they were doing him a favour by letting him handle their unimpressive dicks for them. He kept himself in check now, didn't want to risk Sugimoto pulling out and offering him concern. He could already see the way Sugimoto’s eyebrows would twist in disapproval. He didn't want it to stop, didn't want Sugimoto to get a chance to recover his self-control and stop his feverish praise or the roaming of his hands over Ogata's face and shoulders.

Sugimoto's cock was hot to the touch with his quick-pumping immortal blood. Ogata's left hand pressed flat against Sugimoto's stomach overtop of several scars criss-crossing his navel, holding him in place so Ogata could have him how he liked. He wanted to feel every vibration, every sucked-in breath. He'd seen Sugimoto bear up without wincing under injuries that would have a lesser man fainting, but here he almost whined, the valleys and ridges of his hipbones twisting as he pushed up further into Ogata's mouth. The muscles in his abdomen flexed beneath the surface of his skin as he tried to hold himself back from thrusting up into Ogata's throat and choking him from the inside. Ogata pulled away for a moment and looked up at him while he slid his tongue through the dribbles of precome leaking down the side of Sugimoto’s cock. His face was wild and alive in the near-dark. Brutal everywhere but here.

Ogata's knees were damp from pressing into the moss. Every time he lowered his head Sugimoto's knees knocked against his ribs. His own body was close to unconsciousness from the long march through the woods and his currently stifled breathing, but he backed off as Sugimoto's gasps got more frantic. He didn't want Sugimoto to come yet, wanted to linger on this precipice longer, settle into the taste of Sugimoto's slickness sliding against his tongue and Ogata's name in Sugimoto's mouth. Right now, Sugimoto wanted him so badly he couldn't try to hide it. Tsurumi would never have done it like this; he would never have given Ogata what he wanted just because he wanted it. Sugimoto's fingers grasped on nothing, curling behind Ogata’s ear as if trying to pull on hair that wasn’t there, and Ogata could hear him swallow thickly, trying to master himself.

When Sugimoto started squirming under him, furtive and trembling like he did when he got close, Ogata didn’t have any desire to let go.

His mouth was already feeling pleasantly full when two of Sugimoto’s fingers landed on his cheek, stroking along his skin until his fingertips brushed up against where Ogata’s lips were sealed around his cock. Ogata kept looking at him, unblinking, his tongue moving across a vein. When Sugimoto pressed the pads of his fingers at the corner of Ogata’s mouth they slid right in. Sugimoto’s eyes were shrouded over, hazy, and he murmured, “Yeah, you like that, don’t you. Thought you would.”

He pushed his digits in further so they rested next to his dick inside of Ogata’s mouth. It stretched Ogata’s jaw out to accommodate them. A challenge, the threat of soreness if they stayed that way for long. Ogata grazed a knuckle with one of his incisors.

“Fuck, you look—”

Ogata hated swallowing, but he swallowed for Sugimoto then. He even kept from choking or grimacing, much. He kept Sugimoto in his mouth until he’d gone soft and Ogata had licked him clean, until he was just holding him inside, to keep him warm. Sugimoto slid his fingers free first and then pushed Ogata back by a firm press of the shoulder, mumbling, “Stop it, it’s too sensitive.” As soon as Ogata let him slip out of his mouth he didn’t know why he’d felt the need. He rested his forehead on Sugimoto’s thigh for a moment, taking in breath after heavy breath, trying to restore his heart rate before he had to look Sugimoto in the eye.

Sugimoto’s other hand hadn’t left the side of Ogata’s head. When Ogata finally lifted his eyes, Sugimoto kept staring at him, still lying back on the ground with a stupid look on his face. “What do you want? Have you ever... there’s got to be something you want to do.”

Moving out from between Sugimoto’s legs to kneel on the grass next to him, Ogata crept upwards until their chests were level. Sugimoto didn’t move away, and when Ogata picked up one of Sugimoto’s wrists and brought it up to his neck, Sugimoto neither pressed down nor pulled back. “Why don’t you choke me like you hate me? Like you really want to kill me.”

It was an idle thought. He wanted to know what Sugimoto would do—what kind of names Sugimoto would call him, and what look would be on his face. For a moment, Sugimoto gave him nothing but a creased brow. He was silent, almost thoughtful. Languid with satisfaction. Ogata worked his teeth into the inside of his cheek, just on the inside of painful, waiting.

“Why?”

Feigned confusion wasn’t very convincing from someone who had pulled Ogata round by the collar only days earlier. “I think you’d like it—wouldn’t you? Seeing me half dead. You could fuck me like that, while I flop around.”

A shadow passed over Sugimoto’s face, yet he was looking at Ogata more intently than before. “Why would I want to do that?”

Ogata could feel his own vocal cords vibrate against Sugimoto’s palm. “I want it. Don’t say no because you’re scared of hurting me. I don’t care about that.”

“I know you don’t. That’s what I don’t like.”

Sugimoto didn’t constrict his grip, just let his hand linger there while he looked at Ogata like he was waiting for some kind of a sign. Ogata could give him struggle, if that was what Sugimoto needed to get on with it—he considered jabbing the points of his fingers up into Sugimoto’s eyes to watch him wince and see what kind of hard lesson he’d get in return, but he let the thought simmer.

Ogata didn’t feel the usual curiosity that would spur him to push things along quicker. Something in Sugimoto’s bearing told him to bide his time. There had been others before who had tried to give him what he’d paid for, men much bigger than Sugimoto, though he’d never found any who didn’t balk when they figured out how much he liked to take it, or how much more he could handle than they could give. With Sugimoto—Ogata read his decision in his face before he even moved. A twitch in his fingers, maybe, or the brushfire light in his eyes. He pushed Ogata down onto his back, still not choking him, just resting his left hand on his throat like a tease. He rolled over to straddle Ogata’s lower thighs, his free hand planted on the ground by Ogata’s head, and raked Ogata’s body over, his face heated. “Come on, jerk off. You’ve already got wood. Show me. I want to see.”

Ogata could’ve refused just for the sake of it, to see if Sugimoto’s patience would run out, but he was hard, and when he reached down Sugimoto, true to his nature, at last tightened his grip.

Sugimoto’s hold cut off some, but not all of his air; not enough to induce unconsciousness, but enough to keep him from thinking clearly. Ogata unfastened his trousers, slowly, waiting to see what it would take to get Sugimoto to crack and give it to him in earnest. “Are you going to make me get myself off? I know you don’t have much experience, but I thought you’d picked up a few things.”

“Watch your mouth.” Sugimoto’s eyes pressed into Ogata just as heavily as the hand around his throat. He wasn’t making any indications he was going to do anything but watch, so Ogata tipped his head back and began lazily stroking himself. Sugimoto kept to his word: when Ogata started jerking off, he responded with real force.

When Sugimoto’s hand pushed up past the hem of his cuff the patchwork of scars on his forearm became visible, like erosion marks on the sea-rocks, just as permanent a proof of the violence of nature. Ogata didn't know how much time had passed since they'd first laid down. The moon had risen and its pale light was all Ogata could see by. The feeling ebbed and flowed—Sugimoto’s grip wound tighter and then released, not at a steady pace but intermittent, so Ogata couldn’t steel himself for it. Stones dug into his back from the ground below.

It felt like the half-dead hours in the middle of the night. In the hush of the darkened forest, the high-pitched sounds that involuntarily escaped Ogata’s windpipe were deafening. Dizziness settled in. His extremities seemed further away than usual, numb. Ogata felt as enclosed by Sugimoto’s body heat as if he were a little boy again and falling asleep in front of the hearth. Sugimoto was close in on him on all sides, his unforgiving weight bearing down around him, but the only points of skin-on-skin contact were at Sugimoto’s hands. He held himself upright by the strength of his thighs so as not to put his whole body weight on Ogata’s windpipe. If the exertion was hard on him, he didn’t show it. Sugimoto was hardly the first man to look at him like he wanted to chew on his bones, but the way he watched Ogata stroke himself was unfamiliar. Sugimoto was hardly blinking, as if he couldn’t afford to relent his attention for a moment. Like Ogata was a real threat, even like this. Sugimoto looked as rapt as he did hungry.

Sugimoto loosened his hold just long enough for Ogata to heave in a breath through his burning throat. It had taken enough punishment already that night, and was now taking worse. Ogata's body was softened and warm, like clay worked over between a potter's hands. When Ogata spoke, it was ragged, and he could see his own breath condense in the air. “Admit it, Sugimoto. You lied the first time, right? I’m the only one you’ve ever had.”

Ogata meant it as a provocation, but Sugimoto didn’t look angry so much as embarrassed. He gave Ogata’s cheek two crisp, sweet slaps and replied, “Fine, alright, you wanna hear me say it? You’re the only one.”

As if trying to prove a point, Sugimoto pushed Ogata’s hand away and replaced it with his own. The angle of his wrist was as loose and easy as his grip was tight. He’d learned his way around Ogata’s dick pretty quickly for having started out a virgin. A killer famous across the whole Manchurian front, and Ogata was the only one who knew Sugimoto the Immortal liked to give eager little handjobs and moaned high-pitched and soft when he came.

Sugimoto stripped his cock, hard, while his other hand tightened around Ogata’s neck. Ogata let his eyes drift closed; with them open he felt like Sugimoto was flaying him alive, seeing inside of him. He wondered how long it would take for Sugimoto to get it up again; he wanted to push Sugimoto back so he laid on the ground and Ogata could ride him until they both fell apart. Until Sugimoto had bruised his guts, and there was nothing left of him Sugimoto hadn’t left with a mark.

Ogata opened his eyes back up to find them blurry. On instinct, he blinked frantically, wetly, trying to clear his vision, and a series of fat tears rolled down his cheeks. A physiological reaction. It was so foreign a feeling it took him a moment to identify that he was crying. The more aware of it he became the more he hated it and wanted it to stop, but the quicker his breathing hitched the faster they fell. He wanted to shove Sugimoto away; at the same time, if Sugimoto stopped looking at him or touching him for even a second he might cease to exist.

If they kept this up, made a habit of it, would he be able to train his body out of it? Would he learn how to take it without any show of effort, of weakness? He thought about kneeling behind the army office back home a few days after he put his name on the volunteer rolls, gagging on the recruitment officer’s dick, not willing to admit defeat or let his inexperience show. He’d wanted to be good at it, wanted the balding little man to go back to his wife after Ogata shipped out to basic training and think about how much better Ogata had been. He thought about the nights that were to come, now that there was nothing keeping them from having this all the time: what Sugimoto would do to him, what he would do to Sugimoto. The thrill of bedding down in each other’s jaws.

“Should I stop?” Sugimoto asked gruffly. His fingertips were petting at Ogata’s neck, over his adam’s apple and the ridges of his throat, caressing the bruises that were no doubt already forming. Sugimoto’s other hand dragged along his cock, still, and the tightening in Ogata’s abdomen had only barely abated with the loss of constriction around his neck. Ogata’s mouth had fallen open at some point; he sucked in shallow gasps. Both of his hands clutched at Sugimoto’s forearms, though not to pull him away, only clutching him closer. Ogata wondered if Sugimoto would be disappointed if he came like this, or if it was what he wanted and so Ogata should try to hold out to spite him. It was then he remembered that Sugimoto had asked him a question.

“Again.”

Sugimoto, mouth hanging slightly ajar, gave him what he wanted.

Ringing in his ears. Sugimoto’s hand on his throat, so fucking tight it could crush him, and then loose again, rubbing at his skin like he was trying to undo the damage he himself had caused. He kept going back to the bruises, rubbing the pads of his thumbs over the marks they had left. Slow movement of his palm over the head of Ogata’s dick. All of Sugimoto’s impressive teeth gleaming white and pointed in the darkness. The inside of Ogata’s mind a tug-of-war between survival instincts to fight Sugimoto off and the aching desire to succumb and float. Nothing existed but the pressure of Sugimoto’s hands around him. He was erased and blissfully empty of anything—empty and so full he might burst, but held. Fastened to the earth, even if as nothing more than a nameless thing that Sugimoto could touch.

He thought about nothing until he spent in Sugimoto’s palm.

While he lay there, Sugimoto tucked Ogata’s shirt back in. The clouds had lifted. Above them, the night was starry. Bright enough Ogata could’ve shot, had he needed to. The air was already coming down with an evening chill, sharper up there than it was below in Asahikawa proper, and when Sugimoto lay down himself, pressed up to Ogata’s side, Ogata slid his own hands beneath the cotton of Sugimoto’s shirt and up his belly to warm them. They were still numb from lack of airflow, but wouldn’t stay that way for long. Sugimoto’s stomach muscles shifted from the coldness of Ogata’s hands. His mouth was set in a funny little line, and he watched Ogata through sharp but drowsy eyes.

Eventually Sugimoto tugged Ogata up against his body so his back rested along Sugimoto’s chest. Their legs slotted together as they curled inwards on themselves like small children. As unconsciousness washed over him, Ogata was aware of the fingernails of one of Sugimoto’s hands scratching across his prickly scalp, overdue for a touch-up shave it would never get.

-

He sat across from Tsurumi in the smoking lounge of the Asahikawa Officer’s Club. It was a room Ogata had only ever glimpsed through a crack in the door while running some errand or other on Tsurumi’s command, but it was unmistakable. The tables around them bore half-full bottles of sake and glasses of imported whiskey and wine. Cigarette butts and cigars smouldered in ashtrays and the hands of the faceless men around them, all engrossed in their own conversations, though all they sounded like to Ogata’s ears were dull murmurs. For all anyone was paying attention to them, they could be the only people in the room.

Tsurumi faced him like an equal and spoke like they were already in the middle of a conversation. “The most important thing to do is to keep an eye on Hijikata Toshizou.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You remember your history lessons, don’t you?”

Ogata tried to reply but found he couldn’t speak; his mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls. Tsurumi’s smile widened so that Ogata could see all of his teeth. “You’ve always been a good pupil.”

Ogata glanced outside the window and saw not the Asahikawa street scene he expected but the woods, so closely pressed in around them that the branches of the trees were bent and gnarled against the glass pane. He looked back across the table and nearly flinched. Tsurumi was gone. In his place was Yuusaku, eyes open and glassy while his head dripped blood. It flowed slowly, like tar. Ogata tried to get up, but his muscles wouldn’t respond. Yuusaku smiled, too, with his mouth closed, and then said, “Better not oversleep. The woods aren’t safe, even for a wildcat like you.”

His eyes flew open. It was still the middle of the night; there wasn’t so much as a hint of sunlight creeping across the sky above. The stars winked through the lattice of branches and thin wisps of cloud. He felt a slight layer of dew forming on his clothes and skin.

Behind Ogata, Sugimoto was a wall of warmth. His breath condensed on the back of Ogata’s neck. They were surrounded by coldness and damp and the smell of pine sap.

Sugimoto stirred and jerked in his sleep, restless, plagued by nightmares. He’d always been like that, even in the barracks, before they sailed for the front in the first place. Ogata had noticed it then and taken it as a sign of weakness—Ogata had never been bothered by dreams. Most of the time he didn’t have any. He slept until he woke, and nothing could be said of the time in between. It was only recently he’d started to sweat through visions himself: Yuusaku, mostly, some nights mangled and suffering, some whole and terribly serene, still others skeletal and ravenous, out for blood.

Sugimoto clung to him like a drowning man to a raft. Stifled little whimpers crept out of his throat to land on Ogata’s neck. Dog-in-pain sounds. The cold tip of his nose pressed against the skin just below Ogata’s hairline. One of Sugimoto’s hands had crept beneath Ogata’s jacket and shirt to rest against his stomach, leeching off his warmth like Ogata had earlier. Sugimoto’s fingernails dug into Ogata’s skin hard enough to leave marks. Normally Ogata would’ve liked that, but right now it was keeping him from falling back asleep.

It took him too long to fall back under. They had all slept in the snow at Port Arthur, but instead of the omnipresent noise of an entrenchment during siege, they were now surrounded by silence. It crawled under his skin. As he was finally beginning to slip off, he realized that when Yuusaku had spoken to him in the dream, it was Sugimoto’s voice that had come out.

A few hours later, the morning dawned cloudy and humid. He was woken for good by the feeling of fat droplets of spring rain falling on his face. Ogata opened his eyes, blinked back into consciousness, and took inventory of his body; twisting his neck even a little made him wince. His thighs and calves ached from the long hours spent moving crates and even longer hours fleeing through the underbrush. His throat ached on the inside from the force of desperate breaths and on the outside from the bruises covering the flesh.

Sugimoto, still wrapped around him, started to stir. Slowly, cautiously, as not to wake him further, Ogata reached into his breast pocket and withdrew the folded-up floor plan to his father’s house. Though he’d poured over it well enough to know it off of the top of his head, if he had to, he’d rather not lose it to something as small as the changeable Hokkaido weather.

Before he could tuck it into one of the leather pouches at his waist, Sugimoto’s voice rumbled against the back of his neck, “What is that?”

Ogata's fingers closed on the folded paper reflexively. Hopefully Sugimoto was too dense to take notice of the gesture. “Something I don't want to get wet.”

Sugimoto’s voice was still rough with sleep, but Ogata didn’t think that was the only reason he sounded a shade menacing when he replied, “Oh, so you want to keep secrets now?”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“That's not an answer.”

Sugimoto's fingers curled next to Ogata's hip. For a moment, Ogata thought he was about to make a move for the map. If Sugimoto tried to overpower him there wasn't much Ogata could do about it, but maybe he could roll away and get him in the gut with an elbow—though, even if Sugimoto got a hold of it, he might not be able to see the floor plan for what it was. It weren't as if Tsurumi had labelled it Hanazawa's estate, after all. But still, if Sugimoto was already suspicious—

Sugimoto curled his hand in on itself and then peeled himself off from Ogata's back to be replaced with cool, damp air. He withdrew his hands from around Ogata’s waist and rolled away from him before getting to his feet.

“I'm going to look around for water.”

Ogata watched him go. His hand strayed to the butt of his rifle, instinctively, where it lay on the ground by his head. He sat up and drew it into his lap, but didn’t raise it. A prickle ran down the back of his neck a half-second before Sugimoto turned back to pierce him with a long glance over his shoulder. Shoot him now, went part of his mind, you can’t miss. The morning light glinted in Sugimoto’s eyes. Ogata’s index finger slid inside the trigger guard.

When Sugimoto turned away from Ogata and continued onward into the trees, Ogata let him go.