He’d hoped water would be hard to find; he wanted a walk to clear his head, to put some distance between himself and what he’d left behind. Luck wasn’t on his side. though, and in an unwanted blessing it wasn’t long before Sugimoto came across a frigid and slow-moving stream a little higher up in the hills. It tasted sweet, better than anything they had to drink down at the garrison; it tasted like it ought to be shared. Ogata wasn't with him, though, and Sugimoto didn't know him to ever enjoy simple pleasures, so he lingered for a moment at the stream’s edge, hands on his hips, and stared into the patterns of rushing water as if they could show him just how deep of trouble he'd gotten himself into.

Was this it, then: how it felt to wake up a free man—not to have any places to be or superiors to report to that would distract him from the hovering dread?

They’d gotten out; that was the hard part, the part where they’d needed each other to pull it off. Now, there was nothing stopping either of them from going it alone. Even so, Sugimoto wasn’t sure if he wanted to. Ogata seemed to know a lot more than he did about the gold plan, and he suspected there were more than a few catches Ogata hadn’t yet seen fit to warn him of. Sugimoto barely knew where they were going. To Otaru, yeah—simple on paper, but he hadn't been in the 7th long enough to have a good sense of Hokkaido’s terrain, let alone how they were supposed to go about finding the convicts. Who knew how much of what Ogata had already told him about the plan to come was even true, anyhow. Maybe Tsurumi hadn’t confided in him anything worth knowing about the gold—though the interest Tsurumi had always seemed to take in Ogata suggested otherwise.

He sank into a crouch and let the current play over his hand. It only hurt for the first few minutes before the flesh numbed. They were a few months away yet from the first swim of the year, back home. He’d heard, on the way up from Tokyo, that Asahikawa was the coldest city in Japan, but even Tokyo would be too cold for swimming this time of year. When it warmed up, later in the spring, the kids of his hometown would run along the bank and push each other in. He was the first of the neighborhood boys to brave it, most years, when everyone else was still cowed by the temperature.

The Sugimotos never had any problems having children, did they? A big lot of them, all sturdy troublemakers. Nice kids, though. Not going to have to worry about growing old without being taken care of, not them—

They hadn’t ever slept together, just slept, until the night before. Funny, how little time it took to get used to something like that.

Sugimoto half-expected Ogata to be gone when he came back. Maybe he was hoping for it, wanting to be kept from having to shake the truth out of him.

When he did make his way back to the clearing they’d slept in, the pit of Sugimoto’s stomach iced over. Ogata was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t glad to be proven right. Ogata had left, and now he was alone. That made some things simpler and others much more complicated.

He spent a few long seconds letting the skin on the back of his neck prickle and cracking his knuckles, before he jerked at the sound of a familiar voice: “That was quick.”

Sugimoto whipped his head around and blinked twice before looking up. Amidst overhead foliage in the trees dangled the ends of a pair of gaitered army boots.

“What the hell are you doing up there?”

“You can see most of the way across the ridge from up here.” Ogata’s feet vanished into the leaves and branches for a few seconds and then reappeared, followed by his calves and thighs and the rest, as he made his methodical way down the branches, binoculars hanging around his neck.

Sugimoto’s heart skipped a little in his chest at the sight of him. Dismay and excitement, both. What was a little longer, to keep going on with his head buried in the snow? It wasn’t as though he’d only started now.

Back to the water: they didn’t have time to wash their clothes, because it was still too risky to start a fire and the light rain hadn’t stopped coming down around them. A day of walking soaking wet was more likely to cause them trouble than having to put up with uniforms that were a bit sweaty and dusty from the day before but otherwise serviceable. During the war, they’d worn them until they were falling apart at the seams. They could, however, fill their canteens with water and then wash themselves in the slight pool where the stream was deepest. It was snow and glacial melt too cold to stay submerged in for long, but who knew how long it would be before they would get another chance to bathe.

They’d seen each other naked before, of course, but never when they were completely alone. In the humdrum weeks at Mukden, after the battle, the whole hundred-odd men of the regiment who weren’t holed up in medical tents had spent an afternoon fishing in a creek not far from their makeshift billets in the city. After getting bored of angling for the scanty river fish, they’d washed their ruined uniforms and swam. That water hadn’t been warm, either, seeing as it was Manchuria in March, but they were always cold back then; they got inured to it, as much as one could. Crowded together like they were then, you could get away with a fair bit; he hadn’t bothered trying to stop himself from stealing sideways glances at the droplets of water running down Ogata’s chest, or observing the way the temperature turned his already pale skin almost grey-blue in the harsh sunlight of early spring.

The novelty of not having to pretend not to stare hadn’t yet worn off. Now, Ogata was turned away from him—he was still edgy, as though not letting Sugimoto get a good look at his face would keep his secrets safe. It was a little kid's logic, like he thought his eyes really could reveal the contents of whatever passed for his soul. Sugimoto watched him, openly, as Ogata bent down to scrub at his legs—despite deposits of softness around his stomach and hips, the muscles were close enough to the skin to be seen as they shifted with movement, running through his back and down his thighs, taut, pale, and unscarred—and his mind performed a dispassionate calculus of how easy Ogata would be to kill. With his bare hands like this, no weapon, it would be a sharp twist of the neck. Sugimoto had done it before to other men: crush his windpipe, break his spine, over and done with. As if feeling the weight of Sugimoto’s thoughts, Ogata straightened up, and Sugimoto saw last night’s bruising around his neck, a ring of mottled tones of purple and brown. A chill ran through him, like a winter draught in an empty house.

Ogata glanced back at him, then; not so frightened of a met gaze after all. He looked over his shoulder at Sugimoto with capricious eyes, like he was enjoying himself watching a piece of gutted vermin squirm to the last. When he remembered the things he’d said and done after the sun had fallen, Sugimoto felt something between guilt and embarrassment, but Ogata didn’t seem any worse for wear. He did massage his throat when Sugimoto looked his way, but the look in his eye was sly, so Sugimoto didn’t pay the bruises much mind. A poor close-quarters fighter or no, Ogata was sturdy. He could take what Sugimoto doled out.

He’d looked almost pretty like that, slapped around and satisfied. Sugimoto had never in his life wanted so badly both to hurt someone and to nurse them well afterwards. How far could Sugimoto have taken it? Would Ogata have kept it up the further it went, with all his malice and restlessness melting away the closer Sugimoto dragged him to real danger, the kind of violence they couldn’t take back, or would his animal instincts have kicked in after a point?

He couldn’t stop himself from hooking an arm around Ogata’s ribcage and pressing them together front-to-back, like they had been while they slept. They wasted some time like that, predictably. He sucked bitemarks into Ogata’s shoulder and earlobe while he rubbed against his ass, frotting between his cheeks urgently until he spilled across his lower back. Ogata’s hand reached back around to grasp at Sugimoto’s dick, but Sugimoto pulled away from him, crouched down, and turned Ogata around with hands on his thighs. Sugimoto’s face was hot, but he jerked Ogata off furiously for as long as it took for Ogata to come over his lips and lower jaw—not long at all. When he wiped himself off with the back of his hand, Sugimoto couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from lifting.

It had been stupid any of the times they’d fucked; that wasn’t new. There had never been a time when Sugimoto could have thought things through with a cool head and decided that letting Ogata get in close was the best plan of action; there were only ever counterarguments. Nevermind that they were always the wrong ones. Early on, he’d worried that Ogata would talk about Sugimoto to the other soldiers the way they all talked about Ogata behind his back. If that had happened, no one said as much to Sugimoto, so he didn’t really care. Later, he’d wondered if Ogata was in it for some other reason besides the fucking, if he was only doing it to get something out of him. That might not have been completely wrong, but even though there was still too much about Ogata that Sugimoto didn’t know, it seemed unlikely that Ogata was faking his interest, whatever he’d reported back about him at one time or another to Tsurumi. Now Sugimoto knew he shouldn’t go for it because every time Ogata was out of sight, all Sugimoto could think about was Hanazawa—on the battlefield, in the hospital bed, hobbling out of the garrison.

The problem was that every time Ogata was in front of him, the carnivorous part of his mind took over. Touch him, it said, he’ll let you. He wants it too. When he’d dreamed of being with Umeko, he’d thought of the way her hand would feel between his own palms, of the softness of her cheek, of what it would be like to lay his head on her chest in the dark and hear her heart beating. If his thoughts strayed from chasteness, they were a warm and confusing blur in his head. He wanted to hold her, to feel her, to make her smile or gasp. For them to belong to each other, in every way. It had never been like this, where he couldn’t pass Ogata by without wanting to pull off his clothes and crush him against the nearest flat surface. Sometimes when he let his mind wander, he’d imagine pushing into Ogata so hard Ogata just splintered into pieces.

He was waiting for what felt like the right time, but Sugimoto was beginning to suspect that the question—naked as a newborn: what happened to your brother, and how much should I hate you for it?—would never slide into the light of its own accord. It would need to be forced out, insistently, loudly, and quite likely with blood.

All the same, they were out of the water and dressed well before high noon.

-

From above the ridge, the whole valley was visible. The forests and farmlands were cut through with taut threads of road, and Asahikawa sat dark and ugly as a bruise in the hollow of it. The long, squat structures of army and industry were dotted through with dwellings large and small, though from a distance they all looked insignificant.

Sugimoto remembered hearing, just after his enlistment, about the troop of soldiers who had been put to traversing the Hakkoda mountains in January. Two hundred men slowly freezing in peacetime; it took weeks to find the bodies. Give him a quick death, when it finally came for him; a bayonet to the throat, or a bullet to the brain. He felt a flicker of gratitude that it was well into late spring, but still hoped they would spend no more time than necessary in the woods.

Ogata paused near Sugimoto’s elbow. “We should keep moving.”

“Doesn’t look like there’s a way down the crag from here.”

“We’ll skirt the edge of it. We should continue the way we’re headed until we reach the river. The riverbank will take us into town so we don’t have to follow the road.” Ogata drew his cloak more tightly around himself.

Along the way, they passed broken twigs and growths of underbrush that looked crushed to Sugimoto’s eye, though he wasn’t used to the woods. It was impossible to tell if they were left by themselves the previous day, when they had moved with more haste than caution, by bad weather, or by something else.

After a long stretch of silence, Ogata muttered, “I think we’re being followed.”

Sugimoto looked at him sidelong. “What did you see?”

“Nothing, but I’ve done it myself enough to have a sense for when I’m being tracked.” Sugimoto hadn’t noticed anything, but the air did have a bad cast to it. There wasn’t anything as obvious as the head-and-shoulders silhouette of a human being through the trees that he could point to, just a ticklish feeling on the back of his neck, like the run-and-hide! instinct he got in the trenches before the first claps of incoming shells could be heard.

They were far enough out now that any men Tsurumi sent after them would have a hard time returning to the regiment, since they were on the move west. Maybe it was a creature of the forest: the spirit of one of the long-dead wolves, here to haunt them. More likely, the product of light, weak sleep, bad dreams, and little trust in one another.

“You sound excited about it,” he replied, and Ogata sent him a slanted look out of the corners of his eyes.

Pursuers or no, they continued making their way down the hill the same way they had before. With every step they took closer to the valley, the more pressing Sugimoto’s fight-or-flight feeling became. He wasn’t afraid of Tsurumi, or afraid of death, but he only remained alive because of that animal part of him that knew when to run and when to stand his ground. Maybe now they’d just be running all of the time, and he ought to get used to it.

He might have felt more reluctance about deserting if he had any family left to shame, but as it was, the other Sugimotos would at least be spared having to keep face under the weight of village gossip about their good-for-nothing coward son. He had nothing to lose—nothing that was really his, anyway. Even the other kids he grew up with might not ever learn that he ran. Who knew whether Tsurumi would ever report their desertions to Central Command. For all his former schoolhouse classmates knew, Sugimoto could vanish from their lives with as much finality as if he’d really died, whether of consumption with his parents and siblings or from some slow-bleeding wound on Manchurian shores. He didn’t mind much if he never went back there. It wasn’t much to miss. When all this was done, he would pay Umeko a visit like a thief in the night to deliver her share of the gold. If he did it properly, she wouldn’t need to see him at all.

After that, his mind stalled. Ogata was right when he’d said, back at Asahikawa, that after deserting there wasn’t much they could do with their lives. Sugimoto couldn’t think past it; it was like a pane of glass too dark to see through. What drove Ogata—spite, ambition, or necessity? Sugimoto couldn’t imagine him wealthy or sedentary. If Sugimoto knew him at all, Ogata was a roaming predator more interested in the hunt than the carcass left behind.

If Sugimoto made one last trip back to Kanto to settle his debt, would Ogata come with him? An instinctual warning, as sudden as the kick of a tapped knee, coursed through him at the thought: Ogata must be kept away from Umeko. It was good that Sugimoto hadn’t even told Ogata her name.

At the same time, he wondered if he could persuade Ogata to take him where he’d come from. Knowing it was somewhere in Ibaraki didn’t give Sugimoto any better a picture of the kind of place that could have produced such a person, or the kind of family. General Hanazawa’s mistress—would she be waiting for them by the door, looking out at the road for her son to come home? He tried to dream up her face by taking a sidelong glance at Ogata and scrubbing away everything of Second Lieutenant Hanazawa in his features. He was left with pale skin, a delicate nose, and a quietly heavy presence. Not much to go off of, but Sugimoto was sure she was a beautiful woman. It made his chest hurt to imagine.

He broke the silence: “So we get there, and then what?”

Ogata shot him a pitying look. “I told you already. I need to visit Asahikawa proper before we head for Otaru. It’ll take a few hours at most. You don’t even need to come; you can go pawn some gear and see if you can get us some more food and ammunition.”

“What is there back in Asahikawa you couldn’t take care of before we left?”

“I have a contact in town I want to meet before we get too far away. He knows things about the gold.”

“A contact? Who the hell is your contact?” He thought back to that morning, when he’d caught Ogata handling a piece of paper when he thought Sugimoto was asleep. Sugimoto hadn’t taken a good look at it before Ogata’d gotten wise and hid it away. Another man, and Sugimoto wouldn’t have thought much of it, but he would bet a lot Ogata wasn’t pouring over letters from a girl back home. Sugimoto had toyed with ripping it out of his hand, but it was the early morning and he’d still felt drowsy and charitable from the warmth of Ogata’s back against his chest, despite the bad dreams that had plagued him in the night. If he had tore it from him, he would’ve crossed a line that couldn’t be retreated back over. Perhaps it was time for that, but he’d let it go. “Why haven’t you mentioned this before?”

“I told you. The less information you know, the safer we’ll both be.”

“I’m risking a lot to stick this out with you. I won’t keep it up if you don’t start showing me some respect.” Thoughts slid through his mind on tracks, like railcars; he shifted tack, shooting Ogata a glance out of the corner of his eye as his feet kept winding their way along the narrow path down the ridge. “Remind me, again, what’s going to happen when we start to track down the convicts?”

“Well, we’ll have to use the first few we find for information. Some of them must know something about how to crack the code, or be able to lead us to the others.”

He sounded very relaxed about torturing dangerous criminals. Did he really think it would be that easy, or was he just downplaying his own uncertainty? His tone struck Sugimoto as oddly and clumsily placating: a token of slantways contrition, offered like the body of a small animal left on a doorstep, and just as disconcerting a gift.

“Tsurumi told you all this?”

“Most of it. Other things from others, here and there. Kikuta used to like to talk, back before Tsurumi sent him away. Lot of use it did him.”

Sugimoto nodded, his mind circling around Ogata’s words in sluggish laps. He licked his bottom lip, hesitating, but wasn’t able to stifle his curiosity. “How old were you when Tsurumi…”

The corner of Ogata’s mouth lifted. “When Tsurumi what? Spit it out.” He looked inordinately pleased that Sugimoto was asking him, enough to make Sugimoto’s stomach churn.

“When he started telling you things he didn’t give out over the mess hall.”

Ogata kept his eyes fixed ahead, but his lips were pursed with satisfaction. “Hard to say. I guess not long after I enlisted.”

It was really too bad that leaving meant he’d probably never get to kill Tsurumi, but who knew what the future held. There was still time. “Did you…” Sugimoto rolled his next words around in his head while he watched the side of Ogata’s face. Did you enjoy it? Did you care about him, or at least care what he thought of you?

“You look like you’ve given it some thought. Do you like thinking about it, or does it bother you?”

It was easy to imagine him younger and a bit less hardened and not willing to hide his gloating over being, for once, in some way chosen, even though there was no way it would’ve won him any good will. Sugimoto remembered hearing it passed around as a joke, before the war: Haven’t you heard? The child of a wildcat is a wildcat, too. It had bothered him at the time. Remembering it now, he felt a surge of hatred for the whole lot of them. Let Tsurumi eat them alive.

There wasn’t anyone in the whole rotten regiment he would’ve picked first. Not even Hanazawa. There it was—something he couldn’t speak out loud, to Ogata least of all. Sugimoto wished he hadn’t even thought it. Now he had to go around knowing it about himself, and it wasn’t the kind of knowledge he needed. That kind of knowledge only made the hard things harder.

Sugimoto stared for a few more seconds, then blinked and looked away. “I just don’t know how much I should trust what he’s told you.”

That made Ogata sour. He turned his head away, and stepped over the fallen log in front of him with more petulance than grace. “Let’s say I know him well enough to figure out when he’s lying.”

Ogata wasn’t half as clever as he thought he was. Sugimoto didn’t mind that; he was easier to handle that way. It did make him dangerous, though. He wasn’t sensible enough to be trusted to hold to his patterns.

“Did Tsurumi really tell you anything? Maybe you won’t give anything up because you don’t know anything more than I do. Maybe I would’ve been better off ratting you out.”

“What?” Ogata didn’t sound playful anymore. He had enough common sense to tell when he was in trouble, at least.

“Do you think you’re the only one Tsurumi ever talked to?”

“Who, you? Did he tell you how amazing you are, Sugimoto, and how much he wants to see you rise up to serve by his side? You’re not the only one. You’re not special.”

“I don’t mean about me. He said some really interesting things about you before we left.”

Ogata’s shoulders were set, a little; he was on edge. “Come out with it, then. Tell me.”

He felt electric, full of some sort of cold charge that needed a way out. He felt like touching kindling to a flame just to watch it go up. Every step he took down the slope, his rifle beat a familiar rhythm against his spine. The path had narrowed, too close to walk side-by-side, so Ogata took the lead, walking ahead of him with his back turned, vulnerable. Across Ogata’s back rested his gun: field stripped every night, its wood was notched from heavy wear but spotless. Was this the same gun that—a row of goosebumps ran up Sugimoto’s forearm, under his sleeve. “Do you know why I joined the army? My family all caught tuberculosis. I was the only one who didn’t get sick.”

Ogata cast a suspicious glance behind him. “Why did you lie to me?”

Sugimoto stopped walking and lashed out a hand to clutch Ogata by the shoulder, holding him in place. Ogata stilled, but didn’t turn around. Sugimoto stared at the back of his neck like he was trying to burn a hole there. “What? I never lied about that. Where’d you get that idea?”

Ogata shifted around to face him and shook off Sugimoto’s hand before he took a few slow steps backwards. He had a hand on his sling strap, the fingers curled around the leather’s edge but not tightened—yet. It was hard for Sugimoto to take his eyes away from Ogata’s hand, though he’d seen it many times before; it was a tic Ogata had, to grip the thing for comfort the same way some people crossed their arms over their chests. After a few moments, Sugimoto dragged his gaze back up to Ogata’s face, where he was being watched in return, and Ogata’s lip curled. “Don’t play dumb. You said you burned your family alive.”

“I said I burned them. They were already dead.” Sugimoto’s blood felt thick inside his veins, like the slurry of partly-melted snow. “I hadn’t killed anyone before the war.”

Ogata blinked slowly, his expression all familiar condescension. “Well, you’ve killed more than enough now. Spare me the virgin routine.”

“What about you, then. Had you?”

Ogata’s mouth twisted, amused. “Did Tsurumi tell you I had? It’s the job of an intelligence officer to make up stories.”

“Don’t waste my time. Answer.” Nagging at him, something between thought and memory: how hard Ogata was to threaten when he liked to be hurt. It wasn't a problem Sugimoto saw a way out of, not when Ogata was too volatile to be reasoned with when he'd been backed into a corner. It was tricky, too, when Sugimoto never liked Ogata more than when he was breathless, pink-cheeked and splotchy, smarting, thrilled, and greedy, blinking slow and looking about ready to lay his cheek on down in Sugimoto's palm. Ogata wasn't the kind to be kept, but every now and then Sugimoto would push him far enough he could almost trick himself into believing it, for as long as the warm aftermath lasted.

“What if I had? Would you turn me in so I could rot with Noppera-Bou in prison—you, of all people? Would it make you feel better about all the lives you’ve taken?”

“What about your brother?”

“Yuusaku?” His nostrils flared. “What does he have to do with anything?”

“What happened to him?” His thoughts and movements felt slow, like he was wading through mud and weighed down by the ballast of everything he probably shouldn’t have said, everything he had yet to say, and a few things that were too tender and confusing to put words to, even inside his own head.

“You saw what happened to him, didn’t you? You were there. You got a promotion out of it.”

“It was a hell of a shot. Could have come from anywhere. I don’t know where you were.”

Ogata’s hand on his sling strap had tightened. Sugimoto brought it up in the first place because he wanted to get somewhere, hadn’t he? Only problem was, he still didn’t know where they were going, but it was too late to stop.

“What, did Tsurumi tell you I tried to kill him? That would be convenient for him, wouldn’t it. If it were true.”

“Can you look me in the face and say you didn’t do it?”

He tilted his head to look Sugimoto in the eye. “I didn’t shoot him. Why would I?”

Sugimoto blinked a few times, his brows furrowed deeper. Ogata’s expression flickered with something akin to hope before Sugimoto‘s lip curled. “You’re a bad liar. I thought Tsurumi would’ve at least taught you that much.”

Ogata tipped his chin back, keeping fixed eye contact. His face was empty of remorse, or shame; empty of anything at all. “Why does it matter? He’s alive, and hopefully neither of us will ever see him again. And if I hadn’t done it, Tsurumi would’ve arranged for something worse.”

“Bullshit.”

“He's better off to Tsurumi dead. Tsurumi asked me to do it, once, before he changed his mind, and then he wanted me to finish the job.”

“You're full of it.”

They reached for their rifles at the same time, holding them loosely but readied, not aimed anywhere in particular but pointed in the other’s direction; somewhere between a threat and an action. Ogata’s eyes were gleaming like the sparks let off by a fire grown out of control. “Go ask him, then, and see what he says to try and change your mind. He'd feed you to wild animals if he thought it'd get him closer to the gold.”

“You want to try it? You think you can be the one that’ll kill Sugimoto the Immortal?”

“Who else?” Ogata braced the rifle against his shoulder in a stance Sugimoto had seen hundreds of times. Not just playing around, then. Fine. If Ogata shot him in the head or the heart, would there be a moment in between the shot and the pain, where Sugimoto didn’t yet feel the impact? For all he knew, he was about to be shot at any second. He didn’t dread it, exactly. Sure felt like they’d started to draw blood already; might as well make it true. It would be easier to respond to than this, where it felt like neither of them were speaking the same language. He wanted to thrash Ogata and be done with it, as though that would fix things in a simple equation of pain weathered and wounds received until Ogata had paid off his debt.

Sugimoto ran his tongue along his bottom lip and took one step closer to Ogata and then another, twigs crunching softly underfoot. “Hurry up and do it, then. But if you can’t do the job on the first try, you’re never going to get another chance. You son of a bitch, come on. It’s the only thing you’re good at. Stop making me wait.” He crooked his neck to the side. “Unless you’re holding off because you know you can’t do it. He’s still alive, isn’t he? What makes you think you could make it count for me?”

Ogata was dogshit in a hand-to-hand fight, but with the length of a rifle barrel between them he was more than a fair opponent. He’d already looked scornful, but now his eyes frosted over. So this was what it took to get him spitting mad. Before Ogata could reply Sugimoto went on: “See, what I don’t get is why you just didn’t let things lie. You were already planning to leave by then. You told me about the gold on the train, before we even got to Mukden. If you hated him so much, all you had to do was bide your time a little longer, and then you’d never have to see him again.”

“Why do you care, Sugimoto? I don’t understand what it has to do with you at all. Don’t tell me you fell for his terrible speeches and noble bloodline like all the others.”

“He’s your brother.”

“Our father doesn’t think so. Why should I?”

Sugimoto’s frown deepened, impossibly, further. “I don’t give a shit about him. Your brother—he came to me and asked me how he could become your friend, did you know that? And then he tried to protect you even after you—tried to kill him, you stupid asshole. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Protect your family, not hurt them.”

“Every Russian you or I killed had a family too. Why is it different for someone like him?” He was nearly snarling, face contorted into ugliness by indignation. And to think people, Sugimoto included, had thought him apathetic. This had always been below the surface; it wasn’t a surprise to see it uncovered, but the closeness of it still took Sugimoto aback, like the sight of viscera spilling out of the guts of a fish even when you pushed the knife-point into its belly for just that purpose.

There was an ache inside him that was acting up, a gaping wound he’d been walking off for long enough to know it wasn’t going to heal. “Because he loved you.”

He saw it run across Ogata’s face the moment before it happened. Of everything Sugimoto had said or done, he’d never seen Ogata more angry than he was then. It was like he was afraid of corruption or infection, in reverse; like it would seep into his skin and change him if he let himself get close to the idea of love.

Ogata pulled the trigger. Sugimoto was in motion before Ogata’s finger touched the metal, so instead of his heart, the bullet struck Sugimoto in the side. It hurt like hell. He didn’t stop moving, crashing into Ogata like a raging, wounded animal before Ogata had a chance to cycle the chamber for the next shot. Sugimoto had one thought in his mind: he wouldn't die like this, on some godforsaken hill, far from where he was born, after the war had ended, at the hands of someone he’d never trusted but been betrayed by, anyhow, in none of the ways he’d thought to be afraid of. Sugimoto held his own gun with one hand and with the other tore the rifle out from Ogata’s hands, tossed it into the woods as hard as he could, hardly paying attention to where it went, and toppled Ogata to the forest floor.

Sugimoto straddled his chest and pressed his head into the earth by a knee over the throat. It must have hurt like a bitch, the force of bone and muscle over fresh bruises, but he didn’t let up. His side was on fire where he’d been shot, but he let it fade into background noise. Wasn’t the first time. Ogata tried to speak, but it came out a garbled whine. Sugimoto shouldered his own rifle and went to pull his bayonet out of its sheath, but before he could manage it Ogata got one of his hands free and socked a punch into Sugimoto’s bullet wound. In the moment Sugimoto spent reflexively seized over, Ogata went for his own bayonet where it hung from his waist.

It wasn’t a conscious action, just a move of self-defense. As Ogata pulled his hand up and towards Sugimoto’s gut, bayonet held between his fingers, Sugimoto caught him mid-swing with his own. He pierced through the heel of Ogata’s palm, just under the hilt of the bayonet he held, straight through to the other side of the hand. Ogata gasped, low and keening. Ogata’s bayonet clattered from his hand, and Sugimoto picked it up, his own being still lodged in Ogata’s hand. He knew pulling it out meant blood loss, potentially fatal, so he let it rest where it was, impaling Ogata through the palm. Blood seeped out everywhere around it, staining them both.

He could cut him open without much trouble. Sugimoto rolled the thought around his mind idly. He could angle his bayonet so it would slide up and into the soft part of the stomach, below Ogata’s ribs, so no bones would get in the way. It was so easy. Sugimoto had done it dozens of times. The Hokkaido wilderness was the perfect place to kill a man. He’d never be found out, and who would care? Whatever family Ogata had left in Ibaraki wouldn’t come up looking for him in this forsaken place, if they looked for him at all. The trees around them had witnessed worse than this over the centuries, surely. They couldn’t be the first pair of animals to be at each other’s throats in these woods.

“That’ll heal over. Not going to shoot for a while, though. You’re lucky I’m feeling generous and didn’t take any of your fingers.”

Ogata knocked his head back against the ground; one of his boots kicked out and back, his heel dragging in the dirt. A good effort, considering, but not nearly enough to shake Sugimoto off. Looking at him twist beneath him, Sugimoto’s throat felt like it was closing up. Ogata was holding up well under the pain, and Sugimoto felt fond over that. Angry, too; the cold kind, that shrunk all his thoughts down to what needed to be done, and how best to do it. Most of all, a rueful sort of pity—you sad bastard, you really got yourself into this, didn’t you?

Ogata’s throat thrummed visibly with the exertion of breathing, like the pain was a parasite straining to break out through the skin. Sugimoto had the bayonet he’d taken from Ogata pressed up against Ogata’s neck, tiny crimson dribbles of Ogata’s blood welling up where the tip had lightly pierced skin. He thought about getting at more of it—slitting Ogata’s throat right then and watching him bleed out in the dirt. Up close, he could see Ogata’s adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. If Sugimoto killed him, he realized, he’d have to hold Ogata until the end. He couldn’t imagine it going any other way.

Sugimoto tightened his grip on the hilt, lowered his head further, and ran his tongue over Ogata’s parted lips, his panting mouth. Leaving him wet with spit, glistening. Ogata used a little of what was left of his strength to snarl, showing Sugimoto his teeth. In response, Sugimoto laughed under his breath and rose up just enough Ogata couldn’t rear up and bite Sugimoto’s lips, or anywhere else he might turn his mind to.

He lifted his bayonet up from Ogata’s neck, cautiously. “Try and go for your gun and I’ll tear your arm right off so you can never shoot again.” Ogata’s eyes were fixed to the blade as it came up to stroke the side of his face.

Sugimoto had thought himself a nice guy, once. A long time ago, now, wasn’t it. Ogata squirmed under him like he had several times before: a million years ago, in another life, Ogata had goaded him into fighting in the dirt behind the Asahikawa barracks kitchen. Sugimoto had been broadsided, then, by how much he liked the feeling of having Ogata pinned and straining. His taste for it hadn’t gone away yet, and he didn’t have it in him to think of himself as a sick fuck for appreciating it now. Ogata never seemed more human than during moments like this. His lack of feeling was undercut by struggle or desire, and rolling them into one just made things simpler.

Sugimoto grabbed Ogata’s jaw in a white-knuckled grip with his free hand. “Hold still. I mean it.” When Ogata tried, unsuccessfully, to whip his head away, Sugimoto grunted, and shifted his knee back over Ogata’s throat to keep him in place. “Everything’s gotta be hard with you, doesn’t it? Always gotta make it difficult.”

With the hilt of the bayonet held between his fourth and fifth fingers, he fumbled for Ogata’s breast pocket, unbuttoning the flap with index finger and thumb and reaching inside until his fingers met the crinkle of paper.

He pulled out a slightly battered copy of something that looked at first glance to be a map. On second glance he could tell the lines didn’t show anything but the walls and doors of what looked like a building, rather than streets and alleyways like he’d assumed. There were a few sparse, cryptic notes around the edges, that looked like they were written in some kind of code or shorthand, and between the fire in Sugimoto’s side from the bullet wound and the irregular but forceful squirming of Ogata’s torso under him he didn’t feel like taking the time to puzzle it out.

“What is this? Must be important, if you didn’t want me to see it.”

“It’s a map of the Lieutenant General’s house. Tsurumi gave it to me, so I could help him out by killing my father.” His speech was roughened by pain, but he still managed to imbue his voice with acidic glee.

“Not broken it off with Tsurumi after all, then?”

“I’m not going to do it for him. He’s just the means to the end. Are you going to call me a monster for that? Is my father’s life precious to you, too?”

The paper crushed into a ball in Sugimoto’s fist. “That’s what you wanted to do in Asahikawa. There’s no contact. You just wanted me to kill time while you—”

“Do I disgust you? I guess you think you’re different. You only kill men whose names you don’t know. Well, you’re wrong, Sugimoto. You’re just like me. There’s something missing inside you. Maybe it used to be there, but it’s gone now.”

He let the map fall to the ground, and took the hilt of Ogata’s bayonet into his hand in a better grip. “Are you trying to egg me into proving you wrong?”

“Maybe you should.” Ogata blinked rapidly, like he was trying to stay conscious, and stared at Sugimoto with what felt like all the vile force he had in him. Sugimoto’s knee shifted over to rest on Ogata’s shoulder, so Ogata could rasp through his abused throat: “Do you think you’re being kind by not slitting my throat and having done with it? I might as well off myself. You might as well jerk off all over me and then finish what you’ve started.”

Sugimoto furrowed his brows and leaned closer over him. “Don’t be sick, it’s not going to help you.”

It would be so easy to do it, was the thing, but Hanazawa had kept Ogata’s secret, so he must have wanted Ogata to live. Wouldn’t be right, really, for Sugimoto to make that call for him. At the same time, he couldn’t just let Ogata go. Had to make him pay, somehow, for Sugimoto’s own sake.

“You’re gonna have to go into town to find a doctor to treat this. Maybe a vet, someone who won’t talk. Should keep you busy for a few days.” Sugimoto let go of Ogata’s jaw with his left hand, his right still holding Ogata’s own bayonet against his cheek. His left hand moved to the hilt of his own bayonet, which was still pierced through Ogata’s hand, impaling him to the earth. He pushed it in a bit further, wiggling it, worsening the wound. Ogata’s eyes rolled back in his head, and his body undulated beneath him like a wave, convulsing more than trying to fight him off. “I’ll get a head start, and then if you make it and still want to kill me, or want me to kill you, come and find me. We can settle the debt.”

He let go of the hilt of his bayonet and left it stuck in Ogata’s hand. Let him keep it, for now. Something to remember him by. Before he got to his feet, Sugimoto pressed his lips to Ogata’s sweat-slick forehead. Just once, so he wouldn’t lie awake at night thinking about how he’d never done it. That was the kind of thing that would eat him up. It was just a few seconds, but in that time, with his mouth on Ogata’s skin, he felt like they’d never been closer together, like through the two of them flowed the same blood. Free men now, of a sort, but tethered together, even when apart.

Sugimoto sat up, the end of Ogata’s bayonet now pointed loosely at Ogata’s heart, just in case he decided to try his luck. He looked down at him, and wondered at how it was Ogata had yet managed not to scream. He lay there, silent, jaw clenched from pain and looking ready to vomit, but his eyes were wide, accusing, full of wonder and desperation and fixed on Sugimoto’s face.

There was a long moment when Sugimoto leaned back on his heels and took his full weight off of Ogata's chest, but still rested his knee there. He dug it in harder, for emphasis. “Don't try anything, now. I won't hesitate. You know me.” Ogata emitted a pained sound, like he was trying to speak, but the best he could do was whine through his teeth and then spit a gob of bloody saliva onto the ground next to him. He must have bitten his tongue.

The moment was gone as soon as Sugimoto stood up. He fastened Ogata’s bayonet to the nozzle of his gun, and held it in relaxed but ready arms. He could hear the sound of his own footsteps retreating backward, slowly, the walk of someone who was trying to keep a rifle steady while moving. He didn’t know why he was doing it; he didn’t trust himself to shoot Ogata somewhere non-lethal if Ogata pulled up the strength to get up and rush him. He bore down on Ogata with his mind, willing him not to push himself up on his hands and knees, to give in and let Sugimoto leave without any more of a fight. Willing him to do it, too. To show him he hadn’t given up yet.

When he reached the underbrush, Sugimoto paused. Ogata had himself propped up on his free hand, and had half-managed to crane his neck up to look at Sugimoto’s retreat. You idiot, Sugimoto thought. You ought to learn. He wasn’t sure which of them he was addressing. One more thought, similarly foolish: he hoped Ogata had gotten a glimpse of him.

He licked his bottom lip. Split. Bleeding. Sweet with the phantom taste of a kiss.

“You know where I’m going. I’ll see you there, you hear?”