Toshiro leaned against the wall outside the gaming cafe, drumming his fingers against his leg. Zhou wasn't here. It had only been a few minutes now, so he normally wouldn't have been too bothered at this point, but it wasn't like Zhou to be late. In each of their virtual meetings, he had painstakingly arrived at least five minutes before their determined starting time. Now that Toshiro knew that he had to go out of his way to come to the gaming cafe each time, the punctuality was even more respectable.
To pass the time, he watched the people inside the cafe, gaming on the headsets. To an outsider, they looked a little silly, moving their limbs around so with no explicitly visible reason. He supposed that would be true of him, also, though.
Checking the time again, he saw it was now fifteen minutes past. This definitely felt off: where was Zhou? And despite his winter coat, it was still freezing outside; last night, another storm had settled in and the streets were still coated with the powdery snow, some of it turned to gray slush by trodden footsteps. He stepped indoors to keep waiting.
At half an hour past, Toshiro debated leaving. At this rate, it didn't seem like Zhou would come. Then where was he?
~~~~~
[The previous night]
Zhou regretted not checking the weather, as soon as he opened his eyes to the first flakes falling.
He didn't have an exact measurement of time, but from his guess it was probably well past midnight. The sky was ink black, the only light coming from a distant moon and a park streetlamp. Their ghostly white rays illuminated the bits of snow falling, such a serene scene it was almost pretty — despite foreshadowing the violent storm that was soon to come.
But Zhou didn't know that yet. He blinked a few times, not quite awake yet, a few flakes dusting his eyelashes. The snow wasn't heavy yet: he might be able to wait it out for the night as just another flurry.
Cocooned in the waterproof tarp that was his only defense against the weather, he imagined it would be alright, even if he was unfortunately caught outside when it was snowing. Gently rolling over onto his side and tucking his head further inside the layers of warmth, he tried to fall asleep again.
~~~
Cold. That was his first impression when he woke up once more, later in the night. It was snowing hard now, the wind roaring furiously as it beat against the trees.
His shelter under the evergreen wasn't able to block out all of the precipitation, of course, but he had hoped the tarp could help with the rest. Except somehow the snow had gotten inside the tarp; he guessed from his tossing and turning as he slept. And now he felt the ice-water against him. As he took it in, it only just registered that he was shivering.
Cold. So cold.
He remembered one of the nights soon after he had escaped the orphanage — walked out after school and hadn't returned, just kept on walking. It'd been another snowy night, but then, he'd been able to slip unnoticed into a factory, spend the night next to the furnace, paralyzed not from cold but fear.
Memories trudged about in his mind, slow, languorous, incoherent. The orphanage. Running away. Back. Stowaway. Orphanage. America.
And cold. So, so cold.
He wasn't sure what he was seeing anymore. Was that the sky, or was it just his vision growing dark? It didn't really matter, did it? Everything was just the same, the same everything.
Cold. Dark and cold. Dark.