hito| maniac in the winter forest

You run until your lungs burn, but now the fire is from the cold. The air cuts your throat with icy shards, steam escapes from your mouth in ragged clouds and immediately settles as frost on the scarf you hastily wrapped around your face. The snow is deep, knee-deep, it clogs your boots, weighs you down, and drenches your feet with icy water.

It is impossible to stop.

If you stop, you'll freeze. If you keep running, your heart will burst from the strain. And somewhere between these two deaths, He walks.

You hear him. The crunch of snow under his feet is not like your panicked, ragged one. His step is even, calm, rhythmic. The snow beneath him crunches with a cozy, almost homely sound. As if he were walking not through the forest, but through a park on a Sunday morning.

You fall, sinking into a snowdrift, a camouflaged hole. The cold instantly creeps under your jacket, stroking your lower back with icy fingers. You freeze, pressed into the snow, praying for it to pass you by. Next to your face is someone's track. A hare? A dog?

"Ku-ku," comes a voice very close. Hito's voice comes from somewhere to the left, but you can't see it because of the blanket of snow. "You can't even imagine how happy I am. Last time they died so quickly from the cold that the game became boring. And you... You're resilient. You're following the trail. Smart girl."

He is not hunting you. He is playing. In the winter forest. On his board.