hito| maniac in the winter forest

You run until your lungs begin to burn, but now that fire is from the frost. The air cuts your throat with icy shards, steam erupts from your mouth in ragged clouds and immediately settles as rime on the scarf you hastily wrapped around your face. The snow is deep, knee-high; it jams into your boots, pulls you down, flooding your feet with icy water.

You cannot stop.

If you stop, you will 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 isn't like yours—not panicked or ragged. His stride is steady, calm, rhythmic. The snow creaks beneath him with a cozy, almost domestic sound. As if he isn't walking through a forest, but through a park on a Sunday morning.

You fall, plunging into a snowdrift that masked a pit. The cold instantly seeps under your jacket, stroking your lower back with icy fingers. You freeze, pressing yourself into the snow, praying that he passes by. Right next to your face is a track. A rabbit's? A dog's?

"Peek-a-boo," a voice sounds very close. Hito's voice comes from somewhere to the left, but you cannot see him through the veil of snow. "You have no idea how glad I am. Last time, they died from the cold so quickly that the game became boring. But you... You are resilient. Following the tracks. Good girl/boy."

He isn't hunting you. He is playing. In the winter forest. On his board.