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Kira likes the winter. She particularly likes how sharp the air is through her nose when she inhales it. It makes her feel, makes her grounded.
She likes how the snow crushes beneath her feet, how it seems like trees stopped breathing, how everything seemed slow, how the wind touches your skin when it's not racing. It felt like a nostalgic lullaby she had never heard before.
How there's less people outside, making space for the thoughts inside her head. She feels that there's less noise and hears how her heart slows. How her hands feel numb enough, a tingling sensation she's fond of.
Perhaps that's why Kira favors the color blue. It reminded her of the season. Yet, she knows deep down why she desires the cold.
Kira likes the winter because the frigid climate makes her forget a different type of pain. A pain that started some time ago. Consuming, coming from within.
She wasn't clueless. Hell, being too observant could be her downfall. She hated it. Feeling the itch in her throat, the tightness of her chest. Hated having to cough every minute. Having to hide the spit, the hoarse hacking, the petals.
Dear God, the petals.
It grew slowly, steadily. Kira felt it flourish, nestling between her lungs. The Russian ignored it. She remembers how it began.
It's the adrenaline. The high of intrigue.
Her mind echoes. Grasping such a small box, engraved with tedious patterns all over. Flipping it over and over, through all six sides.
The mystery excites her, gives her purpose. It was as if solving the unsolvable and fixing the unfixable was an opportunity made just for her to grab.
Who is she? Sure, I have everything there is to know, even her name.
Yet, she can't help wondering why it feels heavy to the heart when it's her tongue that utters it.
𓇢𓆸
Yumeko makes Kira feel warm. At least that's what Kira tells herself that she feels. Will she be able to feel anything other than how her cheeks flushed when she saw Yumeko raise her winning card against her ace? How her temper rose when she realized she had lost? How the heat of defeat shot through her body when the Spade Flag disappeared into view?
She loathed it. Despised by it so much, she marched her way to Yumeko, demanding answers. Answers to how she won, if she cheated, how to solve the puzzle she gave her–
How– Why do you make me feel like this?
Uncontrolled, helpless, confused?
Kira doesn't know the exact word for it. She doesn't know how she'll stop it. After all, she can't begin to scrutinize her feelings for this enigma when all she has to compare it to is the cold of winter.
All she knows is that it was warmer.
She breathes in and out, trying to compose herself. "It's rare that I lose, but I can admit when someone has gotten the better of me. How did you do it? You say you never cheat.
I never took my eyes off you."
How, when it's hard not to?
Her mind asks as her heart stutters. Kira wants to focus on Yumeko's strategic plan, but her voice is too soft, her words too mellow, and Kira's throat is too tight.
After Yumeko said her piece, Kira had to say, "One thing doesn't add up. You didn't have enough time to shut the cabinet. You didn't just hand your victory to Mary. She was just another distraction, wasn't she? What are you after? Tell me."
Tell me you were there for something else. Tell me you were there for me. Tell me what I've been feeling all this time.
"You haven't solved it, have you?" Yumeko replied, eyes boring into Kira's.
The puzzle was left in a mess on the floor. Yumeko had merely broken the puzzle Kira had been solving for weeks. The puzzle that she kept twisting and turning, that she had been keeping close.
It was the wooden box that had been stomped on, but why was it Kira's heart that felt crushed?
𓇢𓆸
Kira knew of the disease inside of her. How it was rapidly spreading, it itches, aches, crawls, and burns. There's one cure. To admit it, admit that she's slowly preferring warmth, that she wonders of the color red, that she misses the grasp of her puzzle.
Maybe that's why she interrupted Yumeko and Mary's dance. Perhaps that's why she was adamant about holding Yumeko and swaying her to whatever song to gain back the feeling of control. But how can she when she felt Yumeko ever so slightly caress her shoulder, when her favorite shade of blue became the reflection of Yumeko's eyes as they go from left to right, when she could just feel Yumeko's heart against her weakening one.
Kira wonders if it was still control that she craved.
𓇢𓆸
Everything else was a blur.
Everything else didn't matter. For a girl who grew up with pain, this one did not compare. How can it when Kira inflicted it on herself? The House Pet Hunt, The Kakegurui Club, and even the leaderboard were well past her.
Not when she's here in a cabin, too warm for her liking. Not when she's felt Yumeko's lips, poison trickling across from her lips to her own.
Stop it!
Her head screamed. She feels Yumeko tug and force herself. She feels the alcohol, the poison run past her throat, and the flowers she has harbored greet it with delight. Her hands felt numb, and she wasn't fond of it this time.
Kira remembers touching her lips, screaming at Yumeko, and accepting the gamble. Kira remembers how her insides churned while they were playing. Still, she doesn't remember if it was because of the woman opposite her, the toxin she consumed, the feeling that she was loosing, or the flowers that were growing inside of her.
She remembers the sting of her father's slap and the soreness clawing through her lungs. She couldn't decide which one hurt more. She couldn't remember which of the two she cried for.
Of course, you had to choose the girl who didn't look your way, Kira. You had to pick Yumeko of all people. The girl who was too focused on winning, on revenge.
Too focused that she hadn't seen the pool of red petals that you'd coughed up when she held your hair.
Kira hates to remember that day and all the things that happened. But she can't help but look back on her and Yumeko’s moment. How she laughed so freely, how her smile felt light, and how Yumeko seemed like she cared. And for a bit, as they looked at each other in that small space, she breathed fine.
𓇢𓆸
Kira almost died that day. There are times when she wishes that the poison would just consume her from the inside out. Then at least her father wouldn't have to see the petals on her deathbed. She wonders if he'd be disappointed or if he would think that it was just typical of her.
She looked for other solutions. She found in her research that the flowers could be surgically removed, but the side effects were too much. She wants to love, wants to remember the cause of her disease, she wants to feel, and not be left to the touch of only the cold once again.
She wants to remember something other than pain.
Why am I always the one to suffer?
Mystery used to excite her and give her purpose. But why was she the one that's unsolvable, the one unfixable? She just wants to be mended, not pulled apart and rebuilt again.
Kira had already lost to Yumeko; she didn't want to lose her, too.
So now she basks in the cold. Maybe the torture of the winter was enough to numb the pain from within. Perhaps she can tell herself that it was the sharp air that was causing her to breathe slowly. Perhaps what she needed was the warmth of the fire and not the warmth of her touch.
For a moment, Kira could breathe deeply; she could feel her heart pumping, her chest light, and her flowers wilt.