Cold Steel - Inazuma Gaiden

XVI: Broken Dawn [Rated T+/M]

PREFACE:

Just like the usual, here's a content warning and a reminder that the story's contents may not be suitable to younger audiences. This chapter includes scenes of written violence, blood, and minor/light gore. If you're easily disturbed by depictions of violence in literature form, then it's best to click off the chapter and the story.

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He knew that they were not going to sleep even a single wink throughout the night, not because of the new invasive thoughts that surely must've had flooded their minds after the rather their recent, and more... direct and adventurous discussions regarding their feelings just now - but instead because of the elephant in the room, being the freezing temperature of the ship's empty deck.

Even with her back and his torso essentially sticking together to share some of their body heat, the young man couldn't help but to steal a few moments to slip his hand down into the small gap between their bodies, situated near her lower spine and his front waist to rub his own hands together in order to produce some internal heat of his own. It really didn't help that the two Narukami outbounds were being so conservative with their actions, but at the same time, all too acutely aware of every single small movement each other made.

Throughout his life, Hinode Nobutada has always been reserved with his emotions and inner thoughts, his mind was always focused into thinking something practical to avoid drifting off and becoming easy pickings for the curse to consume. And for the record, it wasn't exactly a challenging thing either when everyday was basically a struggle for survival. His brain would always conceptualize and planning his next move, his next thievery, his worries and concerns whether the children under him would even live to see the next day.

Obviously, the situation has changed greatly since the job he took from the strange outlanders who very easily said that they wanted to destroy the nation without so much as an ounce of doubt within them. He thought that it would be a simple job, it was supposed a simple job. It turned into a game of smoke and mirrors, involving both internal and international politics and controversies that he couldn't even begin to describe.

Just what was going on with Inazuma?

And more importantly, what was going on with... well, himself?

Kamisato Ayaka was an oddity - an exact opposite on what he was, on what Hinode Nobutada was. Where she never struggled with the hardships of life as a commoner, he was practically the lowest denominator - the bottom of the barrel and the food chain. Where she was so full of life and ambitions, that either the Yasogami, the Narukami Ogosho, or other omnipotent being out there saw her worthy of carrying a Vision - he was left ignored and unwanted by the Gods. She was someone with noble dreams, while he's there for his own selfish reasons.

She was a woman who has everything, while he was a man of nothing. She was supposed to be his anti-thesis, and Nobutada was sure she thought of the same to him. They were polar contradictions of one another, destined to never understand each other. Yet time and time again, the opposites attract.

Although to be fair, he's still yet to understand this lady known as Kamisato Ayaka. The one who somehow managed to chip his perfectly-practiced countenance, his formerly unbreakable mask of stoicism that made him resemble something more of a living, breathing, thinking, but ultimately unfeeling husk than a normal human being.

Uneasiness, distress, awkwardness. Nobutada would never, in his life, expected to feel emotions so complex and so raw, not to mention, it was extremely dangerous for him to be so emotionally vulnerable, especially considering the fact that the fallen Serpent God's influence continued to stalk his mind. He felt as though most of his actions recently were motivated by something else other than objective reason.