Kiyo’s house was the brightest in town. And Kiyo felt the cold worse than anyone in it.
Out this way the sun is far off, and there is no daytime to speak of. It stays dim, and it stays cold. So instead of lamps, the people of this town rely on each other.
Because in this town, when you come to love someone deeply, the heat of your body streams out of you as light. The longer and deeper the love, the brighter you shine. In exchange, you grow colder and colder. It was simply understood that you walked the night roads by the light of lovers.
Kiyo was giving off fifty years’ worth of light. Twelve lamps on the town register — first place, by a mile — and she probably half knew it herself. Though it’s always the way: the brighter the house, the more its owner shivers. The townsfolk felt sorry for her. As far as Kiyo was concerned, they had it completely backwards.
Even indoors, Kiyo wore three blankets, hugged a hot-water bottle, kept her mittens on. Her side of the bed hadn’t warmed up in years. On dark evenings, children went out of their way to cut through Kiyo’s alley — her window was bright enough to check the contents of a schoolbag by.
Her young neighbor Rin, who couldn’t help worrying, came by constantly.
Rin was still young and, somehow, toasty warm all over. She had never once loved someone enough to glow. Zero lamps on the register. And as it happens, the warmest person in this town is usually also the loneliest.
“Kiyo, your fingers — they’re freezing again.” Rin swapped out the hot-water bottle. “You’re giving off too much. You should keep some of it in.”
“Keep it in and do what with it?”
“Well… it can’t be good for you.”
Kiyo waved a mittened hand and laughed.
“Listen, dear. Nobody holds a warm person.”
Rin blinked at her.
“It’s because I get this cold, see. My husband wraps me up every night and won’t let go. If I were warm, you think that would happen?”
In the back room, Sabu was snoring. Sabu, on the receiving end of all that love, wore short sleeves in midwinter and showed no remorse whatsoever. A profitable disposition, there’s no other word for it. And yet when night came, he would pull Kiyo’s cold back in against his belly and hold it there until morning.
“Being cold is an excuse to be held. You too — stop hoarding all that warmth like a treasure, and let some of it out. At somebody.”
Rin went home without managing a reply.
That night was the coldest of the winter.
Kiyo’s window stood out bright against the snow-light. Sabu lumbered up and gathered Kiyo in, blankets and all. At the edge of the blanket her mittened fingertips were still glowing. Children passing in the street stopped to look.
Rin went back to her own warm house. The stove had been left on, and the room was snug and cozy. A snug, cozy room with no one in it.
Rin turned off the stove.
She sat in the dark with her coat still on, watching her breath turn white. No glow yet. Even so, Rin slowly pulled off her mittens, one hand, then the other.