The Falling Powdered Snow

I wish the falling powdered snow would land and hide me
Staring at your back as you leave, I suppress my tears
The snow that falls piles up, swallowing the world and my love
Until the day the pain in my heart is gone
I'll melt into white

—Fure Fure Koyuki, UtaP ft. Kagamine Len

[Siblings Chapter (I)]
Deep Snow

"Onii-sama…?"

He could feel the light beyond his eyelids, and the soft touch of a delicate hand as it brushed his hair away from his closed eyes.

"Such a peaceful sleep…"

He humored her for a while as she thought that he was still sleeping, her hand moving in slow, precise strokes that smoothened down his hair. Knowing that his little sister preferred to take care of him when necessary (not that the chance presented itself that often), Shiba Tatsuya just let his whole body relax under her touch.

However, even though his eyes were closed still, he could not drown out the faint smell of antiseptic in the air, the little sounds outside on the hall as people rushed to their destinations, the creaking of rusty wheelchairs as patients were moved from their rooms on occasion.

Normally, Tatsuya was glad of his great observational skills, as it came handy with his line of work, but now that it was presenting him with details that he'd rather not come into terms with for the meantime, he wished that it came with an off switch.

With the thought that he still had to go to work nagging at the back of his mind, Tatsuya's eyelids slid open to reveal mild blue eyes.

"Onii-sama…!" His little sister's beautiful eyes, the color of sapphires, widened a bit at the sudden movement, and her hand hesitated in the act of stroking his hair. "G-Good morning…"

"Good morning, Miyuki."

Shiba Miyuki sat up on her bed a little straighter as she watched her brother rise slowly from his sleeping place on her bedside, the legs of the chair underneath him scraping across the cold floor tiles.

It was uncanny how the resemblance between them stopped at the color of their eyes and hair, with Tatsuya having a natural, healthy tan all over, and Miyuki very pale, made even so by the white hospital gown that she wore. Tatsuya took more after their father, with his tall, sturdy build and serious almond eyes, while Miyuki's large eyes and slender figure were inherited from their mother.

Tatsuya would have liked to say that Miyuki was that white naturally, but he knew that even with her fair complexion before the sickness, Miyuki's present pallor was unnatural.

However, he was thankful that her eyes and abundant hair remained as lovely as they had always been as she looked at him with a soft, loving gaze. He knew how insecure she had been about her appearance ever since the beginning of the decline of her color and the slow weakening of her limbs.

"Onii-sama, you have work today, right?"

"Yes. I'm going home to change into my uniform." Tatsuya scowled a bit as Miyuki smiled bravely on her bed, and can't help but reach out and give her head a quick pat. "The nurse will be here soon with your breakfast. I would stay and wait until you have finished eating, but…"

"Onii-sama mustn't worry about me." Miyuki's eyes never wavered from Tatsuya's face. "Rather, please go and do your best for today as well."

Tatsuya chuckled as he saw Miyuki's earnest expression. "I guess I cannot refuse such a serious request from my adorable little sister." He reached over and kissed a lightly blushing Miyuki on the forehead before pulling away to slip his coat on. "I guess it can't be helped. And you might be feeling better today if you could turn red like that."

"Onii-sama, you meanie."—However, Miyuki's lips were still curved in her bright smile. "Please take care and wear your scarf. The weather report has predicted a possible snowfall."

"You as well. Ask the nurse to bring you more blankets if necessary." Tatsuya managed a slight smile and opened the door. "I'll be back later, okay?"

"I'll be waiting for you, Onii-sama!"

Miyuki nodded and waved enthusiastically as Tatsuya disappeared, and when the heavy footfalls of Tatsuya's boots had already faded into the many other footsteps outside beyond the door, she let her hand fall with a tired sigh.

"Onii-sama…"

"Oh, Tatsuya-kun. Good morning."

"Morning, Lieutenant."

"As usual, your way of greeting me is kind of bland."

Assistant Police Inspector Fujibayashi Kyoko, more commonly referred to as Lieutenant Fujibayashi, smiled upon seeing the impassive young man walk in the police station, her eyes darting to his face and sighing as he stared back with his trademark icy expression.

"How is Miyuki-chan, by the way?"

"She seems better than the past few days." Tatsuya did not move unnecessarily, instead maintaining his rigid posture. His dark blue uniform was as immaculate as always, and did not show signs that he had rushed in any way to get to work. "I just came from the hospital."

"Oh, right. Yesterday was your day-off, after all." Fujibayashi shrugged. "Well, good to hear that. Miyuki is a good girl. She deserves to get better soon."

She watched as Tatsuya opened his mouth, characteristically prompt and to the point.

"Anyway, Lieutenant, is Captain Kazama already in?"

"Oh, is today the new assignment?" Fujibayashi tilted her head and feigned confusion.

"Lieutenant, you should be the one with a clear grasp on these things…"

"Nah, I was just joking." Fujibayashi smiled. "You just seem more uptight today… As if you weren't serious enough. Anyway, Captain Kazama is in his office. He was waiting for you before going to meet with the mayor, actually."

"I see." Tatsuya inclined his head with silent thanks, while Fujibayashi returned it with a light nod.

"Tatsuya." Police Inspector Kazama Harunobu, a severe-looking man in his forties, looked up with a smile that looked out of place in this circumstance, as a superior to a junior, but Tatsuya refrained from comment and instead noticed the slim figure on the chair before the Captain's desk.

"Anyway, this will be your new partner, Chiba Erika-kun."

"I see." Tatsuya surveyed with a cursory eye the slender arms, fiery hair, and mischievous expression of the young lady before him, and then frowned. "Chiba? As in…"

"Yep, I'm that Chiba Toshikazu's younger sister." Erika did not seem to find the matter of her family relations an awkward topic. "However, he's stationed in Yokohama now."

"Ah, yes. One of the Lieutenant's subordinates." Tatsuya nodded. "I have had the pleasure of meeting him before his transfer to Yokohama. I take it that he is well?"

"Yeah. He does miss the Lieutenant now and then, though." The tinge of mischief in Erika's eyes deepened further.

Tatsuya decided to let her comment hang in the air, and instead smiled slightly. His icy expression, which could freeze criminals on sight, did not seem to work on Erika.

Tatsuya finally thought that yes, she may be cut out for this sort of work.

Kazama decided to cut in, much to his relief.

"Chiba-kun, this is Shiba Tatsuya. He's going to help you familiarize yourself with that part of Tokyo you'll be patrolling today."

Erika grinned, and held out a hand for Tatsuya to shake. "Okay. Then, I place myself in your care for today, Shiba-senpai."

Tatsuya looked vaguely uncomfortable. "As we're of the same age according to your file, calling me 'senpai' is a bit…"

"Really? So, you're just…"

"Twenty-four, last I checked." Tatsuya didn't mean to sound lightly sarcastic, but he couldn't help but inflict the tone on this enthusiastic young lady. "Please, call me Tatsuya."

"Okay. Tatsuya-kun then. That all right?"

When Tatsuya nodded, Erika's grin went back on full force.

"Shall we go now, Captain?" Tatsuya said, focusing his attention back to Kazama. "You still have an appointment after this with the mayor, right?"

"You know, it's quite tiring to be the little sister to an overachiever like my Naotsugu-nii-sama."

The two of them, Tatsuya and Erika, stood idly on the snowy sidewalk by a convenience store as they finished their quick lunch. Tatsuya found it surprising that Erika had stayed alert all throughout the process of going all over their territory, and was seriously considering disregarding his first impression of her as a kind of ballast to an operation. Erika's quick reflexes and tough personality might just be what he needed the most in a partner, he reflected with a dry smile.

"Hey, what're you smiling for. I'm serious, it's not easy."

Tatsuya quickly shifted back to his usual deadpan expression upon seeing how Erika put her hand on her waist and scowled. "No, I'm sorry. My mind just drifted somewhat at what you said. I have a little sister myself, you see."

"Oh, Tatsuya-kun has?" Erika seemed wholly interested.

"Yes." Tatsuya could have said more, but he deemed it impolite to do so in front of an acquaintance of one day like Erika. The latter, however, seemed quite intrigued.

"Is she cute?"

Tatsuya smiled a bit. "Rather than cute, I would say she's more of a beauty."

"O~h!" Erika laughed upon detecting the trace of affection in the normally constrained voice of her partner. "Might you, perhaps, be something of a sis-con?"

Tatsuya merely chuckled.

"Say what you will, but Miyuki really is a beauty."

"That's not what I meant. I mean, if Tatsuya-kun, who is so usually dull, can say that a person is a 'beauty', then, I shall take those words at face-value."

Tatsuya was rather uncertain at what to say upon hearing her call him dull, so he just kept his mouth shut.

"Anyway, so Tatsuya-kun has a sister, huh…" Erika looked up. "You know, I have heard from Captain Kazama how you were the youngest police officer in the Kanto area to have achieved such a high record of suppressing criminal activity. Apparently, your name is already something like an urban legend in these parts." She tilted her head. "Isn't Miyuki-chan bothered by your achievements?"

Tatsuya couldn't help but let out a dry chuckle. "Miyuki might perhaps be more brilliant than I am, and she understands what I do, so there's no room for rivalry." Tatsuya seemed unruffled at the praise that Kazama had seemed to pile upon him behind his back. "Moreover, if my reputation serves to instill fear into the hearts of those who are up to no good, then it's of no concern to me. Rather, wouldn't it help them hesitate before doing something against the law."

"Ruling by fear, huh?" Erika pondered about this for a moment, and then looked up with a sly grin. "So I guess Tatsuya-kun is really an evil character rather than a hero?"

Tatsuya returned her grin, in a rare flash of warmth.

"Maybe."

When they headed back to the station after a lengthy, if uneventful, day, they found Fujibayashi talking to a familiar man. Tatsuya was about to greet the both of them, when Erika opened her mouth first.

"Toshikazu-nii-san?" She sounded as shocked as she looked.

"Oh, Erika." Chiba Toshikazu bore very little resemblance to his pretty little sister, his dark hair and narrow eyes conveying an honest, if slightly naïve, personality. However, the firm shake of the hand that he gave Tatsuya upon noticing him gave insight to the fact that the famed courage of the Chiba family (of whom all were involved some way or the other in criminology) did not run thin in this second son.

"What are you doing here?" After giving Toshikazu a hard thump on the chest, which the elder brother took in stride, she put her hands on her hips and blocked his vision like an angry cat. "Are you slacking off again? Weren't you supposed to be in Yokohama?"

Toshikazu laughed a bit. "I just wanted to see how you were doing on the first day of the job. Naotsugu called me, and well…"

Erika huffed. "Naotsugu-nii-sama is such a…" Catching herself, she glared up at her brother. "And don't give me any of that stuff about wanting to see me, because I know that look."

As Toshikazu looked rather confused, Tatsuya noticed Fujibayashi gesturing at him. Sidling past the arguing brother-and-sister pair, he approached the Lieutenant and was handed a heavy case.

"Study this when you get home," she said in a low voice. "I was hoping that the incidents wouldn't spread to Tokyo, but… this is just in case."

"Ah." Tatsuya eyed the case and took it with hardly a reaction. "It's the 'Yokohama Disturbance' case, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Fujibayashi gestured to Toshikazu. "That's the real reason why he came here today, to give me the particulars."

"But couldn't he have just sent it by e-mail?" Tatsuya asked with a bland teasing tone. "Why come see you personally about a case that might or might not happen here?"

"You virgin!" Erika was already accusing Toshikazu, who was beet-red.

Fujibayashi winked and smiled evilly at Tatsuya, who just returned it with his stony gaze. "Oh well. Sometimes it's better to have hard copies after all."

Tatsuya headed to the hospital directly after work, but not without stopping by a used-book store close to the train station. The girl behind the counter, who was already familiar with him, smiled and greeted him a good afternoon as he entered, which he returned with good grace.

Miyuki often asked him to read books to her, not out of an inability to do so herself, but more of an opportunity to let her brother spoil her. Last week they had just finished a collection of short stories by Chekhov, and now Tatsuya walked among the few bookshelves, as this shop was rather small.

Miyuki's taste in books was rather varied, and as she had not expressed a preference for any author, Tatsuya was quite stumped as he ran his eyes among the numerous spines emblazoned with characters and letters. It was when a small tap on his shoulder startled him when he looked around and saw that he was staring into the bespectacled eyes of the girl running the store.

"Are you having trouble, Tatsuya-san?"

Tatsuya smiled slightly. "Hello again, Mizuki-san. …I was unsure as to what kind of book to bring my sister this time."

They didn't call each other by their first names because they were particularly close or anything—actually, this girl was quite shy around Tatsuya, but ever since Tatsuya had known that her name was Shibata Mizuki, he proposed to just call each other by their first names as to not sound very confusing, instead of calling each other "Shiba-san" this way and "Shibata-san" the other.

As Mizuki was quite interested with this enigmatic young man who always buys books every other week for his sister, she promptly agreed without much question.

This same Shibata Mizuki adjusted her glasses with a shy smile, and fidgeted for a bit before opening her mouth to speak again.

"Would you like me to recommend something, Tatsuya-san?"

Tatsuya nodded mutely and followed Mizuki to a corner where some pocketbooks were stacked, and asked as way of making small talk, "By the way, how did you know that I was troubled?"

"Well, usually you would just choose something quickly and then be done with your shopping in about five minutes flat…" Mizuki blushed, while Tatsuya wondered if he was really that easy to read, or if this girl was just highly perceptive. "I'm sorry if I seemed to be quite the busybody today…"

"I don't mind." Tatsuya received the book that Mizuki had held out, and raised an eyebrow when he realized that it was a collection of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. "Hm, interesting choice. Why this book in particular?"

Mizuki smiled while she led the way back to the counter. "You know, Tatsuya-san, it seems to me that your sister would like something more lighthearted to read after Chekhov." She smiled. "And sometimes, girls like stories with simple conclusions, be they good or bad. They make the world seem so much easier to live in."

Tatsuya wordlessly placed the book and the money on the counter, and sighed as she handed it back with his change. "I might never have thought of that. Well, Miyuki is a child at heart still, after all…" He looked up. "Thank you, Mizuki-san."

"You're welcome…" Mizuki replied, flushing a light pink. "And I hope Miyuki-san likes the book."

As Tatsuya rode the train to the hospital, still muffled in his heavy trench coat, the snow that Miyuki had warned him against began to fall.

They fell like gentle drifting feathers, but as the train picked up speed, they seemed like a huge mass of white flowing along beyond the window. He tightened his hold on the book that he had bought and thought about Miyuki, who was probably still stuck in her bed, counting the minutes until the door to her room opened and let him in.

Miyuki's illness was something that they had never really talked about. Tatsuya remembered the first time the doctor mentioned the name of the sickness, and he still found it difficult to get his tongue around the words, not because they were foreign, but because they served to make it seem as if this was all real. Tatsuya, who had always believed that it is better to receive the bad news first to get it over with, found it funny that he could not take it easy when it came to his sister.

"Guillain–Barré syndrome," the doctor's voice echoed all around his head.

He wasn't an expert on medicine, preferring more to tinker around with computers and weaponry, but when Miyuki tried to stand up one day and fell to the ground instead with a surprised look on her face, Tatsuya studied her case and tried to make sense with what the doctor had told him.

The only thing he understood, in spite of all the claims that he could be a prodigy in any field he so wished to study, was that this condition had ultimately restricted her freedom to move around and become a normal girl like other young women her age.

Brilliant, lovely Miyuki, who had also turned twenty-four this year after Tatsuya, who could have been working at any job that she had so wished, was reduced to a little girl who couldn't even make a trip to the bathroom without having her brother support her.

Tatsuya was a normally unruffled person, but in that short trip to the hospital, which he spent remembering what had caused the both of them to settle in this routine, he reaffirmed the fact that he could feel emotions more keenly when it was Miyuki's happiness that was being threatened.

"Miyuki?"

Tatsuya dropped his voice as he went in the silent hospital room, thinking that he might disturb Miyuki if the girl was asleep. However, hearing the delighted "Onii-sama!" from the delicate occupant of the bed, he smiled instead and presented her the book that he had bought.

"Oh, Onii-sama shouldn't have bothered," Miyuki cried, but Tatsuya could see the smile that she couldn't keep from showing.

"It's nothing. After all, Miyuki never asks for anything, so this is the least I could do." Tatsuya sat on the chair beside the bed and watched Miyuki as she unwrapped the parcel, glowing upon seeing the title that he had brought. Noticing the basket of fruits on the nightstand that wasn't there this morning, he asked, "Oh, did anyone drop by?"

"Only Honoka and Shizuku, Onii-sama," Miyuki replied, smiling gently at the dawning look on Tatsuya's face.

"Oh, so it's Mitsui-san and Kitayama-san." Tatsuya sat back, remembering the time he last saw Honoka and Shizuku before Miyuki's graduation from college. "I see."

"Honoka recently got promoted in her company, while Shizuku is studying in graduate school." Miyuki placed the book on her lap with a serious expression. "Onii-sama, I wonder why you didn't pursue an engineering program, though? You could have excelled in that perfectly."

Tatsuya shrugged. "I wanted something more… challenging, I would say. After all, it would be just monotonous if I knew everything from the start. Becoming a policeman is something more spontaneous. You cannot control every element in the job."

Miyuki giggled. "So, even Onii-sama thinks that way sometimes."

"Not all problems have a solution that can be worked out with numbers, Miyuki." Tatsuya smiled, and placed his hand over Miyuki's slender wrist. "And this way, I know what to do in case I need to protect you."

"Onii-sama…" Miyuki's blush was almost luminescent in the whiteness of her skin.

If someone had happened to see that scene, he would have remarked that they looked less than siblings and more than lovers.

"Well, there's that." Tatsuya withdrew his hand and picked up the book. "Do you want me to read to you today as well?"

Miyuki's eyes shone like fine gems.

"Of course, Onii-sama!"

Tatsuya smiled, and opened the book. Miyuki closed her eyes and lay back on the bed as her brother's calm voice wove for her a world where bitter reality does not exist.

If only, this could last forever.

—That was what the two siblings thought at the same time.

Next time:

[Siblings Chapter (II)]
Graupel