Akari, ever since she was a little girl, had always loved to watch the snow fall.
But, for some reason, she never really went out to play in it. Perhaps it was because she didn't want to get wet, or maybe it was too cold, or there was too much ice that she could slip on, but the fact remains that she had yet to hold the stuff in her bare hands, to touch it, to feel it.
The heavy tufts of white obstructed the bottom half of the window, leaving the shorter-than-average Akari to stare at but a simple white void, instead of the breathtaking frosty landscape outside that was surely becoming whiter and whiter by the minute. It was a total shame, but Akari decided to not mull over this circumstance, and got up to do something more productive.
-:-
When she had first started at Haze Middle School, Akari had formed a habit of letting her friends go walk home without her so she could spend a little more time waiting at the gate.
For Hikaru? But of course.
For the first couple of weeks, he exited alone. In a perfectly planned manner, Akari would come over and start up a conversation, and then the two would walk home together. They got along very well on these trips, just as they always had.
But then came her shift for cleaning duty. The morning, she had informed Hikaru of this, and told him to wait for her after school, she'd be as fast as possible so he wouldn't have to wait too long. But when she had finally finished wiping the floors, sweating like she had just run a marathon, she found only a deserted schoolyard.
The next day, Akari saw Hikaru walk home with a couple of friends. One of them, she grumbled, was a girl in a suit that surely was not from this school at all. Dejection poured into her. Those daily promenades with Hikaru were hers first. Those guys, they stole them from her.
But even though she wanted to walk with Hikaru, she didn't want to be a burden. She somehow had realized that she was being rather clingy, expecting him to be free to walk with her every day. So she stopped waiting by the gate and sprinted home herself instead, not wanting to even look at Hikaru and his new friends. To prove this, she had been recruited for the track team in addition to the go club.
-:-
When Akari had returned to the window about an hour later, she found that the snow on the ledge had at last been scraped away. Excited for the view, she rushed over to the pane and pressed her palms against it, surveying her front yard. Unfortunately, it had been shovelled until it looked like an industrial parking lot. There was no longer any room for an ounce of natural beauty. With the despondency eating at her, Akari left the window side once more, not in the mood for waiting until the still-falling snow accumulated again.
-:-
Akari had only just decided that she should try make friends with other people than Hikaru when she was paired with him for a science fair project. She had tried many times to convince herself that she wasn't, oh, definitely wasn't excited at this prospect, but of course she was lying to herself. She rushed to their arranged meeting place half an hour early, with three quarters of her part of the project already done. This meeting, she thought, was surely the work of the Fates themselves, so it had to go absolutely perfectly!
When Hikaru arrived, however, he simply said hi and asked about the project right away. Not a single "how are you?" Just a question on uranium. The only way that would please Akari would be if she was a part of the periodic table, which she certainly was not.
Her excitement ebbing away, Akari took out her pen, preparing herself for one long, uneventful work period with someone that was not her Hikaru, but a depressed schoolboy with the weirdest two-toned hair.
-:-
The snow was still falling, so surely, surely, it would cover the ground in wholeness very soon. She hoped there would be enough by the break of dusk, before she went to sleep.
-:-
Akari just didn't know when to give up. Whenever Hikaru disappointed her, she would get up and try again, completely oblivious to the fact that if you do something the same way every time, you won't be very likely to get any results.
It was like... snow falling, falling, ever slowly to the ground. The sight of Hikaru Shindo was like the start of the winter season, the start of an overload of feelings that didn't cease, no matter how inconvenient they were.
When the winter ended, the snow would melt, but it would come back the next year. Like how when Hikaru brushed her off, melted her heart, she would just try repeatedly to catch his attention whenever she would see him again.
Then the cold would renew, and the snow would start to fall, covering the browning grass. Like how her feelings would come back, covering any of her past mistakes involving Hikaru, erasing her very memory of those mistakes.
And the world would turn white once more.
White as in fresh, white as in new, white as in blank.
Blank, totally blank. There would be no filling this girl's head with the fact that they could not, would not, ever be together.
That is, until the snow would melt. Until she became mature, ineffably renewed, and the cold winter of childhood blossomed into the spring of independence.
-:-
A spike in the temperature overnight had melted away most of the previous day's snowfall, but the weather had reverted to its below-freezing streak in the morning. Akari had not felt like getting out of her warm bed, but she felt she had to. Because Hikaru would be at school today.
The snow had started up again just as she crossed the threshold of her house. On her way, she strangely, subconsciously stopped in the middle of the sidewalk beside an anthill of snow. Taking off her gloves, she bent down to take a handful of it into her trembling hand. She wanted to feel it.
The snow was cold and wet, just like she had heard it described...
Her heart was cold. Her face was wet.
The snow stopped falling suddenly, as if the angels had run out of stock on the blessing that they had, until now, been giving to this child: ignorance.
A/N: Yes, that girl in a suit is Akira.
Yumi Hotta is epic. This fic is dedicated to her. She also owns the whole of Hikaru no Go, not me! If it were mine, I would not have put in that yaoi vibe...
The snow analogy was an idea I got from the Full Moon wo Sagashite song Eternal Snow. I thought of listening to it after I saw a fic in this archive sharing that name.
Review? Please? :)
/ /Novaki/ /