Familiar defeat washed over him. Carol, who had only been wiggling his fingers, left his seat without even closing the ink cap.

The severe cold was long indeed.

The drawer filled with knitted gloves and scarves was open at the entrance, and though he played piano and read books he’d only collected, the anxiety that remained like a low fever showed no signs of leaving.

The half-written sentence remained without a period.

It was a rare day without snow.

Carol, who had escaped from tea time with his ‘family’ for the first time in a while, hopped over long and short tree branches and went outside the mansion.

The abundantly piled snow was beautiful like a carpet, but to Carol it was nothing but a damned obstacle. Though it was a village with no privacy, since there were hardly any crazy people who headed to the mountains during severe cold, Carol could freely wander around.

Trees that maintained green leaves even in winter stood triumphantly under the sunlight. Snow reflected in the light sparkled blindingly.

The sky had not a single cloud, and the fiercely blowing wind had also stopped.

“Tomorrow it’ll blow fiercely again.”

Such peaceful middays during severe cold were precious. By the next day, without a trace, as if asking when that had happened, blizzards would blow even more violently.

That’s when it happened.

“Ahhh!”

At the scream that shattered the peace, Carol reflexively stepped backward. And for good reason—the source of the sound wasn’t left or right, front or back, but above his head.

“Huh?”

Before he could assess the situation, the sound of branches breaking and something falling rang out loudly.

Crack!

A person had fallen from the sky.

Carol took a step closer, hoping the sounds of breaking and tearing weren’t human skin or muscle. What had been caught and caught on dense tree branches seemed to have stopped.

Sunlight strong enough to sting blocked his vision. Carol made shade with one hand and blinked.

“Ugh……”

Curly blue-green hair caught on tree branches and flowed down messily. The light was too strong to see most of the surroundings properly, but a color more vivid than the blue leaves remaining even in winter was unrealistically clear.

Under narrowed eyebrows was a blue deeper than dawn.

A blue the boy who lived in a place where half the year was winter had never seen even once. Even without the silver necklace swaying below her thin neck, he could have been certain.

Rational thinking had stopped long ago.

There was no leisure to question cause and effect in such an absurd situation. Even the moment small palms touched his cheeks, Carol couldn’t say a word.

“Carol.”

It was a voice he was hearing for the first time, yet it was familiar as if he’d been hearing it for a long time.

His lips, his throat, the back of his hands—no, his entire body trembled. Suppressing the unsightly surging tension, the boy barely managed to open his mouth.

“……Asha.”

Perhaps because he’d been wandering outside for a long time, his voice was lower and rougher than usual. Carol hastily cleared his throat, and Asha watched him quietly.

“Um.”

“Y, yes!”

“Sorry from the start, but could you help me down……?”

Only then did Carol notice his friend’s unnaturally caught position. It was like an illustration with a fairy-tale sprite composition that he hadn’t recognized.

“Ah, that, um, sorry. So……”

Tap.

When he stamped his foot once, the boy’s body floated about half a span. Asha gradually shifted her center of gravity while placing her hands on the approaching boy’s shoulders.

Curly hair tickled his slightly flushed cheeks and straight neck. Though there was no way to know, Asha’s body seemed to smell exactly like the sea.

Damp, salty, and cool.

The scent of summer he had only imagined through letters.

As both arms wrapped around Carol’s neck, their upper bodies briefly pressed together. He tried to carefully lower her like that, but the traces of tree branches scratching her calves and ankles bothered him.

“Um.”

“Yeah.”

“I think my ankle is hurt.”

Carol, whose head had been spinning hot enough to cause fever for less than a minute, eventually changed his posture slightly and supported Asha’s shoulder blades and behind her knees.

Fortunately, instead of getting angry asking ‘what are you doing,’ she obediently entrusted her body to him. Both hands were still hanging around the back of his neck.

“Nice to, um, meet you.”

Though it was an awkward posture for exchanging greetings, Asha was steadfast.

Questions like how, what way, why had long been pushed out of both their minds. The problem was that they had completely forgotten what they should say and what they wanted to say.

Instead of Carol, who was only opening and closing his lips while choosing what to say, Asha spoke again.

“And also, really sorry for meeting like this……”

Her pale lips stretched long. Carol lowered his head to hear those words better. The breath that touched his ear tickled.

“Would it be okay if I faint?”

Though the content was utterly bewildering.

With those words, her pale eyelids closed as they were.

※※※

“Carol! How can you skip family appointment time again, ……huh?”

“You’re going to be an adult soon too, so now you should act like an adult— What am I, seeing……”

The mansion’s troublemaker. The merchant master’s son who was the biggest among the village children but still showed childish traits.

The father who had tried to scold his son for going out on his own without breaking his childhood habits lost his words at the being held in his son’s arms.

“So, you, dear……”

“Father, please calm down first. Please calm down, so.”

The eldest, who was the most clever and sincere among the brothers and received the adults’ complete trust, stammered.

It was a rare sight to see, but unfortunately Carol didn’t have the capacity to respond to each reaction. The person who had politely asked ‘would it be okay to faint’ now slumped in the arms of a friend she had just met.

“I’ll explain later. Is there a spare room in the mansion right now……? No, I should go to my room first.”

Though there were spare rooms befitting Kasoche’s largest mansion, there was nowhere cleanly organized enough to lay down a sick person.

Carol, who had been muttering to himself, passed his father and eldest brother standing dazed and quickly went up the stairs.

The movement of jumping over two or three stairs at once looked as light as dancing. Small clusters of light ripened and disappeared where his shoe soles touched.

Only after laying the small body on his bed, treating her wounds, throwing more firewood into the fireplace, and preparing flower tea mainly consumed in winter could Carol look back on the current situation.

“So, right now……”

Asha had come.

Carol recalled the blue eyes deeper than the bottom of a lake beneath pale eyelids. Eyes that held a chill like drawing water from a dawn well.

Yet strangely, they didn’t look sharp at all—clear and transparent……

He had been recalling all sorts of descriptive words read in books, leaned back in the chair, and crossed his arms several times over.

Though it was because the bed had been given up to a guest, it didn’t feel troublesome.

[Grandfather passed away.

I miss you.]

Carol, who had been examining the letter he read dozens of times again, hurriedly gathered it up and shoved it into the drawer.

Every night, he would read one of Asha’s letters, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be caught by the person in question. That would be…… too embarrassing.

The chest rose and fell slowly, and the hand outside the blanket clenched and unclenched small. The long hand carefully touched and withdrew from the cloth-wrapped hand, from the fevered forehead.

“I miss you.”

The answer that had been swallowed alone slipped out.

“I missed you.”

The first words wanted to be said, words not even known to be wanted, dropped out one by one. When that child woke up, there would be many things to say.

Carol waited for the one and only friend to wake up, chewing over the words again and again so as not to forget.

※※※

The stifling warmth tickled the tip of the nose.

Carol noticed the presence faster than Asha opened her eyes. As the eyelids slowly lifted, through that gap, the blue light seen before collapsing appeared without distortion.

“Are you awake?”

Though the outline was blurry, the temperature contained in the words was clearly felt.

Asha, who had been habitually making the motion of adjusting her glasses, awkwardly lowered her hand and sat up. Carol, who had hurriedly supported the neck, plainly withdrew the hand and spoke quickly.

“I was worried. Right now even a doctor can’t come…… At least it’s fortunate this much exists.”

A white teacup appeared before the eyes in an instant. It was agility too difficult to follow with a dulled mind.