1.9 Winter Snow

YUKI

When my mother came to this land she came seeking new opportunities. All she found instead was the bitter reality of an outsider. She was too different from everyone else here, no matter how much she tried.

Her differentness was passed down to her daughters. My sister embraced her differentness and it empowered her; for me it was something that put a barrier between me and the rest of the world. My sister was amazing. There was no one I looked up to more, and she will always be my inspiration. But on some days, days like today, I was tired down to my bones for my inability for be like her.

As I sat on a sheltered park bench, gazing aimlessly at a gray horizon, a figure appeared- Leo, holding his violin case above his head in a poor attempt to ward off the rain. I didn’t feel much at all as I watched him run through the rain towards me. “Did you come here looking for me?” My voice sounded cool, detached.

“Of course I did.” He shook his head to flick off raindrops. “You didn’t come. I got worried.”

The sharp sting of tears broke through the numbness as I started to cry. “I… I had a fight with my sister,” I said into my hands. “I’m so lost, Leo, I can’t find a place I belong. I’m so tired of that but I’m tired of looking.”

“That’s not true,” he replied with heat in his words. “There will always be a place you belong. I don’t know what you fought about but I’m sure she still loves you, and… You have a place with me, if you want it.” He took a deep breath and took my hand in his. They were trembling, from the cold or nerves I did not know. “Yuki, I love you. Will you marry me?”

I smiled and buried my face in his shirt, the dampness mingling with my tears. “Yes, I would like to, Leo. Very much.”

 

LEO

When Yuki first told me her name, I had asked what it meant.

“My mother named me,” she said. “In her native tongue, it means snow. She used to call me Behr Yuki instead of Yuki Behr, because they always put their family name first.”

As I held her upon the pavement wet with rain it occurred to me that maybe it made sense, not by coincidence but by simple laws of nature, for us to be here together. Snow and winter, my Winter Snow.