A lean-cut figure with dark hair came down the slopes with professional skill that even the skiing visitors at the bottom of the hill gawked at him in awe. Even if not for the skills, his presence alone as one of the influential Kanagawas, was enough to be awed about. Before he reached the bottom of the hill, he skidded to a halt with practiced skill, sending a spray of ice flying into the air. His rapid breaths came out in puffs of frozen air as he pushed his dark glasses to rest over his forehead to scan the area for any sign of the redhead. Sakuragi, who was standing under a bare tree, was easy to spot. Even with the teenager's jacket hood covering his head, leaving only a few strands of red hair peeking past the fur lined head hood, Hanamichi's height and the way he held himself distinguished him from all the other visitors in the snow-covered area.

"Hanamichi," Kaede called out, "Why aren't you skiing?"

Hanamichi shrugged, indicating that he didn't know how while at the same time wondering how the green jacket on the kitsune, which decidedly looked as thick as his, seemed to fit the brunette so snugly.

"Do you want me to teach you?" Kaede asked. Automatically, Hanamichi wanted to say something to defend his ego but before he could do so a group of admiring relatives and non-relative visitors consisting of young women and the odd one or two young men, clustered around the brunette and started to gush.

"Kaede-kun! Can you teach me how to ski?" asked a girl in pink.

"Me too, Kaede-kun!" pleaded another girl pushing up to the tall fox-eyed man.

Hanamichi scowled as he watched the group fawn over his pretend-boyfriend. Even with Kaede looking as if he was not enjoying the attention, Hanamichi was still feeling jealous. He leaned against the trunk of the tree, not realising that Hisashi was walking up to him until the older Kanagawa brother opened his mouth.
"What are you doing over here?" the scarred-face man asked, "You're supposed to be one of the sponsors for this event. Mingle."

"I don't feel like it," Hanamichi said, his mouth drawn in a tight line as he continued to watch Kaede surrounded by his bevy of admirers.

Hisashi followed the redhead's line of sight and chuckled in amusement.
"Looks like there wouldn't be any lack of volunteers if we need to replace you as Kaede's boyfriend," the young man said smugly.

"A volunteer that Kaede wants," Hanamichi returned just as smugly.

Hisashi scowled. "There's that."

The redhead snickered.

After a moment of silence between the two, Hisashi sighed. "What can I say? I love Kaede ever since he became my brother. If he wants something, I do my best to get it for him."

Hanamichi turned to look at the shorter man and was surprised to see a soft expression that was very rare on the man's face as he watched his younger brother try to fend off some of his admirers with minimal rudeness.
The redhead huffed and turned around to walk away.

"Where are you going?" Hisashi asked when he realised that Hanamichi was leaving him.

The redhead did not stop walking but turned his head to speak with a grin over his shoulder. "You not looking like an asshole is too weird for me. I'm splitting."
And with a jaunty wave he left, leaving the smiling Kanagawa alone under the tree to continue watching his brother's predicament with amusement.

As Hanamichi stuffed his glove-covered hands in his jacket pocket he began to think on where he should go to for some peace and quiet when someone called to him from behind.

"Sakuragi Hanamichi?"

The redhead turned around to see a slender young man walking up to him, wearing a stark white winter coat with black throusers and a pair of dark amber-tinted sunglasses covering his wide eyes.

"Yeah?" Hanamichi said, stopping to let the young man catch up to him.

"Kanagawa-san asked me to pass this to you," the young man said, handing the redhead a note.

"Doumo," the redhead thanked him, not acknowleding the stranger's departure as he scanned the note given to him.

'Hanamichi,
Meet me in the lodge at the slalom course. We need to talk.'

Kaede'


~~~~

Ice crunched under his shoes as plowed through the blanket of snow which seemed to have increased in depth the further he walked away from the main area of the event. The noise of the crowd has already started to dim and then there was nothing else to hear except for the distant sound of howling wind.
Five minutes later, Hanamichi reached his destination. If not for the help of one of the workers in the resort, he wouldn't have known where to go to for the lodge was situated at a place far away from the resort that people would've thought it never existed.

As soon as Hanamichi reached the lodge he entered and saw that the place was empty except for a built-in wooden bench beside the window. There were no other furnishings as was expected since the lodge seemed to have just been built and all other efforts forgotten in favour of finishing the resort hotel first.

Hanamichi took a seat on the lone bench and began burrowing deeper into his coat to try to get warmer. Although the lodge has managed to keep the wind out, the coldness still seeped into the building to chill the redhead to his bones. While he tried to keep himself warm, he wondered what it was that Kaede wanted to talk to him about. Probably it was something about that one month period they became school-mates but Hanamichi could not figure out what it was, though he did realise that the reason that Kaede chose him to be his pretend-boyfriend might be because the brunette knew him before and therefore was comfortable to be with him. But that did not make any sense. The first time he and Kaede met, the brunette was less than friendly. He was plain mean.

Burrowing his numb cheeks deeper into his fur-lined hood, the redhead wished that the kitsune would hurry up before he froze his ass off.


~~~~

"The wind has picked up," Hisashi commented as he tugged the collar of jacket higher up his neck.

Kaede nodded. "I heard from the news forecast that there will be a short blizzard in the evening."

"That'll be okay," Hisashi said. "The party starts at seven so everyone should be inside warm and safe. I'll go now to get ready. See you later."

"Aa," Kaede replied. As his brother walked away, he again began to look around for any sign of the redhead.

Suddenly someone called out his name and he turned around to see a slender young man wearing a white winter coat and a pair of dark amber-tinted sunglasses walking up to him.

"I have a message from Sakuragi-san," the young man said as soon as he reached the brunette. "He said to meet him at the lodge of the slalom course right now."

Kaede's eyes widened in surprise. "The slalom course?"
As far as he knew, the slalom course was nearly a mile away from the resort hotel and no one was manning the lodge at that moment.

"Hai," the stranger said. Without any more questions, Kaede took off like the wind, skiing down the path of the slalom away from the departing crowd who were getting ready for the party.

The young man in the white jacket smiled. His job was done.


~~~~

"Shit," Hanamichi murmured as the wind continued to howl outside in the darkness. It was already late and he hoped Kaede did not run into any trouble coming here. If he did, then it served the fox right for picking a far-away place like this to meet.

Suddenly the door burst open and in stumbled Kaede who looked chilled and exhausted to the bone. The young man's face was flushed by his run to the lodge and his hair was in disarray made unkempt by the furious wind.

"Kaede!" the redhead exclaimed, striding towards the other teenager.

"What the hell are we doing here?" demanded the fox-eyed young man at once.

The redhead stopped short in his advance. "Nani?"

"What do you want?" Kaede asked angrily as he leaned his ski equipment carelessly on the wall before he slumped onto the bench, tired.

"Hey! You were the one who wanted to meet me here," said Hanamichi hotly.

Kaede looked at Hanamichi irritably. "What?"

"You gave me a letter-"

"I didn't-"
Kaede snatched the piece of paper from the redhead's fingers and as he scanned the words on the note, his eyes narrowed.

"It's typed," Kaede murmured to himself.

"Yeah. And naturally I believed that it was from you since you're always using the computer and all," Hanamichi said with a frown on his face.

"Who gave this to you?" the brunette asked.

"This tall skinny guy with a white jacket, black throusers and orange sunglasses," Hanamichi told him.

"He's the one who told me to meet you here," Kaede said, rubbing his chin with his cold knuckles, "We've been tricked. Someone is trying to sabotage the promotion event. Without us the press won't have anything interesting enough to do a good cover story for the resort's promotion and with me not there the heads of the family would think that I'm not up to taking the managing role of the resort."

"K'so! We've been had!" the redhead growled, banging his fist on the wall, "What do we do now?"

"We're trapped here now. But when aniki realises that we're missing he'll come looking for us. Let's just hope no one else would know about it as well or the press would have a field day."

Hanamichi shivered as the wind howled yet again. "Chikuso. Gomen, ne. It was stupid of me to be tricked like this."

"I was tricked too so it was not all entirely your fault," Kaede replied.

The redhead was about to protest when a hand grabbed his arm and suddenly he was pulled onto the bench to sit beside the brunette before a pair of arms circled around him to envelope him in a hug.

"You're shivering," Kaede explained, shifting closer so that not an inch of space was left between them.

"The Tensai can handle the cold," the redhead protested, blushing furiously as he struggled against the brunette's arms.

"Do'aho," Kaede sighed. "We're both cold. We need to share our warmth."

After a few seconds of thought, Hanamichi agreed with that common sense and with reluctance settled down and held the other young man back by slipping his arms to encircle Kaede's waist, thus bringing them into a more comfortable embrace with his head leaning against the crook of the brunette's neck.
"Don't let it be forgotten that the Tensai didn't leave you to freeze to death," the redhead said loftily.

Kaede snorted. "Aho."

"Nanda yo! You should be more thankful, kitsune!"

"It's you who should be thankful that I didn't demand for us to strip so that we can share body warmth properly."
Then, Kaede smiled as he felt the warmth of the redhead's blush against his skin.

A few moments later, Hanamichi nearly sighed out loud in relief as the warmth that he and Kaede shared managed to stop his shivering. The wind sounded less intimidating now, drowned out by the brunette's calm breathing against his ear and even knowing that they were alone, far away from other people, made him feel less worried than he should be. He actually enjoyed the quiet solitude - feeling as if they were the only two people left in the world without any cares or sorrows. In Kaede's arms he felt safe. Secured. Possibly even loved.

After a minute of silence, Hanamichi's voice broke the quiteness in the lodge.
"Kaede?"

"Hm?" Kaede shifted against the redhead for a closer cuddle.

"Rukawa Kaede?"

Hanamichi felt the brunette go still against him before the young man spoke, "You remember me."

"Ano... not exactly..." Hanamichi replied guiltily though he knew he shouldn't feel like that at all.
"Akira saw the pictures from my primary school album and saw you in the class photo."

"Ah," Kaede acknowledged.

"How could you have remembered me?" Hanamichi asked, tipping his head up to look at the brunette's face, "We've never talked and you've been in school for only one month."

"You were my saviour," Kaede answered simply, "Of course I remember you. And who could forget your red hair?"

Hanamichi ignored the red hair comment for the moment and said, "I beat those guys up because they pissed me off. I didn't even know you then."

"That's the more reason the remember you," the brunette said, "My parents died when I was just a kid and my remaining relatives didn't want anything to do with me. You were the only one who cared even when you didn't know me."

Hanamichi stared at him and what Kaede said next made his brown eyes go wide in shock.
"You were my first love, Sakuragi Hanamichi."


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