Chapter Text
“Is it weird that I feel very excited about today?” Koichi asked, stepping out of his house, sleight in hand. “I can’t remember the last time I did anything like this.”
It was a chilly January day in Morioh. A thick layer of white, shimmering powder covered the streets as far as the eye could reach. Since he hadn’t seen anything like it for a long while, Koichi could only describe it as something magical.
Families tended to stay cooped up in their houses at this time of year, but now that their hometown was transformed into this fabled winter wonderland, they had no choice but to start slowly pouring outside. The people living in the seaside town didn’t get to enjoy playing with snow very often, so all the residents collectively decided to make the most out of the opportunity. That was especially true after Kai Harada encouraged them to do so as a part of his Morioh Cho Radio segment.
The same sentiment extended to the three highschoolers standing in Koichi’s driveway at the moment. The small teen did think it was a little bit strange when Josuke proposed they go sleighing, as it was typically a childish activity, but you kind of lose the ability to judge what’s seen as normal after chasing down a deranged serial killer with a hand fetish. It sounded rather fun either way.
“Hurry up, we’ve been standing here for 15 minutes, if not more, and my ears are starting to get cold.” Josuke complained as his friend made his way towards him.
“Maybe you wouldn’t have to worry about that much if you wore a hat.” Koichi offered. Silently he wondered how the other teen would manage staying in the cold for the next few hours.
“And risk ruining my hair? Are you insane?” His friend pouted, giving his typical excuse. Koichi figured he should have known that was the reason behind him ditching appropriate winter wear again. Josuke’s obsession with his hair style was one of the first things he learned about him after all.
“You get it, right Okuyasu?” Josuke turned to his boyfriend, looking for support. The other just nodded.
“I wouldn’t want you to get sick though…” He murmured.
“Don’t you worry, this scarf is more than enough to keep me warm.” Josuke made a point to show off just how nice and fluffy the piece of clothing in question was.
“I guess. But if you start freezing we can always cuddle to exchange heat, you know, like penguins do!” Okuyasu beamed. He looked very proud of himself to have contributed such a scientific fact to the conversation. Koichi couldn’t help but smile at that.
“Hell yeah, we can!” His boyfriend approved of the proposition with a wide smile.
And with that, the trio started walking to their destination. Only then the smallest teen realised he wasn’t sure of what it was. “Where are we going exactly?”
“I thought we could head to the hills around the rich people area. The one with all the villas? I used to go there with my mom and grandpa all the time when I was younger.” He jumped into some sort of monologue about a certain childhood memory, but Koichi’s attention shifted somewhere else. As Josuke spoke, he started noticing more and more children with their families gathering in their general proximity. They all pulled sleighs behind them too. It wasn’t suspicious or anything, it just reminded him of how they were all probably considered too old to enjoy these kinds of winter pastimes. What a sad thought.
Soon enough, they reached the spot, only to see that it was absolutely booming with people. Josuke was quite surprised to see the hills he had once known as a nice, peaceful area had become rather popular over the years. It was a long time since he last visited them, but it still felt weird to see the crowds gathering around the most slidable slopes.
In hindsight, it should have made sense that a great area such as this wouldn’t go undiscovered for too long, not with the winter craze taking Morioh by storm. It just made sense for parents to bring their kids there. Still, he didn’t think realising that earlier would have prepared them for the way the adults looked at them.
“Is it just me or is this a little embarrassing?” Seeing how much younger the children were than them made the whole idea seem kind of silly all over again, but Koichi wasn’t sure if his friends would feel the same way. He could feel his palms getting slightly sweaty with the growing self consciousness.
“Yeah, being here with these kids does make me feel like an idiot.” Okuyasu supplied.
“More than usual, I mean.” He added. The scars on his face and the general delinquent-y appearance probably didn’t help much in how they were being perceived by all the parents.
“Hey, don’t give up just yet. Yeah, sliding down these hills probably isn’t worth the lowkey humiliation in the long run...But you know where we can go? To the forest!” Josuke was visibly determined to participate in the activity he set out to do and he wouldn’t let the judgemental looks stop him. Rarely anything did.
However, his companions didn’t seem convinced as they looked back at him.
“Listen, not only are there going to be a lot less people there, if any, but also the slopes tend to be a lot more steep there too. These baby tracks are nothing compared to that. It’s literally the best we can get!” He flailed his arms around, trying to get the other two on board with his clearly brilliant idea.
Okuyasu shrugged as a silent sign of agreement, then looked over to Koichi. He was inclined to give in too, even if only to escape the crowd of people shooting them weird glances.
And so they moved onto the freshly proposed plan B. And if one of them was kind of worried about the possibility of being lost in the woods that he didn’t know that much at all, he didn’t say anything.
-
The trio's problems didn’t end at escaping the stuck-up Morioh parents.
When they encountered the first new obstacle, it seemed rather miniscule- they had to get to the place Josuke was talking about. But though the teen made it sound like the slopes were really close by, their hike ended up being long and tiresome. Koichi was sure he has never been anywhere near this part of the woods before and if he was being honest with himself, the fact that he had to completely rely on the other teens for directions was becoming more and more worrying. After half an hour of searching, the silver haired boy started to suspect that maybe his friend was just making things up as they went.
It’s not that he didn’t have faith in Josuke - it was hard not to trust someone who saved your life multiple times in the span of just a few months. If he ever were to get caught in yet another deadly situation (which, please no, he had more than enough of those), he wouldn’t have any doubts about putting his fate in his friend’s hands. It was plans like these, when the stakes were significantly lower, that worried him. Since they weren’t actively risking anything, Josuke could allow himself to be a whole lot more reckless and wasn’t that terrifying.
Upon reaching the promised steep slopes, the team realised they might have been too steep.
“Sick!” Okuyasu described them shortly. It seemed like he was the only one out of the three teens, who couldn’t immediately grasp how this might have not been such a good idea after all.
“As in you’d have to go to a hospital after trying to slide down from them!” Koichi squealed as his friend started mounting his sleigh. “Seriously Okuyasu, it's not worth the potential damage!”
“He might be right this time.” Josuke surprisingly agreed and stepped forward to put a hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder, stopping him from going through with the possibly deadly action. “Look at all these trees, man! There’s no way you can avoid all of them on your way down!”
“If I crash into them, you can fix me up with your Crazy Diamond and I’ll be good as new.”
Josuke stopped to seriously consider this eye opening suggestion. Kochi figured he should join in.
They put themselves in situations a whole lot more dangerous than this in the past and they came out of them just fine. After all of that, wasn’t an adrenaline filled slide worth the easily repairable scratches and bruises? No, wait, that didn’t sound right at all.
“Come on guys! I’m sure there’s a better spot around here somewhere.” Koichi felt like he couldn’t give up his role as the impulse control of the group, even though ultimately his efforts rarely made any difference.
“How about me and Okuyasu do a little test run on one sleigh and in the events of things going south, we’ll just use our stands?” Josuke pretended as though he was asking for permission, but his mind was clearly made up before the words left his mouth. Koichi sighed.
“It’s not like I can do anything to stop you at this point, can I?” At the very least he wasn’t peer pressured into joining them. Koichi appreciated how the two always respected his free will, which couldn’t be said about some of his other friends. Actually, all of his other friends.
The teen silently watched his friends sit down next to each other on the wooden sled. The both of them could barely fit on the child sized toy and the image was kind of hilarious.
He observed them slowly scooting to the edge of the hill, their legs clumsily pushing the sleigh forward. Koichi anticipated their quick acceleration coming any moment, possibly a sound of a crash following not long after, but after waiting for a few minutes nothing of the sort happened. His friends just kept awkwardly shuffling away from him.
“What are you doing?”
“The snow is too thick and clumpy to slide down…” Okuyasu complained. He turned around to face Koichi and the look on his face was one of pure disappointment.
“Man, this sucks.” Josuke joined in as they both stood up. “All this walking and my genius problem solving and we don’t even get to do what we wanted!”
He kicked the sleigh, seeing if maybe the sudden application of force would put it in motion, but it’s rails only dug deeper into the ground.
Seeing one’s friends so disheartened was something that’d surely make anyone at least a bit sad and Koichi cared about his comrades a lot. He supposed the time had come for him to be the one motivating the others, as Josuke looked about ready to give up. He desperately searched his brain for an idea that would somehow save this disastrous day.
“What if… we built a snowman instead?” Saying it out loud made his suggestion sound stupid, but he had no other leads. The outdoors winter activity selection seemed narrow, so he had no choice but to stick with it. “I mean, this kind of snow would actually be perfect for it. And we can use our stands to make this more interesting, right?”
“I don’t know… Isn’t it weird creating something human-like and then leaving it in the wild, all by itself? Feels a bit cruel to me.” Okuyasu countered, taking a weirdly philosophical approach.
Koichi pondered if it was worth explaining that a snowman wasn’t a living creature anyway and thus there was no real morality at play here.
“What if we used the sled to pull the snowman back home with us? I mean, we might as well make some use out of these since we already dragged them all the way here.” Josuke offered before his friend could come up with an answer to his dilemma.
“That way we could put it in the freezer for later too!” Okuyasu sounded way too excited about that prospect. “Just imagine the possibility of an icy little dude in your fridge, chilling your drinks for you and generally being a friend. That’d be really cool, right?”
“Okuyasu… that just might be the best thought you’ve ever had!” Josuke shouted.“You think we can somehow make money out of this?”
Koichi was suddenly reminded that there was a very good reason his two friends were dating each other - they were the only ones who could reach the same level of ridiculousness in such a short time. In a way, he was kind of jealous of how easily they understood each other. Their ability to stay at the same wave-lenght was truly admirable.
It’s not that he was unsatisfied with his relationship with Yukako, but he felt like there was a disconnect between them at times. Maybe it had to do with the fact Koichi wasn’t all that experienced with talking to girls. Maybe it was related to how she had severely traumatised him before he got to know her better.
Either way, after attempting to workshop some snowman related business ventures and Koichi politely shooting down all of them, the group got to work.
Okuyasu must have really taken the casual suggestion of utilizing stands to heart, since he didn’t even make a single snowball before pulling out The Hand. However, his attempts at pushing the snow closer to make it clump together were awkward and not that successful, as they always resulted in strange shapes that fell apart quickly. His failures didn’t seem to bother him all that much though, he just kept on working with a goofy grin.
Koichi couldn’t really come up with a way to make Echoes Act 3 useful, so he stuck to traditional methods of just rolling a ball of snow until it accumulated enough mass. It might have been boring, but it did the job.
Josuke refrained from aiding in creating the main body, choosing to work on the details instead. He made creative use of his stand, crushing up snow in his hand and reforming it with Crazy Diamond into shapes that would be otherwise impossibly hard to attain.
Even with the added chaos of the supernatural, it took them less than 30 minutes to finish their creation. Koichi had never claimed snowman making was a time consuming process.
“Ok… Are you ready to set your eyes upon the perfect being we’ve just created?” Josuke asked, as he stood in front of the sleigh, covering it with his body.
“Yeah!” Okuyasu and Koichi cheered simultaneously and the boy stepped aside for the big reveal.
It was definitely original. It had the classic snowman “three balls stacked on top of one another” silhouette, but it was the details that made it unique. Josuke put extra work into sculpting a little pompadour on its head, as well as several icy buttons and pins. Some of them even matched the ones that him and Okuyasu usually adorned their uniforms with. The snowman's eyes were made out of pinecones stuck awkwardly into the most upper snowball, poking out in a wonky, yet endearing way. The stick hands were a nice touch too.
As the two of them considered the snowy statue, Josuke kept shooting his friends expecting looks meant to communicate that he was asking for their opinion.
“It’s so… small.” Was the first thing that came out of Koichi’s throat. True, the accessories were impressive, but the small size jumped out at him.
“Look who’s talking, shrimp!” Okuyasu barked.
“Be nice to our new kid!” Josuke nudged him in the side with his elbow.
“I'm regular-people sized, you guys are just huge. Also, I don't think snowmen even count as children anyway.” Koichi countered.
“Ok, but if you think about it - we brought him into this world, we birthed him. Therefore, he is our son.” The taller teen was not about to give up his parental rights.
“So does that mean he has 3 fathers?” What would that kind of thing even look like on a family tree?
“Now that you mention it, it does sound kind of weird.” Josuke indulged him. “Maybe we will be his parents and you can be the godfather?” He wrapped his hand around his boyfriend’s waist.
“Sure.” Koichi shrugged. Being a godparent to a snowman didn’t sound like that big of a responsibility. Mostly because snowmen lifespans tended to be short. He could handle it, probably.
“He needs a name!” Okuyasu exclaimed and Koichi briefly considered if he should interject. Getting attached to things as fragile as snowmen didn’t sound great in the long run, but these two seemed to have already fallen in love with this “son” of theirs, so it might have been too late.
“How about-'' He gave in, ready to assist in naming the child. Koichi didn’t really have any idea of what he’d suggest if he got to finnish the sentence, but he supposed he should at least pretend to be involved in his godchild’s upbringing.
“Now, don’t get me wrong, I do generally value your input, but I don’t think a person who has named their dog Police should get a say in this.” Josuke interjected. Very rudely at that.
“What’s wrong with Police?” Koichi actually liked it a lot and his two friends never told him there was an issue with the name either. He felt the sting of betrayal. His question might have come out a little indignant, but he was kind of upset.
“Anyway, I think Prince would suit our little guy just fine.” Josuke offered and put a hand on the snowman’s shoulder in a way that was surely meant to emulate fatherly affection. Too bad his child didn’t have the mental capacity to appreciate it. Or to do anything, really.
Even after having his naming conventions insulted, the silver haired teen couldn’t help but nod in agreement. This snowman really did look like a Prince indeed. He didn’t want to stay angry for too long, either. Even if deep down he knew he’d have to address the Police issue again at some point.
“He’s just so.. beautiful.” Okuyasu sniffed next to him. The whole thing must have made him somewhat emotional “I can’t believe I get to be the parent of such a beautiful boy!” He reached out to trap Prince in what would surely be a tight embrace, but not before an arm came to stop him before it’d be too late.
“Be careful! Snowmen are fragile!” Koichi warned the other, his momentary panic obvious in his voice.
“Uh, yeah, you’re right.” Okuyasu withdrew.
“Shouldn’t we get going? I think Tomoko-san would like to meet him.”
“Yeah... I feel like my ears are starting to freeze over too.” Josuke complained and started pulling his sleigh, the one that they put Prince on top of, in the vague direction of where they came from.
The sudden motion made the snowman slowly slide of it’s surface. In a matter of seconds, the breakable creation could end up falling off completely.
“WAIT!” Both the other teens screeched just as the snow body was starting to tip itself towards the ground.
Josuke stopped immediately and all three of them jumped to the child to gently push it back onto the sleigh. Then they patted more snow onto him to smooth over all the cracks that the rapid crisis caused.
“I don’t think we can bring Prince home like that…” Koichi breathed out once they felt no more danger was threatening the child at the moment.
“Maybe if I just…” Josuke huffed as he picked up the sleigh with the snowman on it. “How about this? This makes things easier, right?”
“Aren’t you going to quickly get tired of holding it up?” Koichi raised his eyebrows, sceptical.
“Nah, it’s fine, let’s go.” He was quickly shut down, but it was clear his friend just wanted to get back as soon as possible. The chill must have started to really get to him.
“Does anyone remember the way back?” Koichi asked sheepishly, fearing that he wouldn’t enjoy the answer he’d be given.
“Not really. But these are just our local Morioh woods, right? They can’t be that hard to maneuver.”
As it turns out, he was right.
-
They got lost. Koichi derived no satisfaction from knowing he had predicted this very thing would happen. Given the choice between being right and getting back home safely, he’d definitely preferred the latter. Nevertheless, the group just kept circling around the same few recognizable areas as they tried to find a way out of the snowy maze.
“Didn’t we already pass by that tree?” The occasional questions from one of his friends were the only things breaking the unnerving silence at this point. After hours of trying to get back, the will to keep their banter going was replaced by shivering and exhaustion.
“There’s no way of knowing. It’s a tree, they all look the same, Okuyasu.” Josuke sighed.
Whether they did see that tree before was kind of irrelevant, as none of them knew where to turn next.
“Not to be dramatic, but I’m starting to worry about how we might have to spend the night here.” Koichi murmured. He hoped his streak of depressingly correct guesses would end soon.
It did start getting dark not long ago. The sun engulfed the woods in a rich, golden sunset colour and the smallest teen might have taken his time to admire it under any other circumstances. Rohan-sensei did manage to instill a knack for admiring nature's beauty at some point in their friendship. But at the moment, the breathtaking sight was merely a bitter reminder of just how much time they wasted.
His parents and sister were probably getting worried. Tomoko-san too. Just what would they think happened to them after not coming back for so long?
“No, we won’t.” Josuke replied sharply. “That’s not an option for us. Even now, I can’t feel my toes anymore. I will literally die if we don’t get out soon.”
“I told you to wear something warmer, man.” Okuyasu might have intended for the comment to resemble a jab, but the concern in his voice prevented it from sounding like their usual light hearted teasing. His boyfriend only groaned, not being able to come up with a worthy defense of what, he must have only now realised, was in fact a very stupid decision.
“Ok, guys, here’s what I think…” Josuke stopped and put down the snowchild in his hands for a moment to catch his breath. “Clearly, following these paths isn’t getting us anywhere and things are starting to become more and more urgent. We need another plan. So, I’d like to propose that we keep walking north, the general direction of our neighbourhood. These woods can’t be all that big after all, we are bound to walk out somewhere eventually.”
“We are going to alternate when it comes to holding Prince too.” He quickly added, growing more and more annoyed with the strain building up in his muscles.
“Umm… isn’t it a better idea to leave him somewhere around here?” Koichi spoke up, only to be met with the looks of absolute horror and betrayal coming from his friends. He had a hunch this would be their reaction.
“I know, you don’t want to abandon him, but think about it rationally! We'd be able to move faster and we’d use up less of our energy!” He didn’t back down.
“We are not leaving anyone behind.” Josuke was firm in his stance and Okuyasu nodded in agreement next to him.
In moments of desperation such as these, the taller teen was always the one to take on a leader role. It felt eerily reminiscent of their summer chasing down Kira.
So it was probably better to just go along with whatever Josuke said and wish for this adventure to turn out with as little casualties as possible, just like then. Afterall, if it wasn’t for the hope Koichi had put in his friend, he would have been long gone. Maybe leaving Prince would help their chances of getting out of there faster, but arguing about it would just create unnecessary tension.
With that said, the group started enacting the questionable plan. Treading on snow wasn’t as difficult or tiring as it seemed at first, but it were the occasional frozen puddles that proved to be the most troublesome. Slipping on them wasn’t hard and with how dark it was getting, they were growing less and less noticeable. The very real possibility of falling over with Prince in their grasp was especially anxiety inducing.
The teens could feel their extremities growing cold enough to freeze and fall off too, but they had to keep pushing forward despite the pain. As the night approached, Koichi felt as if even a quick break might cause him to reconsider their current situation and break down completely. Focusing on the task at hand was the only thing keeping the boy from falling apart.
Where exactly did he go wrong in life? Why did all mundane teenage things have to turn into some kind of crisis? Was he cursed somehow?
“At least there’s no threat of a stand attacking us or anything.” He breathed out, trying to reassure himself more than his companions. He had to differentiate this from all the traumatic experiences of a few months ago somehow.
“You really think so?” Josuke responded without even looking at him. His tone had an aura of seriousness, which only happened during battles before. That wasn’t helping the panic at all.
“What do you m-mean? There haven’t been any signs of a new stand user around since Jotaro-san left and the arrow has been secured by the Foundation!” Koichi didn’t really like where this conversation was going. He regretted not keeping to himself.
“Yeah…” He whispered vaguely before continuing. “I don’t mean to feed your fears, but… We don’t really know how many people or creatures that crazy old man in the photo shot, do we? There might be more stand users lurking out there, maybe animal ones, like those god damn rats…”
“You said those bastards almost managed to kill Jotaro-san!” Okuyasu yelped. “I’d rather not have our son here caught in the middle of a death match.” The teen frowned at the snowman in his boyfriend’s embrace.
And great, now that was all that Koichi could think about. Every little sound, every crack of dead leaves under their three pairs of feet became a reason for alarm. The small teen prided himself on progressively growing out of his cowardice from the year before, but this was different to all his other stand encounters - He never had to fight off a stand in the dark of the night before! He might have been turned into a book, a bomb, a piece of paper, but at least it was all in broad daylight and somehow that made this whole mess worse.
He could feel his anxiety silently growing with every second, praying for their walk to be over soon.
At some point in his shift to panic mode, Koichi didn’t notice one of his friends slipping away. The moment he realised he could hear the steps of only one other person near him, he stopped in his tracks.
“Guys? Are you still here?” He shouted, his voice quivering.
“Yeah? I’m right behind you, dude.” It was Josuke that answered him, standing in place as well, Prince’s sleigh still clutched in his arms.”Okuyasu?”
But they were met with nothing but silence. The two kept on calling the other teen’s name and looking around for him, but it was completely useless with the darkness enveloping them.
“W-We should split up to search for him!” Josuke nervously bit his lip. If Koichi didn’t know any better, he’d say his son's pinecone eyes mimicked his father’s expression for a moment. But even in his hazy state he realised that was an insane thought and he quickly shifted into rationality again.
“No way! We are sticking together!” Koichi grabbed onto his arm to make sure his friend wouldn’t go after his boyfriend alone anyway. Having someone by his side was the only thing preventing him from having a heart attack right then and there.
“Maybe we can try to retrace his steps?” The silver haired teen offered, unsure of what to do next.
They struggled to find any kind of imprint of shoes in the ground below them and then even more as they attempted to identify whom they belonged to. They kept trailing the tracks, still shouting for their friend. Josuke pulled out his lighter too, but it did very little to illuminate the shadows all around them.
“Okuyasu?”
The lack of response each time made the terror rising in their hearts grow stronger and stronger. Every second of Okuyasu’s absence made the fear more real, more heavy and overpowering.
“Hey, over here!” Finally an answer came and they both breathed out sighs of relief.
And suddenly an even bigger weight was lifted off their chests, as they saw a light. It was a street lamp.
They had found civilization at last. They managed to survive in the end.
Without thinking twice, Josuke burst out into a sprint, heading straight in the direction of the Higashikata household.
-
“We actually did it.” Josuke breathed heavily, overwhelmed with relief. After hours of wandering around aimlessly in the dark, standing in front of his own home again felt unreal. The feeling of ghostly pins and needles digging into his skin slowly lifted, even though his body temperature didn’t change in the slightest.
Overcome with pure bliss, he didn’t even notice his grip on the sleight growing weaker. In a split second, the wooden object slipped away from him, his reflexes not fast enough.
“Josuke, watch out!” Okuyasu called to him, but it was too late. Before the teen could even do anything, the fragile creature he tried so desperately to protect the whole night fell down on the pavement with a distinct crack.
He looked down in horror to see his son’s remains splattered all over the ground.
“Where the hell have you been, Josuke? We really thought you might have gotten yourself killed or something.” Tomoko yelled standing in the door frame. She must have been alerted by his boyfriend’s screech, but he couldn’t waste any time on explaining himself to her right now.
“HOLD ON, MY SON NEEDS URGENT MEDICAL ATTENTION!” was his only response and judging by more confused screaming and the shuffling of feet that must have been miss Aya, it didn’t do anything to calm the women down.
It didn’t matter. There were other things he had to focus on.
He quickly shoved the sleigh away to survey the damage. This was bad. He couldn’t even identify where Prince’s head ended and his body started anymore. The two hands were blown away in two completely different directions and the snow was slowly melting into the watery grime that covered the street.
Josuke called out Crazy Diamond and immediately started working on making sure his boy would be ok. He had to be. He didn’t go through all this effort to bring him home, only to have him fall apart at the very end of their journey.
Punches were thrown and doras were distributed. It all felt more chaotic than usual, but at the end he did manage to fix the snowman back to his original shape. A deep sigh escaped his lips.
He could feel his heart rate slowing down as he stared at Prince’s restored body, but upon further inspection he realised something was still wrong. The eyes. The two tiny pinecones gently stuck on his kid’s face looked exactly the same as before and yet there was a crucial thing missing. The image felt alarmingly familiar to something he had witnessed months prior. The moment he truly saw what was going on, the moment he understood, the teen’s knees gave out and fell onto the pavement.
“Calm down, Josuke! Look, Prince is all healed up now, nothing to worry about.”
Koichi and Okuyasu run up to him, clearly succumbing to panic as well, although for different reasons.
“His body’s fixed, yeah…” Josuke managed to choke out. “But his soul… It’s gone. He’s gone.”
His two companions gasped and the boy was pretty sure Okuyasu might have started tearing up too. They joined him on the ground, Koichi more so trying to comfort the parents than experiencing the grief himself.
Tomoko and Aya finally joined the trio, very confused, but the teens paid them no mind, staring at the lifeless Prince in front of them instead.