Chapter Text
“Oh, it’s snowing.”
It’s wintertime in Morioh, and that means the start of the snow season. Josuke’s always had good memories of playing in it when he was little, disregarding when he was 4. The hype of it has died down as Josuke got older, but today is different. Today, he’s going to be a kid again and play in the snow.
He grabs his coat, waving goodbye to his mom on his way out.
As soon as he steps outside, he breathes in the sharp, cold air. It’s a nice change of pace from the heat of the past week.
Morioh sure does have some weird weather, huh?
He starts off, walking into town. Josuke doesn’t have a specific place he wants to go; he just wants to enjoy the snow.
After a bit of walking, he reaches a clearing—no buildings nearby, only a few trees in the surrounding area. He starts to gather some snow and rolls it into a small ball. Josuke continues to do this until he has three small balls the same size. He picks up the first one and starts to kick it around a little, hoping it will become a bigger ball.
Soon, he gets it to about 1.5ft tall, although it isn’t very much of a.... sphere ....
Josuke picks up the next ball and repeats the same process. He’s able to get a 1ft tall “ball” and a 5ft tall “ball”, and when he stacks them onto each other, they make a really nice snowman.
Josuke goes in search of items to put on his snowman. He knows he’ll be able to get some sticks from the trees nearby, but what can he do for the eyes, mouth, and accessories? He can’t use his own clothes, it’s cold enough with them on.
He decides he’ll focus on that after getting the sticks, so he heads over to the trees and picks up some of the smaller ones from the ground, although they’re buried a bit under the snow.
When Josuke returns, he puts them into the middle ball, both sticks pointing upwards. He found some berries next to the trees when he grabbed the sticks, so he places those to make the mouth.
However, he doesn’t have anything for the eyes, nose, and he still doesn’t have any clothing for it.
I should’ve brought some stuff out here; I don’t have any money and who doesn’t make a snowman when they go out in the snow?
Josuke sighs and ruffles through his pockets. Surely there has to be something he can use for eyes or a nose, right? Unfortunately, his adventure comes out fruitless.
Deciding to not want to have a mouth-and-hands-only snowman, Josuke relents and takes off his scarf, hat, and jacket to add something else to this cold inanimate creature.
He looks nice. Though, I should probably put my clothes back on, I’m already starting to freeze .
Right before Josuke takes his articles back, however, he spots something small, round, and black in the distance. They also have a small shine to them, although it could just be snow.
Black beads...? I guess some kids dropped them when they went to make their own snowman.
Josuke can feel the cold creeping into his body, and he looks a little longingly at his clothes on the snowy figure. However, he decides that he can go without them for just a minute longer, so he can fetch those beads and make a full face for his snowman.
Afterall, I wouldn’t want to risk messing up my creation by taking the clothes off and, in the process, offsetting the snow.
Even if he messed up the snowman, he could use Crazy Diamond to fix it, but it seems that the cool temperature is already starting to affect Josuke. However, it doesn’t matter, there’s not going to be anything life-threatening happening in the next minute that requires those articles, and even if by some slim chance there is, the black beads aren’t very far. There’s nothing to worry about.
----
On the news, the weatherman had said that there wasn’t going to be any more snowfall in the coming days, and if there was, it would be very light.
Sometimes the weatherman is wrong. Sometimes he’ll say that there’s 100% for heavy rain, but in reality, there’s almost no rain, and the little that does fall isn’t much.
But stuff like that doesn’t hurt anyone, it just makes people mildly inconvenienced.
Well, for people that aren’t Josuke Higashikata, that is.
----
As soon as Josuke reaches the black beads, he feels something fall onto his bare arms. He looks over.
Rain?
He feels something else hit his body again. And then another.
No... this isn’t rain .
He looks up.
It’s... snowing again?
Josuke picks up the beads and looks up.
And that’ll be his biggest mistake of the day.
As soon as he looks up, and the snow comes down . Hard.
In the blink of an eye, Josuke is surrounded by a dark swarm of white flurries. He can barely see 3 feet ahead of him, and he doesn’t remember the direction the snowman is in.
With all of his clothes.
Josuke summons Crazy Diamond in hope of getting any more visibility but to no avail. He’s stuck in this one spot. If he moves in the direction he thinks the snowman is in, he could move farther away from it and cause himself some trouble. On the other hand, if he does miss, there’s a gas station a few minutes away (by car, unfortunately, so it would take longer for him to walk there). Though, there’s the very high possibility that if Josuke were to move, he wouldn’t go either direction and either walk into the trees or into a more open area.
Now, logically, the best option would be to stay put, and once the snow stops falling, he’d be able to move.
But Josuke isn’t thinking logically. He’s lost all feeling in his hands, his entire body is shivering, hard , and he’s barely able to stand.
Taking off my winter protection was a terrible idea, but how was I supposed to know more snow was going to come down?!?!?
And so, with his range of sight getting less and less, probably due to his eyes starting to fog up, Josuke realizes that this is... probably the end.
No one comes out to this part of town very often, and they especially wouldn’t during this bad of a snowstorm.
It doesn’t hit as hard as it should, knowing that he might either die or permanently lose function in at least one body part. Though, he won’t have time to think about it.
Because, as it seems today has been, Lady Luck has abandoned Josuke Higashikata today.
The poor teen faints, headfirst into the snow.
And then, the snow fall slows to a stop.
This has been a hell of a winter season for Morioh.
Tyr Ace Jotaro returned to Morioh in early December to research a relatively cryptid marine species. It’s been documented a few times in his uncle’s town, but only during the colder months. So far, Jotaro hasn’t been able to find any signs of it yet, but he’ll go out today again to check.
However, there’s been a lot of snow for Morioh this winter season, so maybe searching around this time will yield better results.
Jotaro looks out his window and sees a clear sky.
I should head out now, in case it starts to snow again. The weatherman said there wasn’t really a chance for there to be anymore falling in the next few days, but you can never trust him.
He grabs his coat and heads out.
-----
It’s not a long walk to the beach since the hotel wasn’t built very far from it.
He would’ve driven, but Jotaro didn’t feel like doing that today.
Jotaro arrives at the beach. He can barely see any sand, most of it being covered in snow. He makes his way to the shoreline but decides not to get into the ocean for once. Even someone like him knows that being exposed to such cold temperatures, even with clothes on, is a really, really , bad idea.
He stays at the shore for a while. Maybe an hour, two, but it’s been long enough that the temperature is starting to catch up to him.
Jotaro starts to head home when he sees snow start to fall.
So, the weatherman was wrong.
However, it seems as if the man can’t have been anymore wrong than he is now.
The snow is coming down really hard, really quickly. Jotaro can barely see 4ft in front of him. He knows, however, the direction he needs to walk in to get to some kind of shelter.
The Joestar walks for about three minutes or so before the snow stops. Strange.
However, something Jotaro sees brings his thoughts to a halt.
Josuke?!?
He wakes up disoriented, and more notably, cold .
He feels a weight on him, but he can’t process what it is.
It’s cold it’s cold it’s cold it’s cold-
“J...Jotaro?”
“ You ok kid?” Jotaro knows Josuke’s not ok, he saw the kid lying face down in the snow with no winter protection on, some of his skin was even starting to turn blue.
“ I... wh-what happened-” Josuke tries to huddle into the blanket that’s on him as much as possible. He’s so cold-
Jotaro doesn’t miss this and hands the cup of hot chocolate that was on the end stand.
“You were passed out in the snow with most of your warm clothes gone. Why did you put them on a snowman and then leave it?”
Oh
“I...” Josuke pauses. He takes a sip of the hot coco his nephew gave him. How does he explain that he put them on a snowman, left them to grab black beads a couple hundred feet away, and didn’t grab the clothes when he went to get the black beads? “ I... left them because I wanted to grab something for its eyes, and I didn’t want to risk ruining the snowman...”
Jotaro lets out a semi-annoyed sigh. “Good grief kid you could’ve gotten yourself killed by doing that.”
“ I know I just... wanted to be a kid again.”
Jotaro creases his eyes a little, not enough for Josuke to notice though.
The kid’s 16 , yet he feels that he’s no longer one.
What were supposed to be the greatest years of Jotaro’s life were taken away because of what he had to go through when he was 17. Those memories still haunt him, and he’s never been able to fully get over it. Plus, he lost some of his teen years when he became a delinquent.
He never would have wished that same fate on anyone else, especially someone like Josuke.
But here the kid is, feeling like he can’t really be one anymore.
Josuke looks up after he finishes drinking his hot coco. “ Th-thank you...”
Jotaro is brought out of his thoughts and looks at the child. “Yeah, of course.”
Josuke smiles a little before lying down and bringing the blanket over his face again. He closes his eyes and falls asleep in an instant.
Jotaro sighs once more. “What am I going to do with you.” He goes to the phone and calls Tomoko, letting her know that her son got lost during the short snowstorm but that he found him and that Josuke’s going to stay at his place for a little bit to warm up.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jotaro knows that the future is going to hold some surprises, and he doesn’t think he likes that notion.
But for now, it’s calm.
