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Atsushi knew it would be an interesting day as soon as he opened the door. There stood Kin-chan, gloved hands neatly clasped before him, with a canary yellow scarf wrapped around his neck. From underneath his matching hat, he gave a big, cheery smile. "Hi, Atchan! Ready to play?"
Atsushi craned his neck, looking at the sky behind Kin-chan. The blue, blue sky. "Why are you wrapped up like that? It's not snowing."
Kin-chan drew back a little, eyebrows knitted. The bobble on his hat wobbled nervously. "The forecast said it would snow today."
"But there's no snow. Look..."
Atsushi pointed out into the broad strip of garden, where there was, indeed, no snow at all. Kin-chan turned to look, face falling as he turned back to Atsushi. "The forecast said," he repeated, mulishly. "Anyway, it's cold. I wouldn't have been allowed to come if I didn't."
"You're right," Atsushi said, his usual cheer returning as he knelt to grab his shoes. "Give me a minute and we can go, okay? I want to show you—"
"Is that Kin-chan?" came a voice. Atsushi turned a bit too quickly, just in time to see his mother poke her head into the little square entrance hall. She'd been doing motherly things all morning, worrying things; her hair was piled up on her head, and she had her apron on. There was a smudge of flour on her nose.
Slowly, he stood up, clutching the back of his head with embarrassment. Kin-chan, at least, didn't seem to mind; he never minded. He just bobbed his little bow, smiling attentively, graceful like a girl. "Good morning, Kinugawa-san."
Atsushi's mother laughed. "Dear, why can't you ever teach Atchan to bow so nicely?" The two boys exchanged quick glances as she turned, still talking. "Close the door and come inside. I've made reindeer buns."
"You didn't offer me a bun!" Atsushi called after her, mock-wounded. "And I live here!"
"Ah, that's why you don't get a bun," she called back, with another little laugh. Kin-chan was still wriggling out of his boots and gloves, and out of his scarf, which was secured as close as a cocoon to a moth; but he gave Atsushi an apologetic smile, gradual and slow.
* * *
Atsushi often thought these days that Kin-chan smiled like a ghost would smile, thin and transparent and not entirely there. But just sometimes, when he forgot himself, he could surprise you. He was doing that now, contemplating his snowy white manjuu. It had antlers seared into the top, and a cute reindeer face, and it had Kin-chan almost lost in happy reverie, smiling bright as sunrise.
There was no arguing with a smile like that. You had to let it pick you up and take you where it wanted, and Atsushi always did. He picked the little nose of red fondant from his own bun's face, and licked it off his finger.
"What did you want to show me?" asked Kin-chan, still smiling at his bun—his quite uneaten bun—and still lingering near the kitchen.
Atsushi didn't immediately reply. Instead, he nodded at the bun in Kin-chan's hands. "Kin-chan, aren't you going to eat that?"
Kin-chan looked up at him with a bit of a blush. "It's too pretty to eat," he said. "Don't you think? Look." And he held it out for Atsushi's attention, with its face poking out above his fingers.
Atsushi shifted uncomfortably. Kin-chan always said things like this. It made him feel they didn't see things quite the same way. "It's only a bun, Kin-chan."
Kin-chan looked across at him, his smile falling quickly away. As his shoulders began to droop, Atsushi's stomach sank in turn. He never wanted to make Kin-chan sad, but it was so easy to do without trying. "And besides," he hurried on, "if you don't eat it, it'll just go bad, right? That'd be like it dying. Doesn't it want to be eaten, if it's a bun?" He watched Kin-chan rest his fingers on the bread, very aware of the half-eaten bun in his own hand.
"It's mono no aware," Kin-chan finally said, still gazing at his bun. "Isn't it..?"
"Mono no..?" echoed Atsushi, lost.
Kin-chan blinked up at him, his reverie broken, still touching the bun as if it might melt to nothing in his hands. "It's like when something is nice, nice to have," he said, fumbling for an explanation. "Or—or beautiful. But it's sad as well, because it will be gone. Like when it snows, and it's exciting, but at the same time you know it will all melt away. Oh, or like a rainbow! Rainbows have mono no aware."
There was clearly something more that Kin-chan wasn't saying, and his halting explanation had finished the job of burying Atsushi under things he didn't understand. Kin-chan was giving him a strange look, so wistful it was almost sad, and Atsushi, grabbing for something to say, closed his hand tighter on his own half-devoured bun. "Did you learn that at tea class?"
"I guess," Kin-chan said, glancing quickly down at his bun. He touched a becrumbed finger to his tongue, closing his eyes. Atsushi had no idea how he'd managed to hold out this long.
"There's lots more in the kitchen, Kin-chan. It'll be okay."
"But this one's special." And finally, Kin-chan took a small bite, then stopped in surprise. "Oh, it's good."
"Of course it's good," huffed Atsushi. "My mother wouldn't make a bad bun."
Kin-chan was peering, now, at the bean paste inside the steamed bread, deep, dark red against the white, with its little reindeer nose still poking out at one side. But he laughed at the mention of Atsushi's mother, and the next bite he took was larger.
Outside the window, clouds had started to appear, low and heavy in the sky.
* * *
The two of them had, eventually, worked their way back to the mysterious, oh-so-important thing that Atsushi wanted to show to Kin-chan, via a second bun each and a long digression about what even happened to reindeer when they died. Atsushi's mother had bustled them into the entrance hall and wrapped them both up warm. Atsushi's woollies were green and blue, and didn't match, and Kin-chan had bitten his lip and stared up at her in solemn silence as she busily tucked his scarf around his neck.
"I don't like the look of those clouds," she'd told them, as good as wagging a finger. "If it starts to snow, you must come back. No ifs or buts, and no arguing, Atchan! Kin-chan, make sure he does as he's told."
Atsushi had, indeed, opened his mouth to complain—Kin-chan, after all, wasn't his babysitter—but Kin-chan had quickly said, "Yes, Kinugawa-san. Thank you." And he'd bowed again.
Now they were outside. Now they were scurrying through the streets, closer to the outskirts of the city, closer to Kin-chan's own home. The cold of the day stung red into their faces, and Atsushi looked up at the white sky.
"It was so blue this morning," he said, mouth wide in disbelief. "Look at it now."
"Told you," Kin-chan said, pleased with himself. Atsushi gave him a shove, joking, and Kin-chan laughed. "Are we going to the hot spring?" he asked. The Binan Hot Spring was a favourite spot of theirs, for all that they were warned to stay well away from it.
Atsushi laughed in turn, running ahead. "You're going to spoil the surprise! Wait and see." Kin-chan ran behind him, panting a little, until they got to the edge of the spring, where the ground ran level for a short way, and the water flowed shallow and clear over rounded pebbles. The air was damp, full of steam and the smell of sulphur, their own little oasis away from the streets, out of sight of all the houses.
It was very warm. Atsushi peeled off his gloves and looked longingly at the water. But he didn't need Kin-chan to tell him he'd be worse off if he let the water cool on his hands today. He knelt down, though, and trailed one hand in the spring, just the very tips of his fingers. It felt good, hot and soft together the way spring water was. It made the winter chill out on the street seem a long, long way away.
Behind him, he could hear Kin-chan make that little noise he made when he wanted something very much, and knew he shouldn't want it. "Come and try it, Kin-chan," Atsushi entreated him, beaming. "It might not be this cold again all winter."
"We're not supposed to," said Kin-chan, quietly edging closer. And Atsushi heard all the things unspoken: it will hurt, we'll get into trouble, everyone will be so angry with us.
"We're not supposed to come to the hot spring and we do," Atsushi pointed out.
"That's different," Kin-chan said. But his feet were at the edge of the water now, and he was getting down, careful to avoid mudstains on his knees. One yellow glove was coming off, centimetre by painstaking centimetre, and then his fingertips were skimming the water.
He laughed quietly, under his breath, surprised by the joy of it. "I wish we could get in."
"That's too much trouble for anyone," Atsushi agreed. "In the summer we can."
"This isn't what you wanted to show me, though," Kin-chan said, dreamily trailing his fingers in the water.
"Oh, yeah!.." Atsushi had forgotten. "Wait, how did you know that?"
Kin-chan blinked at him. "You would have said something, right? Like... 'look, Kin-chan, this is it here!' " His voice dropped in pitch as he mimicked, and they both dissolved into giggles.
"I don't sound like that!" Atsushi laughed, giving Kin-chan a shove. Kin-chan giggled in turn. "I thought you were reading my mind for a second."
Kin-chan was carefully wiping his hand dry on the edge of his coat, putting his glove back exactly how it was. "Mind reading isn't real," he pointed out. "That's just a myth."
"Yeah, but if anyone was going to read minds it would be you," Atsushi said comfortably, fishing in the depths of his pocket. "You know about things like mono no whatever. You're clever."
"That's how I know mind reading's not real," Kin-chan swiftly replied, looking at the greased paper package in Atsushi's hand. "What is that?"
Atsushi was unwrapping it at the the edge of the water, eager to show Kin-chan his secret. "Look, look," he said, fingers stumbling over each other as he opened it up to reveal...
"Fish?" said Kin-chan, with an audible nose wrinkle. "You were walking around with fish in your pocket? What for?"
But Atsushi was leaving the scraps by the side of the spring—a fin here, a trimming there, and an almost entire underskin in pride of place, mottled grey with deep orange spots. The scraps were a day old, and smelled that way. Kin-chan took a revolted step back, but he couldn't shake Atsushi's excitement.
"You worry too much, Kin-chan," he said, cheerily, forgetting the threat of cold long enough to wash his hands in the spring.
"Atchan!" he heard Kin-chan wail.
"Like I said," he said again, "you worry. Come on, come and see. Come and see." And he grabbed Kin-chan's sleeve, leading him behind a bush. Before Kin-chan could flap about catching cold, Atsushi was pulling him down, onto the frozen ground so they could both see beneath the bushes to the spring.
"Sit down and be quiet! You'll have to be quiet or they won't come out." He hesitated. "I hope they come out..."
"Who?" Kin-chan had got down on the ground too, squatting so as not to get himself dirty, supporting himself against the bush's thorns with a gloved, careful hand. His eyes had gone wide, and his voice had dropped to an undertone.
"You'll see," Atsushi nodded. "If they come." Kin-chan glanced at him oddly, but then went right back to watching the spring.
* * *
Long, tense minutes passed in silence, which Kin-chan eventually broke. "Atchan," he whispered.
"Mm?" said Atsushi, glancing round. He was starting to get bored with waiting, and a bit impatient. The cold earth beneath him was starting to hurt his knees.
"You shouldn't say things like that. Like you're not clever. Your grades are really good." Kin-chan was giving him a wide-eyed, earnest look; a look that made worms itch in Atsushi's stomach. He shifted uncomfortably.
"Yeah, but..." he said, looking away from Kin-chan back to the stream. "You notice things. Like the weather forecast. You remembered that."
"Won't do me much good if it doesn't snow," said Kin-chan, sounding glum. "It'll just make me look silly."
"Oh, it will not—" Atsushi began to complain, to tell his friend that was what the forecasts were for. But then he saw them from the corner of his eye, graceful and precarious both, tumbling in the direction of the water—and of the fish he'd placed there. He barely managed to stifle his telltale cry of joy. Beside him, he could hear Kin-chan doing the same, the weather forgotten.
Approaching the water, majestic head held high, was a large cat, heavy with tortoiseshell fur. A mother, too; her kittens made a trail behind her, tumbling and uncertain. They let out little cries, not like squeaky wheels but like squeaky cogs in watches. Atsushi watched them approach the fish he'd left, vindicated, triumphant.
"I knew they'd come," he told Kin-chan, under his breath, watching the mother cat shake out her fur in the warmth around the spring.
"It's like magic," Kin-chan gasped, almost silent.
"It's just cats," demurred Atsushi. "They came yesterday, and the day before. I wanted to get you, but Mom..." Tomorrow, she'd said.
There was another pause. "I don't mind if your mom said it," said Kin-chan, a bit awkwardly. Atsushi glanced at him, but he was still watching the cats, eyes shining. "Did your mom give you the fish?" he asked.
Atsushi shook his head, watching two of the kittens scrapping ineffectively over a fin. "My sister did. She said if I left it for them, maybe they'd come out."
"Don't they get cold?" Kin-chan asked. "They're so small."
"That's why they like the water," Atsushi said, with an air of authority. "Just like the snow monkeys." His parents had taken him and his sister to Yamanouchi the winter before, and he'd come back laden with pictures and stories of monkeys, with which Kin-chan had been suitably impressed. Kin-chan very much approved of monkeys.
Kin-chan liked most animals, in fact, though he'd make a fuss if you came out and said he did. By now he'd forgotten about keeping his hands and his knees off the ground, and about folding his hands neatly and sitting correctly, and about all the rules and worries and disciplines that he sometimes seemed to be made of. He was leaning forward, mouth open in a little o of adoration, almost pricking his face on the thorns in front of him.
Atsushi had known this was a great idea. He'd known Kin-chan would like the kittens, and next to that, walking around with pockets full of old fish was nothing at all. But all too soon, the food was gone, and the mother cat was getting up from her comfortable sprawl at the edge of the warm water, chivvying the babies into motion.
"She's taking them home," Kin-chan observed, sounding bereft. Atsushi realised, all at once, that he'd been so excited about showing Kin-chan the kittens that he'd forgotten they'd eventually have to go away again.
"We can come back tomorrow?" he said, hopefully. "Mom's making eel donburi tonight. I bet she'd give me the scraps if I asked."
But Kin-chan shook his head, biting his lip, watching the kittens tumble after their mother to whatever nest they had in the undergrowth. Atsushi's face fell further. "Is it—" He bit his lip in turn. "Is it your mono thing? The cats were nice and now they're gone?"
"It's not that at all." Kin-chan turned to protest, tearing his eyes away from the cats only with difficulty. Then he began to blush, and looked away from Atsushi, down into his lap. "Well... maybe a little. Look at them, though."
Atsushi looked again. The mother cat was sweeping the last straggler, a little black and white scrap, under the bushes. When she was satisfied, she followed it out of sight. "Do you think your mom would let you have a cat?" Kin-chan was asking.
"Sure, if I wanted one. Aren't they lots of work, though?" Atsushi wrinkled his nose. "You could have one if you wanted one, right?"
Kin-chan shook his head quietly. "Not in the house. And I guess outside it would go after the koi, and they'd send it away."
Atsushi thought about this. "You could hide it. There's lots of space in your room."
But again, Kin-chan shook his head, slowly getting to his feet. "The maids would find it."
The two of them turned to go, dispirited. Kin-chan cast a last, longing glance in the direction the kittens had gone. Atsushi had started to feel the cold nip for real, sharp and almost painful where he'd washed in the hot spring; he pulled his gloves on tighter, with no thought for the the fact that his hands were still greasy, and smelled of fish.
He felt like this happened a lot. More and more, Kin-chan had a way of wrapping every silver lining in a cloud. Atsushi wished he could do something nice for him, just once. Something that wouldn't go wrong. Something Kin-chan wouldn't worry about until it stopped being a nice thing altogether.
They walked along in silence, back out onto the street, under leafless trees that hung over the pavement, past water in the gutter that had turned to ice. From time to time, Atsushi glanced unhappily at Kin-chan, but Kin-chan seemed far away, in some lonely place of his own making. Atsushi thought about promising that they would go back and see the kittens again, no matter what. But he knew the kittens weren't the only thing making Kin-chan sad.
By the time they turned on to Atsushi's street, it was getting dark. Kin-chan was looking sadder and sadder, in a contagious sort of way—Atsushi's own mouth was turning down, and he didn't like it. But then Kin-chan let out a small, stifled cry, just like when he'd seen the kittens. At the same moment, a small white snowflake drifted past Atsushi's nose.
He spun on the spot, crying "Look, Kin-chan, you were right!", only to see Kin-chan already turned to him, all his sadness forgotten.
"I knew it would snow," he said, clutching at his yellow scarf with a stray hand.
The two of them stood side by side, staring up. The falling snow had made it darker yet. Tiny snowflakes landed on their eyelashes, on the tips of their noses; they spun in will'o-the-wisp circles on the pavement. Somehow Atsushi didn't think, right now, that Kin-chan was thinking of how everything nice always came to an end.
He had a moment of misgiving there, a tense premonition. But then Kin-chan tore his attention away from the snow, and turned that brilliant smile right on him. "Come on, Atchan," he said, brushing a gleaming snowflake out of his hair. "Let's get back. Like your mom said."
* * *
It wasn't long before the snow was falling hard and fast. The gate into Atsushi's garden was narrow, as gates had a habit of being; Kin-chan went first, and Atsushi made to follow after. But seeing Kin-chan head for the front door, he couldn't resist. He bent down and made a snowball, packing it tight so it would hold together in the cold, and then he sent it winging past Kin-chan's ear.
It landed in the snow, with a dull thud. Kin-chan turned quickly, startled into indignation. But Atsushi was laughing, bending down to quickly pack another snowball, throwing it right at Kin-chan—who sidestepped quite impressively, but was starting to look cross.
"Come on, Kin-chan," he called, wheedling. "Haven't you ever thrown a snowball?"
Kin-chan's lip turned out a little more, but Atsushi could tell he was wobbling. "Of course I have," he said. Atsushi didn't ask who with. He couldn't think of anyone else Kin-chan might have thrown a snowball at.
"Throw one at me, then," he challenged, encouraging. But Kin-chan just opened and closed his mouth, without saying anything. His hands had closed into fists.
Atsushi sighed. He bent down one more time, packed a bunch more snow. But this time, he walked over to Kin-chan with the snowball still held tight. Kin-chan's eyes seemed to get bigger as Atsushi came closer, but instead of letting fly, Atsushi gave him a serious look.
"Hold out your hands," Atsushi said. Kin-chan hesitated, eyebrows knitting together in a frown before he did as he was told. Atsushi opened his mouth, but then Kin-chan caught on, and he peeled off his yellow gloves, tucking them into his pocket before he placed his two hands together in a cup.
Atsushi placed the snowball there, right in the hollow. He heard Kin-chan gasp aloud. "It's cold!"
" 'Course it's cold," said Atsushi, laughing despite himself. "It's snow." But he closed Kin-chan's hands around the snowball, covering it over where it gleamed pure blue-white in the twilight. Kin-chan looked down at it, explored its icy surface with the edge of his thumb, with the tips of his fingers. He juggled it gently as the cold began to bite. Snowflakes landed on his coatsleeves, small and white and kitten-soft.
Atsushi tried to find the words for what he wanted to say. The feeling was big in his chest, too big to keep quiet, and yet too big to come out right. "You're always talking about... about how we'll get into trouble, and what will go wrong," he eventually said. "About what might happen. About tomorrow," he added decisively, with a stern look. "But it's not ever going to be today again."
"That's silly," Kin-chan muttered, not quite meeting his eyes. "It snowed last year. It'll probably—" He bit his lip, breaking off: it'll probably snow next year too.
"Probably," Atsushi agreed. "But it's snowing right now. Mom told us to come back if it started to snow, and we have. She didn't say we had to go in."
They were still in the garden, in the light of the front door. Kin-chan was still biting his lip. "But—"
It was then that the blinds in the big picture window twitched aside, and Atsushi's mother looked out. As soon as she saw the two of them standing on the path, her frown turned to a big smile and a wave, and then the blind dropped carelessly back into place. Atsushi turned to Kin-chan with a big smile of his own—you see?—but it took a moment longer for Kin-chan to turn from the window. His own smile had begun to creep back, secret and shy.
"Well?" asked Atsushi.
"A... all right," said Kin-chan. He thought about it a moment longer, then let fly with the snowball that was melting in his hand.
It hit surprisingly hard. Atsushi caught his breath, then shook the snow from his blue scarf where it had crumpled into the wool. Kin-chan had taken a frightened step back, but Atsushi just shook his head, took another deep breath, then told him, "My turn now!"
As he bent to scrape together his next snowball, he saw Kin-chan run for the shelter of a tree. It wasn't till he began to stand that not one, but two snowballs hit him, one after the next.
"I won't lose!" called Kin-chan, from the tree. Atsushi could hear his excitement, could hear him laughing, and he was laughing too, warm and exhilarated. He'd forgotten about Kin-chan's disappointment, about mono no aware, about the horrible feeling of something slipping through his fingers. His hand was tight on the snowball he'd made.
"We'll see about that!" he called back. And, perfectly happy, he ran pell-mell through the falling snow to catch his friend.