Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear when you ignore them long enough.
- Earl Wilson




Aidou Hanabusa stared into the starless night sky, while fine, white flakes trickled gently and silently down on him. The blue eyes reflected two things: the night sky and worry. A few scattered snowflakes were caught in the blond's hair. He didn't care. It might be his ability, but he barely felt the cold anyway. He wasn't going to freeze to death that quickly. His only concern was that the snow might not stop falling. It could just keep snowing around the annoying person who was standing around so lethargic and looking up at the sky. Until Aidou was finally completely enclosed in a white layer and there was no point in moving.


A serious risk, because the blonde wasn't about to move. However, he also didn't believe that the snow would do him a favor and swallow him for a while, so that for once, he didn't have to meet anyone. He would not be treated so kindly.


A few days ago, he had seen how the pureblood, Kuran Kaname, whom he so admired and loved, had cut off his father's head without even blinking an eyelid. And the worst; Aidou Nagamichi had accepted it with a smile on her face. Of course he did. Nobody turned against a pure-blood ruler, even if it meant dying ...


And something had changed since then. Something in his life, in his thinking, had changed dramatically. As if it had clicked in his head after too long. As if the blonde understood something. Something that had cost him years of his life, even if he refused to admit it. Aidou still wanted to do everything possible to make Kaname-sama happy. After all, this was the head of all of them. But something was wrong. It was more difficult than before to spend so completely on this one person.


Maybe Kaname-sama knew this. The blonde himself was well aware of his emotional world, even if he had pushed it into the depths of himself so as not to have to think about it. He failed miserably. He just thought about it. It literally ate him up. There was a conflict in his heart that he had never known before. It was grueling.


And it wasn't that he wasn't grieving. His father had finally died. Even if Aidou had not behaved himself to a nobleman at times, and sometimes in the rarest cases, as his father might have wished, he was still a family member that he had loved. And after all, his father was the only one who was there. It wasn't him anymore. Now the blonde himself was the head of the Aidou family. And the blue-eyed nobleman doubted that Nagamichi had actually committed a crime that warranted execution.He just sensed it.


It had made him think. Maybe, just maybe, he had chosen the wrong path. That one day, Kiryu had checked on him, seen him in his prison cell where he had been stuck. Aidou hadn't known what the silver-haired man had wanted from him. Either he wanted to enjoy the blond's suffering, or he had wanted to check how the oh-so-esteemed Kuran was now in those ice-blue eyes. Either way, Aidou hadn't cared and felt pressured. Back then he had told Kiryu that he had no need to raise his hopes. That the blonde could never hate Kuran. And at that point, he had been convinced that it really was. But now he knew. Aidou knew it was a lie. He didn't hate Kaname-sama. This was not possible, after all, the pureblood still exerted a strange pull. But it was getting harder and harder to look your leader in the eye without actually hearing the word killer echoing in his head ...


And he couldn't take it. It was impossible to hate Kaname-sama with as passionate as Kiryu did, but it was also utterly impossible to worship him as before. The blonde wasn't even able to hoard the Pureblood's used things. He had already disposed of his previously loved collection the day before yesterday. Inconspicuously, as if he didn't want anyone to notice. Aidou bet Seiren saw it. This woman seemed to see everything. And she kept telling Kaname-sama what she saw. It was ridiculous. It didn't matter. Should Kaname-sama find out. Maybe then his behavior towards Aidou would finally change. Perhaps he would no longer act as if everything were the same. It wasn't. And it might not be anymore.


So was Kiryu Zero right from the start? Not with his hatred, which was directed against all purebloods, but with the hatred he harbored for Kuran Kaname. If Kaname-sama had been able to kill his father so easily, surely nothing else had stopped him with others. Aidou felt like a naive child. That was how he had behaved all these years. Childish. Had fervently denied anything that could offend the Pureblood he so adored. He was stupid. So long, so stupid. Kaname-sama, in any case, seemed to have always felt only a burden to be so adored by him. Aidou had deliberately overlooked that too over the years.


The blue-eyed man had occasionally wondered why there had been those moments in his life when he had let Kiryu get away with it. Like that one moment ... Kaname-sama's blood was flowing. Aidou had rushed out and just then Kiryu had jumped down. He had seen the hunter's face. The blood. He had seen it clearly and just let it go. The blonde had always wondered why. Now he knew.His mind had probably understood a long time ago, even if in its naivete it hadn't been able to do it.


It was tragic that so much had to happen for him to finally be able to open his eyes and not close them to the cruel truth.


Aidou clenched his fists unnoticed, while his gaze still refused to turn away from the falling snow. He did not feel the tears that damp rivulets left on his cheeks before they froze into small crystals and fell to the ground, where they sank into the snow with a soft but clumsy sound ...


[i]"What's wrong with me? What was wrong with me all along? At our first meeting, I instinctively didn't like him. And at some point he managed to get me on his side. Because he is a pureblood. I should have trusted my first impulse, me idiot! "


Slowly, as if mechanically, the blond nobleman bent down. He didn't feel as if he knew exactly what he had in mind. He put his hands in the snow and picked up a generous amount of the white powder with him as he stood up again. For a while he stared at his hands in silence. He couldn't feel the icy cold that was probably eating its way into his fingers. The blonde raised his arms and stood still for a while before emptying the contents of his hands over his blonde head. He couldn't feel this cold either, he realized with resignation. Just as he hadn't been able to feel Kaname-sama's cold anymore. How he had deliberately suppressed it.


Aidou let her arms drop again, disappointed. And when he noticed his own low sob, he noticed it. Tears. Water that flowed down his face out of pain and in torrents and landed in the snow at his feet. But there were no longer any lumps of ice that had formed in his grief and frustration. They were hot tears, every one of which he could feel on his cheeks. Aidou was happy about it.


He had come loose. The blonde had broken it. In the future he would be able to go his own way with an unadulterated view of his surroundings. Not full of fogged, admiring thoughts, but not full of hatred either. He wouldn't end up like Kiryu. He could do better. He knew that. A small smile flickered briefly over his lips before he closed his eyes and listened to the quiet of the night.


And then he heard footsteps coming in his direction. "Hanabusa", Akatsuki. He could have guessed that. The blonde didn't have to turn around to know that his cousin was rubbing his hair thoughtfully. "You've been standing out here for a while. You don't have to come in if you don't want to. But why are you standing here of all places?"


Before, Aidou would have clung to the thought that he still had Akatsuki. But those times were now gradually over. Everyone had to grow up at one point or another. And the blonde had realized that he could not stay forever in a secluded world where there were only Akatsuki and Ruka, as in the past when they were children.Now he finally had to do what he had avoided for so long. Look reality in the eye. Of course, that didn't mean he was going to leave his family. He would never have the heart to do that. But he had to accept that they couldn't go on like this forever.


He didn't know why he had come to this place of all places. Close by, the house of sun. Maybe he wanted as far as possible from everything that reminded him of Kaname-sama. Maybe he had other reasons as well. He didn't know anymore.


"Hanabusa?", Akatsuki reminded his blonde cousin again of his presence.

"Go ahead. I'll stay here." Apparently the blonde had decided to ignore his question.

"But...-"

"I'm staying here," repeated Aidou emphatically, and put his hands in his jacket pockets. Finally he began to shiver ...


Kain Akatsuki ran another hand through his fiery red hair before shrugging his shoulders and leaving his cousin to fend for himself. If Hanabusa wanted to be alone, he thought it best to let the blonde rule. Cain had a vague assumption that it would be good for the other. The redhead had no idea how right he would be with that as his fine, grinding steps retreated.


Snow.


This whim of nature seemed to symbolize a new beginning over and over again.



__________________________________________________



"Kiryu-kun, it's already after midnight. I'm surprised that you don't chase Aidou-sempai straight from the yard.


Sayori looked at the silver-haired man who had apparently just entered the main hall. She had not been able to sleep herself, and noticed Aidou Hanabusa in the courtyard when she wandered around and looked out one of the windows. She was surprised that Kiryu Zero, of all people, had sneaked past the blond nobleman and hadn't hit him loudly. At least there was the possibility that some day class