Snow Day
The piercing sound from my alarm cut through my mind and violently pulled me from my dream. My eyes sprang open with surprising intensity but my body was slow to follow, my head still felt heavy and my arms and legs were glued to my mattress so instead I just lied there and starred at my ceiling. The contents of my dream were still sprawled out across my mind and I couldn’t help but overview them. I found that I didn’t remember much; something about an airplane falling out of the sky… only it didn’t crash when it hit the ground, it bounced, like a ball across the horizon before disappearing into the sun ~weird~. I think Emi was in it, not sure, but for some reason I was certain Mutou and Misha were the pilots, that would at least explain why the plane was falling in the first place, but why it bounced escaped me.
        I realized that my alarm was still running when it pulled me out of my mind for the second time. I reached over to shut it off but accidently brushed it clear off my desk, onto the floor, and out of my reach, ugh…
        “I guess I have a reason to get up now” I thought to myself while listening to the muted drone of my alarm clock buried somewhere underneath my desk  
        I threw myself to the edge of my bed, forced myself to my feet, and gave myself a good stretch and yawn before dwelling into the darkness at the bottom of my desk. Finding my alarm wasn’t all that hard since it was pretty much giving off a distress beacon the entire time. I shut it off finally and placed it back on my desk.
        Let out another yawn and reached over to the light switch, ~click~, and nothing. Right, my light had gone out a couple days ago and I never got around to changing it. I don’t spend a lot of time in my room anyway so I always forget, that and I get lazy whenever cold weather hits. The runs with Emi have been keeping my laziness at bay but I find sweating the small stuff to be okay now and again. So instead I motioned over to my window to let some natural light in. After pulling back the curtains I was greeted with a vast landscape of utter whiteness, the entire grounds were covered fully in snow and the light being reflected off of it was near blinding. I had heard that it would snow but I never expected this. The track must be covered in snow and ice and be pretty much unusable, hell, I’d be surprised if school was open at all. Almost sure of this, I started heading back to bed when I thought of something. I sighed to myself when thinking of Emi trying to wade through feet of fresh snow on the track, I almost laughed at the thought, only problem was that she was crazy enough to actually try this, good thing we have an indoor gym, she’s told me many times however, how much she hates it. Says it’s too small and stingy and that her prosthetics slip on the floor to easily. She was practically praying that it wouldn’t snow, actually, now that I think about it, her and Rin started a “no snow” chant in the cafeteria one day, it caught a lot of attention and I’m pretty sure everyone thought we were crazy; those two are so weird when they are together. Regardless I guess we have no choice but to use the indoor gym now so I might as well get ready for my adventure out into the snow.    
        I threw on my coat and gloves and packed a gym bag with my running stuff. I figured I would meet up with Emi at her place and get an actual plane together since I never had to deal with a snowy Yamaku before.  As I walked out I started thinking to myself. I never really minded the snow and there was rarely ever any in the city anyway, in fact I think the last time there was any amount worth mentioning was last winter.
The thought of last winter gave me shivers. I couldn’t believe I was diagnosed almost a year ago; it seemed like another life time, so much had happened since then that I never had the time to reminisce on old memories, not that I really wanted to. Things were better here than they ever were before and I didn’t want to waste my time living in the past.
 So I left my room and made my way out of the dorm, when I walked past the lounge I overheard a couple of the guys mention that school was indeed closed for the day. I was almost sure that it would be but a voice in my head figured things would be different, probably because the kids live on campus here, but then again this is a school for the disabled so I guess it would be safer to just close the school in total, I could only imagine how impossible it would be for, say, kids with wheelchairs to get their classes. However, I doubt this would stop our runs, Emi is always too determined for her own good and she never lets anything get to her…eh, for the most part.
        The snow had accumulated nicely but it was pretty powdery and I wouldn’t be surprised if, at least, the walk ways were all cleared by tomorrow, but for now drudging through the stuff was beginning to be a real pain. It wasn’t really all that tiring you just had to be careful that you wouldn’t take a wrong step and break a leg, or something. The scenery, however, was quite beautiful, the way the snow had covered everything made it seem as though it was just one big blob, like everything was connected and flowed into each other. “I sound like Rin” I thought to myself, although it is really hard for your mind to not wander when you’re marching through snow in absolute silence.
        After a while I finally made it to the girl’s dorm actually feeling a bit exasperated, I guess that walk was harder than I thought, oh well at least I made it safe and sound. I entered and made my way to Emi’s room, arrived, and knocked…nothing. She probably left assuming I would know where to go, that wouldn’t surprise me, but maybe she just didn’t hear my knock, I mean, I was wearing pretty padded gloves so the thought didn’t escape my mind. I knocked again a little louder, this time I heard some mumbles. Okay, so she is home.
        “Emi, there’s snow everywhere outside, I’m thinking we should head towards the indoor gym today.” I called through the door
        “Yeah I know, isn’t it amazing.” was what I heard from the other side
        “Amazing?... I thought you hated the snow”
        “Only when it’s really cold.”
        “What? What are you talking about? It has to be cold for it to snow. If it wasn’t cold then it would be rain not snow.”
        “What if it could snow and be warm at the same time?”
        Ok, something wasn’t right here, either I’m crazy and hearing things or Emi’s crazy and saying things, or…
        I opened the door for further investigation and had my suspicions confirmed. Rin had set up a whole easel pointing towards Emi’s window and she was painting a surprisingly realistic representation of what was out there too.
        “What are you doing in here…?” I said
        “Painting.” She responded flatly
        “Clearly. But why here? What about your own room?”
        “I didn’t like the image there, the view from here captures the scenery better.”
        “The scenery looks the same everywhere, everything is covered in snow.” I just don’t understand her at all, however, at least it was only Rin in here and not some random person. “Anyway, do you know where Emi is, since she obviously isn’t in here?”
        “The gym probably.” Rin responded never once looking at me “She said you would probably figure it out.”
 So she really did leave without me. I had a feeling she would go there and I had a feeling she would just go and leave me to figure it out. I guess her schedule must be kept no matter what
        “Thanks” I said to Rin as I turned to leave, hearing her muffled grunt of affirmation after me. “Looks good by the way” I said motioning towards her painting just before leaving
        “It’s ok…I guess” was the last thing I heard her say before I left
        Well that was weird but at least I know where to go now. Actually I don’t think I ever used the gym before. Emi and I would always run outside and “gym” isn’t even a class at this school so I never had a reason to go there, I mean I would walk by it from time to time but I never had any reason to go inside. I barely made it to the main door of the dorm when I saw Emi coming back in.
        “Hey? What’s up?” I said in confusion. She looked tired, like she did her whole routine without me; I wasn’t that late though, was I? She walked in, dropped her stuff, leaned up against a wall, and let out an ugly moan
        “I hate the snow, Hisao”
        “Well yeah you’ve told me before a-”
“It’s so stupid, it’s such a pain in the ass, you can never get anything done when it snows, you just sit inside all day, it’s so boring, it makes me so mad I could just…just” she threw her hands in the air at her loss of words
        “Woah, slow down, what happened? Where were you?” I asked her
        “Well, it snowed last night” she started
        “Yeah…and?”
        “So I figured the track was gonna be a no go. So I guessed that we would have no choice but to use the indoor gym, which sucks by the way” 
“Yeah, I know, I was about to go there b-“
        “So I get all my stuff ready and leave to go there, right?”
        “Eh, right…”
        “But the dumb thing was locked up anyway!”
        “Oh, yeah?” I said more or less humoring her so she could get this off her chest
        “Yeah, yeah, so I kept trying the door anyway as if someone would magically just show up and open it but clearly that didn’t happen”
        “Uh huh”
        “So then I was like ~Maybe I can find someone with a key~”
        “Did you?”
        “What do you think?”
        “Uh…”
        “I mean I looked for someone but there is no one out there. I checked the main building, the ground’s keeper’s building, and the…uh…well, just those two but still, no one”
        “Well the school is closed today so odds are that the staff won’t be going in today”
        “Hisao” she said out of nowhere
        “Yeah?”
        “I’m angry.”
        Her stating of the obvious like that was too much for me and I burst out laughing
        “Hey! Don’t laugh at me” she said with a smile already forming on her face
        “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.” I dropped my gym bag and threw an arm over her
        “Jerk” she said falling into my embrace
        “So” I said talking over her head as it was buried in my chest “What do you want to do now?”
        “Hot cocoa” was all she said, not even lifting her head
        “Do you know where any is?”
        “No?” she said sadly
        “Do you want to go find some?
        “I’m tired” she said in the cutest voice she could manage
        “Ugh, do you want me to find some?” I already knew the answer
        “Yes” she said as if she was apologetic, though I knew better than that
        “Alright”