It was cold that evening and bitterly so. The sky was a deep, lead grey with clouds and the threat of snow was in the air. The wind was blowing strongly, so cuttingly cold that it could chill through four layers of clothing. It was not the sort of evening that many would venture out on unless their need was great. But in one quiet, suburban street, almost empty of life, one person, a young man, was walking. He seemed oblivious to the frosty temperatures. Indeed, he was wearing very little clothes, only a t-shirt and a pair of trousers which were slung low on his hips, revealing the top of his boxer shorts. His feet were bare. Although you would expect them to be a strange colour with cold, they weren't. They were very pale, as were his face, arms and hands. He was walking slowly up the street, letting his dark eyes sweep over everything with a gaze that appeared lazy, but which really took in every little detail of what surrounded him. The wind swirled about him, rippling his shirt that hung on his thin frame and whipping through his spiky hair. He glanced up at the clouds that were heavy with snow and wondered where exactly he was. He had a feeling that he knew something somehow, but he was uncertain. He knew that he should be freezing cold, but he wasn't. If anything, he felt a warmth, like an aura, around him, protecting him from the cold and wet.
His mind wandered from this onto the subject of food. He stopped in front of one house and sat down on the garden wall. Next to him was a large basin built into the wall filled with earth and a leafless, flowerless rose plant, but he didn't notice it. He was staring across the street unseeing, wondering what to eat when he got back to the house. If he got back. Perhaps some strawberry cheesecake. Or maybe he should try something new. Pocky had always sounded good. Perhaps he'd eat a packet of pocky, maybe packaging and all. With a cup of tea. Yes, a cup of tea with seven sugar cubes. That was the best kind. But not yet, he decided. He wouldn't try to get back yet. It was peaceful on that wall, gazing at the bright splodges of colour that were the closed curtains around the street. Of course, he could do that in the day, but it was always more beautiful at night without the hustle and bustle of general life.
Felicity, known as Felix, pushed the keyboard back underneath the computer and pushed her swivel chair away from it with her on top. She was alone in the house. Her mother and brother were both out and her father wasn't home yet. But she was bored. Nobody online was role-playing with her and most people weren't online already. But Felix never complained aloud. She was a mute. She hadn't spoken for two years since she had walked out from school. She had been bullied and finally snapped. The bully had followed. And Felix hadn't spoken since. But she loved animé, manga and the snow. She knew that it could snow any day now. She stood up and walked to the window, pulling back the corner of the curtain to look out. She turned her eyes to the sky to see the small white flakes of snow begin to fall. Her heart leapt with excitement.
A snowflake floated past the tip of the young man's nose and he looked up. The snow was thickening, swirling wildly around. He lifted a slender hand, attempt catching one.
Felix saw the motion out of the corner of her eye and looked down. She saw the young man sitting on the wall, his hand outstretched, waiting for a snowflake to fall into it. She gasped with surprise and pressed her nose against the cold glass, trying to see him clearly, but her breath condensed and clouded the image. However, she could see that he was lightly dressed. She backed away from the window, dropping the curtain, and almost ran to the hall. There, she dragged on her trainers (she always left the laces done up) and grabbed her black coat, shoving her arms down the sleeves as quickly as she could. She had her hand on the door handle when the thought that she would have to let herself back in occurred to her. She ran into the kitchen and grabbed her keys out of her blazer pocket, shoving them into her coat pocket as she returned and let herself out into the storm. The cold hit her first, a gnawing, searching, biting cold that made her shiver and made her flesh pucker with goose bumps. She closed the door behind her and walked down the short drive, her feet already crunching slightly in the thin layer of snow. The young man on the wall hadn't noticed her and, now that she was outside too, she could see just how ill-dressed he was for the weather. She could also see that he was barefoot. Barefoot? In the snow?
The young man was confused. He couldn't catch anything in his hand. He looked more intently as a snowflake came flying straight towards his palm. It just slid straight through...
Felix reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. The young man jerked slightly, lowering his hand to the wall to steady himself, and glanced at her. Felix smiled as reassuringly as she could and fished around in her pockets with both hands to uncover a pair of gloves. She offered them to the stranger, silent as always. He stared at them.
"Thank you for the offer, but no thanks," he said.
Felix returned the gloves to her pocket and leant against the wall next to the young man, facing the opposite direction to him. She stared up at the swirling snow and he looked at her.
"Are you going to say anything?" he asked her finally.
She shook her head, touched her lips with the index finger of one hand then made a closing gesture. The young man seemed to understand what she was trying to say. She reached for his hand, the one on the wall nearest her, and tried to take it. But her hand slid straight through it like the snowflake had done before. Both she and the stranger stared down at their hands.
"That was unusual," he commented. "Where am I?"
Felix thought for a few seconds, then snapped her fingers when she had a sudden, good idea. She straightened up and ran around the wall to the young man's side, then crouched down. With her right index finger, she quickly wrote a word in the cold, powdery whiteness: England. The young man crouched down beside her in a way that seemed familiar to her, then nodded. They both stood up. Felix felt suddenly shy and she looked down the road. A familiar car was drawing ever closer and she looked to the young man quickly. She stared straight into his face and recognised him in a second.
"L!" she gasped. "But you had a heart attack. You're dead!"
She was shocked. Her manga crush, L, had appeared in her drive, and she was talking! L stared at her and smiled. A second after, Felix and the drive were lit by the headlights. It was her father's car. She watched it draw in, mesmerised, then turned back to L. But he had almost completely faded away. She threw herself towards him and, for a brief second, managed to do the impossible. She grabbed his ghostly hand and held it tight. But then he was gone. Felix sighed, and turned to where her father was getting out of his car. How would she explain it to him? Surely he had seen L!
"Felix!" he called. "Did you come out here to see the snow?"
Obviously he hadn't seen L then. Felix decided that it wasn't worth explaining, as she didn't understand herself.
She simply replied, "Yes!"
Her father could have been knocked down with a feather. He looked stunned and happy at the same time. Felix felt herself begin to cry for her losses: L, two years of speech, two years of happiness. She ran up to her father and threw herself into his arms.
L, who had faded up to a tree in the drive, looked down on the scene with satisfaction. It was all his doing. He smiled again, a relaxed, happy smile, and the wind gusted against him. But this time, he seemed to go to pieces. His spectral form dissolved, swirling like dust before vanishing altogether.