The night before that day had been terrible - horrible… A dark shower composed of feathers, regret and tears understood by a select few. Rakka had cried herself to sleep; Kana hadn't spoken for the rest of the night, Nemu had fallen asleep like the escapist she was as soon as they had gotten home, and Hikari had left at three am to bake her worries away.

Reki hadn't slept at all. Instead, she sat on a chair, facing her easel, companioned by a blank canvas, preparing to paint.

She knew that the next few days and weeks would be rough. Kuu had represented a younger and more carefree part of them all… No one had ever hated her. She had been so… good.

Reki was jealous, and she felt disgusted at herself for it.

You're a horrible Haibane. You never deserved Kuu being with you, or any of the others. You should be happy for Kuu! She possessed a knowledge that none of her elders at Old Home did, and because of that, she was able to pass on over the wall.

Wish she could've passed that knowledge on to me. Maybe knowing the truth could have been my salvation.

Reki shook her head in a vain attempt to clear her head. She faced the canvas in front of her and stared at it. Her eyes were sharp, gently ripping at the tapestry to discover what lay within it, pulling and tearing with the utmost care as her hands waited to catch and cradle what lay inside. What did it want her to paint?

And only one thing came to mind: Kuu.

Reki sighed deeply and sank down in her chair, before standing and walking over to her desk. From it, she extracted a single stick of charcoal. She gazed at it for a moment in her hand, wishing for its demure colour, before she walked back to the uncreated portrait of her friend.

She put the charcoal to the blank whiteness and began to draw Kuu. She expected nothing more than a life-like, black-and-white sketch. Beautiful charcoal grey… Kuu had been a perfectly good Haibane. She deserved to be coloured grey…

A flare hatred grew inside Reki as she ruminated, and she made Kuu's hair a bit choppier and darker than she would have liked. Then came Kuu's head like this and her eyes were shaped a little like… That… What were her nose and eyes like again?

Reki closed her eyes for a single moment, breathing in shallowly as she racked her brain to remember what Kuu's face had looked like. She knew that her friend's lips and eyes had always been smiling, so Reki quickly scrawled thin lips onto the portrait. But Reki had never really paid any attention to Kuu's nose before. Had it been big? Small? She wouldn't ask the others.

She left that part of the face alone for now.

Out of her pocket, Reki drew a cigarette and her lighter. She flicked and lit the cigarette so she could take a break form drawing. She enjoyed the taste of tobacco and nicotine playing on her tongue as she inhaled.

As she observed her quick drawing, she sighed out a thin and long puff of smoke.

Damn. I made her head too big. She thought. There was no room for a body on the paper, and not enough room to draw a halo in either. Reki had let herself get carried away again.

She turned away from the picture, not wanting to look at it and feel disappointed again. She strode over to her window and looked outside.

It was snowing.

Kuramori once told me that snow was lucky. Reki thought, sucking harder on her cigarette. She said that when the first snow came, it meant something good had happened. Maybe this is a sign from God that Kuu is all right…

Reki walked back over to her picture and stared at it for a moment, before smudging all of the charcoal and burning a hole in the canvas with her cigarette.

"A waste of good canvas. But I guess it's for the best. Kuu shouldn't have to be recreated in the physical world… No one should worry. She'll be fine. If all the Haibane go to the same place, and if she's with Kuramori, she'll be fine."