Winter is Rio's favorite season.

Is, not was, Ryoga thinks the first time he sees the painting. It is a conference room on the third floor, and there's never anyone else there — no meetings, no cleaning staff, no other visitors hiding out because they want to stay past visiting hours, or because they look at their sister's slack mouth for any longer.

The painting is of the snow falling — white snow and blue shadows and a dark smudge of a cabin, with a grey shadow in the yellow window. It's a stark painting, a lonely painting, and yet it makes Ryoga desperately nostalgic. He remembers last winter, before, when Rio was awake. She lived for the snow. She was happiest in the brisk cold, her breath foggy, the ice crunching under her boots. Back then they walked from their apartment to he Heartland Dueling Arena everyday. Rio was his manager, which really meant that she did nothing but nag that week, and shove food into his hands.

It was fun, but it was tiring. Ryoga slept deeply the night before his final duel.

He didn't wake up until the emergency room called him and told him that there had been a fire. Critical condition, they said, burns all over her body, and they needed him there.

The waiting room was too hot, and so was Rio's skin when she came out of surgery, and so were Ryoga's tears, when he finally was left alone with her in the sterile beige room, and she didn't wake up — not then, not the day after, not ever.

Now it is summer and the heat is still everywhere, and Ryoga comes to the conference room and stares into the blizzard depicted in the painting and wishes that he could feel the cold wind on his face, that time would turn back so he could lead Rio out into the snow where nothing burned and never bring her back.

Rio develops some kind of drug-resistant infection on the hottest day of the year, and sweating in the sweltering heat, Ryoga watches her temperature go up and up until he thinks, god she's going to die, and has to leave.

The conference room is comfortingly in its ordinariness. This is a place where disease and death do not exist, and Ryoga lies down on the floor underneath the painting.

There he cries.

He wishes his his parents were here, so there would be someone else to listen to the doctors and the nurses, and to visit Rio when all Ryoga wants to do is sleep. There is no one else, though, and even that depressingly knowledge, that burden of duty, is not enough. He can't move.

He lies there and looks at the painting, into the whiteness, until everything begins to blur, until his eyes begin to hurt, until…

…Ryoga blinks and is elsewhere.

There is snow falling all around, steadily, and there is an icy wind whipping through his hair. Despite that, Ryoga does not really feel cold — or rather, he does, but it is not unpleasant. In the distance, if he squints through the falling flakes, he can see a dark shape, like a house.

"That doesn't make any sense," Ryoga says. It is dead silent and he can hear himself clearly, even though he can feel the wind blowing; the storm around him rages without a sound. It's eerie. "I'm…in the painting?"

Must a dream, he thinks, and he starts walking.

The cabin doesn't get any clearer as he comes near it. It's indistinct, the edges blurred, and there's no visible door. The window isn't even a real window, just a place where the smudged black becomes smeared yellow instead. Ryoga reaches out, unsure what he will feel.

There is nothing solid there, and his hand vanishes into it. That is terrifying, but this is only a dream, after all, and so Ryoga pushes on. He goes through the blackness and on the other side is a cabin.

A normal cabin, even — a fire is burning in the hearth, there's a bed in the corner, a fluffy pelt on the floor, and a wooden table set against the wall with two stools. It's warm inside.

And there's someone there. There's a boy sitting on the floor, perhaps Ryoga's age, legs crossed and folded. He's playing with something that glints of gold, but when Ryoga's first footstep echoes off the wooden floor his head snaps around.

He smiles. Ryoga has never seen anyone look that happy.

He takes Ryoga's hands, and drags him to the table. He leans in, too close, and his eyes are very red and very wide.

"Hi," he says. "I'm Yuuma…"

"…hi." Ryoga shrugs. "I'm Ryoga."

"Wow," Yuuma breathes. "I've never met anyone before…your hair is purple and everything!"

"…what do you mean, you've never met anyone before? Who are you?"

"I'm Yuuma," he says. "I live here! Only I didn't know people could come into the painting."

That is the moment Ryoga realizes that perhaps he is not dreaming after all.

The boy in the painting is full of questions.

He wants to know where Ryoga came from, first of all, and is he from another painting? Is his hair soft? Is is snowing outside, too? His name is Yuuma, Ryoga hears as warm hands grab his wrists.

"I live in Heartland City," Ryoga says. He tries to pull his hands away, and Yuuma hugs him instead, so tightly he impairs Ryoga's breathing. "Oi, what are you —"

"So this is what it's like," Yuuma mumbles into his shoulder. "I always wondered."

Even Ryoga, an orphan with only one living family member and an inability to tolerate other people, has been hugged before, and so he lays his palms flat against Yuuma's back and lets him hang until he's satisfied.

When Yuuma lets go, he makes Ryoga sit down by the crackling fire, and he looks expectantly at him until Ryoga realizes he's supposed to be talking. Ryoga isn't used to having people listen to him, though, and he has no idea what's going on, so he says nothing.

Yuuma frowns.

"Come on, say something," he whines. "What's it like outside? Is it snowing?"

"…outside the painting?"

Yuuma nods.

"It's summer. It's hot and sweaty and annoying."

"What's summer?"

Ryoga blinks at him, as he comprehends the question, and then he sighs. How to explain the seasons, when he has always taken them for granted? He tries to remember his science classes, the rotation of the planet and the power of the sun coming towards them, and begins.

When he finally decides to leave, he wanders through the snow until the cabin disappears, and then he is on the ground again, the air sweltering after the blizzard he was just in, the carpet scratching his cheek. He checks his watch absently.

Not even a minute has passed since he last looked at it. Impossible, he thinks, and he glares at the stupid painting before he leaves the conference room.

They take blood out of Rio's arm, tubes and tubes of blood, and after the third one Ryoga has to excuse himself before he throws up. He walks aimlessly around out in the halls. He is not going back to the conference room.

Or so Ryoga tells himself, but he ends up there anyways. He pushes open the door; it's empty.

Maybe it was just a dream.

He walks over to the painting, and lays his palms on it. It feels like ordinary canvas and paint, rough, a faint smell to it, nothing out of the —

— the snow is landing wetly in his hair again.

Ryoga starts walking towards the dark cabin shape again.

"You came back!" Yuuma hugs him again. He doesn't know it's weird, Ryoga tells himself, and Ryoga should just indulge him. It's not like Ryoga needs a hug. He doesn't.

"Hey, tell me more about that season stuff," Yuuma says. He pushes Ryoga onto one of the wooden stools and joins him there. "And can I touch your hair?"

"What?"

"It looks nice and soft."

"I…" Ryoga is baffled — Yuuma has hair of his own, doesn't he? — but he nods. Yuuma toys gently with the end of a strand of purple hair. It is nice and soft, of course. Ryoga uses conditioner. He and Rio used to fight over who got the last of the stuff in the bottle, before…

"So…there are three of these season things?"

"Four." Ryoga describes them to Yuuma — he understands the concept of winter, although he admits he's never been cold before, and the idea of snow that doesn't come up to his waist confuses him. Fall, too, is difficult, because Yuuma has never seen a tree or a plant before. He's horrified when Ryoga tells him what wood is made off, and he is only calmed when Ryoga convinces him that plants don't have feelings.

But Yuuma likes the idea of summer — you just get to hang out and be with your friends and stuff? and when Ryoga tells him about spring — everything coming back to life, everything changing, he can't get enough.

"Nothing ever changes here," he says. "What's a flower? Can you eat it?"

"No — I mean, some of them —"

"I've never eaten before, is it good? What's it like to taste things?"

"One question at a time," Ryoga grumbles, and Yuuma pouts (he's cute, Ryoga registers, and then he slaps himself mentally). "A flower is like…they grow on plants to attract bugs. They come in lots of colors. They're kind of…like leaf bundles."

"Why don't they grow in the snow?"

"Because they need warmth and sunlight to survive."

"Okay." Yuuma nods. He plays with Ryoga's hair again. "…what's a sun?"

When he is with Yuuma, he forgets.

Ryoga comes back, every day, after visiting hours are over. He slips into the painting and he fills his pockets with pictures and crushed blossoms and plucked leaves beforehand, so that when Yuuma asks Ryoga can show him. Once he brings Yuuma an apple and Yuuma eats so quickly he nearly chokes; Ryoga has to pound on his back while he coughs.

Afterward Yuuma beams, though. "Food is really good! Does it all taste like that?"

He doesn't tell Yuuma much about himself, though, and at first it's fine. Yuuma has so many questions about the world that it's easy to keep talking about trivial things. And besides — he's been sitting in the hospital for weeks surrounded by the dying and the worn down, and no one has given him a real smile in so long. Everyone looks at him with pity in their expressions; there's that poor orphan boy, they are thinking, and soon he'll have no one.

Ryoga knows this already. He doesn't need the constant reminders in people's eyes.

Yuuma is always happy to see him, at least, and his naivete makes Ryoga smile.

"Get up," Ryoga says one day. He's arrived at the cabin earlier than usual. He went into Rio's room, and the doctor cornered him. Ryoga listened. He processed. He understood.

And he just stopped. His heart couldn't take one more word.

"Where are we going?" Yuuma asks. Ryoga points in the direction of the door; it doesn't work, exactly, but it does tell them where to walk through the wall to leave.

"We're building a snowman." Ryoga holds up the carrot and the sticks and the buttons he's brought with him. Yuuma's eyes light up at the sight of the carrot — he is always hungry — but he lets Ryoga drag him outside. They find a spot a little ways away from the cabin, and then they have to dig out a space so they can work freely.

It will vanish once they go indoors. Ryoga knows this; his footprints, too, disappear. Even in this frozen place where time refuses to move, he is powerless.

But he can do this for Yuuma.

"You make a ball," Ryoga says, and he demonstrates. "And you just…roll it…"

Yuuma makes the ball. He examines it seriously. And then he throws it at Ryoga's face.

"Hey!"

"Got you!"

The snowman goes forgotten as Ryoga gives chase. Yuuma is better at navigating the snow than he is, but Ryoga has the better aim, and they both get wet and fall down and take turns shoving snow down each other's shirts, and it melts uncomfortably but Ryoga almost doesn't care.

He brushes the snow off Yuuma's head. "Oi."

"Can we build the snowman now?"

"Yeah," Ryoga says, and he is staring at Yuuma's mouth, aware of how it is pink and it looks soft and it is right there, so close. He could…but no.

They build the snowman, poorly. It's crooked. The arms aren't the same length, and there aren't enough buttons, so it has only one eye above its long orange nose — and Yuuma bit into the carrot before he stuck it into the snowman's head, so the end of its nose isn't pointy anymore.

Yuuma declares that it's perfect. Ryoga thinks it's ugly, but Yuuma is hopping up and down with excitement, so he agrees.

They go back inside. Normally Ryoga would be preparing to go at this point, but he has no desire to, so he sits down beside Yuuma on the hearth rug. They are silent for a while, as the warm room dries their wet clothes, and then Yuuma speaks.

"Do you have a family?"

Here it is, the question Ryoga has dreaded, and yet the words fall out of him. "Sort of."

"What's it like?"

"I…I have a twin sister." Ryoga has to stop to explain to Yuuma what a twin is, then, and then he has to explain about siblings, and then Yuuma opens his mouth to ask where babies come from, Ryoga knows it, and he heads him off before he can ask.

"Her name's Rio. She loves the snow." Ryoga leans forward, and Yuuma does too. He's very close. Ryoga takes comfort in that.

"Why doesn't she come with you?"

"She's sick," Ryoga says, and he realizes that it has been months since he talked to anyone about RIo like this, without having to discuss symptoms or treatment plans or cutting life support. "She's…she's not going to live for much longer."

"Oh." Yuuma reaches for him, but he stops, hands outstretched in midair, and that breaks Ryoga, because he must look awful if Yuuma is hesitating.

"I don't want her to die," he admits, and Yuuma enfolds him in his arms while he cries.

"Doesn't it ever stop snowing?"

Yuuma shakes his head. His bangs bounce up and down as he does; they're pink and they stick straight up against all logic. Ryoga supposes it's because Yuuma isn't real, because he's a painting of a person, and he has to keep reminding himself of this, because Yuuma is…he's very present.

He is loud against the quiet of their surroundings.

"That's the way he painted it." Yuuma gestures at the window. "It never gets any higher, but the snow keeps falling, and falling…"

It is the first time Yuuma has ever mentioned the painter. Ryoga waits, eager to know more. Who could have created Yuuma, made him so real?

"He wanted to freeze time," Yuuma says somberly. "I don't know exactly he did, but when he added me in the window, this place was exactly the way it is now. I could hear his voice in my head while his brush was on the canvas."

"What do you mean, freeze time?"

"He stored all this time inside the painting. It's here under the snow, frozen…I guess he was planning to use it someday, but after he was finished with the painting…I never heard from him again."

"What was his name?" Ryoga wonders whether Yuuma is being literal when he says that time is buried under the meter of snow outside, but he lets it go. He's inside a painting, after all.

"I don't know." Yuuma stares into the fire. There is something sad in his eyes. "It's pointless — even thought I have all this time, there's nothing for me to do.

Ryoga spends more and more time in the painting. It takes no time in the real world, he rationalizes. It's harmless. And the painting is soothing in its stillness, while outside, the world is rushing by, the clock is ticking too quickly, Rio is —

Soon, it will be Rio was. Every second he spends in the snow white world is a second outside he can delay, just that much longer.

Yuuma must know what's happening — for all his ignorance of the world, he seems to understand Ryoga very well — because more often than not when Ryoga wakes in the cabin he finds himself in Yuuma's lap, the fire burning as it always had, wide red eyes looking down tenderly at him.

Ryoga is grateful for the silence, for Yuuma never asks.

"What's wrong?" Ryoga asks as soon as he enters the cabin. His heart is pounding; he knows something is wrong. Today Rio is have another radiology lab, to see if her brain is working still, and today there is no snow falling inside the world of the painting. He hopes it's not an omen.

Yuuma is by the fire, but the fire has gone out. The cabin is cold. Unpleasantly cold, and Yuuma is shivering.

"I've never been cold before," he whispers. "Is this what it's like?"

"Yeah," Ryoga says, "But Yuuma, what's going on?"

"It's thawing."

"What's thaw — you mean the snow? Why?"

Yuuma does not answer him. Instead he stands up, and he walks over to Ryoga, and he throws his arms around him. It's much slower than usual; normally Ryoga has to dodge if he wants to avoid a hug. Yuuma's face is buried in his shoulder for a long time.

He grips Yuuma tightly. "Come on, say something."

"You're kinda lonely, aren't you?"

"I…" Ryoga trails off. He doesn't want to say yes, and admit that Yuuma isn't enough company for him. He likes Yuuma, more than likes him, and wishes he could take him out of the painting and home so Ryoga could show him everything.

But he misses Rio so badly that it's like missing a hand, or a lung.

"Thanks for staying with me all this time," Yuuma says, and he takes Ryoga's face in his hands.

And then he kisses him. It's perfect, even though neither of them know what they're doing, even though their noses end up scrunched together, even though Ryoga has no idea what to do with his hands. All of his worries fade away.

When Yuuma pulls away, he takes Ryoga's hand in his own and presses his thumb down on the ring that Ryoga wears on his smallest finger, the one that is really Rio's ring. Ryoga feels a jolt run through his entire arm, like Yuuma is a live wire, and he doesn't understand at first.

The cabin shatters into a milion dark fragments that fade away. All around him the snow is melting — no, not melting, just disappearing with no water left behind. The wind has stopped blowing. Everything is vanishing.

"Yuuma," Ryoga says, and he has so much more to say, but nothing else will come out.

Yuuma smiles at it. It's so sweet. Ryoga wants to punch him, and kiss him more, and all he can do is listen numbly instead.

"Take all the time, Ryoga," he says. "If you give it to your sister, maybe…

"No, please." The ring on his hand is burning with power. "Don't go —"

"I'll miss you," Yuuma says. He, too, is fading away. Ryoga can almost see through him now. Yuuma is still holding his hand, but the pressure is lessening as surely as if he were letting go. "But you need your sister. Because…I'm not real…"

Ryoga opens his mouth to protest that, to say goodbye, to beg some more, but there is no time left, not even here, and Yuuma blinks out of existence right before his eyes. And Ryoga disappears, too, before he has even has the chance to cry out.

It is snowing again, the first snowfall of the rest of Rio's now long and prosperous life. She's been sitting at the window, hands pressed against the glass, while it piles up outside on the sidewalk. She's supposed to be resting, Ryoga grouses, but he helps her into her coat and tells her to wait while he gets his things.

A miraculous recovery, the doctors said. They would never know how right they were.

Ryoga's winter coat and boots are under his bed somewhere, and he has to crawl underneath and grope around before he finds them. He drags them out and gets up, intending to look for his muffler.

But then he spots a card on his dresser and frowns. Ryoga never leaves cards just lying out that way, and so he goes to see what it is; probably it's one of Rio's, or not a card at all—

Ryoga picks it up. He runs a fingertip over the surface reverently, drinks in the image, and then brings it to his lips. It's warm.

He puts the card into a card protector and wedges it into the side of the framed photograph sitting on the dresser.

"Ryoga!" Rio calls. "Hurry up!"

"I'm coming!" Ryoga calls back, and with one last look at the photograph and the card, he smiles. And then he leaves the room, and the door falls shut behind him, and there is only the fading sound of his and Rio's bickering as they leave the apartment.

The photograph, in its silver frame, is a formal family portrait, or it was supposed to be. But they had all started laughing, and the photographer had captured it all: his mother's smile, her hands on Rio's shoulders, and his father ruffling Ryoga's hair, and Rio with her face screwed up with laughter, and Ryoga, head ducked to hide a wide smile. The spell card is tucked into the left side of the frame —

— and there is Yuuma, caught mid-motion in ink and cardstock, his eyes bright and his smile full of wonder. He's sitting between a cherry blossom tree, his blurred reflection half caught on the lake beside him, and one of his hands is outstretched, reaching out, to catch the pink petals falling all around —

The gold lettering across the top of the card reads Spring Snow.