I hate winter.

Because it is cold, muddy, dark, clouded, dumpy, colorless. There are no flowers or plants around, only concrete, plaster, asphalt; ice and oceans of slob. Here in the city, it never snows properly because it is too warm and crowded for the beautiful white snow to remain untouched. And when sometimes an extraordinary amount of snow falls, traffic stops immediately, forcing me to walk hours by foot in the numbing cold.

I love snow, oh I do. But when I go out of the city to enjoy the untouched white beauty, the wind, sharp as a knife, soon chases me back to my room which is usually stifling smelly if not cold as an ice chamber.

Winter comprises everything I hate.

In the winter, I'm always moody, and I would not hesitate sleeping it through like the bears, like the flowers, if I had the opportunity to do so. In the winter, I always tend to think how much better my life was when I was still the infamous thief bandit, living carelessly in Makai, wandering off towards warmer regions whenever I wanted to.

Winter always reminds me of how you like it the most among the four seasons.

You like it because it is cold, and you can endure cold very well. You can endure anything that's related to torture. You don't need sunshine, because you have never felt its warmth; because when you did feel it sometimes, your enemies spotted and attacked you. You like lingering in the dark because you can hide there, unseen to everyone. You like it because if you need the light, it can be taken away from you, and it may serve as a weak point in your enemies' eyes. Having no needs, that is true strength. Or at least that's how you learnt it.

I'm sure Mukuro thinks the same. She has been hiding in her entire life, too. You are both so simple. You both escape into nothingness from complications. That's why you know so much about each other. That's why you like being together. That's why you need each other.

So, looking further into it, Mukuro is also just a weakness for you. I wonder if you will realize it sometime. Like you realized what I am to you before you fled to her.

And if you realize it again, where will you go? To another place? To another world?

I just wish you would find your piece someday. Anywhere. Anyhow. I don't even care who you manage to replace me with.

Did you notice my efforts when you were still here in the human world? I tried my hardest to show you the warmth of the sun without you realizing where you are heading with this all. Because if you had realized, you would have resisted it knowingly. I wanted you to see what happiness is, because in the shadows of your own world, you were anything but happy. You might have been satisfied with yourself, yes. But that's far from what I wanted you to be.

And you know exactly why I wanted you to be happy. I know you do; after all, this is why you left me.

I admit I was a bit too naive. Just like those silly human girls… They always believe that they can make me fall in love with them just from smiling and clinging at me all the time we are at school. I am used to smile at them; they are really cute, sometimes annoying, but I must be very careful not to break their hearts which is so sensible.

Somehow, I think I acted quite like them towards you. I did not want to, but I still managed to fool myself, believing I could show you what warmth means by just being warm towards you. That you would smile back at me someday. You just don't know how many times I have imagined all these silky scenes. Probably that was one of the reasons I became so naive.

And how I regret it now. It was always so obvious that two hundred years of solitude won't disappear in an instant. Nor after a longer period.

And still. I am still waiting. Just like the planted seeds that don't know what they are waiting for during the winter; they know only that they are waiting. And they are waiting patiently in their nothingness, because they don't have anything else to do; they don't have another way out. If something is wrong and their patience is in vain, they are waiting still. Even if they will never burst into bloom, they wait, and they perish in the earth meanwhile.

They rot in the dark, airless earth waiting.

I won't rot for you, Hiei – this is what I keep telling myself.

It has no use.

Guess I can't escape my destiny either way.