Character: Isamu Shiratori

Year: 2007

Title: Having Two Homes/The First Snow

Anything Else?: I know this is an unfamiliar name, but this character isn't an OC, he's Yuuki-san's son, but as he wasn't named in either the anime or the manga, I took it upon myself to give him a name. And as to why I chose 'Isamu'- it is supposed to mean 'bravery'. I think from there, the rest is more-or-less self explanatory.

Isamu likes the snow.

Until recently-around two years ago to be exact-he had never seen snow. Not in real life, in any case. Where he'd spent the first eight years of his life, it had mostly been very sunny and warm. There had been some awful rainstorms, sure, but no snow. So seeing it had been quite a sight.

And sensation, too. He knew snow was cold, but he hadn't quite expected to actually feel the coldness. Nor did he realise how wet it was. His father showed him how to make snow bunnies and snow men, the same way that he had done once, when he had been Isamu's age. It was not quite the same as making sandcastles or being able to search for seashells, but he had a lot of fun.

Yet at first, he didn't really realise it. He hadn't wanted to come back here, to the place his father had come from. It looked and sounded different, there were different rules and different foods and different sorts of people. Though he knew the language of this new place and had always spoken it at home, it sounded very different when spoken by people like his father, people to whom the language belonged. And of course, he was conscious of being so much darker than everyone else at first. Though the children in his new class in his new school were actually quite nice and didn't seem to care, he felt as though he was a curiosity, something more outside and different, who did not belong.

And then the snowy season came, and Isamu watched this new country of his get blanketed in the most brilliant white that he had ever seen. He felt the coldness of it for the first time (and always remembered to put on his gloves and scarf after that), smelt it for the first time (though he decided not to taste it) and watched his footprints track through it for the first time, and marvelled at how different from dusty, sandy bare-footed prints they were. He experienced it as yet another monumental difference, to add to all the ones he'd already listed in his mind.

But it wasn't just another difference, not really. Because in that snowy season, his father showed him how to make different things out of snow. He got to have a snowball fight at school for the first time in his life, and when his team won and they were all celebrating that win, it felt as if he really had made friends.
And then the snowy season was when he met his father's friend, who came to his house with astonishing stories, memories that Isamu was no part of, and a box of gifts for him-manga comics and some toys. Though he could not really understand it and knew that this person came from a time before he existed (and even as he was more excited to look through the presents), somehow, watching this person, he felt a connection to his new home in his new country for the first time. The language suddenly felt smoother on his tongue. He started to care less about how his appearance contrasted with everybody else's. Soon, things became easier.

And this feeling remained, and became more so, even as the snowy season finally melted away and cherry blossoms formed on the tree. And with that ease, Isamu was more able to accept that this strange place, his father's country, was not really that strange, and that it was his too. He became happier, and eventually, though he never managed to feel as though he had 'always' been there, he was proudly able to state that he came from two countries, that he had two homes, each equal parts of him. To him, all of this happened because of the first time he had seen the snow.

And this is why Isamu likes the snow,