This is actually pulled from personal experience –though we don't now, my family briefly got a trampoline from our neighbors, and one fall my sister and I had the bright idea to put our leaf pile in it. It was about six inches to a foot thick, and pretty damn fun, though the leaves bounced as one solid mass when we jumped on the trampoline and didn't really get very high up. Still! 10/10, I would definitely do it again.
June 4th, 2022
Hinamizawa was truly awe-inspiring as the weather turned. The clear, sultry water in the rice fields chilled and darkened, the chittering of the cicadas faded and died, and the lush greenery turned brittle and brown.
At least, some of it did, but the rest of it flared, maple trees turning a vibrant and fiery red as other trees bled a yellow so intense that it outshone the watery, dying autumn sun. And orange, every shade of orange, rusty and bright and mottled and browning, swirling together in leaves that danced along the dirt roads and shook gently overhead in the breeze.
The Hinamizawa club, naturally, took advantage of such weather. Mion's family land was big enough that they could rake up a forest of leaves, their scarves dangling precariously from 'round their necks and, in Rika and Satoko's case, the imperilment of their protective clothing only worsened by the two mittens dangling from the string slung across their shoulders under their coats. Hanyuu was more practical and had her knitted lilac mittens actually on her hands, along with a fuzzy, pom-pom hat wedged down over her horns. Rika had a hat too, but Satoko spurned everything but a jaunty pink scarf and her winter jacket.
"It's not the same without this!" she cried gleefully, grabbing fistfuls of the dry, crunching leaves and tossing them in the air like crackling confetti. "You've got to feel it on your hands!"
"Less feel, more work!" Mion called back from her place shoveling huge rake-fulls of leaves onto a plastic sled her sister was pulling. "Mush, Shion, mush!"
"I'll mush you in a minute." Shion grumbled good-naturedly, putting her back into it as she dragged the surprisingly heavy clumps of leaves over to the growing pile on a certain stretchy black fabric.
Now, Keiichi would have been happy to just have the leaves. He sniffled and wiped his wrist under his cold nose, reminding himself that he wasn't built for this chilly mountain in weather, before hauling his rake back and pulling more golden leaves into the mixed pile he and Rena were making. Back in Tokyo, there hadn't really been enough outside to make a leaf pile, but here –if you would pardon the expression– he couldn't see the forest for the trees. The leaf pile was already huge, crackling and humongous and secretly thrilling, and he would have been positively giddy to throw away years of supposed maturity and leap into it right now.
Mion, naturally, had taken one look at a boring, mundane giant leaf pile, and decreed that they needed to take it a step further. What was the purpose of a giant leaf pile, she had asked? Why, to jump in, and then roll around in, and make nests in, and then splash leaves at each other like water. A leaf pile represented untapped autumn fun, but it was, at its most basic level, something to jump in. Mion had decided that they should elevate that noble purpose, because leaf piles, after all, did have some drawbacks. Unless it was monstrously large, you had to be careful how you jumped, or your legs would hit the cold, hard ground. You also had to be careful not to rake up sticks and twigs, which would poke you if you jumped into them.
Mion's first step in solving that was to put Satoshi and Rika on leaf-monitoring duty, parsing through each full sled that Shion brought in search of jabbing sticks, twigs, or chips of wood, before they dumped the huge armful of leaves into the pile.
Mion's second step to creating unrestrained leaf-jumping fun was to put the ever-growing hummock of leaves on a trampoline about a meter above the ground.
Keiichi, though the chilly air was making his face and his fingers cold and red, was still in awe over the mad genius of such a plan. He and the others were practically dancing in place as they raked and scooped, nudging huge rustling clumps of leaves over to Shion's sled as they ran back and forth all over the yard, pulling more and more leaves to create a vast ocean of leafiness, a crunchy, softened abyss of leaping, jumping, springing fun. His legs tingled and twitched with anticipation, and Keiichi was all but bouncing on his heels as he rushed back and forth with the others, eager to put this plan into motion, to see what would happen. He had never, ever imagined that he would get to jump in a leaf pile, never mind one that was on a trampoline.
Finally, finally, finally Mion said they were done, and there was a mad rush to yank off shoes and clamber onto the high platform, crawling over the cold steel springs that held the trampoline taunt and wiggling through the zippered wall that closed around it. Rika was first, being closest to it, and she was almost immediately engulfed in leaves, like a dog that had run into water so that only its head and neck were showing above the waves. She crawled happily forward, her long loose hair trailing through the leaves as Hanyuu plunged in behind her.
Satoshi ducked through the entrance next and unbent himself almost immediately, coming to his feet as he took several shuffling steps sideways, making room for the others. Satoko, of course, cannoned happily into the leaves with a crunch and a shriek of glee, sending skeleton leaves flying everywhere as she burrowed into the mass. Shion was more sedate, in that she flopped down on a drift of them to the side with a melodramatic sigh of content, and Mion stood with Satoshi, grinning smugly in pride at their accomplishment.
Keiichi should have damn well known better than to stand in front of Rena as Rika, Hanyuu, and Satoko crawled through the leaves.
"Hauuuu, they're so cute! Adorable!" Rena squealed, and Keiichi had only time to pray to Oyashiro-sama that his death would be swift and painless as she bowled him over, all but launching herself into the leaves in pursuit of one of the three girls with her arms outstretched. "I wanna take you home~!"
"Scatter!" Rika yelped in dismay, suiting words to deeds and ducking under the surface of the leaves. She was small enough that she could swim through the huge drifts like they were water, and that was exactly what the young miko did, wiggling frantically out of the way as Rena hit the ground where she had been and the whole trampoline swayed and bounced.
"Hauhauhau!" Hanyuu squealed, following her cousin and burrowing a panicked path in the opposite direction as Rena sat up, several half-crushed leaves in her copper hair and her blue eyes alight. Satoko, her only visible target, gulped and ducked behind a drift of leaves that had swelled upwards alongside her own path –in much the same way, Keiichi felt, that a solider would duck under the ramparts as a sniper on the opposite side readied his gun.
And then the madness began, a crazed combination of tag and blind-man's-bluff as Rena plowed her way through the lead pile, dashing huge furrows of it aside in her search for the three youngest, and they squealed and giggled and crawled frantically through the leaves, looping around Keiichi and the others and using them as shields, which then drew them into the chase. Rena tackled Keiichi onto a bed of leaves, and he was so caught up in the fun that he didn't bother getting to his feet again –what was the point? That would only make it too easy to run, and spoil the game.
He cried out his outrage as Satoko crawled onto him, scaling his back like a mountain before using it as a launching pad to spring off in another direction –just in time for Rena to pounce and narrowly avoid crushing his spine. Keiichi wheezed under her, but then Rena's weight was gone again as he sat up in the light and the cold and the bitter scent of dead leaves.
When they finally wore her out –aided in no small part by Satoko sacrificing her scarf to use as a rope for her trap– everyone collapsed back onto the leaves, laughing until their sides ached along with the persistent cold stinging at their noses.
"We should definitely keep this." Mion gasped.
"Agreed." Shion said, and tilted her head up as Satoshi sneezed. "Satoshi-kun? Are you cold?"
"Muuu, I'm fine." Satoko's older brother said, wiping his running nose on his arm the same way Keiichi had. "It's just chilly out."
"It's fall." Keiichi pointed out, and Rika finally grasped the mittens dangling like empty hands at her sleeves, picking the leaf debris out of them before slotting her own hands inside.
"It's nice and warm under the leaves, mew." she said, and Mion sat up, getting that old, familiar gleam in her eyes.
"Let's make a leaf fort!" she cried. "Or tunnels, or burrows, or whatever the heck it is you do with this stuff! Let's move!"
Nothing loath, Keiichi plunged in with the others, hastily scrabbling and shoveling the leaves up into a bigger pile, scooping it over and over himself as he wormed his way into the center with the rest of the club. Rika was right: it was a lot cozier under the light, half-tangible weight of the leaves, almost shockingly so. Warmth and air were trapped almost immediately, as everyone curled up on their haunches or laid down on their stomachs. Keiichi felt himself warming up immediately, like he'd plunked himself down in front of a fire.
Hanyuu was last, shuffling carefully around the huge mound they'd made and patting some extra sections of leaves into place, making sure to cover everyone completely. Then she wiggled in with the rest of them, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the sheltering warmth. The dusty, bitter scent of dry dead leaves was strong in Keiichi's nose, almost enough to make him want to sneeze –though that was no surprise, considering the fragments of crunched-up leaves that clung to the yarn fibers of his scarf and hat, or the larger, itchier portions that had made their way under his clothes.
"This is awesome." Keiichi said, giving a little shudder of excitement. A few bits of leaf was nothing to the sheer adventurousness of what they were doing. "Do you guys do this every year?"
"Eh, every year we can." Mion said, and though the space beneath the leaves was almost pitch-black, Keiichi could imagine it along with the rustle as she palmed her chin and propped her elbow against the ground. "I mean, the weather can be pretty uncooperative."
"If there's a frost, then the leaves get all wet, and slugs and things can crawl inside." Rena said brightly, making him make a face. "Or if it rains."
"Or an early snow." Satoko chimed in. "That happens."
"Have you ever experienced a mountain winter, Keiichi-kun?" Satoshi asked politely.
Keiichi felt that the way his shudder rustled the leaves was answer enough.
"Heh. The wussy city boy probably won't last two days before he's plastered to the radiator at home." Mion snickered.
"I will not!" Keiichi shot back, defending his honor even if he had a sneaking suspicion she might be right. "I'm a man, after all! I can take some snow!"
"Some snow?" The delight in Shion's voice let him know that he made a mistake. "Kei-chan, the village doesn't get some snow, it gets buried in it. We don't have none of those fancy city snow plows, and if we did, they'd go kaput after just a few weeks of rumbling over the hills. We're talking waist-high snow and stockpiling food and supplies in the garden shed in case one of the old guys with a tractor doesn't make it out to your place."
Keiichi quailed inside, but refused to let it show.
"W-well, I can still handle anything Hinamizawa can throw at me!" he said, drawing on every scrap of fiery charisma he had to offer. Fake it till you make it, as they said, and Keiichi could throw plenty of cover over his confidence. "Just you wait!"
9.42 AM, USA Central Time
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