It was cold, gloomy winter night in the city of Kasukabe, and the snow was falling. In the cold and the dark, Konata Izumi roamed through the streets. After she had failed to get into college, her father had started drinking and had eventually failed to pay his loans. So they were evicted from their house.
Now, she was homeless, sleeping in whatever warm place she could find. However, today the strict policy against loiterers went into effect, and homeless people would not be tolerated in train stations and other public places. Such sights were thought to blemish the city's reputation.
The only job Konata had found was tissue-pack marketing, that is, distributing small tissue packages on the streets. However, people avoided her and nobody had accepted even a single packet during the entire day. That was because she smelled bad and looked terrible. Konata had not been able to bathe or get clean clothes for a few days.
Snowflakes fell on her once beautiful, long blue hair, which was now a dirty tangle. Her runny nose and constant coughing didn't help either. Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along, mechanically handing tissue packages at people. All of them tried to look the other way and hurried past her.
It was the night before Christmas, but Konata did not know that. Lights were shining from every window, and hundreds of neon lights brought color into the night, but they offered her no warmth. Appetizing smells wafted from the restaurants – thanks to fans deliberately placed just for that effect.
Finally, Konata found a narrow, abandoned alley. She sat down behind some concrete flower boxes, which were now empty and covered in snow. Konata took off her coat, placed her foot into it and tried to wrap it around her wasted body. The worn-out, tattered fabric could not keep off the cold. She couldn't go back to her employer, having failed to hand out any tissues – the thought of simply dumping them didn't even occur to her.
But the cold got worse and worse. Finally, she started ripping the tissue packets open and stuffed the soft material into her clothes and around her. They did warm her at first. She failed to notice how they also soaked up the melting snow, and the dampness seeping even more warmth off of her frail body.
While feeling slightly warmer, she reminisced over her happy days in high school. Back then, she had her own, warm room, with a huge collection of manga and anime, TV, and a modern game console. She had not realized how lucky she was and that she had been living in a virtual paradise.
Back then, she even had had lots of friends; Kagami, Tsukasa, and Miyuki being the dearest of them. And Kagami … the only friend who did not turn her back at her when the difficulties started. Not right away, at least. She was the only one who actually called her and had sounded worried. But since they lost their home, Konata's cell phone broke and she could not get a new one.
She had never bothered to memorize Kagami's number nor even the college she was attending to – because she had all that information available in her phone or she could look it from the Internet – so now Konata could not contact Kagami. Besides, would she even care about a homeless outcast? Nobody else did.
Oh, what fun they had had in high school. And she had thought it was a drag. Being forced to wake up early every morning, having to spend all day at school, learning useless things, when she would have liked to play games, watch anime and read manga instead. Still, if she could change her life back to that now, it would have been a thousand times better than this.
Another hour passed and the temperature fell rapidly. Konata's teeth rattled and she slowly lost feeling in her hands and feet. Yet, she slowly started to feel warm again. In fact, it felt almost as if she was taking a hot bath. She remembered the public bath at the seaside inn. With Kagami and everyone else. How many years had passed?
Konata took the coat off of her shoulders – it felt far too warm now. As the warmth spread to her entire body, she started to feel very, very sleepy. Just before falling asleep, she thought that someone was coming. It was a girl, in a Ryōō high school winter uniform, and with two long, lilac pigtails. Konata smiled, and whispered, "Kagami …"
A passerby found a curled-up body at the dawn. A small, frightfully skinny, dirty young adult woman was curled up in the snow, with a smile on her frozen face. Her coat was laid down beside her, and everywhere around her, dozens of opened tissue packackes.
