Chapter Text
Kanade wasn’t someone who would typically go out and pick berries, even less so in sub-zero temperatures during winter, and it was almost inconceivable for her to venture into the deepest possible area of the forest.
Yet, the sixteen-year-old Kanade Yoisaki stood in a snow-covered clearing with her thickest jacket and boots on and a basket nearly filled to the brim with berries that were so blue they could have been mistaken as something that was a part of the sky.
Another subject that she would never disclose was that of the tear streaks that ran down her cheeks, one’s that were definitely fresh yet had also been seen for much longer than just this past week.
Kanade looked up at the sun that was slowly making its way down west. And she griped her woven basket a little tighter.
She sighed to herself as her lip wobbled and her body swayed, yet she still remained dead set on not crying again, despite her emotions telling her so. Even though no tears had fallen, she still wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and took in a deep breath to calm herself.
Even still, she took steps forward, one at a time, while following the footsteps she had made earlier that day, footsteps that led back to her home a little more than two miles away.
While in the past she may have been happy with that thought– the thought of coming back home to her family and eating a home-cooked meal – it was now but a dream, and dreams such as those were now gone.
She shook her head. She needn’t think those thoughts at the moment, as any more dwindling will have her home past nightfall, something that wasn’t typically desired in winter and certainly not desired by Kanade.
If that line of thinking made her slow steps turn into a faster walk, no person was around to witness.
After all, if she had died tonight, there may be no one to mourn her, let alone to look for.
However, as her thoughts got darker, her pace quickened and quickened, until she was full-on sprinting through the forest, trying to run away from both the forest and her ever darkening-thoughts.
Even though she wasn’t a particularly clumsy person, any normal person would have fallen on something sooner or later if they were in such a hurry as her. But even so, she still managed to narrowly avoid any and all unwanted obstacles in her path. However, despite this, she soon stopped and crumpled to the ground, back leaning against an old oak tree to catch her breath.
It was due to her lack of movement on any regular day that had caused her exhaustion and weariness, something that could not be stopped by fear and adrenaline.
If Kanade wasn’t gasping for air, she would have giggled to herself due to how foolish she was being. She didn’t need to hurry herself when the warm sun hadn’t set yet, she was wearing her warmest clothing, and there was not a cloud in the sky to indicate troubling weather.
She would be just fine if she walked the rest of the way.
Completely and utterly fine.
Once her breathing had returned to normal, she found herself being lulled by the noises around her. The ever so slight whistling of the wind, the rustling of the trees' branches, and even the faraway sound of running water. It all sounded like music to her, a song that she wouldn’t mind getting lost in for eternity.
She closed her eyes and tried to take away all of her sorrows and troubles that had bogged down and lingered in her mind for the past months. How many? How many months from that first one? She had stopped counting, as she could only remember the one specific date of three days from now. A day so important to her that she had walked through a forest to help celebrate the only way she now could.
But for the time being, she absorbed herself into the music of the forest. Ah, what a wonderful sound it was! What she wouldn’t give to be here forever, lost in a trance that had left her mind so free of the troubles that she couldn’t stop thinking about.
She slowly opened her eyes again, expecting to see nothing but the pure and beautiful witness of the snow-covered trees around her. Instead, however, she jolted back in shock to see another girl in front of her, crouching down to Kanade’s level.
While this girl looked to be about the same age as Kanade, she was more different in numerous ways.
The girl had long purple hair that fell to the middle of her back and a height that was easily forty-five centimeters taller than Kanade when she was standing. Her clothes were unlike anything she had ever seen, though much like how she envisioned when she heard and read about royalty.
But the most unique part about her was her eyes. Eyes that were such a deep purple, deep enough that it may have made Kanade’s soul turn into violets just from staring at them, with light blue near the bottom that had made her feel as though she was tossed into the bright blue sky and would not lament staying there for eternity.
Thankfully, she was quickly snapped out of her trance when the girl moved, crouching down to Kanade’s level.
“…are you alright?” She asked, her voice as perfect as she looked, though with more than a hint of monotone.
“Y-y-yes, why wouldn’t I b-be?” Kanade said as she flinched when her teeth chattered against one another, making her stutter rather awkwardly.
The girl only blinked as she stood back up to full height and gave out her hand to Kanade, prompting her to take her and join her.
Kanade uncharacteristically flushed red with an emotion she couldn’t quit pin-point.
Nevertheless, she grabbed ahold of the girl's hand and, in the other, held onto the basket, which had seemingly gotten much colder than she had last remembered.
She glanced up at the sun and was surprised to see it not any lower in the west, nor in the place where she had seen it prior, but instead rising in the west.
Confused by this, once she had regained her footing, she looked towards the other girl and opened her mouth to speak about her revelation; when she was pulled out of her confusion when the other girl started walking forward with no prompting yet had not let go of Kanade’s hand; she still followed Kanade’s footsteps.
Yet another odd thing she had taken note of was the frost that had accumulated on the snow, something she had seen every morning that winter yet never in what was supposed to be the afternoon.
Though, if it could be regarded as afternoon when the sun had seemingly reset itself, she did not know.
“Fair lady?” Kanade addressed the stranger in a manner that she had never once uttered in her life; one that gave Kanade quite a shock.
Nonetheless, she shook off the strangeness of her words and continued.
“May I ask of you your name? And how you found me way out here?” She asked, not necessarily expecting an answer to the second question, as it could easily be explained if the girl lived close by.
The girl nodded. “You may call me…” She hesitated for a long while before muttering in a small voice: “...Yuki.”
Kanade glanced at the snow around them for a quick second before glancing back at the girl.
“It seems fitting, considering what time of year it is. Though, I guess it is not something you can control.” Kanade said rather awkwardly, with a small laugh at the end to perpetuate the odd words.
Yuki didn’t laugh or even blink at her statement and only nodded.
“M-my name is Yoisaki Kanade if you inquired.” She said. However, with that rather common statement, a new discovery doned on her.
Or rather, it came to light.
After announcing her last name, her current situation donned on her after more than an hour of not thinking about it. While to most, it would have been a bad thing to be reminded of an unfortunate situation they couldn’t control, Kanade had a bit of a different experience.
Fairly quickly, she had that same dread and sadness that came over her whenever she thought about the subject, emotions that made her want to repeat a similar action that she had been doing for months now: cry.
Though, strangely enough, those negative emotions had only lasted a few seconds, almost as if it had never happened at all. In fact, her emotions flipped entirely, with her feeling joy and even an emotion she had not felt in months, hope.
She took another long look at Yuki, admiring both her borderline ethereal beauty and the unique character that she exhibited. Kanade smiled a small smile. Her chest filled with those same positive emotions and newer ones she hadn’t yet put a name to. This must have meant that she was healing and that all of her sorrows were soon to leave her mind entirely. If she could forget them for a few minutes, then that must have meant something, hopefully, something good.
However, much like the negative emotions, the positive ones were also gone fairly quickly, albeit not as fast. Soon those positive ones were replaced with guilt.
It was at least a month since then and she was already forgetting? What did that say about her?
But she was not to dwell on these rare rush of emotions for long, as soon Yuki nudged her with her shoulder, snapping her out of the thoughts.
“Ah. What is it, Yuki?” Kanade asked, wondering in the girl meant anything by the action.
Yuki didn’t make eye contact with her and instead kept her eyes on the train of footsteps in front of them. “Why were you out here? Doesn't the cold bother you?” She asked, her voice remaining monotonous.
Kanade nearly stumbled over her feet once Yuki started to talk, but she thankfully composed herself before the other took notice.
“W-well, I was out here collecting these berries for a pie. It was my mother’s favorite food, so my father and I used to celibate her birthday by baking a pie after the first snow of winter.”
Yuki looked over at Kanade’s basket filled with light-blue berries before picking up one of the said berries and inspecting it.
“…you are able to eat these? Most rabbits that try to eat these fall ill after a day.” She stated.
Kanade’s eyes widened, and she inspected the berries herself. It certainly looked like the berries she and her father collected each year, and while it was true that they were much deeper in the forest than she remembered, no other berry that she had seen was like these.
She was about to dump the berries out of the basket entirely and try her luck again with finding the right berries tomorrow when Yuki took the berry she had been holding and swallowed it whole; no hesitation was shown on her face.
Kanade gaped at her with a wide mouth and eyes and was about to say something– her words would most likely have been on the borderline of panic– when Yuki interrupted her by licking her lips. “Oh, I see. Its oxalic acid, a chemical in essence, is much more harmful to rabbits specifically than to humans. You needn’t worry Yoisaki-San.”
Kanade could only continue to stare at the girl with shock, amazement, and morbid curiosity.
“You-you can taste the chemicals in plants?” She asked.
Yuki shook her head. “Not really.” Was the only answer the rather peculiar girl gave.
Kanade nodded, though not without silently worrying about her health. “You also said more toxic to rabbits than humans. So, it's still harmful to humans?”
Yuki nodded. “Yes… though humans like yourself are much more tolerant of it than rabbits. It’s found in many other plants as well. The reason those rabbits died must have been due to the over-consumption of these berries.” She explained calmly, still not looking Kanade in the eyes.
While Kanade certainly found her rather odd, she found that despite her eccentricities, she could not help but want to know about her. While this may have been a weird cacophony of fascination and morbid curiosity, it was also something else.
Possibly due to the overwhelmingly new sensation of loneliness and longing that had been bogging down Kanade recently.
Still, even if her want was due to her selfishness, there wasn’t any harm in indulging herself in asking the girl more questions.
“Do you live around this part of the forest, or are you a resident of the village?” Kanade asked.
“Neither. I don’t have a home. Not yet.” Was the response that Yuki gave.
“What do you mean?” Kanade responded, feeling rather lost.
“I haven’t found someone who can help me. Save me…”
With the new information Kanade was given, all she could do was nod helplessly at her words, feeling as though she wasn’t a part of the conversation she had started.
“I could try to help you since you helped me,” Kanade whispered, most likely too quiet for Yuki to hear.
After saying that, her cheeks lit up with blush and shook it off. It was a rather strange thing to say to an almost stranger, after all. Therefore she decided to change the topic instead. “Y-you asked about the cold, right? I’m wearing rather thick clothing, so the cold doesn’t bother me as much. What about you? Ultimately you are wearing much less thermal and winter-ready clothing than I.”
Yuki shook her head. “I don’t need to worry about those sorts of affairs. I don’t catch colds, nor get cold enough like you all do.”
Kanade blinked in confusion. “You don’t? Then that must mean that you’ve been accustomed to weather like this?”
After a long silence of waiting, Yuki didn’t respond. So instead of trying to continue talking, Kanade sighed and looked up at the sun that was now high in the sky. A little less than mid-day perchance?
The oddest part about that was the fact that around this time of day, it would have been warming up, and Kanade may have started to feel even more exhausted, especially with all the walking she was doing.
However, that didn’t seem to be the case as the harsh winter chill of the morning still lingered, and regardless of it being presumably hours since she woke up, she still felt refreshed.
She decided not to think about the other predicament of the time reversal she had experienced that morning, despite the fact that she couldn’t have fallen asleep for the entire night and not had gotten, at the very least, hypothermia.
“…what is it like?” Yuki suddenly asked.
Kanade was shaken from her thoughts and rather embarrassingly answered, “Huh?”
“What is it like to eat a pie Yoisaki-San? I’ve never had it.”
Kanade smiled a small smile at the girl as her chest bloomed in a way that was possible only for flowers. “If you would like it, I could share it with you once I am done. If you come three days from now, it will be finished and-“
She swallowed the lump in their throat that had started to form, and she then spoke the rest of her sentence much quieter. “…you may come over to my house… and celebrate my mother’s birthday with me.”
Yuki’s mouth turned down at that, and she looked at her with what could only be described as shock, albeit much less present than the average person. “That is a very special day to you and your father, isn’t it? I would be intruding.”
For some odd reason, Kanade's chest lightened at the fact that Yuki was indeed listening to her when she talked about her reasoning for the forest; and despite her feelings on her situation, she didn’t even think to hesitate and responded instead with the single, rather pathetic word,
“Please!”
Yuki’s eyes visibly widened, and her eyes looked down deep into Kanade’s own. Despite this reaction, her mouth quicked up a tiny bit into what Kanade hoped was a smile.
“Okay. I’ll meet you again in three days, and we’ll eat the pie that you baked.” She said as her footsteps came to a stop.
When Kanade finally tore her eyes away from Yuki’s almost adorable gaze, she looked forward and saw that the snowy pathless path they had been following had instead turned into the dirt path that had led to her village.
“Oh. Well, I get this is our rather informal goodbye. I… I’ll see you soon.” Kanade stuttered out, holding her hand for Yuki to shake.
Yuki nodded and griped Kanade’s hand with both of her own. “Yes. We shall see each other again soon, I… promise.”