A Girl Called Snow
By Celia Jenkins
She gave in to him easily, like the delicate petals of the sakura relenting under a spring breeze. But like the fleeting blossoms, their whirlwind romance wouldn't last.
By autumn, Asahi had moved on. Yuki was distraught. No-one saw her through the winter. Her parents, who lived down in the valley, received no calls.
In spring, when the snow began to melt, they found her. Feet facing down the mountain, the first limbs revealed. Higher up, they had to dig. When they uncovered her icy face, she looked fresh as a daisy. Just slumbering, almost.
Once upon a time there was a baby boy, his mother held him in her arms, and he grew into a little jokester, the clown of the class, with bright eyes and a wicked smile and the blondest hair, and he could buckle his shoe before any of his classmates, and he grew some more and was good at sport and science and drama but couldn't get on with French, and he flicked that blonde hair over his eyes when he caught the girls staring, gave that cheeky smile, and he joined the army, and he was a young man, such a young man, when the bullet pierced his helmet, and we all said what luck, what a miracle, not even a scratch, but then a few years later, out of the blue, he killed himself.
And that, unbelievably, was the end.