White Snowflakes
"Whoa!"
I couldn't hold the gasp in as I stared out the window. Snow was pouring down in thick white sheets. It had snowed at Christmas too, but nothing like this—not a proper, pounding fall.
Already warm with excitement, I went racing around the room. A great deal of snow had piled up overnight, and the world beyond the building was one beautiful sweep of unbroken white.
With flakes coming down this heavy, there was no staying shut up in my room. I charged the office on my short legs, pattering all the way. It was still morning, so the only person there was Bora, fresh off yesterday's overnight shift.
Her eyes were hollow again today. Fortunately, she was surviving the all-nighter on a cup of Starlight Green Tea. I crept up behind her, and she must have felt me there, because she turned around.
"Hana...? You're not sleeping more?"
It was still a little early for me to be awake, so she asked it like she was curious. I was wide awake. Seeing that, Bora stroked my hair.
"Bora, let's go play on the roof!"
"Yeah? Shall we go up for a bit?"
The workday hadn't started yet, so the roof was sure to be empty. Just picturing a field of pure white snow spread out in front of me, I couldn't get the excitement to settle.
"Let's go! Let's go!"
I said it while bouncing in place. I wanted to get up there so badly I could hardly stand it. A snowball fight once we arrived? Or should I build a Mr. Snowman?
Happy daydreams crowded my head. Bora took my hand, and we left the office, rode the elevator, and headed for the roof.
The last time I'd seen it, what stuck with me was how the rooftop floor stretched out as wide as a schoolyard. What would it look like now? I climbed with her, already imagining the snowfield waiting above.
When the rooftop door opened, the snowfield from my imagination was right there. No one had come up, and there wasn't a single footprint.
"Whoa!!!"
I shouted and stamped my mark into the snow. I was first. Then I dove in. Cold snow stuck to my face, so I flopped onto my back and swept my arms and legs until I'd made a snow angel. When I got up, the spot where I'd been lying was a complete wreck.
"Hana, play like that and you'll catch a cold."
Bora must have been freezing. She didn't step past the rooftop door, calling to me from inside instead. I didn't listen to a word of it. Right now, I was invincible.
I rolled the snow up into a great big snowman. A carrot, or anything else at all, and I could have given him a face... but I had nothing of the sort. I set the disappointment aside and showed Bora what I'd made.
"Wow, Hana. That's pretty amazing."
She admired my magnificent snowman. I'd thrown it together a little sloppily, but it was more than good enough to pass. Bora's face had gone red from the cold. Maybe it was the falling snow, or maybe not, but once a knife-edged wind started howling, I got cold too.
"Let's go eat, Bora."
"Okay."
She had only watched me play instead of joining in, so she was perfectly fine. I, on the other hand, had been rolling all over the snowfield, and snow clung to me everywhere. Bora peeled off my coat and shook it out hard, the way you'd shake laundry.
Every time she gave it a snap, the snow stuck to the cloth scattered away. I watched it go with regret. If only it weren't quite so cold, I could have played longer...
Snow this good was rare, which only made stopping more of a shame. Even when it did snow, a thick fall of big fluffy flakes like this was hardly common.
After eating until I was full, I went back to my room. Holding my swollen belly, I stared blankly outside. It was still coming down hard.
I checked the flowerpot where I had planted my tooth. It had grown so fast that I could hardly even remember when it had only been a sprout.
I watered it again today, humming as I went. I hoped the fruit would set soon. Something delicious was sure to come hanging down in heavy clusters.
Once the pot was watered, I spaced out for a while and got bored, so I turned on the computer and started gaming again.
Morning study was getting skipped today. Unless the subject was Korean, my skills were good enough that a perfect score on everything else was basically a given.
When I started the stream, a few viewers came into my room. Today I meant to slay Icarus. I was going to see it through to the bitter end.
I'd already loaded up plenty of money. All that was left was to roll Cubes. The cape was finished from last time, so today I was rolling the rest of my gear.
For now, the plan was to Cube about three pieces and land good options. Ten million won ought to be plenty, right? I wasn't even chasing god rolls. I only needed three lines.
But I paid the price for underestimating Icarus.
"No way..."
The defeat was so total it felt like a lie. Aside from a single piece, the other two hadn't even produced two lines, let alone three. In one go, I had burned through about what a part-timer earns in a year.
The world was griefing me. I nearly howled, then quietly turned the volume down so no one outside would hear.
Thoroughly soured, I shut Icarus off without a second thought. Part of me still wanted to throw more money at it, but today was not the day. Today was a day when spending meant ruin.
I typed the one line and launched League of Relics. I was angry enough to need something to take it out on. Today's targets were the junglers infesting Diamond. Today, those Diamond junglers were going to receive my wrath.
For the so-called easy stomp on weaker lobbies, I picked Nidalee. She was a champion ranked at the very top both for how hard she was to pilot and how hard her skills were to land, but that wasn't much of a problem for me.
If the match had been against people of similar skill, I wouldn't have chosen her. Right now, though, I was guaranteed to be better than whoever I faced, so I did. Unless the enemy was a smurf or on an alt, a jungle gap was certain. I entered the game hoping the other lanes would simply play like normal people.
Even an expert can lose if their teammates don't back them up. By the rule of the game they call the dead-log theory, the player on your own team who can't play is more frightening than the player on the enemy team who can.
The game went exactly the way I wanted. I counter-jungled cleanly, starved the enemy jungler out, then ganked the lane that was losing. We were still only in Diamond, so the pathing was obvious, but the enemy team walked right into it anyway.
Standard play is predictable by nature, but nothing lands more cleanly than this. They don't call it the standard for nothing.
My carry took the win. How far this body's mechanics might climb was starting to frighten even me. On mechanics alone, I might have been a match for a pro. My macro, though, lagged badly. My game sense was probably worse than an amateur's.
"Hmm..."
I could feel it for certain: my mechanics were better than when I used to play. My macro, if anything, seemed worse than before.
The way I played now was like a pure-offense swordsman with nothing but mechanics honed to the limit. Maybe that was why I still couldn't reach Challenger. The experience I'd built up, together with those mechanics, had been enough to carry me as far as Grandmaster, but climbing into Challenger meant being truly good at both.
The road to Challenger really wasn't an easy one. Still, once I got a little older, wouldn't this soft brain firm up at least somewhat?
These days it was routine for the baby hormones running through my body to be the ones in charge of my mind. Anime I never would have wanted in my old life was fun now, and I could feel my tastes shifting to match a child's.
And yet scraps of my grown-up years still surfaced now and then, so every once in a while I felt like someone with two personalities.
"Hana!"
The door opened, and Haru came in. The blizzard had pushed back the start of the workday, so instead of nine in the morning, she arrived closer to eleven.
I climbed down from the chair and tucked myself snugly into Haru's arms. The stream mattered, but the warmth of her embrace mattered more.
"Let's go have lunch."
Still held in her arms, I headed down to the cafeteria for a delicious lunch.
On the monitor, left glowing with no one in front of it, only the viewers Hana had abandoned remained.