Advent '09 [12/25]
Advent 09
December 12th - 13 days to go
Reino didn't consider himself to be evil.
It was true that he had a hobby that not many people would agree with, and it was true that this hobby including destroying originals - in whatever shape they came in.
Lately he had set his sights on one Sho Fuwa. But he had been exasperated to find that Fuwa was as difficult to break as a cockroach. He had stolen his music, stolen his style, blatantly rubbed Sho's face in his success, but that didn't work.
Then he had turned his attention to those closest to Sho, the argument being that if the loss of achievement and material gains didn't affect him then a personal attack would.
That was how he had come across Kyoko Mogami. He had threatened to rape her, so that the only thing Sho saw when he looked at her would be him. He hadn't even planned to go through with it, he knew he scared the girl and he knew that Sho had been close. He used this against the girl, terrifying her so that she couldn't move, leaving her in a state of semi-undress so that - even though he hadn't done anything - there would always be that suspicion.
And even if the girl denied it later Sho would still not fully believe her.
He would always see him.
But it hadn't worked.
Sho had hit back, and he had hit back hard.
Reino hadn't counted on this reaction. Nothing from his personal experience had prepared him to deal with this.
It wasn't until he was lying on the ground in the woods, his plans in tatters around his feet that he realised something important. Sho had become to mean more to him than just a target - something to break.
Sho had intrigued him, and he found that he wanted Sho's attention all to himself even more now than he had previously.
It had been a game, now it was an obsession.
This was why he couldn't stand the thought of Kyoko being anywhere near what was his. He knew Sho had feelings for the girl, and while she was in the picture Sho's attention would always be divided.
He could attack the girl again, but he knew he had already lost that battle.
No, all there was to do now was manipulate the events around them so that it would seem that she disappeared on her own. Then Sho could get over her and he could start working on him again.
Reino reached the desk in the guard cabin by the ski lift and took the weather report for today.
Hmm, perfect. A blizzard was the perfect way to engineer a freak accident.
Quickly but carefully, he switched the current report with one from a few days ago that detailed cloudy skies but no chance of snow. Hardly anyone would notice that the only thing that was wrong with the report was the date.
Grinning to himself, he left the cabin and made his way back to the hotel, passing by hoards of people who were heading up the slopes, but eying the clouds worryingly.
He didn't want to be on the mountainside today, that was for sure.
-/-
Kyoko stood off to the side of the ski lift next to Sho and Ren, Kanae having forgone coming with them to stay at the mansion with Maria, strangely enough the instructor had called to say that the lesson would be cancelled that day. Ren was silently staring at the sky, his face creased in a frown as he took in the heavy grey clouds rolling above them.
"Kyoko-chan." He said quietly. Immediately Kyoko perked up, wondering just what he wanted. "Could you go to the guard cabin and see what the weather report for today is? I don't like the look of that sky..."
"Sure, Ren-san." Kyoko answered, walking over to the small cabin and disappearing inside.
When she reappeared she quickly made her way over to where they were standing.
"Well?" Ren asked her.
"It says that it's going to be cloudy but no chance of snow."
Ren's frowned increased and he looked back up to the sky one last time. "Well," he said eventually, "I guess I was wrong..."
"Kyoko?"
Ren and Kyoko turned around. Ren practically bristling at the informality that Sho was addressing Kyoko with. They weren't that close, were they?
First Yashiro and now Sho?
"Yeah, Sho?" Kyoko asked.
Apparently they were that close.
"Could I talk to you for a minute?" Sho asked, shooting a glance at Ren, "Privately?"
Kyoko was a little suspicious, but overall Sho hadn't done anything too bad lately.
Surely, she reasoned, just talking with him won't be too bad.
"Ok." She said, following him as he led her away and completely missing the glare Ren shot at Sho's back. "What do you want?" she asked when they were deemed to be far enough away to have a reasonable semblance of privacy.
"I wanted to ask you..." Sho trailed off, and then blushed bright red. Obviously embarrassed about what he was about to ask.
"Yeah?" Kyoko asked, slightly amused despite herself.
"I was...did Yashiro do anything to you?" Sho asked in a rush, the words tumbling from his mouth.
Kyoko took a moment to process what he had just asked then concluded that he did just say what she thought he had said.
"What?"
"I - I mean..." he continued, his blush never abating, "He's been acting weird to you. A-and you sleep in the same house as him and..."
"Oh my God!" Kyoko interrupted, "No!"
"Oh. That's good then." Sho tried vainly to get himself under control.
"Why would you even think that?" Kyoko asked, horrified. Sure, Yashiro had been acting weird for the past few days or so but she could never think of him as stooping that low!
"I was worried about you after Reino!" Sho hissed, "You may not realise this but crazy people tend to migrate to you!"
"Excuse me?"
"It's true! It's like they can smell you or something!"
Kyoko's mouth dropped open, "Are you trying to say that I smell?"
"No!" Sho said, horrified. "That wasn't supposed to come out like that!"
Kyoko huffed and stormed off to stand next to Ren, intent on ignoring Sho for all she was worth.
Sho just groaned and dropped his face into his hands.
-/-
Ren wasn't jealous.
He wasn't!
Not even when Kyoko acted friendly with Sho, going off with him and standing away from everyone else.
He couldn't hear what they were saying but by the way Sho was blushing he had a feeling it wasn't anything good.
In fact, he had a sneaking suspicion that Sho was confessing to Kyoko.
Damn it! First Yashiro and now Sho? Was someone conspiring against him here? He didn't want to just be another person in the line. He wanted to be the only one!
Even though he knew that they shouldn't be together and that it couldn't work...
Still! He had to do something about this.
He looked back up to the mountain. A thought occurred to him and he allowed a small smile to twist his lips. It would be perfect. Revenge against Sho whom he knew deserved it, but nothing of the lethal kind.
You couldn't die of humiliation now, could you?
-/-
The run up the mountain was quiet but thick with tension.
The group of three disembarked and stood a little ways off to the side.
"So, where do we go from here?" Kyoko asked, never having been up this high before.
"I was thinking of taking you on a new run." Ren answered.
"Over there then?" Sho asked, pointing to where most of the other skiers were heading to.
"No. That run looks a little busy; we'll go on this one." Ren replied and pointed to the opposite side of the lift to a run that had no one on it.
Sho shrugged and started skiing over to it slowly, Kyoko following.
"It's not hard is it?" Kyoko asked Ren in a small voice.
"Don't worry," Ren smiled at her, "as long as you're with me you'll be safe."
Ren started off first slowly, Sho following with Kyoko taking up the rear. He smirked to himself, this was perfect, he could humiliate Sho and get his revenge and Sho would never want to tag along when he took Kyoko out skiing again.
It wasn't until twenty minutes in to the run that things started going wrong.
The first thing that Ren noticed was that it started snowing, lightly at first but it soon turned quite heavy.
That was weird. It wasn't supposed to snow today. And, even though he was good - he didn't think that he was good enough to traverse a black run in heavy snowfall. Never mind Kyoko and Sho.
He was so caught up in his musings that he didn't see the small fence with the sign on it until he hit it. He let out a shout of surprise as his skis got jammed between the slats of wood and the safety locks on his skis activated, releasing his boots from the restraints.
He hadn't been travelling very fast, as he had slowed down as soon as it had started snowing seriously, but he was going fast enough and was at such an angle that as soon as this happened he was catapulted forward and over the small fence by momentum and gravity alone.
He landed face first in the snow but the tumble flipped him over until he was on his back and sliding down the mountain at an increasing speed, his jacket acting more like a bin bag for all the help it was giving him.
Sho watched as Ren disappeared into the blizzard with wide eyes, staring at the point he disappeared long after he lost sight.
Kyoko slowly side-slipped towards him.
"Sho?" she asked, "I don't think that this is such an easy run." She paused when she realised that he was practically ignoring her and staring into the distance. "Sho?" she said slowly, "What are you looking at?"
She looked down and spied a pair of skis stuck in a fence. "Are those Ren's skis?"
"Yeah..." Sho answered a little dazedly.
"Where's Ren then?"
Sho just pointed down the mountain.
"Oh. Um...so...what do we do now?"
Sho seemed to shake himself out of his daze a little. "I think...that we should take our skis off." He said decisively.
"What? Why?" Kyoko asked.
"This obviously isn't an easy run." Sho pointed out, "And Ren was the only experienced skier out of all of us. I don't really want to kill myself by accidentally skiing off a cliff because I couldn't stop.
"Besides," he continued, "we can't go back, it's too far, and Ren will need his skis too. I think we should just walk down and see where he finally slid to a stop, give him his skis back and hope that he can get us off this mountain without any of us dying."
Kyoko was a little dumbfounded. "That...actually made sense." She said, impressed.
"Right." Sho pressed on the boot release on his skis and picked them up, trudging his way carefully over to where Ren's forlorn skis resided.
Kyoko quickly followed suit. "Sho?" she asked quietly when she was standing next to him.
"Yeah?" He answered, distracted by trying to balance Ren's and his own skis together without fumbling them and losing both pairs down the mountain.
"Why does that sign have a skull and crossbones on it?"
Sho looked up alarmed, to find that the sign indeed had a skull and crossbones on it. It also declared that it was a black run and that only experienced skiers should try it in good conditions. Sho cursed under his breath, knowing that Kyoko had read the sign too and was probably panicking.
"Don't worry," he said eventually, trying to calm Kyoko down from whatever panic attack she was working herself into. "I'm sure we'll be fine, after all - we're just going to walk it. It's not like we're going at any speed so we won't run into any of the dangers head on without any warning."
He felt a little pleased with himself when the look of panic that was shadowing Kyoko's eyes turned into relief and determination. "Yeah, you're right. Let's go."
-/-
It was after an hour of slowly sliding their way down the slope and not finding any sign of Ren that things took another turn for the worse.
Sho had thought it was bad when the heavy snowfall had quickly obliterated any tracks left by Ren, it was so much worse when that heavy snowfall turned into a full blown blizzard. Sho couldn't even see Kyoko's blindingly pink ski jacket and he was standing less than five feet from her.
They had been forced to hold hands just so they wouldn't lose each other. They didn't even know if they were going in the right direction anymore, they just started to head downwards.
Eventually Sho had been forced to call it quits. Kyoko had slipped for the third time in ten minutes and dragged them both metres down the slope. It was just getting to dangerous to be out there anymore, they needed to find shelter quickly or they weren't going to survive.
It was by an ungodly amount of luck that the next time Kyoko slipped they happened upon a cave in an outcropping of rock.
Well, it wasn't exactly a cave per say, more like a fissure in the rock, but they could both fit into it and it wasn't filled with snow.
Sho quickly dragged Kyoko inside and to the very back, trying to keep away from the icy cold snow at the entrance as possible.
They huddled together, their knees drawn up to their chests.
"You know," Kyoko said, forcing the words through her chattering teeth, "I blame this on you."
"What?" Sho asked, astounded, "How is any of this my fault?"
"We should never have come down the mountain; we should have headed back up and seen if anyone could have helped us."
"And Ren? Would you have just left him?"
"We haven't even found Ren! For all we know he could have slid to the bottom of the mountain by now!"
Sho grit his teeth. "You can't blame this on me! It was Ren who brought us out on the slope!"
"An honest mistake, I'm sure."
"Kyoko! He's an experienced skier! He knows these slopes and he knew this was a black slope. He purposefully brought us here and now we're trapped in a cave while there's a blizzard raging outside!"
Kyoko grimaced, baring her teeth before curling up tighter into a ball and falling silent, ignoring Sho as much as she could.
-/-
Ren had slid halfway down the slope on his back, and he swore that he had never had such a terrifying thing happen to him before.
By the time he had managed to slow himself down the snow had gotten heavier. He debated trying to walk back up and trying to find Kyoko and Sho, but when a particularly violent gust caught him in the face he decided that the best course of action was to walk the rest of the way down and alert the guards that there were two inexperienced skiers stuck on a black run in heavy snowfall.
It wasn't until he staggered to the cabin that the blizzard actually hit and Ren cursed, pushing his way through the mountain rescue workers that were rushing about, yelling orders at each other and trying to arrange teams to get people to safety.
He quickly grabbed an arm of a passing worker who was wearing a bright yellow jacket. "Excuse me," he said politely but urgently, "there are two inexperienced skiers on the black slope, I was with them but we got accidentally separated."
The worker looked disapprovingly at Ren. "What were you doing taking two novices up on a black run?" He asked sharply.
Ren could only wince and look away, his plan didn't seem like such a great defence.
"Never mind." The worker said shortly. "If you go over there," here he pointed at a small table set up in the corner, "give the names of the people and where the last place you saw them or think they could be and we'll send a team out to look for them."
"Are you going up?" Ren asked quickly, "I want to go too. I need to help."
"There isn't anything you can do," The rescue worker argued, "I think you've done enough as it is, you should leave this up to the professionals. No one apart from us are going up that mountain."
Ren felt helpless, "But where I'm staying is halfway up there. Can I go home at least?"
"Sorry, you're just going to have to find a place to stay in the village or further down. There's no way you can get up there without running the risk of dying."
Ren gritted his teeth and made his way over to the table, giving the woman sitting behind the desk all the information which she quickly organised and gave to another woman who was leading the search team.
Finding himself at odds now, with nothing to do but worry, Ren tried to find a phone that would connect to the mansion even through the snowstorm. He had to give up that thought when he found that nobody had a phone that could connect anywhere.
Ren's worrying quickly passed the afternoon and before he knew it, it was evening. Not that anyone could tell the difference as the clouds had brought on an early darkness.
Floodlights had been set up around the guard cabin which Ren had refused to move from until Kyoko...and Sho...were brought down safely. He was getting in the way, he knew, but he just couldn't stay in a warm room at a hotel whilst they were still up on the mountain.
He looked up with some hope when a dozen or so exhausted people trooped in close to midnight.
"Are they safe?" He asked frantically.
"Sorry, kid." One of the older men said, "We've called off the search party for the night."
"What?" Ren shouted, "Why? People could be dying out there!"
"The snowstorm has gotten worse. Anyone we send out now has an increased chance of dying. We can't even see anymore, even with torches and no one can hear anything. Sending anyone else out there right now would just be suicide.
"Look," he said, continuing on when he saw Ren's face, "the new weather report we just got in says that the worst should be over by mid-morning. We're going to start sending people out before that to look for who's left."
With that he turned and left, leaving Ren standing there in the middle of the cabin completely lost.
-/-
Sho noticed Kyoko shivering beside him, and even though she was refusing to speak to him he didn't want her death on his hands.
"Here," he said pulling her into his lap, "Sit there. Quickly, undo your coat."
"W-what? W-w-why?"
"We'll zip our coats together, that way we can share body heat and not freeze to death out here."
Kyoko nodded and quickly followed instruction. Even so, their hands were so cold, even through the gloves that it took a few minutes to fumble the zips up.
The result was immediate though and Kyoko relaxed into Sho's warmth, her shivers abating slightly.
After a few minutes of silence Kyoko twisted her head to look at Sho, who seemed to be half asleep.
"Sho?" She asked quietly.
"Mmmm?"
"What do we do now?"
Sho peered at her through a heavily lidded eye. "All we can do is pray that someone finds us in time."