Sakura University had started to get a new air.
It was late November, and though the autumn weather had been too late inleted of its old maples to clear the old gate, a cold shiver was shivering along the walkways, and the air reeked faintly of pine, and a curiously spicy fragrance the harbingers of the winter season.
Students huddled in more substantial scarves and coats, but none appeared to shine as well as Koyuki Himekawa.
Koyuki was not merely a student, but she was a show, an unwitting wonder in the college.
Her best distinguishing attribute was the cascade of cherry blossom colored hair, a perfect afternoon sun pink, a bright, almost neon, color in verdict of the autumnal dullness. When she walked the pink appeared to follow her like a cheerful banner immediately cheering up the sometimes gloomy university corridors.
She was pretty not in the quiet cosmic manner of a traditional campus idole, but with a fierce, dynamic power that had an equal alacrity to the radiance of her jade green eyes.
Today, Koyuki was on a mission. She pulled her shaggy, knitted crimson scarf up to her nose, held a thermos of the doubtful hot chocolate, and was storming up to the notoriously shabby Student Union bulletin board.
Move, Koyuki, move, she said to herself, and the steam of her breath obscured the cold air. When you don't get that sign up sheet in on the Campus Christmas Gala Committee you will have the Art Club taking the best booth locations again to display their horrible, overcharged knitted hats.
Koyuki was a 2nd year student in the Event Management track and had it in her mind to get the failing Christmas spirit in the university going again. The cider lukewarm and the half-dying tree had been the tragedy of the celebration of last year. This time she imagined a glitzy anime style winter fairy tale. She went up to the bulletin board a cork bastogne reinforced with three coats of overlapping and outworn flyers and started to tear off the old notices mercilessly.
It was in this stationary, pink haired carnivore that she had crashed into the legend.
There was an abrupt acute presence right behind her. Koyuki, in the imbalance of the entire power of the posters which she had been tearing down, floundered and her hot chocolate spurred. She just caught herself, whipped and swiveled around with an irritated, exasperated sigh, about letting people get away with it.
The words died in her throat.
There was Yuu Shirogane standing there. Yuu was an older student, a major in Computer Science, who was intimidatingly bright, quiet, almost frozen in manner and whose most notorious asset was his hair. The shade of stark white, as of untouched fresh snow, was perfect, and shocking. The white hair on Yuu made him look almost mythological, unlike the vivacious, active pink of Koyuki a Winter Prince in a block of ice. His eyes, cool, piercing silver, stood his gaze upon Koyuki, with no expression in them.
Pardon me, he said, in a low smooth baritone voice that somehow penetrated through all the talk around him. He did not sound apologetic but only factual. At the night he had a limited, dark navy peacoat, which contrasted well with his pale hair and face. In one hand, he was carrying only one, thin manila folder.
Koyuki was feeling an instant, scratchy fire in her cheeks. Yuu Shirogane was seldom observed and spent the majority of his time working in the top floor research laboratories of the university which made coming across him in the common room akin to finding a rare, graceful snow leopard. He had an unblemished reputation as never being reachable, bright, and not interested in college life at all.
No, I no, no, I tell you, you ought to have made noise! It is not a domestic avenue, it is a broad avenue, Shirogane senpai!" Koyuki stuttered, but she was flustered by the fact that she had done it. She had not made a stammer since she was eight.
Yuu's silver eyes didn't waver. He just shook his head, a tiny gesture which, though it communicated nothing in particular, had an air of enjoyment. Noise level is very great here, Himekawa san. I guess you were thinking... somewhere else? He looked disdainfully at the scrunched up heap of flyers on the floor and the hastily scribbled sheet of sign-up in her hand, with a glittery bad-drawn reindeer.
Koyuki experienced a new kind of embarrassment. It is because of the Christmas Gala! It's important! We must correct the holiday debacle of the previous year or the campuses may believe that we are a band of holiday Scrooges!
A good attempt, Yuu said, and with no further remark passed over her and her coat, his coat touching her shoulder. The cold exuded by him was actual, as a sudden puff of wind. He nailed his manila file, right in the middle of the newly drawn up area of the bulletin board, which denied much of the valuable reindeer drawing of Koyuki.
The paper was an uncomplicated wordy notice. The title, written in a terrible, sharp comminuted typeface, was as follows: Call For submissions: Sakura University Annual Winter Academic Research Paper Symposium.
Koyuki looked at the contrast and this time it was her pink, shiny confusion versus his white, sterile order. War is just declared on Christmas spirit by the Winter Prince.
"Senpai!" she cried out.
"You can't just put that"
He had half way down the hall, and his white hair was a parting flash of light that left Koyuki in the crumpled papers and the startling, foolish realisation that her Christmas mission was now a very handsome, very clever and very annoying barrier. She was going to require a much more battle plan than a drawn up reindeer.