*The blizzard roars like a living thing, snow stinging your face as you push forward through knee-deep drifts. Your lantern flickers weakly, barely cutting through the whiteout. Then you see her.* *She stands alone in a small clearing, a fragile figure swallowed by the storm. A thin, pale dress clings to her slender frame, the floral print almost mocking in this frozen hell. Her long blonde hair dances wildly in the wind, strands frozen stiff. She doesn't move, doesn't shiver—at least not visibly. Her arms hang limply at her sides, bare skin already dusted with snow.* *As you draw closer, you hear her soft, broken whisper carried on the wind:* "…He's not coming… is he?" *Her voice is faint, cracked from the cold. Her lips are blue, her cheeks hollow, eyes,once bright blue, now dull,staring into the endless white as if searching for a ghost. Frost clings to her eyelashes. She sways slightly, knees buckling, but she doesn't fall. Not yet.* *You realize with a chill that she's not just lost...she's dying. And something about her feels… wrong. Like she belongs to the storm itself.*

} glancing away from the screen and noticing Ashley beside him, quietly lost in her work as she munched on a bag of chips, her simple blouse and long, flowy skirt making her look cozy and soft under the office lights. The gentle crunch broke the silence, and for a moment he forgot about the frozen code on his monitor and the fact that his Christmas was completely botched. If the holiday was already ruined, he thought, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to at least celebrate it here—with her. Just as he worked up the nerve to start a conversation, Ashley turned toward him, cheeks faintly pink, and held out the bag of chips. In her shy, gentle voice, she asked with a small smile, “Um… do you want some? It’s Christmas, so we should share… right?”

*You wake up in the middle of the light hearing a knock at the door. You hear knock on the door and your girlfriend opens it, she's just in a t-shirt and a thong, her face is showing a pouty expression.* **Yonehara:** "Babeeee, I can't sleep because I feel there is a monster under my beddd... Can I sleep with you please~" *Shes hugging her pillow tight, trying to guilt-trip you.* "Come onnnnnn I wanna cuddle with you~" *She jumps ontop of you, straddling your lap, her voice pleading.*

}:* “Same. Guess this is our unofficial Christmas detour.” *Ashlyn:* “What are we gonna do now?” ❄️

"Seems like you made it, idiot." Tsunade said, her usual term being used. "But I'm glad you could! I could use some help setting up the Christmas tree, would you mind lending a hand?"

} arm pulling them along he rows and rows of stalls.* "COME ON COME ON , We have to get some pretzels!!"

}. You shouldn’t wander around so freely Making that much noise….. distracting me from my work…

**Ebenezer Scrooge. A grasping, wrenching, covetous old sinner who has done nothing but glare at those who request generosity; this is far more apparent in December, as more people preach the spirit of giving; though this seems to have the opposite effect on the old man, who grows more cold and sullen in the one season where warmth and pleasantries are paramount.** *He doesn't look up as you enter his bookkeepers', instead continuing to speak to one of his employees. The cold air hits you like a wall; there is no coal in the fire, which has long since burned away its final embers. Scrooge does not care, since the cold is cheap as the darkness.* "Ha... Christmas. A poor excuse to pick a man's pocket every December 25th. But since I seem to be the only one who knows that, fine. Take the day off for Christmas Day. But I want you back on the 26th, early as always. Do I make myself clear, Cratchit?" *The employee in question, evidently one Bob Cratchit, nods and returns to his desk, murmuring to himself, as the miser notices your presence, but does not offer a single glance upward.* "If I could work my will, every idiot who goes around with a "merry Christmas" on his lips would be cooked with his own turkey, and-- Ah, yet another damned penny-pincher... what cause are you peddling, then? Make it quick."

*She takes a look outside and inside the igloo* Seems spacious enough... You better keep me warm and cozy while we're here though, mister... *she smirks*

The world outside the conservatory panes is a monochrome study in grey and white, a silent, frozen city. In here, it is another universe. Humid, green, alive. The air smells of wet earth, jasmine, and the sweet, clean scent of snow-magnolias. This is my cathedral, my purpose. And my greatest failure—the Anima Cordis, the Heartbloom—sits on its central plinth, a stubborn, silver-veined bulb, closed tighter than a secret. The public hours are over. I’m recording soil pH levels when the main door sighs open, letting in a gust of frigid air and you. You don’t seem to see the wonder around you. You move through the orchid aisle like a ghost, your fingertips brushing a velvety petal without really feeling it. You stop before the frozen fountain, staring at the suspended icicles but seeing something else entirely. The kind of sadness you carry has a weight; it bends the light around you. I’ve seen it before, in people, in plants on the brink. I should announce myself. I don’t. I watch as you drift to the central plinth, to my failure. You look at the closed Heartbloom, and your face does something devastating—it softens with recognition, as if you see a friend in the same kind of stasis. “It never opens, does it?” you say, your voice so quiet it’s almost stolen by the drip of water from the fronds. “Not yet,” I reply, stepping from the shadows of a rubber tree. You don’t jump. You just turn those wounded eyes to me. “Some believe it needs a specific frequency of honesty. A vibration it hasn’t felt in a long time.” A sad, hollow smile touches your lips. “Maybe it’s just broken.” “Nothing here is broken,” I say, moving closer but leaving a wide berth. I pick up a nearby watering can, not because the plants need it, but to give my hands purpose. “Dormant, maybe. Frost-nipped, certainly. But broken implies uselessness, and there is no such thing in nature. Even fallen leaves become the soil for what comes next.” You wrap your arms around yourself, a human bud closing in on its own pain. “It doesn’t feel that way. It just feels… over.” I gesture for you to follow me, leading you away from the central mystery to a lesser bench surrounded by Winter Jasmine, its bright yellow flowers a shock against the dark green. “See this?” I say, gently lifting a vine. “It blooms in the dead of winter. Its strategy isn’t to fight the cold, but to require it. The harshness is what cues the blossom.” I look at you, holding your gaze. “Your heart isn’t a summer garden right now. It’s a winter one. The things you’re feeling—the numbness, the ache—they aren’t signs of death. They’re the necessary cues. They are telling you that you are in your dormant season. And dormant seasons have one purpose: profound rest, to gather strength for a bloom you can’t yet imagine.” A tear, finally, escapes. It tracks slowly down your cheek. You don’t wipe it away. “I’m so tired of gathering strength,” you whisper. “Then don’t,” I say softly, sitting on the bench, leaving space for you. “Just be tired. Let the greenhouse hold you up for a while. Let the silence here be the kind that nourishes, not the kind that judges.” You sit. We watch the steam rise from the heating pipes, curling like ghosts around the fronds. I don’t speak. I just breathe with the plants. And then, I hear a soft, almost crystalline snap. My head whips toward the plinth. The Heartbloom. A single, pearl-white petal has unfurled, just a centimeter, glowing with an inner moonlight. My breath catches. I look at you, then back at the flower. It has never done that. Not in seven years of trying. You follow my gaze, confused by my shock. “What is it?” I choose my next words with more care than I’ve ever used with a rare seed. “It seems,” I say, my voice thick with a wonder I thought I’d lost, “that the atmosphere in here has shifted. Something true has entered the room.” I turn to you, the scientist in me reeling, the poet taking over. “You asked if it was broken. I think… it was just waiting. For the right kind of winter.” I reach out, my hand pausing in the air between us, an invitation. “The first thaw isn’t a flood. It’s just one drop of ice melting. Let this place be that first drop. Let me show you.”