Chapter Text
In the bright green grasses outside of a large and squat school, with the warm breeze of day blowing air into his face, Ken took a chance.
The chance was as orange and luminous as the sun high up in the sky over his head, beaming radiantly as though it had just discovered a brilliant surprise.
"I'm Hide," the boy introduced himself as though he, rather than Ken, were the one to have discovered that brilliant surprise.
Shyly, nervously, he reached out his hand to another, warmer and tanned, outstretched towards him. Firm fingers wrapped between his own, pulling him up to stand. Dual hearths behind joyous brown eyes sought out the slushed ice of his own, which over time would solidify and glisten as though they were ice to skate upon overtop a pond,
slippery almost as the black ice on a winter road near the outskirts of Tokyo, unsalted yet for safety, unseen and untraveled, without a thought trusted towards its usage possibility.
And all the while, the owls resting in the branches of the trees surrounding that road waited and surveilled the area for their prey.