Shirou Yuri

In the snowy mountains of Japan, there lived a small tribe of people. These weren’t ordinary humans, mind you. This tribe was adapted to the snow. In fact, they all lived off of the cold, ice, and snow. Nobody knew how this was possible, they just adapted that way. Still, life in the snow was a delight.

The children constantly played in it. Their mothers learned to cook with it. Everyone in the village lived for the snow. For three months, they were visible to human eyes. Come the spring, the people would vanish into the invisible fold. Life was good like that.

However, things can’t stay the same forever.

In the beginning there were only twenty snow-beings. They were naïve about the more intimate side of nature. They had no idea what mating was. Heck, they didn’t even know how to kiss. Such innocence is not a way for a whole breed of species to survive. Somebody needed to show them how it’s done.

One day, a snow boy wandered into a nearby town after getting lost during a game he was playing with his friends. He was so busy laughing that he hadn’t noticed how far he had gone. The young man looked around at the sky.

“Where… am I?” he asked. The snow boy froze when he heard giggling behind him. He hid behind a tree for a look. A couple in their twenty were walking down the snowy street. They looked so happy, arm in arm together. The snow boy couldn’t take his eyes off of them.

What is this? He watched as the couple stopped in the middle of the street and shared a kiss. The action rather intrigued the snow boy. Why was this couple doing this? The girl pulled away from her boyfriend.

“I love you,” she said. Both males blushed. The snow boy was now really curious. That was a way to show love? Inside of him was the urge to try it out on a girl in his village that he always thought was cute. The snow boy closed his eyes and let the wind carry him home.

By sundown, the boy reunited with his friends. He looked among the crowd and spotted the girl that he always thought she was pretty. The snow boy flew over to her and kissed her on the lips. When he pulled away, she stared at him with big, blank eyes.

“What was that?” she asked. The snow boy stood before her, blushing.

“I love you,” he said. His girl could only blush. It didn’t take long for the kiss to spread to everyone in the snow people village. Pretty soon, everyone ended up being paired off. It didn’t take long for them to want more.

The younger of the snow people would observe human mating rituals to learn more. Before, they never thought about reproducing. They just lived and played in the snow. Ever since that one kiss, things looked a little bit different.

By a year’s time, the village population had doubled. The snow had increased on the mountain as new children played around. Their parents watched them with smiles on their faces. They didn’t know that they could have such pretty children. It already made them want to have more.

Therein lies the problem.

Their village was just too small. In two years’ time, it couldn’t hold all of the children and their families. The snow itself was taking over the nearby time by summer. The people couldn’t understand what was going on.

“Why does it keep snowing so much?” they asked every day. By the next year, they grew sick of it. The elders of the snowy villagers overheard the complaints of the humans. They gathered one day in the middle of summer and tried to form a situation.

“We can’t keep going like this,” the head elder said. “We are killing our neighbors with the endless snow because of our children.”

“Don’t blame them,” the parents complained.

“But we must do something,” the old man said. He cleared his throat. “Which is why I propose that every year, fifty children must leave our village and venture out on their own.”

“What?!”

“Hear me out. Our village can no longer hold your beloved children anymore. If they continue to stay, we will kill the land around us.” He pushed up his glasses. “We have no choice. Some of them have to go.” The parents didn’t enjoy this final decision, but they couldn’t argue with the head elder.

So every year, fifty snow children were made to leave their village and venture out into the world. It felt soul-crushing, but this had to done to insure the safety of the humans and the survival of their village. There was never a dry eye with the departures. Still, it had to be done.

This year will be no different either.