You are my ice! I am your fire! - (Natsu x Juvia)

Yuki-Onna - (Part 1)

This story may seem incredible, but it really happened to me. Everything I'm going to tell you is the truth. And what I don't know, I don't know. I do not agree to invent. That's how it was. But, perhaps, I'll start with the presentation. My name is Haru. Just Haru. There is no surname, or rather, there was no family then. As long as I can remember, I did not know and did not see my parents. Or maybe I saw it when I was very young, but childhood amnesia does not allow me to remember.

The place that I called somehow, but still home, was an orphanage. But still, loneliness has haunted me since I was born. Many children appeared there on the doorstep, with notes. I was one of them, according to the teacher. I wonder what a tiny child feels when his parents leave him at the threshold of the orphanage, press the bell button and go into the dark? After learning about this, I could not understand why I, so small and defenseless, was abandoned, and what did I have time to do wrong? Why was I born at all? Every day I asked myself this question.

Still, life wasn't so bad there. We were like one big family. And although now I can no longer remember the names of those with whom I spent the night in the same room, ate at the same table, maybe even made friends, I have no bad memories of that place. We lived according to the same schedule: breakfast, lessons, lunch, quiet hour, reading, dinner, sleep. But there were also days when some of us were taken away: happy couples came, sympathized with all the children, but always chose the most beautiful and cute babies. "It's like we're at a dog show," I thought then.

I admit, I was a little jealous, but still I was genuinely happy for them. Every child in this orphanage deserved to find a family and a new home. Until then, we could gather in the common room, sit on a large burgundy carpet and drink tea. Yes, right on the floor, clutching a hot mug in his hands, wrapped in the warmest clothes we had. Especially me. I'm a cold person in life, which is probably ironic, given my hair color. And only a tiny lamp in the center of the room served as a weak light source.

Our teacher, Madame Ilona, an elderly woman who always wrapped herself in a knitted gray shawl, was sitting in a chair in the center and in the semi—darkness was reading us a fairy tale, the name of which I can no longer remember. But to this day I wonder how in such darkness she managed to read something to us. She loved us very much and, it seems, pretended to read, while she invented new fairy tales on the go.

But everything changed when I got older. Or rather, I turned twelve years old. Me and my other peers were taken to no one knows where and why. They broke into the shelter, almost knocking down the door, behaved rudely with Ilona, not listening to her requests and pleas not to take us, the children, to ruin our lives and destiny. I didn't know what it meant then. It would be better not to know any more. I remember being outraged by this attitude towards her. And I was not at all confused by the fact that my future employer was much taller and I was just above his knees. Yes, I was short. He looked into the eyes without looking away. Perhaps this and my impudent speech were the reason why he subsequently developed a special attitude towards me, so to speak. As a result, I was simply knocked out by a powerful blow to the stomach. I woke up already in my new "home".

As it turned out later, we had to work for higher-ups. I don't know by what criteria the selection was carried out. I have never been distinguished by special strength, endurance, intelligence, or even the presence of magic. He was thin and even looked a little like a girl because of his face and longish hair. But, apparently, a certain situation demanded it, since they took away all my peers, starting from the age of ten or twelve. All those who were not accepted by the new parents lived with the hope of waiting a few years, and then leaving the orphanage to seek their fate, starting a new life. But... if all the things I'm going to tell you about hadn't happened to me, everything could have been completely different. I wouldn't have met the love of my life, become a father, found my family and much more. But about everything in order. This is just the beginning of the whole story. A kind of prologue.