Ryle 0

Snow fall endlessly, there’s hardly anything in sight, other than the upper half of the view – which is the unsettling ephemeral dark-blue sky, and the lower half – which is the ground where snow is falling. Dots, and a glowing horizon line that seems to look whiter than the ground.

A while later, two silhouettes come nearer and nearer to my own view. One familiar and one not.

“Dad!” I call and run to him.

“Aww… You should have stayed home,” he responds. “ Go ahead, introduce yourself”.

He didn’t say that to me, but to the girl right next to him.

“Nice to meet you. My name is Regina.”

She looks at me with wide bright eyes, a smile that seems to be able to burn my own heart at any given moment. 

Even though this would be embarrassing to confess to my own dad or mom: she looks very cute. Not just her appearance, but something intangible as well, that seems to be exuding such an adorable feeling.

I don’t know if I can describe this feeling, although this shouldn’t be the current priority now given her pondering look while keeping that very friendly smile.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Ryle,” I respond.

“Ryle? That’s a nice name isn’t it?”, she giggles.

That noise melts my heart more than it should.

“So well,” my Dad chimes in, “there’s a lot of story here, but the gist is that this girl with me, Regina, is gonna stay with us, in our house, for a very long time. So… you two are gonna live together from now on.”

“Oh, so…” I meekly respond.

“Is that okay?”, my Dad asks.

“Erm… Yes, of course…”, I sure hope he doesn’t notice the underlying feelings I have been trying to suppress.

“Good. So well…” my Dad looks at her, “Regina, do treat us like your family members from now on,” then looks at me, “Ryle, be nice to your new family member”.

I say “Yeah”, Regina makes a nodding gesture.

We all move toward our house, in the midst of snow. I go ahead of Regina as she follows behind. I glance a bit to her, she smiles at me, I suddenly get a bit embarrassed and look back ahead, hopefully she doesn’t notice that.

But deep down, I suspect she does, secretly holding back a chuckle.