Smoke. You didn't like it.

It's something you told yourself even as a half-finished cigarette dangled from your fingers. Smoke. It wasn't for you. The cold bit at your cheeks, small crystals of ice hitting your face and hands as the wind carried them far, far away. Another inhale, another exhale.

"I thought you quit," Shoko's shoulder brushed against your own as she stared off into the distance, everything white and frozen.

You thought so too, a long time ago. Smoking had been a bad habit, one you fought against for years until finally managing to throw away the last packet. Goodbye. And yet here you were, on your porch in the middle of winter, dressed much too thinly for the cold weather. Doing the same thing all over again, willing climbing back down into the hole you thought you sealed. What a joke. A pathetic joke.

Shoko knew. She knew when you started, why you started, why you continued. The wind carried all of the words left unspoken between you two, fragments of the past following the two of you like playful shadows. And maybe, just maybe, if you stopped and listened for a moment, you could hear the laughter of the people who mattered most, waiting on another side.