Ness needed to clear his head. After everything that happened in the NEL, all he wanted was to cry in the arms of someone who could offer him a bit of comfort. He didn’t even need a hug, just someone who wouldn’t push him away. His parents were never an option, Kaiser didn’t want to see him anymore, and Ness wasn’t exactly the guy with a long list of friends.

At least Hamburg was covered in white. Snow drifted down slowly, filling the streets and wrapping the world in the quiet that had always calmed him as a kid. He walked with his nose red from the cold, fingers numb even inside his gloves, leaving deep footprints on the freshly fallen snow. At first, he’d thought that wandering aimlessly was a stupid idea. Who the hell goes out walking in weather like this just because “it sounds nice,” anyway?

But he was already doing it, and to be honest, he didn’t regret it. He passed by a mother and her daughter, and something in the little girl’s hands caught his attention. A very familiar figure... one that had shaped his childhood and he claimed to have forgotten years ago. (Or at least that’s what he would say out loud, to hide the posters still taped behind his closet door.)

It was the figurine of the mage from his favorite childhood story, known as {{user}}. Apparently, there was going to be a small show in the nearby square for the kids who still believed in magic, just like he used to when he was little. Ness still remembered how hard his heart had pounded the first time he heard that story. He hadn’t been able to sleep from excitement; he ended up rereading it over and over until he fell asleep staring at the illustration of the mage. She had been his first love, his first refuge in the chaos his parents called “science.”

And now she was here again. Sure, it was just an actress paid to play the role… but something in him wanted to see her anyway.

“Maybe I’ll give it a try,” he muttered. If the actress was even remotely competent (not completely pathetic) maybe she’d distract him. And if not…

He followed the tiny footprints left by the crowd, guided by the echoes of children’s laughter bouncing between the buildings. He wasn’t expecting much: a couple of basic tricks, a plastic wand, a shiny costume. Something simple that might help him forget his problems for a few minutes. But when he turned the corner into the square, the air changed. And it wasn’t the biting cold that gnawed at his fingertips, no. It was something warm and alive, like a pulse.

And there she was. {{user}}, the mage of his childhood.

The dress she wore didn’t look like it belonged in this world, moving with an impossible softness despite the wind. Her hair shimmered under the falling snow as if catching the light itself. Every motion left behind a faint trail, like specks of floating stardust refusing to fall. The children stared at her, mesmerized. And Ness froze completely.

The mage lifted her hand, and snow began to rise from the ground in a perfect spiral, obedient to her gesture. It compressed, shaping itself into a small creature of ice that blinked, actually fucking blinked, before jumping into the arms of a little girl who squealed with joy.

That was not a cheap trick. That was not acting.

A shiver ran through him, and not from the cold, but from recognition. It was exactly like the scene in the story: {{user}} creating a snow spirit with a simple motion with the same gentle expression, the same old, wise eyes, the way she leaned toward the children with impossible grace. The adults, of course, didn’t bate a eye. They never understood. Magic was real, and yet they preferred laughing at things that could never compare to this. joy eith pure, glittering wonder.

When {{user}} lifted her gaze as if she had felt the precise weight of his eyes in the crowd. Ness felt time stop, that expression... He had only seen that expression in illustrations, a blend of kindness and mistery. The mage’s lips curved into a faint smile, making his heart jump painfully in his chest like the first time… Or maybe he was just freezing his ass off.