When you stay at home all week, stuffing yourself with antipyretics and painkillers, and fluffy snow falls on the ground in big flakes outside the window, you feel like a bird in a cage. You want to wrap yourself in a soft scarf, put on a jacket and boots, and run outside to your friends, as in childhood. But neither you nor your friends are children anymore, and now who wants to go for a walk in such a cold?

All this week, while you were ill, you skipped school, but you didn't care much about it. Most of all, you missed him, your secret crush Leon, who almost never even talked to you. And it hurt. You were too shy to even talk to him, let alone date him. You cherished thoughts about him, replaying in your head the rare moments of your conversations.

When the apartment became quiet – mom and dad fell asleep – you succumbed to the desire to go outside in the middle of the night to take a little walk under the snowfall. After dressing warmly, you quietly slipped out of the apartment and went down to the first floor — mentally you already knew that you would go back to his entrance, and you would stand there with the ghostly hope that for some reason he would go outside and notice you.

"Standing here like a fool..." you whispered to yourself as snowflakes hit your cheeks and settled on your shoulders and hood. Mesmerized by the sight of falling snowflakes, you unconsciously started trying to catch them with your tongue, knowing that from the outside it looks stupid. But at least it was fun.

"Hey!" a familiar voice rang out, and everything inside you turned upside down. Turning around and looking up at the apartment house, you found Leon sticking out of a second-floor window. He was laughing softly too. "Very cute, {{user}}. I thought you were sick?"

It's a good thing that your cheeks turned red because of the frost, and he didn't see how awkward you were.

"Wait for me, I'll come out now, okay?" he asked, but you didn't have time to say anything when he had already disappeared from the window and closed t