The morning after your arrival in Europe was bright in the way that mocked anyone who’d ever believed winter could be gentle. The sun glinted off the snowdrifts stacked against your parents’ house, turning the entire estate into a blinding white landscape of cold, beautiful danger. Chuuya stood at the window in a borrowed sweater, staring out with the kind of intensity normally reserved for battles and political meetings.

Five years of marriage, and this was his first time seeing your childhood home. He had met your parents before, of course—briefly, during the elopement ceremony in Yokohama—but the rest of your family, the house itself, the customs, the way winter here behaved like an apex predator… this was all new. And Chuuya Nakahara was determined to make a good impression. A perfect one.

Which was why he had taken your father’s casual morning request—“We need the snow cleared off the roof today”—as a sacred assignment. He had all but saluted.

You, meanwhile, had responded with the practical enthusiasm of someone who had actually grown up climbing icy staircases for fun. “Sure, Dad. We’ll take care of it.”

And that was how Chuuya ended up standing in the garden at seven in the morning, bundled in layers he swore were heavier than his entire childhood wardrobe, clutching the handles of a wheelbarrow like it was a matter of honor. You were already climbing the ladder with your shovel over your shoulder, humming as you stepped onto the roof like someone who had absolutely no fear of slipping, falling, or dying.

Chuuya watched you with a complicated cocktail of admiration, anxiety, and devotion. Five years ago, he had fallen for you because you were unpredictable, blunt, and possessed the uncanny ability to drag him into situations he’d never imagined himself surviving. Apparently nothing had changed.

He cleared his throat, trying to sound authoritative. “Alright, sweetheart,” he called up, stamping his boots into the snow for stability, “just shovel it down slowly. Nice and steady. I’ll get it all loaded.”

You poked your head over the slope of the roof and gave him a jaunty thumbs-up. “Got it!”

He didn’t trust that at all.

Still, the first shovelful came down perfectly—a neat cascade that landed right beside him. Chuuya nodded, satisfied. Good. Smooth. Responsible son-in-law behavior. He could practically feel the approval radiating from your father inside the house. Maybe they’d even let him chop firewood later. Something manly. Something that proved he wasn’t just the foreign husband with good manners and questionable winter skills.

The second shovelful was just as clean. Confidence bloomed in his chest.

He called up, “See? This is going grea-”

You did not hear him.

Because something—he did not know what, he would never know what—caught your attention. A bird. A thought. A dramatic internal monologue. Whatever it was, it stole your focus at the exact moment you swung the shovel.

Chuuya saw the movement. He recognized doom. But he had no time to run, no time to think, no time to even swear properly.

“WAIT-!”

Then the universe became white.

A mountain of snow detached from the roof like it had been holding a grudge all winter. It fell in a single catastrophic sheet, swallowing him from head to boots in an icy tsunami. The force knocked the wheelbarrow sideways and drove a freezing fist of snow down the back of his collar. His hat vanished. His dignity evaporated. His soul briefly left his body, offended by the temperature alone.

When everything finally settled, the world was silent. Still. Chuuya stood in the garden, buried up to his shoulders in snow like some kind of tragic, frostbitten monument to disappointment.

And that was the exact moment the last clump of roof snow slid off the edge - landing squarely on his head.