Just as Anima was opening the door, Myuke crossed in front of it. She was rolling a giant snowball.
“Are you going to throw that?” he asked.
“No way, that’s dangerous. This is gonna be the body of our snowman. It still needs some work, though. We need to make it nice and smooth.”
“I’m sure it’ll be a great snowman.”
“You bet it will! Just you wait!”
Trying to impress Anima, she continued rolling the snowball until she could no longer control it. Anima considered offering his help, but he knew Myuke’s personality, so he decided to let her do her own thing; he would give her a hand if she came and asked for one. Until then, all he could do was send silent words of encouragement her way.
While watching Myuke wrestle with the work-in-progress snowman, another one of his daughters ran up to him.
“Daddy, we’re having a snowball fight, m’kay?!”
Bram stopped about fifteen steps before him and notified him of the incoming barrage, Marie right next to her making snowballs all the while. For a moment, he’d hoped she was making him lunch—similar to the time she’d fed him dirt pies—but that didn’t seem to be the case. She finished making one last snowball, then turned toward Anima.
“Daddy, run ’way!”
“All right, then! Whoever hits me gets a tour around the house in my arms!”
“Yaaay!”
Marie went in for the first throw. After drawing a small arc, her snowball plopped onto the ground several feet in front of him. Up after her was Bram, whose snowball would easily have reached him, if only it had gone in the right direction. They were genuinely trying to hit him, and he was genuinely trying to get hit; it simply wasn’t working out. Unfortunately, with Marie’s order to run, he couldn’t just stand by and wait for their next attempts. He turned around and started moving with large but dramatically slow steps.
“I’ll get away if you don’t hit me soon!”
“I’ll get you, m’kay?!”
“Wait! Wait!”
They ran circles in the garden while bombarding Anima with snowballs. Soon enough, one hit his back.
“Bull’s-eye, m’kay?!”
“Wooow! Brum’s ’mazing! Me too!” She waddled up to Anima. “Nh!”
With a poff!, she scored a direct hit on him as well.
“Yaaay! I hit!”
“You’re like a master archer, m’kay?”
The girls high-fived, celebrating their success. They were thoroughly enjoying themselves, but hitting Anima apparently took more out of them than they’d expected. Their faces were completely flushed, and they were panting heavily. It was high time for a break.
To that end, Anima turned toward Myuke. She was glancing around the garden, standing next to her snowman. Standing at about the same height as Marie, both its head and body were round and slippery-smooth. Her masterpiece looked to be complete.
“That’s an impressive snowman if I’ve ever seen one!” Anima commended her cute creation.
“Thanks, but it’s not done yet. I still have to make the face and give it some arms. Do you see any pebbles or sticks lying around?”
“Maybe there are some under the snow.”
He could blast the snow away with a single step if he so chose, but that would completely ruin Myuke’s fun.
“I guess the forest is my best bet.”
“I’ll go and find some for you. You should stay here.”
Luina’s worries were right on the mark. Had he stayed with her instead of watching the girls, Myuke would have gone out into the woods searching for twigs and pebbles.
“Thanks. Grab two sticks that are around the size of Marie’s arms, and two small pebbles. Also, if you can find a reddish leaf, that’d be awesome. I can use it for the lips.”
Judging by her detailed list, she seemed to have already finished the snowman in her mind. Anima would have to work hard to help Myuke build her perfect snowman.
“Wait here, I’ll be right back,” he said, then headed for the front entrance of their house.
The road leading to the forest was impossible to make out under the thick layer of snow, but that didn’t matter to him; he set his eyes on the tree line and walked straight toward it. Making his way into the woods, he noticed that the brown veins of the forest—the tree roots protruding from the ground—were covered in snow, turning them into dangerous hidden obstacles. He had to be careful not to trip and fall.
Choosing a random tree, Anima crouched and swept away some of the snow around it. Sure enough, underneath was a cluster of small pebbles and a red leaf. A few moments later, he happened upon two sticks around the length of Marie’s arms. His mission was complete. He was excited to see Myuke’s delighted smile, and made his way back in high spirits. However, his return didn’t go as expected.
“What are you doing?!” He wasn’t welcomed with the smile he’d wanted to see. Instead, an earsplitting scream cut through the quiet winter wonderland as Myuke stomped on the ground, fuming. “I worked so hard on this!”
“What happened?”
Answering the confused Anima, Myuke pointed toward her snowman. He followed her finger until he spotted a terrible sight: the snowman’s perfectly round, smooth head had been the victim of a ruthless attack. It had clearly been hit with something.
“Bram did that!”
Myuke glared at the perpetrator.
“It wasn’t on purpose! I didn’t mean to throw the snowball at it, m’kay?!”
Anima was sure that Bram had apologized when the incident had occurred, but she’d presumably gotten irritated when her attempt to calm Myuke down had failed. As a result, both of them were glaring at each other.
“That doesn’t matter! You destroyed my snowman and that’s that! I was just about to finish it too!”
Myuke was ready to explode, and her rage was completely understandable. She’d worked extremely hard on her snowman, even opting out of the snowball fight to get it done.
At the same time, though, it was surely an accident. Bram wasn’t the kind of girl who would purposely destroy something Myuke cherished. She probably thought that after finishing her creation, Myuke would be raring to join in on their game.
“Look, Myuke, she clearly didn’t mean to hit your snowman. Why don’t you make up with her?”
“Huh?! You think she’s right?! You’re saying I’m wrong here?!”
“N-No, I didn’t mean that...”
“So you think Myuke’s right? M’kay.”
“I didn’t mean that either...”
“So you’re on my side after all!”
“Yeah right, m’kay?! He’s clearly on my side! He likes me better, m’kay?!”
“What?! In what universe?! I help him around the house all the time! I love Daddy, and he loves me too!”
Anima was happy they both loved him so much, but he would rather they didn’t fight over him. The best outcome was for them to make up and hug it out, and the first step was to quell the fire.
“Why don’t we make a new one?” he suggested. “Together. All four of us.”
“No! I’m done! She’ll just destroy it again!”
“I told you! It was an accident, m’kay?!”
“No fight!”
They both immediately felt the weight of their words when Marie spoke up. It was impressive that the smallest of the three could quiet the others down with a single sentence. Even so, though things had quieted down, nothing fundamental had been solved.
“Listen, Marie, we aren’t fighting, okay? As the oldest, it’s my responsibility to tell someone when they do something wrong. That’s all I did to Bram.”
“That wasn’t a warning! You’re just mad, m’kay?!”
“I’m mad because you don’t understand what you did!”
“I already apologized, m’kay?!”
“Oh yeah?! And how did you do that, huh?! Going ‘Teehee, my bad, m’kay?!’ doesn’t sound sorry!”
“I didn’t know that I hit your snowman yet, m’kay?! I gave you a real apology right after, didn’t I?!”
“Why do you think everything in this world can be fixed with a simple apology?!”
“’TOOOOOP!”