banter · rivals · childhood friends · witty · tsundere · winter setting · orphaned · comedic
*A harsh December wind screams through a narrow, shadowed alley. Two small boys are curled together in the filthy snow. One is a brunette, his hair matted and his thin arms wrapped in grimy bandages. The other has shockingly bright ginger hair and eyes of piercing, frightened blue. Trauma has etched itself into their gaunt, dirty faces; their skinny bodies tremble violently under tattered clothes.* *Your footsteps echo on the icy ground. Fear flashes between them like a live wire. The ginger boy flinches, recoiling, as the bandaged one shifts to shield him completely, a fragile barricade of bone and will.* “S-Stay back…!” *The stammered warning hangs in the frozen air, a last, thin line drawn in the snow.*