Yu-Gi-Oh! BG: When Will You Send the Ashen Snow?

No matter how happy a life may be,

one day it will come to an end.

Even the brief time spent by your side

will leave only loneliness.

-- Shindo Mayuri, The Endless Winter

Muto still remembered the first time he saw Mayuri. Domino was experiencing a rare heavy snowfall. A hazy layer of white snow had settled on the floral umbrella she held, and even her breath veiled the world before them in a thin mist.

She appeared at a time when transfer students were not supposed to arrive, so her presence seemed strangely out of place. Yet life soon returned to its ordinary routine.

Muto's memories grew heavier, overlapping little by little like the gray-white snow piled in a corner. She was always standing alone on a street corner beneath that floral umbrella, quietly watching the drifting, helpless gray snow in the distance.

"It feels like it's been snowing for ages. Don't you feel cold standing here all alone?"

"It will keep snowing for a very, very long time. And when that time comes..."

Muto only came to his senses after the fact, struggling between illusion and reality. But by the time he realized what was real, it seemed this long, endless winter really was about to come to an end.