#1 Imagination: Aoi always thought about all possibilities that may happen in the future. What kind of house she wanted, what kind of glasses she would wear if she needed to, which job she wanted to do. When she asked Tenma about his plans, he just answered that the exact moment was amazing the way it was and that it should stay that way. Aoi blushed as red as the sunset that tainted the both of them in orange.

#2 Survey: Tests were one of the very few things Tsurugi Kyousuke openly hated. They reminded him of the times when he had been training under the always watching eyes of Fifth Sector's examiner's. Compared to some of those, Maths was a real monster.

#3 Minority: Not a lot of first-years had joined Raimon's soccer club that year. But somehow, over the year they had somehow taken up the most important spots of the team. Not to forget, the number had doubled.

#4 Doubt: Tenma was sure that he would never be as good as captain as Shindou and constantly wondered why his senpai never took the spot back after he came back from the hospital.

#5 Status: When Kariya had told Hikaru reluctantly that he grew up in an orphanage the latter asked him what the problem was. The defender stomped off muttering something about the other being too naïve for his own good.

#6 Source: As more and more Raimon players brought out a keshin, Aoi wondered more than ever where exactly the strong creatures came from. Since Tenma couldn't explain, she opted to ask Tsurugi who had been just gently poked the place where her heart was and ran off to continue his training.

#7 Chemical: Hikaru had never understood why people said that the chemistry between Kariya and him worked so well – all the defender ever did was making snide remarks whenever he messed up during training. But when they had to do a project for Chemistry class, Kariya appeared very helpful and he actually found the hours working on something school related pleasant for the first time.

#8 Clearing: When they met Jeanne d'Arc for the first time Aoi couldn't help but stop breathing for a while when she laid an eye on the beautiful woman. Tsurugi had just commented that a woman should not have to wear an armor since men were there to protect her. Their eyes accidentally met.

#9 Fault: What Tenma really liked about the soccer club was, that nobody really seemed to blame people (well, after they had chosen to work together against Fifth Sector). Until a certain tealnette defender had joined the team. He found himself a victim of blame quite often.

#10 Usage: Aoi constantly wondered when it had become a trend to bring out the huge keshins when playing soccer. She could have sworn when she was a kid the players rather relied on hissatsus which weren't less spectacular.

#11 Storing: When putting away all the pictures the soccer club has collected thanks to Akane over the year, Aoi noticed sadly that they hadn't gotten even one shot of Tsurugi in his old school uniform. She wondered how that had happened since he used to attend the first matches of the Holy Road in his cape.

#12 Professional: The soccer club had met so many of the legendary Inazuma Japan that they started to think about actually starting a professional career. Shinsuke wanted to be a goalkeeper as good as Endou-kantoku, Kariya a swift and tricky defender just like Kogure, Tsurugi definitely had taken a liking to Gouenji's firey and strong attacks and Hikaru wanted to show that a Kageyama can sure be a fair player. Tenma just said that it would work out somehow, not noticing that he also went the path to be like Endou-kantoku just like his best friend.

#13 Category: One day Endou-kantoku had said that it didn't matter which position you play. When you felt like switching you could do it. Kariya found that a very deep quote and told Hitomiko that evening when he helped her with washing the dishes. His nearly-motherfigure had just snickered and told him that she was the person who had told his coach this. Maybe there was not as much to his coach as Kariya had thought.

#14 Studying: Coming home after a very successful training and hearing the sentence "Do your homework." always managed to get all of Tenma's motivation down. Even if Aki said it with her friendly voice.

#15 Killing: Trust Tenma to barge in on Aoi trying to free Tsurugi's hair from the jersey's tag, Tsurugi would never admit it but he had actually enjoyed Aoi's gentle touch against his skin.

#16 Contrast: It was common knowledge that best friends were usually very different from each other. Looking at his two best friends Tenma couldn't but feel very proud of having a found one friend that was his total opposite in height and one that was his total opposite in character.

#17 Collection: Seeing his friend kneeling over his Duel Monsters cards, Hikaru was sure Kariya would start laughing at him in a few seconds about how childish he was being. You could say Hikaru was more than surprised when Kariya asked the forward to teach him the game since he had never had the chance to play the popular game.

#18 Accuracy: Having focused on his dribbling skills his whole life, Tenma found it quite hard to send the ball to where it actually was supposed to go. But seeing Aoi smile when he made a quite good pass he vowed to train his passing skills more.

#19 Television: Movie nights at Tenma's usually ended up in only Tsurugi and Kariya watching the third movie to its end. But hearing the ace-striker snicker at a chick-flick-comedy when he thought everybody else was already sleeping was definitely worth not giving in to the much-needed sleep.

#20 Joke: "Don't you have anything to laugh about with your family?", Hikaru asked after Kariya had played another prank on his fellow defender, Kirino, and was practically rolling on the grass laughing.

Kariya didn't speak to him for a whole week.

#21 Living: It shocked Aoi when she heard about all the car accidents that seemed to happen to people related to the Raimon soccer club but she was even more reliefed that no such thing had happened to any of her teammates.

#22 Face: Even though every player in Raimon had a very unique aura around them, one thing connected them all. The cheeriness seemed to be fundamental for all the players, well, except Tsurugi maybe.

#23 Parent: After a lot of discussing Kariya finally let Hikaru visit him at Sun Garden when he was down with the flu. Raimon's first-year forward had always imagined that the boy had to be lonely since he lived without his parents. But seeing Midorikawa and Hiroto fuss around his bed he thought that maybe bloodrelation did not define your family.

#24 Cold: Whenever Midorikawa decided to contribute to the maintenance of the Sun Garden orphanage, it usually consisted of something homemade. Just recently he brought two cardboard boxes full of jam glasses since he had tried making it himself for the first time. It had ended up with him trying out nearly every recipe he could find in women's magazines at the doctor's.

This time he had tried to knit.

Nagumo had found it hilarious when Midorikawa ran around Sun Garden to ask the kids if they needed anything for the upcoming winter. When he asked Kariya, he had said that his hat was getting too small for his head and constantly rode up.

A few weeks later Kariya held a bright yellow wool hat in his hand. It's design looked like it had been made for a 4-year-old. Which kid his age still wore a hat with a huge bobble on top? Kariya looked at Midorikawa unbelievably who just took the hat and put it onto his head. It was warm alright but Kariya could not help but feel like he was small again and being dressed up like a kid by his mother.

Tenma had decided to call all members of the soccer club as soon as the first snow fell so they could play around in it. Too bad most of the members were not as thrilled as him to go out into the cold more than necessary.

In the end just Tenma, Shinsuke, Tsurugi,Shindou, Kirino, Hikaru and Kariya had shown up at the meeting point. Kariya still wondered why he had even bothered since Nagumo had already pushed him head first into a pile of snow that day.

Since Shinsuke wanted to build a snowman so much but was too short to actually hope to create one of moderate size, Tsurugi had voluntered to help him out with his task. The rest of them engulfed themselves in a serious snowballfight. Tenma, Hikaru and Kirino against Shindou and Kariya. Again, Kariya just wondered what was up with his bad luck today. The ex-captain seemed much too nice to actually put up much of a fight or pull some dirty tricks to get the other team full of snow. Soon, Kariya found his face being rubbed in with snow twice by Kirino, who apparently did not have any problems with sneaking up from behind on his junior in contrast to his best friend, and with nearly as much snow up his shirt as Shinsuke and Tsurugi had put into their snowman.

"At least you won't be cold in that cute hat of yours", Kirino had said when Kariya threw a full load of insults at his senior (most of them were Nagumo's creations).

After hours of rolling around in the white mass and Kariya began to shiver in his wet clothes, Hikaru offered to visit his house to warm up before they all headed home. After imagining the warm chocolate and marshmallows they soon all agreed to the idea.

Hikaru's house was warm and had a very friendly feel towards it. It amazed Kariya, how a place he had never been to before could actually emit such a homey atmosphere.

As soon as the soccer players had taken off some of the many layers of clothes they wore, they immediatly felt the warmth that engulfed them and made themselves comfortable on the floor in Hikaru's room.

Kariya himself couldn't help but shiver since his thick sweater was completely soaked and felt even colder in the warmth of the house. Their host soon arrived with a tray with seven colourful mugs of hot chocolate, each one filled with a couple of marshmallows and topped off with a bit of cream.

Definitely the best thing after a serious snow fight.

Hikaru sat down next to Kariya and took a blue mug with pink polka dots, the rest of the team following his example and savouring the taste and warmth of the godly drink.

"Are you still cold?", Hikaru asked the boy next to him who just looked at him questioningly, "because you're shivering." He put the mug down again, patted the boy in the face, checking temperature which was apparently okay and moved to touching his sweater.

Kariya just stared at the boy slightly uncomfortable and the others eying them during the process, Kirino grinning into his mug.

"Wait a moment!", the forward said, standing up and going to his closet. He pulled out a very fluffy wool pullover in a bright yellow colour. „Wear this! It even fits your hat." He held the piece of fabric to his teammate who continued to stare at him. Seeing as Kariya would not change his clothes any time soon, Hikaru carefully pried the defender's finger of his cup, setting it back onto the tray. When he started to remove Kariya's sweater, life finally started to come back to him. "What the hell are you doing?!"

"Well, you will get sick if you don't get out of your wet clothes", Hikaru pouted.

"I can change myself!"

"Then why don't you?"

"I won't change with everybody watching! I'm no entertainment programme!", Kariya retored with a hint of panic in his voice. The boys he shared his room with had the annoying habit to treat every boy changing like stripper, dancing behind them, whistling and checking out their bodies. What a drag that was.

It took Shindou to finally get the defender to put on the pullover, after Hikaru had already tried to pin Kariya to the floor and get Tsurugi who was sitting next to him to pull off Kariya's sweater.

When Kariya returned to Sun Garden that evening he felt more exhausted than after Coach Kidou's hard training programme. After putting his jacket and shoes into the drying room, he hurried into the kitchen where Hitomiko already put a plate of leftovers from dinner into the microwave so the boy wouldn't starve.

Just when she turned around to give the boy the lecture on coming home after dinner she stared at him. Kariya already feared for the worst – an angry Hitomiko was like a deathwish.

"What are these clothes?", she finally asked.

"...excuse me?", he was completely confused now. Why was she asking that? It was not like he went to a clothing store and just took a t-shirt and-

Oh.

He was still wearing the yellow pullover. His hat in pullover form.

"Ah! Hikaru gave it to me because mine was all wet from the snow...", he started to explain.

Hitomiko sighed. "So it's Hikaru's? Make sure to give it back and don't forget to take back yours."

At that moment Nagumo strolled into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. "Exactly. When making out with your boyfriend in public places at least try to put on your clothes afterwards. Makes it less comspicious- ack!"

Hitomiko had just thrown the spatula into his face. Kariya still blushed and spluttered around.

Done for the Inazuma-Eleven-Secret-Santa 2012.