I've wanted to write (and attempt to do) a fic in the third person for Kuroko no Basuke for a long time now.

I hope you all enjoy and tell me how I do. (It'll be a bit boring for now, but hey, maybe I'll make it more interesting as soon as a more concrete plot enters my brain.)

And since it's Christmas Eve where I am, I hope you all have blessed holidays!

{Disclaimer: I do not own Kuroko no Basuke, no matter how much I wish I did. I only own my OCs. Poem also does not belong to me (found on a blog I was on).}

[Note: as of January 4th, 2019, I have edited and updated this chapter in hopes of a slightly better flow and description of certain aspects.]

Chapter I: Fluttering Snowflakes

Caress the one, the never-fading
rain in your heart - the tears of snow-white sorrow
Caress the one, the hiding amaranth
In a land of the daybreak
-from Nightwish's Amaranth

"Ayako! Ayako, where are you?!"

It was a woman's voice. Well, more specifically: what appears to be a passive-aggressive woman's voice, clearly unused to the concept of being overly loud and egregiously distracting. Obviously, she disliked raising it up to the octave that she had managed to reach.

It was her mother's voice. Perhaps that was why the middle sister felt the necessity to block it out with everything in her power. Headphones on; music playing (a nice piano medley of holiday-related carols); book out in an earnest attempt of being read. The perfect kind of distractions. The ones that scream: "Let nothing bother you! Embrace the solitude and open your thoughts!" Or, at least, that's what she was going for.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Simple onomatopoeia. Three, quick and precise raps upon the door, one after the other. Enough to show slightly irrational thinking, slight paranoia and detected urgency. That was her mother. Exactly how she could describe her whilst she was panicking.

However, she simply ignored it by turning to the next page in her poetry book. It wasn't her problem whatsoever, so why should she be bothered enough to care?

With a slight rattling, her mother fished the key from its location under the flower pot next to her room – roses. She loved her out-of-season blossoms, even though they totally ate up her measly weekly allowance.

In light of her success, her mother delightedly smirked and hastily opened the bedroom door. Looks like the middle daughter was in for a rude awakening today.

Said daughter glanced up, laudably gave her mother a once-over and looked back down, relishing in a new line of beautiful poetry:

izureni, / utsukushisa ha kie / amasa wa awaku

[eventually, / the beauty will fade / the sweetness lost]

She sighed contentedly, at peace with the meaning behind the words. All things eventually come to an end. It was a bittersweet idea, but one that carried a great deal of weight: embrace things to the fullest before they fade away.

And then said daughter came to truly realize her mother's presence, and ever-so-slowly, removed the headphones from her shoulder-length blue-black hair so that they rested respectfully around her pale neck. The poetry book was then placed carefully atop the small bedside post underneath the simple black lamp. Satisfied with her things, she finally, finally decided to pay attention to her mother.

With a slight eye-roll acknowledging how uncharacteristically dramatic her daughter could be at times, Morine Ame looked at her daughter. "Yuki, where is Ayako?"

Yuki heard the concern in her voice yet chose to ignore it. "I'm not her caretaker. Ayako can go wherever she so desires. If she decided to run away, I'd probably let her."

Her mother flinched at the cold indifference in her own daughter's voice. "I heard through a reliable source that you told her she could go and play with her friends," that reliable source being her father. "It's been four and a half hours. Now, where could she possibly be for that long? It's Christmas Eve, and I'm concerned."

Yuki pointed to the window, completely unfazed. Her mother looked over and saw the precipitation outside – snow. "They probably decided to build some snowmen, maybe a fort or two. They're children; they do that."

A murmured, "You're a child, too," seemed to slightly break her from her defiance.

Despite her outwardly uncaring demeanor, Yuki decided to get up. Moving slowly from her bed – feet first – she took three lackadaisical steps and passed by her mother through the doorway frame. She ambled toward the front of the home, put on a simple knitted-cap and her snow boots as well as her coat, a soft, white one, with tiny, smooth brown buttons – her older sister's hand-me-down, now wonderfully hers.

"I'll go get her."

And away, she walked into the blessed snow that she loved.

Yuki was currently enrolled in Teikō Chūgakkō, in her first year as a middle school student. She preferred to consider herself a run-of-the-mill, forced-to-go sort of a child, but that wasn't the case. In fact, that was not the girl Yuki could even remotely resemble in a million years. She wasn't the smartest, but her hard-working nature and affinity for knowledge was a forced to be reckoned with.

People just didn't know who she was. She was quiet; she was serious; she was . . . apparently scary. Some strange and often a little bit too interesting misconceptions grew around the girl that coexisted with these fellow humans, but never really conversed with them. That's what made Yuki so bizarre; she was the snow in a sea of summer. Something cold in a pool of heat.

Ayako was only a few years younger in grade school. She struggled with reading at times, which was something of a disgrace for one so fluent in literature as Yuki. It annoyed the two of them greatly that they could be so different despite the same familial bloodline. Her mother reciprocated the feelings as she simply could not understand how two siblings could bicker as often as they do.

Perhaps that was why Yuki didn't care. Or maybe it wasn't that she didn't care; maybe she just simply didn't want to.

Kicking a stray pebble into the snow, Yuki proceeded to the next street's cross-walk.

'Only one more block,' she thought. Ayako would only go so far as to her elementary school to make snowmen. She wasn't as bold as a certain other sister in the family – the eldest. But that was a story for another time. And unfortunately, not a time as carefree as playing in the snow. Nay, the mysterious child will maintain that status – a mystery.

Quickly approaching the metal gates to the school, Yuki could see Ayako preparing to sustain the hit of a snowball. Playing with her were two rowdy looking boys; she never was one to play with girls. She called them "doll-like damsels with too many bows to play rough."

Yuki could only partially agree. She'd floated between the "doll-like" stage and the passive tom-boy phase throughout her years. It'd left her out of place once she entered middle school. What girl fluctuates between both phases so diligently? This behavior drove other students crazy.

Unsurprising when a person is so quiet. Not shy; quiet. There is a broad difference. Quiet is a chosen act; a person wants to keep their mouth shut, their opinions and mindset to themselves. Being shy is far harder to deal with, and sadder. Yuki was quiet. She opted to stay alone. That is what made her even weirder.

Watching in preparation for her sister's squeal, Yuki waited for the ball to make some form of contact. She knew that once the cries started, she'd actually have to demonstrate some sort of sister care.

How annoying.

But it didn't.

The ball didn't.

It didn't make contact.

At all.

It was aimed directly back at the other boys.

Yuki scrunched up her face in confusion. 'What on earth . . .'

Walking over to where Ayako was located, Yuki saw what had happened, or rather, who. However, upon looking at him, she realized that maybe the 'who' she saw was someone meant to be unseen.

It was a boy, about as tall as she was – which was not very tall at all – with light, sky blue hair and a matching pair of eyes. A shadow in a sea of snow.

Kuroko.

A/N: Just pointing out that despite the fact I do mention Kuroko here, Yuki has yet to connect the dots on who he is; this meeting between them is their first. It's for dramatic effect.

Thanks for all the love and support of this story so far! I can't wait to continue to work on it and give it the care and respect it deserves.