Unfathomable

3.

Madara:

It was a good day.

The sun was brilliant, making the snow underneath me glimmering, as if it was made of glitter instead of snowflakes.

I was practicing downhill, and was bent forwards like a ball to diminish the friction between me and the wind. I sped up, and used my arms and staffs for balance in the jumps. This is it, I thought, as so many times before. This is what I want to do.

I was on my way to the steepest part of the hill, and couldn't help but scream out in pure joy as I sped up even further. The quietness intermingled with the whooshing sound of my skis. It was heaven.

I saw the end of the hill, and to my horror, someone was standing right in the way for the vast curve I needed to do to break my speed. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.

"MOVE!!" I screamed.

And the person seemed to get it, taking a few steps out of the way.

But it was too late.

I crashed into it. Luckily, I'd sped down significantly, so the impact wasn't too great, but we still came crashing down, and my boots detached from my skis.

"What the fuck?!" I screamed. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? And how much my equipment costs? Those skis and boots alone are worth more than what your mum brings in on- Oh..."

I stopped dead as the man looked up at me, an amused smile on his face. He was clad in a caramel coat, and his long, chestnut hair was tumbling around him in the snow. His stubble from yesterday was no more, making his skin soft with a greenish hint to it.

"I'm sorry", he said. "I'm from England. Don't know how to behave in the Alps."

I stared at him, dumbfounded. Good God, what did I just say about his mum?

I was quiet for a while, but then, I regained my composure. "If you don't know how to behave, you'd do well to stay away. See that?" I pointed at the hill. "That's the steepest black hill in the Alps. Only me and a few others can master it. Stay away!"

I stood up, took my skis and left.

The bar was full tonight.

This time of year, it was always full of students celebrating their winter holidays, sort of just like I was.

Every Friday, I went there to meet people. I was a solid introvert, and preferred my own company and got my energy from being alone. But once a week was perfect for socialicing. And I loved the bar. It was wooden, cosy, dimly lit, and full of pretty boys my age.

I usually didn't have any trouble getting one on the hook.

I sat down in a booth with a huge glass of German lager, and looked at the people around me. Rich boys with flannels, stylish young men in suits... Some girls, but I wasn't interested in that. I had a game I played with myself each week where I just sat, started my timer and saw how long it took before a man with a gaydar came to chat me up. And then I tried to beat that time next week by making myself even prettier. Last week, it had taken twenty minutes. This week, I knew I looked good, so I hoped for fifteen.

I had put on skinny, pitch-black black jeans with holes in the knees and a grey cardigan that was slung off my shoulder, showing of my collarbone that I'd covered in glitter. I had some light, glittery powder on my cheeks and had done black smokey eyes. My hair was collected in a loose, high ponytail wit strands that fell off it, framing my face, and I had lipgloss on as well that smelled of strawberry.

"Wow, you're beautiful", Izuna had whispered as he saw me, seemingly startstruck.

I had taken him into my embrace and held him, kissed the top of his head. God, I loved him.

I took my phone out, fiddled with it. For some reason, I found myself Googling Hashirama Senju. I read he was thirty-one, was from England but was currently living in Russia. He'd studied at Oxford, had no family and little was known about his personal life. I wondered how-

"Mind of I join?"

I looked up and smirked. I took my timer out. Eight minutes. Hot damn, that would be hard to beat next week.

He was handsome, the boy. Pretty even. I guessed he was about twenty-five, with fair hair reaching his shoulders and frosty blue eyes framed by lashes that were almost white. He wore a white shirt and black suit pants, but he had an aura of femininity about him that I found interesting. Usually, the men who came for me were more masculine seeing as I was slightly feminine myself.

"Be my guest", I said, and as he sat down, I took his glass of wine and took a sip. I always found that caught them up, made them almost obsessed with me, which was how I liked it.

"Wanna hear something sick?" he asked. "I saw someone ski down that black hill downhill-style. I've never seen anyone ski that fast."

"Did he have red trousers?"

"You saw him, too?"

I took his wineglass and chugged it all, then looked at him huskily. He took my glass of beer, sipped at it prettily.

"That was me."

A fire lit up in his eyes then. "You're joking."

I took my phone out and opened my camera roll. I scrolled to the video from my helmet camera and showed him my perspective of skiing down that hill.

He got a hungry smirk on his face. "My, my..."

There was a room at the far end of the hotel, next to the grand suite, where I usually took my one night stands. The room was almost always empty, used only if all other rooms were booked, as its ventilation was connected with the grand suite, meaning sounds could escape there and bother the important guests who stayed.

Didn't stop me though.

I pulled the boy, whose name was Lucas, was twenty-seven and from Norway, by the hand. He stopped me from time to time if we came to an empty corridor, pushed me into the wall and kissed me, his ring-clad fingers on my cheek.

"Mmm..." I moaned happily, feeling myself blush.

"God, you're adorable", he breathed into my mouth.

I pulled him with me, used my almighty card that went to all the doors of the hotel to open this particular one and pushed him in. I closed the door behind us, backed him onto the bed and clambered onto him, connected our lips.

It was such a contrast, the darkness of the room and the light and liveliness of the bar. It had been a relief leaving, really, after an hour of just talking. That was enough for my senses for one evening.

When we had left the bar, we were unaware of the man with long, chestnut hair sitting at the back of the bar, looking at our backs as we rushed out, hand in hand.