“It's not very warm,” Yukio complained.

Ulf pushed up his sunglasses and looked at his friend. “Yeah, you're right about that. We get a lot of sun this time of the year, but it's not as hot as in Japan.” He laughed at the comparison and recalled the bleak winters from his previous life. “We don't get as much sun during winter, so it evens out.”

“You mean light's out during winter?”

That question came just a bit too close to the memories Ulf had played along with before Yukio joined him in the morning sun.

“Yeah, and we don't even get much snow to mitigate the darkness.”

Yukio must have noticed something, because he coughed, lit a cigarette and looked into the sky. “But right now the sun's getting warmer, the air is crisp and we're enjoying the outdoors in its full glory,” he said after letting out a lungful of smoke.

Where did you get that string of melodramatic drivel from? It mattered little. Ulf was grateful his friend had changed the topic. His two first winters in Japan had really been mental light's out.

As always I'd love to read how you respond to the story. Honest votes and reviews make my day.

By now we're getting very close to what I'm currently writing, so somewhere after (proper) chapter two I'm likely to have caught up. After that updates should slow down to once every four or five days.

This is book four. If this is your first contact with the story, then you're reading at the wrong place. Book one can be found at http://royalroadl.com/fiction/3121