It was snowing when the bus stopped and Leslie stepped onto the road. She really didn't feel the cold at all, and her soft blue eyes turned upwards towards the midnight blue clouds. The driver of the bus hesitated as she stood there, as if giving her the chance to let the small white fox return to the bus. She could still reverse her course... return home.

But it wasn't home anymore, was it? Father gone. Mother now joined him. She came to this place from across the ocean to pick up the threads of her mother's life. Shouldering her bag she started down the street, leaving the bus idling there for a moment before its doors closed and the brightly lit vehicle pulled in the other direction.

The house had been her great grandmothers. Her grandmother had turned it into a hotel. Her mother had turned it into apartments before leaving the country to marry her father. As Leslie walked to the top of the hill, where the building overlooked the town and the beach below, she thought how lonely the Yuki House looked. And how very fitting that appeared.

Now there was little to do but fix it up, reopen it, and find some renters. Maybe then the house would not be so lonely. Maybe then neither would she.
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A bit on the house: it's an old japanese hot spring inn (ryokan) that was converted into apartments before being abandoned for thirty years. Currently has no power, no running water, no toilets, and a very disdraught landfox trying to fix all of the above.
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