"Achoo!"
On Yakushima Island, Ah Man sneezed while sitting on the snow sleigh. She looked around but didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Muttering, "Which dung beetle is cursing me," she then lifted her head and gazed into the distance.
The distant landscape was still a vast expanse of white. Apart from snow, there was nothing but more snow. Even the stretches of pine forest barely showed any living color, as everything had been smothered by the heavy snow.
Yakushima Island in winter is truly an island of snow.
It was only after coming here that Ah Man realized there could be such an unlucky place in this world. Snow didn't fall in little delicate flakes—it came down in fluffy clumps the size of a palm, just tumbling down from the sky. The snow was so soft that if the wind blew it into a dip in the ground and someone walked onto it, they'd sink in and disappear, leaving behind only a gaping black hole in the snow.
