Winter had always known there was something wrong with him - something more than just his peculiar nature name, of course. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel like “not fitting in” with others of his age: he did, he had friends, and in general he had a good, healthy social life for a 15-year-old boy. Rather, it was the way he looked that caused not only curious looks from other people, but also confusion in Winter himself whenever gazing at himself from the mirror: he had strong, sharp teeth (the dentists had been forced to polish them by Winter’s parents, but Winter himself had refused them to be completely flattened; at that age he had thought his fangs were cool), his nails always kept growing in odd ways and he constantly had to cut them, and the texture of his hair was strange at best, feeling like animal fur rather than human hair.

What was even stranger, however, was the hair growing on his lower back, and what undoubtedly looked like a scar partially hidden under the hair.

Winter knew it was normal in puberty to notice hair growing in strange and often unexpected places the sex education classes didn’t cover, but he had had this strange, white hair there as long as he could remember, and the same applied to the small scar.

Winter had often asked his parents about these and other strange things:

“Why are my teeth like that? Why do I have to flatten them?”

“Why is there fur growing on my lower back?”, a question immediately met with an agitated response of “It’s not fur, it’s hair; your great uncle was the same.”

He’d further ask about the odd shape of his ears, and the the scar on his lower back; about the nails and the way his hair felt, and the weird, small bumps on his head.

The answers always varied.

The strange, white hair was said to be an unspecified genetic disorder that ran in the family, but all the relatives with the condition were long gone by now. Likewise, the scar on his lower back was initially claimed to be a scar from Winter falling badly as a child. The bumps on his head were somehow related to his skull’s structure, and the sharp tips of his ears were simply a remain from the more primal past of humans - it happened sometimes, with kids being born this way due to how their normally inactive genes were somehow activated in birth.

As younger, Winter would always play with the idea he was some sort of monster child who had then gone through surgeries to look more human.

However, such thoughts were quickly buried under logic and reason when he matured, and for a good while Winter had basically forgotten his oddities. Things changed when his puberty started: with the new changes his hormones brought with them, the strangeness of his body became much more apparent.

“Maybe you’re intersex?” one of his school friends had suggested: Winter’s strange medical past and secretive parents seemed to align with what he had read regarding the topic.

“No, no, that’s not it,” Winter had replied. “It’s not like that; it’s definitely different. I have read about it and I can’t find myself relating to most of the things the books mention, let alone what people say on forums.”

Things came to change, however, when a new boy arrived to the school.

He was a year older than Winter was, but although they weren’t in the same class, it was easy to notice the peculiarity of the new student: he was tall, his ears shaped so similarly to Winter’s it was almost uncanny, and when he laughed a row of almost predatory teeth could be shown.

All this interested Winter greatly, and a week later, during one lunch break, he sat opposite of the young man.

“Hi,” he said as he placed the food tray in front of of the new guy’s own. “Is this place free?”

“Uh, yeah,” the other mumbled, somewhat awkwardly: he hadn’t expected Winter specifically to come here and was a little confused.

“You’re the new student, right? What’s your name?”

“It’s, um,” the boy started somewhat awkwardly and paused, as if to think very hard. “It’s Ethan. I’m Ethan. And you are…?”

“Winter,” he replied and smiled. “I know, it’s a weird name: my parents had strange tastes.”

“I think it’s cool,” Ethan answered. “It’s kind of otherworldly somehow, I like it.”

Not wanting to teeter around the issue any further, Winter decided to risk it all and asked as casually as it was just possible for him in the situation:

“Speaking of otherworldly… I couldn’t help but notice your teeth. What’s up with them?”

Like out of instinct, Ethan covered his mouth with his hands and looked at Winter with an alarmed expression.

“No, don’t worry, I’m not making fun of you!” Winter hurried to explain. “It’s just that… Well, look,” he then said and opened his mouth, moving his lips a little with his fingers to show his teeth in their full, animal-like glory.

“You have them too?” Ethan asked, eyes wide and blinking faster than what was normal - he seemed to be very particularly abashed by the sight. “Are you perhaps… “ Ethan started carefully but then shook his head. “No, nevermind.”

“Your ears, too,” Winter continued, now intrigued by the reaction he had gotten out of Ethan. “They’re kind of sharp, aren’t they?”

“Well, yeah…” the other admitted.

“What about your nails?”

“What about my nails?”

Winter showed his hand and the sharp nails he hadn’t cut off in order to show them to Ethan. “Do you also have nails like mine? They grow really fast, I usually cut them and file the tips of them to make them less sharp, but I couldn’t be bothered lately. So many school things to focus on - you know, that sort of stuff.”

Ethan hesitated for a moment, looking at Winter’s fingernails and then his own.

“I cut and file them too,” he finally said with a low, careful tone. “But they look almost like yours, although they don’t grow all that fast, thankfully.”

Winter was overjoyed upon finding someone who shared these strange traits with him, and as the curiosity got the better of him, he continued asking: “Do you have any other strange things?”

“Strange things?” Ethan raised his eyebrows.

“Like, well, um… Surgery scars, or something like that? Especially around lower back?”

Ethan was silent, looking at Winter with a strange expression the other boy couldn’t quite read or understand. Had he spoken too much? Was Ethan weirded out? Gods, he shouldn’t have spoken this much after all.

“Is there… something strange with your lower back?” the new student finally asked upon being silent for so long. “Like, anything?”

“Do you promise not to laugh?” Winter asked solemnly. “Or be weirded out?”

“I promise,” Ethan said and raised his hand to make a gesture of a vow. “I don’t think I have any right to make any comments about the bodies of other people anyway, no matter how strange.”

“Good. See, I have a surgery scar there, but also this… strange white something, like fur? I don’t really understand it, mum and dad just claim it’s some sort of rare condition, but that’s basically it - I can’t find any information even online.”

Ethan looked extremely thoughtful as he listened to this. Then, out of blue, he asked something Winter had not anticipated.

“Were you adopted? Are you the biological child of your parents?”

“What kind of question is that?” Winter snapped. “Of course I am! I have almost the same hair colour as my father too!”

“Hmm… If you say so,” the boy replied and took a bite of his food he had momentarily forgotten to focus on. “I just wanted to make sure.”

“Why?”

“I just… wanted to, that’s all.”

He moved the fork around his salad absentmindedly.

“Hey Winter.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you believe in ghosts? Things like that?”

Winter shrugged. “Can’t say I do.”

“I see…”

“I mean it’s not like I can’t deny them either, but since I have never seen with my own eyes… I’m not that inclined to believe.”

“What would you do if you did… see a ghost or something along those lines?”

The boy laughed nervously. “What kind of question is that?”

“Just answer,” Ethan replied but looked away from Winter as he said this.

“I guess I would. I mean, if I can have a condition like this even though the rest of the world doesn’t seem to even know it exist, then I guess I could understand a ghost or a demon too - it’d be strange, but not too strange, you know?”

“Gotcha.”

Ethan stood up from the table, still half finished food on his plate.

“You finished?” Winter asked, not having even touched his food yet.

“Yeah. But Winter…” Ethan murmured, and once more lowered his voice. “If you want to talk more about that condition thing whatever… Meet me after school at the school gym.”

Winter nodded obediently, and fast forward 3 more hours, he was standing inside the empty school gym. It was part of the main building so it was locked only when the school was also closed, and so getting inside was absolutely no trouble for him. Even better, it was also never supervised, so sneaking in was easy, and he had no fear whatsoever about getting caught by a teacher.

He walked around, the dimly lit room so dark he could barely see: the windows of the gym had been blocked with large, black curtains, and only the small holes time had bitten into them gave him any light to see around.

And then he heard Ethan’s voice.

“Here, Winter! Let’s go to the changing rooms, it’s better there.”

His voice was silent and raspy, and Winter felt something akin to anxiety rise from within him: just what was Ethan planning to do? Was he really going to talk more about this condition of what they both seemed to have? Or was he going to punch him and steal his money? Or assault him? Was that it?

Winter hit his cheeks with both of his hands to cast off such thoughts, and Ethan heard the slapping sound.

“Winter, what’s wrong?” he asked worriedly.

“Nothing, nothing!” Winter replied and stopped hitting himself.

“You don’t need to be nervous,” Ethan spoke as he stepped inside the back of the gym hall, into the small stairway leading into the changing rooms. “I’m not going to murder you or anything. This is just the best place to talk without anyone interfering. And if someone does come, we are sure to hear it well in advance.”

“You’re absolutely right,” the other nodded. “I would never consider you murdering me. No way.”