A/N:  This chapter is a little more serious than some of the others will be.  Don’t worry too much, though.  I am not a fan of sad things... ^_^

Changmin

            Changmin watched the two fangirls step into the elevator to escape the staff members.  He smirked.  They were rather pretty.  One was of medium height (that would be tall by Asian standards) and slender with dark brown hair.  The other was very tall for a girl (about the same height as his Junsu-hyung) with glasses.  She wasn’t skinny, but she wasn’t plump, either.  She had light brown hair, and he could tell even from a distance that her eyes were blue.  The girls hadn’t dressed for the cold weather.  They were wearing jeans, t-shirts, and jackets that would have been fine had it been twenty degrees warmer.  They didn’t seem too prepared for the cold or for seeing DBSK. 

            “Oy!  Changmin.  You gonna stare at those girls all day?  Did you forget about your food?”  Jaejoong was eyeing Changmin’s food like this was a golden opportunity to actually manage to steal food from him.  Changmin gave Jaejoong his best death-glare.

            “Maybe you should pay more attention to girls, hyung.  Then you might not be so lonely all the time.”  He could be mean sometimes.  Even to his older brothers.  Though, they might argue that he was mean most of the time. 

            “That’s a little uncalled for, Changmin.  After all, none of us are dating anyone right now.”  Leave it Yunho to stick up for the others when he believed Changmin was being too hard on them.  Yunho ruined all his fun.  But, upon seeing the hurt look on Jaejoong’s face, Changmin regretted going that far.  Not that he would ever admit that. 

            Changmin sighed and went back to his food.  If there was anything he loved as much as girls, it was food.  Man, but he could lose himself in a good meal. 

            A little while later, after the others had gone up to their rooms to relax or play video games (there wasn’t much else to do since they couldn’t go skiing or go outside at all with a blizzard coming), Changmin headed to the coffee shop for a café mocha and a snack.  He was hungry again.

            He glanced outside to see if the snow was falling yet and shook his head.  Those girls had put on bigger coats and snow boots and were outside building a huge snowman.  They even had a pile of clothes next to them that he could only assume was for the snowman after they finished making it.  Didn’t they know a blizzard was on its way?  He guessed that it wasn’t too dangerous outside just yet, but it would be within the hour.  And, judging by the size of the bottom part of the snowman, they wouldn’t be finished in time.  Changmin walked over to the lounge area and sat in a chair that faced the windows.  This would be interesting.

            “Hey!  The bottom’s uneven.  It’s not a perfect sphere, yet.  We can’t put the next part on.”  Robyn, being a mathematics graduate student at a university in Texas, was bothered by the fact that the bottom sphere of the snowman was not at least close to perfect.  If they were going to build a snowman, they were going to do it right.  After all, how many chances were they going to get to build a snowman that size that didn’t use up all the snow in their neighborhood?

            “It’s fine.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  We can just squish it down some when we put the next part on.”  Shandi, on the other hand, didn’t really care about the ball being a tad more bulbous on the top than on the sides.  This was why Shandi was a nurse and didn’t have to deal with real math.  Robyn always had a hard time understanding that things that bothered her didn’t usually bother others.  But she let Shandi win this time.  They picked up the second, slightly smaller ball of snow and set it on top of the first.  The fledgling snowman was now taller than both Robyn and Shandi.  How were they going to get the top part on without a ladder?  Instead of pondering that question, Shandi asked a much more important one.

            “What should we name him when we’re done?”

            “Hmm…that’s a tough one.  I don’t know.  You got any ideas?” 

            “How about coming inside before you can’t find the lodge again?”  They turned around to see Changmin standing right behind them.  They hadn’t heard him coming because of the wind. 

            “What do you mean?  It’s just a little snow.”  As Robyn said that, she realized it was more than a little snow.  She hadn’t noticed how dark it had become or that the snowfall was making it hard to see anything farther than a few feet away.  She couldn’t even see the lodge anymore.

            “Just a little snow?  Don’t you know anything?  This is the beginning of a blizzard.  You’ve obviously never been around much snow; so let me give you a little warning.  Blizzards are bad, seriously bad.  You need to come inside right now or you’ll be caught out here and won’t be able to get back.”

            Robyn and Shandi just stared at him.  They hadn’t known a blizzard was coming, nor could they have known the signs of the impending blizzard.  That was the danger of growing up in a place that never got too far below freezing.  They had never dealt with any kind of winter weather other than ice. 

            “Well, come on.  Just standing there isn’t getting you to safety.”  Changmin grabbed both of their arms and turned them around.  “Let’s go.”

            “Wait.  We can’t leave our stuff.  It’ll get blown away.”  Robyn had left her room key and her favorite scarf in that pile.

            “Just leave it.  It’s not worth…darn it!”

            Robyn had already pulled away and run back to find the pile.  Only, it wasn’t where she expected it to be.  Either it had already been covered, or she didn’t know what direction it was.  Both were logical scenarios.  She jumped in surprise when someone grabbed her arm and yanked her around.

            “Are you crazy?  Nothing in that pile is worth your life.  Now, come on!”  Changmin had come back for her, dragging Shandi along with him.  Unfortunately, in the time it took for him to find her again, the weather conditions had deteriorated.  Robyn watched Changmin look around, unsure of which direction to go.  They couldn’t see their own footprints from just a moment ago.  This was very bad.  Any way they went could be the way back, or it could lead off into the wilderness.  There was no way to know until they picked one, and the odds were against them.  Robyn could see Changmin cursing, but she couldn’t hear him over the wind.  Why did he have to come looking for them?  It was bad enough that she and Shandi were in danger.  Why did he have to be, too?

            “Just standing here is going to get us killed.  Let’s try this way.”  Changmin had to yell to be heard.  The wind was getting louder.  They started off in the direction he had indicated.  They couldn’t have known it was the opposite direction from the lodge.  But, after trudging along for a good twenty minutes they knew they weren’t going to make it back.  The wind was already blowing so hard that Changmin had to keep a hold on both their hands to keep them from getting separated.  And no amount of yelling would be heard, even by the person doing the yelling.  Robyn prayed silently that they could find some sort of shelter.  She liked the cold, but this wasn’t cold.  This was freezing, and they would lose too much body heat if they didn’t find someplace soon. 

            As Changmin pulled the two girls behind him, he wondered why he had even bothered leaving the safety of the lodge to get them.  If they were stupid enough to go outside during a blizzard, maybe they didn’t deserve to be saved.  But no, that was just his anger at the situation.  He wouldn’t have let them get caught out in the storm without doing something to try to stop it.  He just wished they had had more common sense.  Besides, didn’t most women try to claim that they were the ones with common sense and that men had none?  Well, here were two perfectly good counterexamples to that theory. 

            It was getting colder by the minute and they still had not come across any place that looked as if it might provide some shelter from the storm.  Maybe there wasn’t any to be found.  Just as he thought that, Changmin saw a dark shape looming out of the storm directly in front of them.  He stopped and let go of the girls so he could see what it was.  He hoped they would be smart enough to stay next to him without him holding them there.  Good, they didn’t try to wander off. 

            The dark shape turned out to be some kind of log cabin.  There was no warmth coming from inside, so it was reasonable to assume that it was abandoned.  If he could find the door, this could be their salvation.  Changmin walked along the side of the cabin until he came across a section of the wall that felt different from the others.  It moved when he pushed on it.  He had found the door.  Maybe, they would survive this after all.

            He pushed the door open enough to slip inside and pulled the two girls in after him.  It was still freezing cold inside the cabin, but he already felt warmer now that he wasn’t being buffeted by the wind.  He let go of the girls’ hands and felt around until he found the back wall of the cabin.  There was a large stack of firewood leaning against it.  He had only taken a few steps before he reached it.  The cabin must’ve been really small.  He found a fireplace and, for some lucky reason, had Jaejoong’s lighter in his pocket.  He clicked it open and lit up the room.  At least they could start a fire.  He looked at the girls.  They were huddled together near the door, shivering.  He sighed.

            “I’ll get a fire going.  It’ll be warm in a minute.”  Changmin stacked some wood and kindling in the fireplace and worked at it until he had a decent fire started.  It would take a while for even that small of a cabin to warm up and they had been in the blizzard for almost an hour.  The fire wasn’t going to be enough to warm them up by itself. 

            He looked around the cabin.  On top of the woodpile, he spotted a thick blanket.  It looked big enough for the girls, at least.  He grabbed it and handed it to them.

            “Here.  Sit by the fire and get warm.”

            “What about you?”  Robyn took the blanket, but stayed next to the door.  “You’re still going to be cold.”

            Changmin shook his head.  “I’ll be fine.”

            “No, you won’t.”  Shandi unfolded the blanket.  “If we sit close enough together, we’ll all fit.  That way, no one will have to be cold.”  She took the blanket from Robyn and sat down in front of the fire, as if she expected him to obey.  Robyn sat next to her and wrapped the blanket around herself. 

            Changmin sighed again and sat down next to Robyn.  He pulled some of the blanket over. 

            “How long can blizzards usually last?” 

            “It depends.  I think this one was supposed to blow through in six or seven hours.  So, we might as well get comfortable.  We’ll probably be here a while.”  It struck Changmin that he didn’t even know the girls’ names.  If they were going to be trapped together, he should at least know that much about them.  “So, care to introduce yourselves?”

            “Oh, I’m Robyn and this is my best friend, Shandi.  We’re from Texas, but we love your music.  Well, not you in particular…TVXQ’s music…and JYJ’s...well, you guys are back together now…and well, you get the picture.  Anyway, why did you come outside if you knew there was going to be a blizzard?  Couldn’t you have just called us from the doors?”

            “I tried calling, you couldn’t hear me.  I was watching you build your snowman.  Were you really going to make it that big?”

            “You mean, you saw us outside before the blizzard got bad enough to cause problems and you didn’t come get us earlier?”

            “I wanted to see how dumb you were.  Guess I underestimated you.” 

            Shandi and Robyn sniffed in unison.  “Yunho wouldn’t have waited so long.”  He could tell from her tone of voice that Shandi was trying to blame this situation on him. 

            “Junsu wouldn’t have, either.  But, then again, if Yunho or Junsu had been in the lobby, we probably would’ve been inside anyway.  We couldn’t get hugs or high fives from outside.  Or, maybe they would’ve helped us with the snowman.  We still haven’t thought of a name for him, yet.”

            “You’re right.  We have time, let’s think of one now.”  Why in the world would these girls be talking about naming a snowman right now?  What did that matter?

            “Who cares what you name the snowman.  It’s probably gone by now anyway.”

            “Don’t say that about our snowman.  If he’s gone, we’ll just rebuild him tomorrow.”  Shandi sounded upset.  He sighed for what would probably not be the last time that night.  He was stuck in a cabin with two crazy teenage girls in the middle of a blizzard, and he was cold.  Could this day get any worse?