[Saturday, December 21st]

The next morning after breakfast, father has us all wait. “Girls, before you leave for your trip, I need you to make sure you have everything you need for the New Years Party. I doubt you’ll have time to do it if you wait until you get back.”

We all nod as Mom tells him, “Honey, we were already planning a shopping trip today to get our dresses.”

He pauses and looks at me. “Sora, we’ll have a lot of high profile people at the party so be prepared since I’m quite sure many of them will want to talk to you and get to know you better.” I nod. “Good. I’m sure you already assumed that would happen,” which I again nod at. “Regardless of anything else, I hope you all have fun.”

As a so you know, after the press conference, I’ve had many, let me reiterate that, many requests for interviews from both national and international services, which have been politely turned down. There have been so many requests that Sanae had to get another girl at work to help her with all the requests. Hopefully, it will settle down soon, but that doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon by the looks of things.

Our security has their hands full whenever we leave the house as well. It got so bad that we finally relented to stop them trying to catch me on the street and set up a combined interview with NHK New services for January 6th. We set some ground rules that they have to follow. Nothing overtly personal to be asked and we did allow for three others to be there from other services to ask questions as well since part of the agreement is that the interview is to be shared with whomever wants it. Daddy did inform them that the interview was contingent upon my schedule, amongst several other factors, and that we should have a more solid idea of if I would be able to keep it after the 3rd. If not, we’ll be happy to reschedule it. It seems there is a huge amount of interest in me. Personally, I don’t get it since I don’t consider myself to be all that different from other girls my age.

Hmm… Maybe I should explain that a little better. While it’s true that I’m one of the wealthiest people in the world and a genius to boot, in every other way I’m fairly normal. I have friends, enjoy dates, shopping, going out to play and just about anything else a normal girl enjoys.

Okay, next item. Shin and the rest of thems trial starts that day, so we’ll have a better idea of how long it will take depending on how they plead. We shall simply have to see how it goes. I’m still not looking forward to telling Mii about it when we get back from our trip. I’ve no idea how she is going to take it, so after much discussion, it was decided that since I’m the person she trusts the most I should be the one to tell her, although Airi, Mama, Daddy, and Hiro will all be there when we tell her.

Ryu will be picking up Hiroki and taking him to see Mr. Kano while we shop for our dresses. I won’t bore you and go into detail about shopping, but we all found our dresses. Mama made the decision for us on the type and style of our dresses. All of them are floor length gowns, not that we dislike what she chose for each of us since they are gorgeous. I had to question her choice for the color of my dress since it was fuschia. I have several pairs of shoes in fuschia and they look great one me because they provide contrast for whatever dress I am wearing, but with my red hair and the dress itself being fuschia, I had to wonder. That is, until I tried it on and took a look in the mirror. It seriously makes my hair and eyes pop, not to mention the mermaid style fitting accentuates my every curve. I love the color, so you can believe me when I tell you I will be buying and wearing many more fuschia dresses and skirts from now on. She found me a lovely pair of 10 centimeter ankle strap heels in blush pink to wear along with it. Mama chooses the opposite colors for Chinatsu. Blush pink gown with a pair of 10 centimeter fuschia ankle strap heels to go along with it. I think Ryu will be more than happy with the way his fiancées will look that night.

Suffice it to say that it takes quite a while shopping for our dresses and heels. We girls excuse ourselves after lunch to go pick up Mama’s Christmas present from me. Remember the pendant I ordered with all of our birthstones in it? They finished it a while back and I asked them to hold on to it for me. So, after paying the balance and them wrapping it for me.

Next, Mama takes us to Sakeya Kimono to pick out our New Year's Day Kimonos to wear to the shrine. For those of you who are not all that familiar with Japanese culture, it’s tradition to attend a Buddist Temple to offer thanks and prayers. Many girls wear elaborate kimonos while doing so, which will be all of us girls in the family, along with Mii. I never really cared for the tradition when I was still Sora-nii, but I have to admit that I’m looking forward to it this year.

It takes the rest of the afternoon for Mama to find kimonos and zori for all of us. Chinatsu and I were really happy with the fur trimmed, with the matching lavender and and deep blue kimono with a white chrysanthemum print she chose for us. After that, we head home.

Thankfully, me picking up Mama’s present today finishes our Christmas shopping. Believe it or not, Ryu was rather hard to buy presents for. He’s not into the typical things most boys his age are into. Chinatsu and I finally settled on some new cufflinks to replace his rather battered ones and a rather expensive Dubois watch.

[Sunday, December 22nd]

Today is nothing more than us getting everything to leave tomorrow morning, so I’m not going to go into any detail about it. Other than that, we spend the day with our parents and spoiling our adorable little sisters.

[Monday, December 23rd]

The alarm waking the three of us at four in the morning is rather an unwelcome, yet welcome at the same time, surprise. Unwelcome in that we stayed up later than we should have making love. Welcome in that it means we are heading out on our trip. So, after bathing and dressing, we head down to eat breakfast with everyone. I kind of felt bad that Amani and Asumi got up so early to make breakfast, so I apologized, but as you can guess they waved it off and said they were more than happy to do it. Afterward, security helps carry and load ecerything and we head out to pick everyone up.

I’m not going to say much about the trip since mostly all of us cuddle with our boyfriends for the long trip. Ryu, Chinatsu and I actually cuddled and slept most of the way. Mr. Okami has to wake all of us when we arrive. It doesn’t take long for us to check in and the bellmen to carry our bags to our rooms, nor do we waste anytime unpacking and then head down to meet everyone for lunch, which I have to say is superb.

Heading back up, we undress and after Ryu changes into his ski suit, he helps us into ours. Truthfully, it feels rather odd to wear something like this since we never wear anything other than skirts or dresses and no, I am not saying it’s uncomfortable, just odd. After we make our way to the lobby to meet everyone and make our way to the lifts. Ryu again shows his more gallant, and I’d say romantic, side when he has us sit down, helps us slip into our ski boots and then buckles them. The other boys seem to think it’s a great idea since they immediately follow suit. Ryu wouldn’t even let us carry our skis, again not complaining here, we love being cared for by Ryu like this and it’s rather sweet that he does things like this for us, but we’re far from incapable of doing it ourselves. When we reach the lifts, he takes off and soon comes back with hot chocolate for the three of us.

You can think what you want, but we love the level of attention he can, and does, give us. I realize some might feel smothered by this, but as you can guess, we aren’t.

As we wait our turn, Ryu asks, “What level are you two comfortable with?”

“I’m fine with just about anything, other than the most extreme slopes. I’m a very good skier, but I’m not that good.” Chinatsu nods her agreement when he looks at her.

“Okay. What do you say we start on an intermediate one to get the feel of things and go from there?”