Asha, who shivered at that cold sensation, caught her breath while rubbing her hands together.

Unlike before when she would collapse weakly, there was only an endlessly trembling emotion. With a heartbeat that seemed ready to burst from her throat, she couldn’t sleep or see her surroundings.

[To Carol. Even though Delling and the capital are both big cities, they feel different. Delling feels much more bustling with people from various countries coming and going, but the capital looked cleaner and more orderly. Like it was systematically designed with a protractor?]

Sentences to tell Carol floated through her mind like a habit.

Carol, Cas, to my dear friend.

Asha also recalled affectionate modifiers she rarely used. My gentle, only, wise, my, your……

The colder the chill inside the stagecoach became, the longer the trees stretching on both sides grew, the more a question she had consciously avoided raised its head.

We are unique to each other, and freely mixed lies and truth under agreement. Among the countless sentences I received, were those words about you cherishing me sincere?

The carriage entered the city.

The girl who buried her face in both hands recited a sentence she couldn’t quite form.

“Do you…… me……”

Miss me?

※※※

“Kasoche? Can’t go, can’t go!”

“Excuse me?”

“What time of year do you think this is? If you want to go, it’ll be two months from now. Didn’t you research such things before coming?”

At the merchant’s cold assertion, her blue-green eyes became as large as a full moon.

The merchant who periodically exchanged goods with Kasoche shook his head vigorously at the girl who was obviously from the south and emphasized again.

“Absolutely can’t go! Hell, can’t even come out from there, can’t go there from here either.”

“Severe cold……”

When she looked up, high mountains were visible in every direction. Ones whose ends she couldn’t dare fathom, that she was seeing for the first time in her life.

Having packed her bags thoughtlessly in Iota, she couldn’t have considered the season.

Only then realizing that the time her friend mentioned every year was now, Asha stamped her feet and pressed her forehead.

The shawl she’d brought from the kingdom’s warmest island was nowhere near enough for this cold. It was a stifling weather, different even from the harshness in the capital.

The only consoling point was that it wasn’t snowing right now, but Kasoche’s situation was different.

Because of that situation, she was going to be stranded in a city where she had no connections.

“You seem to have come from far away, get a room and rest first. With the timing being like this, inns will have plenty of rooms.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Can’t what. What will you do if you can’t? Horses and carriages are all stopped. Are you going to cross the snow-covered mountains alone, Miss?”

The weak kindness turned to annoyance. The indifferent brown eyes surveyed the woman who was smaller and more delicate than her peers.

This senseless girl who had come alone to the northern end during this off-season bit her lips repeatedly and muttered quietly.

“Moun, mountains……”

“You really plan to go? Even people born and raised here don’t do such crazy things.”

“Of, of course not! Even if snow hadn’t piled up, how could I cross mountains when I don’t know the way……”

Asha, who bristled at the gaze that saw her as a reckless child, snapped irritably then trailed off.

Asha didn’t know the way.

There was no path to reach the snow-covered Kasoche.

Path.

“How……”

She didn’t need to know.

What she desired to the most necessary place.

Opaque breath escaped through her pale lips. The power to send letters without addresses written, without borrowing anyone’s hands.

Capable of handling at most a few sheets of paper.

“By any chance……”

The reason Asha defined her limit as ‘a few sheets of paper’ was simple. She could feel the burden on her body as the weight increased.

She had nothing to send that would make her already weak body work harder.

Asha’s world was centered around her bedroom and the small two-story house, defined only by walking distance.

Until then.

“Excuse me, ma’am!”

Until she knew Carol.

“Could, could, could you lend me that? No, I’ll buy it! How much would it be?”

“Huh? Are you serious right now, Miss?”

Having finished thinking, Asha stretched out her right arm and trotted her feet. At that pitiful and anxious gesture, even the merchant who had been watching the outsider’s crazy antics swallowed and blinked.

“I’m serious! I really need it! No, maybe not, but perhaps.”

“Why would you suddenly want a worn-out broom…… I was going to throw it away anyway, so use it as you like.”

At the owner’s permission, her gently curved eyes folded brightly. The girl who had been fretting as if choking carefully—though her steps still staggered—but energetically grasped the broom.

“But what are you going to do with a broom……”

The question was resolved before it could even begin.

Asha, holding the broom larger than her body horizontally, took a deep breath and exhaled long. The opaque breath touched the old broom.

Her stiff boots floated up in the air. As soon as Asha hurriedly corrected her posture, the broom shot out diagonally at tremendous speed.

Her blue-green hair scattered in the direction of the wind looked exactly like a bird said to live on some southern island.

Staring at the spot where a person had been standing just moments ago, the merchant muttered in bewilderment.

“Even witches come to these mountain corners……”

※※※

“Ahh!”

This is driving me crazy.

Asha bent her upper body, struggling desperately not to slip and fall from the broom. The roughly packed suitcase had fallen somewhere long ago.

Fortunately, she had kept her money pouch in her coat, but right now Asha wasn’t leisurely enough to feel relieved or distressed about such practical problems.

The northern air was cold, and cutting through that air felt like being slapped dozens of times on the cheeks.

Did letters always travel at this speed too? That’s why they arrived so quickly. Trivial impressions sporadically burst up and scattered.

It was at least consoling that it wasn’t snowing, but it didn’t really register with Asha, who was gripping the broom like a lifeline with hands that had almost lost all sensation.

It was really freezing cold.

Asha, who had wrapped herself around the broom and laid her upper body flat, slowly caught her breath and carefully looked around left and right.

The sensation of floating in the air had become somewhat familiar, but looking down required even greater courage.

A place full of dry, cold scents instead of salty, fishy sea smells. Where Carol had lived his whole life.

Just when her shoulders relaxed a little at the trivial sentiment, the broom that had been flying parallel suddenly bent at an alarming angle again.

Downward.

“Ahhhhh!”

[Carol, am I going to die like this?]

It was cold.

It stung.

The broom descended relentlessly between countless trees. But no matter how small and thin she was, Asha was still human, and couldn’t perfectly follow the narrow gaps the broom took.

“Ah!”

Crack!

Just when she squeezed her eyes shut thinking she might crash into the ground, her wide sleeve caught on a tree branch. The cream-colored shawl and round glasses had already fallen somewhere after getting caught.

“Ugh……”

The girl who had lost her glasses, whose bare hands had been scraped by tree bark, barely blinked and raised her head.

In her blurred, smeared vision, only one figure was excessively close and clear. Like finding platinum in fog, Asha slowly reached out her hand.

The human shadow didn’t move.

She touched it.

She felt skin that was soft and even hot, perhaps from trembling in the cold all along. The silver was brilliant as if cut from dawn sunlight, and the blue was much brighter and clearer than Asha’s own.

Like glass you could see right through.

Like an optical illusion created by that glass.

Her pale lips parted slightly then closed. The girl caught on the tree branch opened her mouth very slowly, just as she had practiced for years, very slowly.

“Carol.”