But that one comment from Elios must have decisively triggered Snow’s emotions. After barely whispering “No,” small intermittent sobs began leaking through the crack in the door. At that moment, the entire door began to freeze instantly, as if hot water had been sprayed on it in the dead of winter. Elios had to remove his hand from the door.

“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry…”

Snow was crying right in front of him, yet he could do nothing.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry.”

Elios whispered desperately. Snow couldn’t stop crying. The sobs that initially leaked out occasionally became uncontrollable after a few minutes, and her crying echoed throughout the quiet building, reverberating off the walls.

Snow cried for a very long time. Elios could only helplessly listen to that painful crying with just a door between them.

“Elios Riman Akelan.”

After quite some time, Snow stammered. Since it was the first time she had called him by his full name including his family name, Elios tensed up.

“Never again.”

And then Snow couldn’t continue her words, overcome by another burst of tears. She cried so sorrowfully as if she had lost her parents. Elios finally began knocking on the frozen door.

“Snow! Please open the door. I’m begging you, please open the door. Please…”

“Never appear before me again.”

“…What?”

Elios asked blankly, thinking he had misheard.

“…Go away. …Don’t come back.”

Elios placed his palm on the frozen door and slid down helplessly, his knees hitting the floor.

“Snow, what are you saying? If you’re worried I might get hurt, I told you not to worry. I’m stronger than you think. I won’t get hurt. I’m really strong…”

Elios’s voice, fading like doused embers, felt terribly surreal. Snow felt as if her heart might burst.

“Go.”

Snow uttered once more. She had thought it would be easier after saying it once. But the words that hurt Elios returned to Snow as wounds of the same size, like touching a large thorn stuck in her throat.

Her heart was torn to shreds.

Elios had no idea what state she was in. She would truly hurt him badly. So Snow chose what she thought would hurt him less. With clenched fists, Snow spoke once more.

“It’s not because I’m worried you might get hurt.”

“Snow. I—”

“No, you’re not strong.”

“Snow, that’s not—”

“I don’t like you.”

The sound of Elios collapsing to the floor came vividly through the crack in the door.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Elios.’

Even as Snow kept repeating this in her torn heart, from another corner, Freia kept whining shrilly: “Kill him. Take revenge”.

And once again, silence continued for a long time. Both Elios and Snow, separated by a single door, each silently writhed in agony.

Occasionally, rustling sounds could be heard from beyond the door. Snow pressed herself against the door, trying not to miss a single sound. Yet contradictorily, she wished Elios would just give up and leave. The moment “Snow” weakened her resolve even slightly, the ice freezing the doorknob would melt, and either Elios or she would open the door. And she didn’t know what she might do to Elios.

Elios seemed to have no intention of getting up. Occasionally she heard him calling, “Snow,” but Snow didn’t answer. She just pressed her ear as close to the door crack as possible. It might be the last time she heard Elios’s voice.

How much time had passed? Snow very slowly uttered words. She put strength into each syllable so they wouldn’t be muffled by tears. So that Elios could let her go completely.

“At first, I was just happy to have a friend. I enjoyed going outside together and seeing the outside world. But after learning you were a prince, I gradually started to feel burdened.”

“…”

“I kept thinking that if I made a mistake in front of the prince, the temple’s position might be jeopardized. I no longer wanted to meet with you.”

Elios was gripped by a terrible sensation as if his mind was being detached from his body.

‘I don’t want to hear this.’

He didn’t want to hear it. He wished she would stop speaking. But Snow cruelly continued, enunciating each word clearly.

“The reason I couldn’t show you my dislike was because of my timid personality and your position as a prince.”

“…”

“I was uncomfortable every time you acted friendly.”

“…”

“I’m already struggling a lot as it is. If I continue to endure something I dislike, something worse will happen. So I decided to be honest now.”

Silence again. No sound came from beyond the door. Snow forcibly gathered her already incinerated heart and set it ablaze again.

“I really don’t like you. I feel like I’ll end up freezing everything if you stay here. So I’d like you to leave now.”

A loud cracking sound echoed as the frozen ice began to fracture. Though there was a wall between them, Snow felt she no longer deserved to sit back-to-back with Elios. That’s what she thought.

Snow staggered to her feet, clutching her whining head with both hands. She intended to move as far away from the door as possible. Her patience was reaching its limit. Conflicting emotions were swirling and amplifying, threatening to explode her head at any moment. Snow began to fall. It accumulated only in her room, as if there were no ceiling. White snowflakes fell on her white hair. She had taken just a few steps when:

“I love you!”

Sensing her retreating presence, Elios shouted urgently. Snow stopped in her tracks.

“I love you.”

Snow gasped and covered her mouth again. Her legs gave way and she sat down. She had heard words she shouldn’t have heard.

Elios collapsed, scratching at the frozen door with his fingernails. He had never intended to confess this way. He tightly gripped the ice fragments that fell from his scratching. His soaking wet hand froze again, becoming unbearably cold and painful. No, more than his hand, his heart was cold and painful.

If Snow… truly had been uncomfortable because of him, he intended never to appear before her again. But he simply couldn’t believe that Snow’s bright smile had been false. The warmly shining sunlight, the flower petals falling gently like feathers, the spring-scented breeze… those things couldn’t all have been false or fabricated. Because they corresponded to Snow’s mood. So…!

Elios banged his forehead against the ice wall. The cold and pain meant nothing. Elios began to ramble incoherently.

“Snow. I remember it exactly. It was an autumn night when I was twelve. I met you for the first time when I came to the temple with my uncle. I thought you were some extraordinary being. But you were just a kid like me. Still, I thought you were really beautiful. A white, sparkling, cute Saint. Someone I definitely wanted to meet again. Someone I wanted to show so many places to.”

These were the inner feelings of the twelve-year-old Elios that he had never told anyone.

“I was a prince, and I was lonely. I couldn’t share my worries with Papel or Galimede since they were people I needed to take care of, and Crusis was extremely blunt and cold at that time. There wasn’t a single noble peer of appropriate status who could treat me, a prince, as a friend. But then you became my first friend. I liked that very much.”

Just as Elios had been Snow’s first friend when she was young, Snow had been Elios’s first friend as well.

“So when my father told me never to meet you again, it felt like the sky was falling. Every day I would look out the window to check the weather, recall your face, and worry if something had happened to you whenever dark clouds appeared. That’s how… I came to hold you in my heart after seeing you just once.”

Once again, Elios confessed his feelings. But this time, that wasn’t the end. To prevent Snow from denying it any further, he was pouring out his deepest feelings endlessly, without beginning or end.

“From that autumn when I was twelve until I met you again, Snow, you were a fantasy, a legend, a mirage within me. I sometimes doubted whether you, whom I had seen just once, were a real person, or if my twelve-year-old self had just dreamed for one night. Sometimes you felt so distant and completely unreal.”

Snow covered her ears, but she couldn’t completely block out Elios’s voice, which poured out as if he were vomiting blood.

“And when I finally disobeyed my father and met you for the first time. Ah, from that moment, I became helpless. For six years, I had imagined you every day, adding all sorts of fantasies and beautifying you, but the you I met that day was more beautiful than any Snow I had ever pictured. I’m not just talking about your appearance. I can’t explain it, but every word you spoke, every gesture you made was unbearably wonderful to me.”

“…Stop it.”

Snow cut off Elios’s words. She couldn’t bear to listen anymore. She felt like she might go insane.

“I love you.”

The moment she heard those words directly with her own ears, “Snow’s” heart pounded violently.

“How dare he. Not knowing his place.”

Ah, in truth, Snow knew. Friends? El was no mere friend. Snow liked El, liked Elios. Just saying she liked him wasn’t enough. Even when seeing him and talking with him, she felt longing, affection, and heartache. No matter how ignorant she was about such matters, she couldn’t help but understand when it was to that extent.

She felt that if she continued listening to Elios’s words, she would reach a point of no return. Snow tried to stop him. But perhaps, it was already too late to turn back.

“There isn’t a single aspect of you that isn’t lovable, Snow. I know that your timid and cautious nature comes from worrying that someone might get hurt because of you. That’s unbearably endearing to me. I also love that you’re kinder and more tender-hearted than anyone. I love your slight smile, your wide smile, the way you slightly furrow your brow or open your eyes wide in surprise, and even the way you cry. I truly love it all.”