“I know what you’re going to say. You’ll ask how such a thing is possible, how this could happen. But it’s true. I’m not crazy, and I haven’t lost my mind. I have all of Freia’s memories, from her oldest to the moment just before her death. Do you understand? Not only this raging blizzard but also the One Year Calamity from 20 years ago—I caused them all.”

The once quiet and shy Snow cried out.

Snow poured down as if the sky were collapsing. It was closer to chunks of ice than snow. The snow that had barely reached their knees suddenly piled up to their thighs. This was exactly what Snow had seen in the future. In that future, the weather had worsened after Snow disappeared, but this time it was different.

The future had changed.

It was dangerous. Truly dangerous. They needed to return to the temple or somewhere immediately, but these people foolishly couldn’t leave Snow behind. If she disappeared now, they were destined to die buried in snow while searching for her.

“Come close to me!”

Snow shouted. Around her, snow neither fell nor accumulated. It was evidence that she was the cause of the calamity, and one of the things that made her miserable. But now it was their lifeline.

Martadia, Arianne, and Elios gathered around Snow, leading the two horses they had ridden. None of the four spoke. Even the two horses seemed to understand the situation, not making a single noise.

Snow could neither return to the temple with them nor disappear and leave them behind. She was cornered.

Snow feared the moment when any of the three would speak. So she opened her mouth first.

“That the three people I missed most have appeared together like this—I still think this might be a dream.”

“Snow, it’s not a dream. We all heard you say you missed us.”

Arianne interjected. Snow buried her face in her hands. She didn’t know what absurd thing she had done again. She was truly a selfish person who could only think of herself.

“Arianne. If this really is my dream, then you telling me it’s not a dream has no persuasive power at all.”

Though she meant it as a joke, no one laughed.

“If I weren’t the Saint, if the revelation had come to someone else… Arianne would have cherished and raised another baby, Elios would have sought out another real Saint, and Ceres would have given advice to another Saint instead of me.”

Snow spoke more painfully.

“If I weren’t the Saint, I wouldn’t even have been born; I would have died in my mother’s womb. And I’m not actually the Saint. I’m closer to a witch who destroys everything.”

“Snow.”

“So!”

Elios called her briefly, and Snow immediately cut off his words. Above all, she was most afraid of Elios speaking to her now.

“It’s as if I was never born. Since you were able to form bonds with me because I was the Saint, it’s as if there were no connections between us.”

Snow clenched her fists behind her back, hiding them so no one could see.

“Go back right away. Live as if I never existed from the beginning. Just… think of me as dead. That’s enough. I’ll somehow deal with the calamity.”

“Stop it!”

Arianne shouted angrily. Snow looked at Arianne with surprised eyes. She had never seen Arianne so angry before.

“How, how can you speak like that?”

Her voice trembled finely, as if deeply wounded. Unlike her loud shout, Arianne slowly wrapped Snow’s small hands in her own timid grasp. She knelt in the snow and placed her face on the hands she held.

Snow felt something wet on her hands. Though the sobbing was buried under the sound of the wind, Arianne was clearly weeping. Crying like a child, she painfully uttered each word:

“When I reach out, I can touch this soft, delicate skin right away.”

Snow stood awkwardly, unable to withdraw her hands, watching Arianne.

“Live as if you never existed from the beginning? Think of you as dead?”

Snow looked around helplessly. Ceres was looking at Arianne with eyes full of grief, and Elios had his head lowered, making his expression invisible.

Arianne raised her head. Her face was a mess with tears and m*cus. Sobbing as if about to die, Arianne cried out:

“There were no connections between us?!”

Snow now realized how deeply and horribly those sharp words had clawed at Arianne’s heart.

“You say if another baby had received the revelation, I would have cherished and raised that child? Maybe so. Perhaps it would have started that way. But what does that matter now?”

“…”

Snow couldn’t answer.

“I was the first person in the world to hold you in my arms. I was there for every moment when you got your first tooth, when you rolled over, when you started walking. I held you all day, afraid you might get hurt if I put you down, and I always worried whether you might be suffering silently, unable to show your discomfort. For 19 years, you have always been my life.”

Arianne now clung to Snow, pleading:

“Every single moment we spent together was a new connection. You can’t deny all of that. Even if that initial revelation was wrong, Snow, what you’re thinking about doesn’t even amount to a tiny fraction of all the connections we’ve shared. It’s like one drop of salt water in all the oceans of the world. That’s how small it is.”

Arianne buried her lips on the back of Snow’s hand and desperately said:

“Please don’t throw away our connection.”

“I…”

Snow opened her mouth with an intensely confused expression.

“I don’t deserve such excessive love. Arianne. Because of me, countless people have died. Yes. Even from the moment of my birth, I’ve always hurt someone while being born. In my past life and in this life, my mother died because of me.”

Though no one had ever told Snow the details of her birth, she now knew everything as if it were obvious. In her past life, Freia’s mother died giving birth to her, and in this life, the Saint Bernadette’s birth mother froze to death in a basement for having an illegitimate child of a nobleman.

“Mother? Snow’s mother didn’t die.”

Snow thought Arianne was lying. She felt it was too much that Arianne wouldn’t tell her the truth even at a time like this.

“Whenever I asked how I was born, you always answered vaguely and quickly changed the subject. But now I know. My mother was locked in a basement because she was pregnant with me, and she died frozen in that cold, dark place.”

Arianne suddenly let go of Snow’s hands and clutched her own chest tightly. Groaning painfully, she whispered softly:

“Snow’s mother is right here, in front of your eyes.”

Snow stared at Arianne, dazed as if she had been struck.

‘What have I just said to Arianne?’

“You’re right. She did pass away. But I, who has dared to raise you for 19 years thinking of you as my own daughter, am still perfectly alive. So please, at least for my sake, don’t tell me to forget you.”

With those words, Arianne said no more. The words Snow had poured out had become deep wounds for the three people.

But they weren’t thoughtless words. Snow had truly thought that way—that since these connections couldn’t have continued if she hadn’t been the Saint, they were mistaken connections from the beginning.

But Arianne was saying that none of that mattered.

“Snow.”

It wasn’t Arianne who called her that. It was Martadia. Martadia had called Saint Bernadette “Snow.”

“Since you seem to dislike other titles, may I call you that?”

To the question of whether it was alright to call her “Snow,” Snow nodded. She simply couldn’t bear being called the Saint. The name “Bernadette” was also the same, as it was a name she received as the Saint. But “Snow” was different. Now she felt that only that name truly represented herself.

Martadia had known about the Saint’s other name, “Snow,” for a long time.

Though six-year-old Snow had asked Arianne to keep it as their secret, Arianne had already told Martadia about what happened that day, saying, “The Saint has been having such concerns.”

In fact, becoming more familiar with another name while having the official name Bernadette was an issue that needed more consideration. But Martadia had felt sorry for a child who couldn’t even freely use her own name, so she had pretended not to know.

“Snow.”

Martadia called Snow by that name once more. Snow found it a bit awkward. But Martadia continued naturally, as if not minding at all:

“Priest Arianne, unable to find you, returned to the temple and collapsed after crying out to the Goddess. Despite that, she insisted on going back out into the snow, so the priests locked her in a room and locked the door.”

Snow was shocked. She had left the temple right in front of Arianne. She had thought she couldn’t commit any more sins against Arianne, who had dedicated her youth believing Snow was the Saint when she wasn’t.

But afterward, Arianne had never given up on Snow for a single moment. As Martadia spoke, the past from a few days or hours ago vividly flashed before Snow’s eyes as if happening now.

Arianne had confronted many priests to save Snow.

Arianne had even shouted that if this Goddess abandoned her Saint, what was the use of such a Goddess? As a priest, she had dared to insult Goddess.