Chapter 1: Frozen to Death in the Extreme Cold
【Phoenixa's POV】
"Dilia! Open the door!"
I was practically ramming the door with my shoulder. My fingers were too frozen to bend, so I could only hammer at the wood with my wrists.
"Please... let me in, I'm really going to freeze to death..."
The wind cut through my clothes like a handful of rusted knives.
Every breath I pulled into my lungs felt like swallowing broken glass.
Half a year ago, global temperatures had plunged without warning. The extreme cold swallowed the cities and killed nearly half of humanity.
Now the air outside was close to minus forty Celsius. And inside that door was the safe house I had stocked myself—foot by foot, can by can—with a heater already installed.
The door stayed quiet for two seconds.
Then I heard Dilia laugh.
"Phoenixa, why are you still hanging around?"
Her voice came through the heavy door panel, lazy and unhurried, like she was shooing off an irritating fly.
I went still.
Warm air was leaking out from under the door.
I could even smell soup cooking inside. My stomach clenched hard.
"Dilia..." I pressed my forehead against the cold door. "I don't want the supplies anymore. Really. Not any of it. Just let me in—I only want to live."
"You don't want them?"
She said it like I'd told a joke.
"But I do."
My breath caught.
A second later, she added, slow and casual: "Once you're dead, your cans, your medicine, your fuel—and those few crates of chocolate—they're all mine."
She paused, and the smile in her voice grew more obvious.
"Oh, right. And your man. He's mine too."
My nails dug hard into my palms.
For six months I'd scraped together supplies like my life depended on it. Enough food to last me months.
And just when I thought I could finally breathe, I found out my husband was cheating on me.
With my best friend.
The two of them had joined forces, taken everything I had, and thrown me out the door.
My teeth were chattering. My self-mocking laugh came out in broken pieces, so ugly it sounded like crying.
"Fine."
"You can have the man. And the supplies."
"Dilia, I give up... open the door."
I swallowed the last shred of my dignity whole.
Click.
The viewing window on the door slid open.
A face I knew better than my own appeared behind the glass.
Cecil.
My husband of three years.
He was wearing the black sweater I'd bought him, warm yellow light behind him.
That face—the one that had made my heart skip countless times—looked clean and warm now, while I stood outside like a stray dog in a gutter. Like we lived in two different worlds.
He looked down at me, his brow creasing slightly.
Not out of concern.
Disgust.
"Phoenixa, why haven't you crawled off yet?"
I stared at him.
"Cecil, I'm going to die."
"So what?"
He said it too naturally.
So naturally that for a moment I didn't understand.
"Whether you live or die—what's that got to do with us?"
My lips moved, but nothing came out.
He looked at my face, purple with cold, and suddenly smiled.
"Look at you."
"Hair like straw, face like a corpse, hands covered in frostbite."
"Phoenixa, why did I ever like you?"
Every word was colder than the wind.
I remembered—before the apocalypse, he used to sit by my bed all night when I had a fever.
He used to hold me and say that no matter what happened, he would protect me.
So promises are afraid of the cold too. The moment the end of the world came, they froze to pieces.
Dilia's sweet, cooing voice drifted over again: "Darling, stop wasting words on her. The soup's going to get cold."
Darling.
She said it so smoothly.
Cecil turned and answered her, and when he looked back at me, only impatience was left in his eyes.
"All right. For the sake of the years we had, I won't send you off empty-handed."
The little window shut.
A few seconds later, the door opened just a narrow crack.
Instinctively, I stepped forward.
Bang!
The door slammed back instantly, nearly catching my hand.
A wool scarf was tossed out through the gap and landed in the slush.
I looked down at it.
I'd knitted it for him myself last year...
"Take it," Cecil said through the door. "Don't say I actually let you die."
Dilia burst out giggling.
"When the snow stops tomorrow, should we go out and see if she's turned into an ice sculpture?"
They both laughed.
I stood outside the door and found I had nothing left to say.
Clutching that scarf, I walked step by step toward my family's safe house.
Not because I accepted their charity.
Because I wanted to live.
As long as I had a single breath left, I wanted to live.
Behind me, the door slammed shut with a bang.
In that moment, I finally understood: my three years of marriage had been shut inside that door with it.
...
I don't know how long I walked.
The snow was past my ankles. Every step felt like dragging two stones.
When my vision started to blur, a heavy engine sound came from behind me.
A black armored vehicle broke through the wind and snow, sliding slowly past me.
I looked up without thinking.
Behind a half-open window was a cold, hard, handsome face.
The man had a high, straight nose and a sharp jawline, and his eyes were so pale they held almost no warmth at all.
Zander Rupert.
The man who, when the cold first hit, had predicted the disaster earliest, pooled resources, and built the largest shelter.
The man countless survivors looked up to.
If only... I were someone like him...
I couldn't help glancing at him again.
The car had already driven past.
I lowered my head and kept shuffling forward.
A second later, several muffled thuds sounded behind me.
I turned.
On the snow lay a hot water bottle, still warm, a windproof jacket, and several packs of compressed biscuits.
I stood frozen.
The armored vehicle didn't stop.
Not one person looked back at me.
But staring at those things, my eyes suddenly stung so badly I could barely keep them open.
What a stranger had given me was more than what the man I once loved had given me...
How ironic.
I pulled on the jacket, stuffed the hot water bottle tight against my chest, and wolfed down half a compressed biscuit.
That little bit of warmth fell into my nearly extinguished body like a spark.
I pushed on for a long time after that.
At last, I saw the lights of my family's safe house.
I practically threw myself at the door.
"Grandpa! Uncle!"
"It's me, Phoenixa!"
"Open the door... please, open the door!"
Someone walked up quickly inside.
Hope surged in my chest.
My family was in there.
However angry they were, they wouldn't really watch me die. Would they?
But the door didn't open.
My grandfather's old, cold voice came through the door.
"You still have the nerve to come back?"
My heart sank, inch by inch.
"Grandpa, I was wrong."
"I shouldn't have turned my back on the family for Cecil's sake. I know I was wrong."
"Let me in. Just for one night..."
Inside, the silence was instant.
Half a minute passed before a single sentence came back: "Stop dreaming. Get out of here."
I lowered my eyes.
My mother was already dead.
When the cold first came, she hadn't made it through the first blizzard.
The only person in the world who would pull me into her arms first, without asking who was right—
she was gone.
No one would ever warm me again.
I crouched down slowly.
No sound came from inside anymore.
Even the footsteps were fading.
I couldn't hold on anymore. I hugged my head and sat in the snow, sobbing.
My body suddenly started to feel hot.
I knew what that meant. I was freezing to death.
My tears turned to ice. Despair and hatred wrapped around me like two layers of grave cloth, binding me tight.
Best friend, husband, family elders—
I hate you all!
