Before the World Freezes

[Phinex’s Pov]

“Dilia! Open the door!”

I slammed my shoulder against the door. My fingers were so numb I could no longer bend them, so I struck the door again and again with my wrist.

“Please… let me in. I’m really about to freeze to death…”

The freezing wind was like a hundred rusty knives, forcing its way through my clothes.

Every breath I drew felt like swallowing a mouthful of ice chips.

Six months ago, the global temperature had plummeted without warning. The extreme cold swallowed entire cities and froze nearly half the population to death.

Now, the temperature outside was close to forty degrees below zero. Behind the door was the safe house I had personally stocked with supplies and equipped with heaters.

There was silence inside for two seconds.

Then I heard Dilia laugh.

“Phinex, why haven’t you left yet?”

Her voice came through the heavy door, languid and dismissive, as if she were trying to shoo away an annoying fly.

I froze.

Warm air was seeping through the crack beneath the door.

I could even smell the soup cooking inside. My stomach clenched violently.

“Dilia…” I pressed my forehead against the freezing door. “I don’t want the supplies anymore. I really don’t want any of them. Just let me in. I only want to stay alive.”

“You don’t want them?”

She sounded as though I had just told her the funniest joke in the world.

“But I do.”

My breath caught.

A moment later, she added slowly, “Once you’re dead, your canned food, medicine, fuel, and those several boxes of chocolate will all belong to me.”

She paused, and the amusement in her voice became even more obvious.

“Oh, right. Your man will belong to me too.”

My fingernails dug hard into my palms.

For the past six months, I had worked myself to the bone gathering supplies. I had enough food to last for several months.

Just when I thought I could finally breathe, I discovered that my husband was cheating on me.

His mistress was my best friend.

Together, they had taken everything I owned and thrown me out.

My teeth chattered. The self-mocking laugh that escaped me came in broken bursts, sounding more like sobbing.

“Fine.”

“You can have the man. You can have the supplies too.”

“Dilia, I give up… Open the door.”

I swallowed the last scrap of my dignity.

Click.

The little observation window in the door slid open.

A face I knew better than anyone appeared behind the glass.

Cecilia.

My husband of three years.

He was wearing the black sweater I had bought for him. Warm yellow light glowed behind him.

That face had made my heart race countless times. Now it was clean and warm, while I stood outside, disheveled and pitiful as a stray dog. We looked as if we belonged to two entirely different worlds.

He looked down at me and frowned.

Not out of concern.

Out of disgust.

“Phinex, why haven’t you gone away yet?”

I stared at him.

“Cecilia, I’m going to die.”

“So what?”

He said it so naturally that, for a moment, I couldn’t understand him.

“Whether you live or die, what does that have to do with us?”

My lips moved soundlessly.

Looking at my face, purple with cold, he suddenly smiled.

“Look at yourself.”

“Your hair looks like a pile of weeds. Your face looks like a corpse. Your hands are covered in frostbite.”

“Phinex, why did I ever fall in love with you?”

Every word cut deeper than the freezing wind.

I remembered how, before the disaster, he had stayed beside my bed all night whenever I had a fever.

He had once held me and promised that he would protect me no matter what happened.

It turned out promises were afraid of the cold too. The moment the apocalypse arrived, they froze and shattered.

Dilia’s sweet voice came from inside again.

“Darling, stop wasting your time with her. The soup is going to get cold.”

Darling.

She said it so naturally.

Cecilia answered her over his shoulder. When he looked back at me, his eyes held nothing but impatience.

“Enough. For the sake of the years we were married, I won’t send you away empty-handed.”

The little window slid shut.

A few seconds later, the door opened only a narrow crack.

I instinctively took a step forward.

Bang!

The door slammed shut again, nearly catching my hand.

A knitted scarf was thrown through the gap and landed in the slush.

I lowered my eyes.

It was the scarf I had knitted for him myself last year…

“Take it,” Cecilia said from behind the door. “Don’t say I really left you to die.”

Dilia burst out laughing.

“Tomorrow, when the snow stops, shall we go outside and see whether she’s frozen into a statue?”

They both laughed.

I stood outside the door, suddenly unable to say a word.

Clutching the scarf, I began walking, step by step, toward my family’s safe house.

Not because I accepted their charity.

Because I wanted to live.

As long as I still had one breath left, I wanted to live.

The door behind me slammed shut.

At that moment, I finally understood that my three-year marriage had been locked inside with it.

…

I had no idea how long I walked.

The snow had risen above my ankles, and every step felt like dragging two heavy stones.

Just as my vision began to blur, the deep roar of an engine came from behind me.

A black armored vehicle broke through the snowstorm and slowly passed by.

I looked up without thinking.

Behind the half-open window was a handsome, hard-edged face.

The man had a high, straight nose, a sharply defined jaw, and eyes so cool they seemed almost devoid of warmth.

Zangweila Rupert.

When the extreme cold first descended, he had been the earliest person to predict the disaster, gather resources, and build large-scale shelters.

He was admired by countless survivors.

If only… I were someone like him…

I couldn’t help looking at him again.

The vehicle had already driven past.

I lowered my head and continued dragging myself forward.

The next second, several dull thuds sounded behind me.

I turned around.

A thermos filled with hot water, still radiating warmth, lay in the snow. Beside it was a windproof jacket and several packets of compressed biscuits.

I stood there, stunned.

The armored vehicle had not stopped.

No one had even turned around to look at me.

But as I stared at those few things, my eyes suddenly burned.

A stranger had given me more than the man I had once loved ever had…

How ironic.

I pulled on the jacket, stuffed the thermos tightly against my chest, and wolfed down half a compressed biscuit.

The small amount of energy fell into my nearly extinguished body like a spark.

I forced myself onward for a long time.

Finally, I saw the lights of my family’s safe house.

I nearly threw myself against the door.

“Grandfather! Uncle!”

“It’s me, Phinex!”

“Open the door… Please, open the door!”

Someone soon approached from inside.

A glimmer of hope rose sharply in my chest.

They were my family.

No matter how angry they were, they wouldn’t really watch me die, would they?

But the door did not open.

My grandfather’s old, icy voice came through it.

“You still have the nerve to come back?”

My heart slowly sank.

“Grandfather, I was wrong.”

“I shouldn’t have fallen out with the family over Cecilia. I really know I was wrong.”

“Please let me in. I only need to stay for one night…”

The inside of the shelter fell silent.

After a long while, a single sentence came through.

“Stop dreaming. Leave at once.”

I lowered my eyes.

My mother was already dead.

When the extreme cold began, she had not survived the first blizzard.

The only person in this world who would pull me into her arms without asking who was right or wrong was gone.

No one would ever warm me again.

Slowly, I crouched down.

There was no sound from inside anymore.

Even the footsteps gradually faded into the distance.

I couldn’t hold on any longer. Clutching my head, I sat in the snow and began to sob.

Then my body suddenly started to heat up.

I knew I was about to freeze to death.

My tears hardened into ice. Despair and hatred wrapped around me like two layers of a burial shroud, binding me tightly.

What kind of best friend? What kind of husband? What kind of family elders?

I hate you all!