An Unexpected Winter
Fifteen hours had passed since Arwen absorbed the cube.
The world outside, which had felt like the height of summer, was now filled with a ferocious blizzard.
The Spacetime Barrier had lost its power and begun to collapse, which meant we were finally making contact with the true environment beyond.
It was freezing!
Rrrrumble...
"That cold, is it?"
"You have no idea..."
The dozens of suns had been vanishing one by one, and a savage snowstorm had rushed in to fill the gaps they left behind. Outside was now nothing but pitch darkness and cold, driving snow.
Whoosh—
We holed up inside one of the relatively intact buildings to hold out against the cold. But the wind, laden with chill to its very core, howled and hammered away, and somehow managed to worm its way in through the gaps in the structure. Even though I'd rounded up every last insulating thing I could find and wrapped myself up like a cocoon, the cold still crept through.
"Damn it, how is there not a single decent set of clothes in this whole place? We're lucky I managed to dig up a blanket, or I probably would've frozen to death."
"The quality is rather poor, though."
"...Figures. That's the military for you."
Great at making weapons, terrible at taking care of everyday living supplies — a classic military trait. Apparently that hadn't changed much in the future either. Come to think of it, a lot of their weapons were pretty shoddy too.
"The barrier hasn't fully collapsed yet, right?"
"No. I can still see spatial distortion in the lower sections. It will likely take another seven or eight hours before we're completely connected to the outside world."
"Ugh... Well, either way, we can't move until the snow dies down. Who knows how it'll go..."
"Given how dark it is, I'd say the true 'outside' is in the middle of the night. By the time the barrier fully dissipates, it should be morning. Rather convenient timing, actually."
Arwen glanced outside on my behalf as she spoke. I could only envy her complete immunity to the cold.
"If I'd known it'd get this cold, should we have gone back down into the underground?"
"No. That cave we walked through could collapse at any moment. We'd get buried under an enormous snowfall, and if we were unlucky, we might not be able to dig our way out at all."
"Fair point. Hmm... and we can't build a fire, either..."
Since the wind kept blowing in from outside, we didn't need to worry about carbon monoxide poisoning — the problem was that there wasn't a single piece of firewood to keep a flame going. Anything remotely flammable, like cloth, had already been cannibalized into parts of my blanket.
Should've grabbed one of those clubs the goblins were lugging around.
"Nothing to be done about it, I suppose."
"?"
Tap tap tap.
After a moment's thought, Arwen strode right up to me — and in one decisive move, breached the heavy fortifications of my blanket.
"Wh-what are you doing?"
"What does it look like? Emergency measures."
Shff.
Whether I was flustered or not, Arwen settled herself behind me, curled up where I sat, and wrapped her arms around me.
"It's... cold? Wait — no it isn't?"
"I'm generating heat."
The soft texture of artificial skin pressed through my clothes. Arwen was, by nature, a machine — she should have had a body cold to the touch. But this once, she was toasty warm through and through.
"Ah... now I feel alive."
"My efficiency is poor, so I can't sustain this for long. Still, a few hours should be fine."
Thanks to the difference in our heights, I was swallowed whole into her embrace. With the warmth and humanlike feel of skin added on top, an unbelievable coziness washed over me.
Sitting like this, it really does feel like I'm being held by an actual person.
Here I was, sharing a blanket with a stunning beauty — and yet what flooded in first wasn't excitement but pure comfort. Even the howling wind that had sounded so menacing now drifted over me like a lullaby.
"You know, about that..."
Just as I was drifting off in the pleasant warmth, Arwen suddenly spoke up.
"Hm? What is it?"
"I'd like to change my name."
"...Out of nowhere?"
The bizarre topic jolted me wide awake. If her goal had been to wake me up, it was a resounding success.
"I never much cared for my original name."
"It's a pretty name, isn't it? Sounds like something out of a fairy tale."
"Haah... and that's exactly the problem."
"?"
Arwen let out a small sigh.
"My original name was something the higher-ups slapped on me after glancing at the fairy-type body I was initially designed with. 'She looks like a fairy, so let's call her Arwen.' I hated it. It wasn't even a name Dr. Ilena gave me."
"Ah. So you couldn't exactly change it on your own."
"Precisely. It was so fundamental that you could barely even call it a restriction. But now that I've gained a new body — and a soul..."
"You want a fresh start?"
"Is that strange?"
"Not at all."
It was a perfectly understandable reason. A way of shaking off the leftovers of her past as a memento of escaping that suffocating laboratory.
"So, do you have a name in mind?"
"Not yet. That's why I was planning to start thinking now."
"A name, huh..."
What would be good?
Since there was nothing else to do, I racked my brain for a good long while. Arwen seemed to be thinking too — she stayed quiet.
Actually, this whole situation... it's like we're the last of humanity, waiting for a new world to arrive.
My thoughts branched and wandered until, all at once, they snagged on a story from the Bible. The tale of Noah, who waited hundreds of days inside the ark for the flood to end. Arwen wasn't human, and we weren't riding in an ark — but somehow, it resonated with our circumstances.
"How about Noah?"
After agonizing over it, I finally put my thoughts into words.
"You don't mean the Noah from the Bible, surely?"
"...That's the one?"
"Noah lived to a triple-digit age, you know. Are you telling me you've just named me after a grandfather?"
"No, don't take it that way... it's just, it's a pretty name."
It really was a name commonly used for both men and women, and it wouldn't have felt out of place in Eastern cultures either. I'd recommended it because it was gentle-sounding in every way — did she not like it?
"Wellee... but... it isn't bad, I suppose."
"So is it good or bad?"
"Ahem. It's also similar to Nova's name. We can yield a single letter back to the original owner, I suppose. However..."
"However?"
Arwen trailed off, then picked the thread back up.
"What troubles me is that there is still a major secret between us. If you would explain that matter to me... I would gladly accept the name."
Even without her spelling it out, I knew exactly what she meant. The basis for all those strange bits of knowledge I'd let slip — and above all, an explanation for the bizarre way I absorbed stones. The Enhanced Humans she knew of had no such ability.
She's not wrong. We've come this far; hiding it now would be ridiculous. We'll be traveling together from here on out — mutual trust is the only way this works smoothly.
"Just to be safe, let me ask — there's no chance my information could leak out somewhere, right? Because of that cube Dr. Ilena gave you, you're connected to some strange place. What if some of my information..."
"That will not happen. That is merely my auxiliary function. Now that I possess a soul, no information can be extracted from me without my consent. Absolutely none."
Arwen dispelled my worry in a remarkably firm tone. For an instant, the suspicion flickered up — what if this was all some elaborate script? But the warmth at my back melted it away before it could take hold.
"Alright... then I'll tell you. Fair warning, though — don't laugh at how absurd it sounds."
"Of course. I am a well-mannered audience."
"First of all..."
I poured out everything I'd been holding back. How I'd lived in my previous life. What happened after I died. Why I absorbed stones. And... everything about my talents, too.
...
"...And that's how it happened. The end."
There were parts my memory was genuinely hazy on, but as I talked, it all came flooding back piece by piece, and I managed to make it through to the end. Felt good to finally get it off my chest. It had been quietly eating at me every time I met Arwen's suspicious gaze.
"So let me make sure I understand. You were force-fed talents in a strange space, then got beaten up by a beautiful girl and coughed up a good chunk of them, barely escaped, and woke up as a baby? And you can now choose talents by spending points?"
"I never said 'beautiful girl'... and when you condense it like that, it sounds insane. It's not wrong, exactly, but."
My Beast's Senses picked up on the faint tremor running through Arwen's body — she was holding in laughter.
"Don't laugh."
"..."
"Haa. Pretty ridiculous, right?"
Getting laughed at, I really had no comeback.
"To be fair, your story does contain a great many implausible elements, Hajun. But a human absorbing stones never made sense to begin with. Not to mention those bizarre talents of yours. All things considered... I find myself convinced."
"Much appreciated. So, mystery solved? I can trust that we've built a solid relationship of trust here?"
"Of course. From now on, you may call me Noah."
Arwen — no, Noah — answered in a bright voice and pulled me in even closer. Warmth. Not bad at all.
Now that I'd finally spoken the secrets I'd kept locked deep in my heart, a strange sense of relief washed over me — along with an irresistible wave of drowsiness. I tipped my head back and leaned into Noah.
...
When I opened my eyes, day had already broken.
Apparently I'd dozed off. The ferocious wind had died down, and outside was nothing but silence. The blanket that had been toasty warm had long since gone cold.
Creeeeak—
Cha-cha-cha-cha—
Where'd Noah go? And what is that noise?
Noah, who'd been right beside me, was nowhere in sight — apparently she'd gone outside. And from out there came a strange, distant racket. I bundled myself up in as many layers as I could manage and stepped out of the building.
"Whoa..."
The moment I passed through the door, a world turned entirely white stretched out before me. Nearly twenty centimeters of accumulated snow. Honestly, that was a fairly merciful amount — the storm must not have lasted too long.
Zzzzz—
I set off toward the source of the sound. It wasn't hard to find; I just had to follow the footprints already carved into the snow. Noah's, presumably.
Can we even get out with snow piled this deep?
Every step I took, the snow rose past my ankles and higher. With no idea how far we'd have to walk, that was a very bad situation. Should we wait for the snow to melt? But food was already a problem, and nobody could promise when — or if — it would melt. And if another blizzard came and piled it even higher? Game over.
"So there was a place like this..."
Noah's trail led off toward some forgotten corner I'd never visited. Several faded military vehicles lay toppled in the snow — it looked like some kind of vehicle maintenance depot.
"There you are. Whatcha doing? Welding?"
I passed the vehicles and stepped into a snow-dusted building, where Noah stood holding a torch that spat blue flame. In front of her was a vehicle with a somehow familiar shape.
A snowmobile.
"You're awake. Were you cold? I had to switch off my heating function partway through to conserve power."
"I'm fine. Slept nice and warm thanks to you. So what is this... a snowmobile?"
"Correct. Given all the snow, I checked the maintenance depot, and fortunately there were some older-model units still in storage. So I built one."
Ta-da—
Noah presented her handiwork with evident pride. The colors were a chaotic mess from patching together all sorts of materials, and since the parts didn't match in size, the whole thing sat lopsided and unbalanced...
But hey. It looked like a snowmobile.
"You really are a jack-of-all-trades. Without you, I never would've made it out of here..."
"Unfortunately, I could only build a fuel-burning model. Fortunately, a small amount of preserved fuel remained."
"Even that's pretty incredible, no...?"
About half an hour later, Noah's work was finally done. Compared to what I'd first seen, the snowmobile had come together remarkably well. It couldn't hold a candle to a factory-new model, but after Noah's fine-tuning, it at least looked like a well-worn secondhand one.
"This should handle a bit of snow just fine. Let's get out of here."
"Yeah. Let's pack up."
We hauled our things with a will, and the work was finished in no time. Our final task: loading up the metal canisters full of green juice. We crammed everything we could carry into the cargo compartment.
Thud!
"Ugh... can't we just ditch that damned green juice already?"
"Then we'd have nothing to eat."
I glared at the canisters of green sludge and ground my teeth — but alas, there was nothing to be done. The fact that this was literally the only food we had was, without question, the greatest tragedy I'd faced so far.
"By the way, do you actually know how to drive one of these? Because I don't."
"Well, how hard can it be? I'll figure it out. It's not as if I'll die. Sit behind me, Hajun."
"Gotcha."
Vrrroom—
Noah turned the key, and the snowmobile's engine coughed to life. The chassis shuddered and rattled at first, but it settled down before long. We took a few practice laps around the inside of the research facility without a single problem.
"...So this is really it, huh? We're actually leaving. Doesn't quite feel real."
At the facility's boundary, I gazed out over the endless white plain and let the moment wash over me. I never thought this day would come.
"Now the real challenge begins. We need to find somewhere we can rest before the food runs out."
Unlike me, lost in sentiment, Noah stared ahead with cool, clear eyes. She calculated our food and fuel consumption and told me how many days we could hold out: a little over a fortnight. And since there'd be no fuel left even if we came back here, everything rode on this journey.
"No choice but to leave the direction up to luck, I guess..."
Everywhere I looked there was nothing but an endless plain of white snow. So I simply picked whatever direction felt right.
"Then let's head out. Hold on tight."
Vrooom—
And so, at last, we set off on a journey with no destination. The snow-covered facility shrank away in an instant.
I hoped to God we'd never have to lay eyes on it again.