The days bled together, marked only by the rhythm of snow. Morning and night looked the same, pale light bending through endless clouds, but with her beside him, the sameness felt full instead of hollow.
She told him her name was Hana.
The word was soft on his tongue, carrying warmth that clung long after it was spoken.
"And you?" she asked one evening, as they sat beneath a crooked tree glazed with ice.
He hesitated. The answer should have come easily, but there was nothing — no memory, no anchor. A hollow space where certainty should be.
Her hand found his, fingers curling. "Then choose one," she said gently. "Every story needs a name."
He thought of the snow, how it covered everything yet left the world trembling underneath. "Joon," he said finally. "Call me Joon."
Hana smiled, as if the name had always belonged to him. "Joon," she repeated, and the sound of it in her voice felt like the first proof of who he was.
Their world was simple, yet it brimmed with moments that glowed like embers. They built shapes in the snow, clumsy figures with crooked arms. They chased each other through forests of brittle trees, their laughter scattering flocks of silent black crows that always seemed to watch from above.
Sometimes, they would collapse side by side into the drifts, their bodies forming shallow craters in the white. She would point to the sky, tracing constellations in the clouds as though they were stars. He never corrected her. To him, if she said the clouds were stars, then they were.
One night, when the snow fell heavier than ever, Joon brushed the flakes from her hair, his fingers lingering. Her breath fogged between them, trembling. Hana looked up, eyes wide, lips parted slightly as though she had been waiting for something.
Joon leaned in before fear could stop him.
Their lips touched, hesitant at first — soft, uncertain. She exhaled against him, and for a moment, the cold world disappeared. All he felt was her warmth, the press of her mouth, the strange surge of rightness that made his chest ache.
When they pulled apart, the snow clung to her lashes like tiny stars. She was smiling, though her eyes glimmered with something else — something he couldn't name.
"It feels real," Joon whispered, almost to himself.
Hana's smile deepened, but her laughter that followed was faint, a fragile chime. Too perfect. Almost rehearsed.
He told himself not to notice.
The snow fell, endless and quiet. Their footprints vanished as quickly as they appeared. And still, they walked together, hand in hand, as though nothing beyond this white world could matter.
Yet sometimes, in the silence between their laughter, Joon felt the stillness pressing too heavily, like a question waiting to be asked.