The blizzard howled on without end.

In the vast, empty crystal palace of ice, there was only an old man, a flower seedling, and a fire.

Cheng Weicai sat in quiet contemplation, watching the leaping flames before him.

The bud was still biting him.

It had grown to the size of a fist now—and was still growing larger.

Unable to withstand its repeated gnawing, Cheng Weicai had already lost a layer of scales from one arm, so he switched to the other and continued letting it bite.

The game had gone on for more than twenty-four hours. A weight of worry pressed down on Cheng Weicai’s heart. He didn’t know how his companions were faring, didn’t know whether they had retrieved the swords—and if he was missing from the count, would Weiwei be able to hold on?

Time…

*Go faster, please.*

He prayed silently.

……

The bud was getting bigger and bigger. It was restless and acutely sensitive—apparently certain by now that Cheng Weicai wouldn’t fight back—and would attack him at random intervals.

Not just his arm, either. It had started biting other places too, seemingly for its own amusement.

As long as it didn’t threaten his life, Cheng Weicai let it be.

Six hours came again, and the Snow Queen arrived on schedule.

This time she lingered longer, watching the peculiar dynamic between Cheng Weicai and the bud. A complex emotion surfaced in her eyes.

*Why was he able to do this…*

That thing was clearly a monster. How could he have such boundless patience for it?

Cheng Weicai got up to add more wood to the fire. The bud bit down and refused to let go, so he reached down from the floor and picked up a handful of the shed scales, then deftly stuffed them into the bud’s mouth—a full mouthful of fish scales, which it began chewing with a smacking sound.

“Have you remembered anything?” Cheng Weicai asked, picking up firewood as he spoke. “Does seeing the rose bring back any memories?”

The woman stood still where she was, her face like cold frost—a sculpture of ice and snow without feeling.

“No,” she replied coldly. “…Nothing comes back.”

Even if something did surface, it was all… memories she did not wish to face.

Cheng Weicai added wood to the fire pit, then poured a little more soil around the rose. “It looks like it might grow taller and larger than an ordinary rose,” he said quietly. “In that case, it will need to be repotted again… The bud not opening for so long may also be because the pot is too small for the roots to develop properly…”

He glanced toward the door and sighed: “Looks like I’ll have to go back out and find a more suitable pot.”

Without delay, Cheng Weicai set off immediately.

He dragged out the door plank from last time, lashed ropes to it, hoisted it onto his back, then pushed the great doors open and stepped out into the wind and snow—

Left behind in the vast palace were only the Snow Queen, and the rose flower still contentedly chewing on fish scales.

She watched it quietly.

…What had it stirred up?

At first, there had always been a feeling of having forgotten something important.

She couldn’t remember who she was. She didn’t know why she existed, or why she had never been able to leave this castle.

Her body was cold as ice, and her heart seemed to have become ice too. Only when a player wandered in would hope flare briefly to life within her.

One time after another, she had players grow roses for her.

Maybe it was the system’s design—no particular reason for it—the setting told her to do it, so she did.

She had countless flower seeds, yet could not grow a single one herself.

Watching a flower sprout, watching it grow—fragmented images had begun surfacing against the blank sheet of her memory, shards of a former life…

In those memories, she had gotten married… become pregnant… given birth to a daughter.

Her daughter was soft and tiny, nestled in her arms like a sweet little angel—snow-white skin, soft hair, a pair of dark, bright eyes, wide and shimmering as she took in the world. In that moment, she had sworn to give her daughter the finest of everything this world had to offer.

Even though she herself was no queen, she would give her daughter a princess’s life.

—