Time flowed swiftly, and before long, true winter had arrived in the imperial capital.
These days, my very soul had been ground to dust in the hellish training of Second Prince Arthur, who had suddenly begun running amok with manic intensity. Then one day, a holiday finally came for me too.
“…Ugh, I’m gonna die.”
First of all, if I had to guess the reason my workout intensity had increased… it was Chloe.
‘My little sister likes muscular men.’
‘…Pardon?’
‘It means we must raise the training intensity further.’
‘Tha—’
‘Ian, between low-weight high-repetition and high-weight low-repetition, which is more beneficial for muscle training?’
‘…I’m not sure.’
‘The correct answer is high-weight high-repetition. Let us begin!’
I had no way of knowing what Chloe had told Arthur to make the training intensity spike so brutally overnight, but regardless, my thighs were screaming day after day.
Thanks to that, a rare and honey-sweet holiday like today felt all the more precious.
“Welcome, Ian!”
“I have arrived, Your Highness.”
As usual, I stopped by Chloe’s detached palace to spend time with her.
Victoria had asked me to, and I knew my survival strategy hinged on this side as well, so lately I had been spending an awful lot of time sticking close to Chloe.
“…….”
Cupping a warm black tea, I found my gaze completely stolen by the scene outside the window.
White, cold crystals fluttered endlessly from the ashen sky, covering the entire world in pure white.
It was the year’s first snow.
‘It’s snow.’
Honestly, I quite like snow.
In my previous life, when I lived in Korea, I had truly loved that unique quiet and cozy atmosphere of snowy days.
I certainly had terrible memories of cursing up a storm while shoveling snow on the military drill grounds, but even so, watching the snow pile up thickly outside the window had always been a pleasant sight.
However, from the perspective of Ian—the body I had possessed, born and raised in the warm southern Sterling Kingdom where it was mild all year round—this had to be a rare spectacle witnessed for the first time in his life.
I thoroughly hid the memories and familiarity from my previous life, putting on an act of gazing out the window as if entranced, like a country bumpkin from the south seeing ice crystals for the very first time.
“Wow…….”
As I let out a low exclamation and placed my hand on the window, Chloe, who had been reading a book across from me, raised her head.
Following my gaze to look outside, a bright and happy smile spread across Chloe’s face.
“Ian. Is this your first time seeing snow?”
“……Yes. My homeland, Sterling, is in the warm south all year round. Even in winter, rain falls instead of snow. I had only read about it in books; seeing actual snowfall like this is a first in my life. It is truly beautiful.”
At my answer, Chloe sprang up from her seat with a beaming smile.
“Good heavens! Then we can’t stay cooped up inside. Let’s go out and play in the snow together!”
“Yes? But it will be cold outside…….”
“It’s fine! I’ll make sure you’re bundled up warmly.”
Chloe ran to the wardrobe with excited steps and pulled out thick winter coats that fit both her and my build.
She personally slipped fluffy, oversized fur gloves onto my hands and carefully wrapped a warm fur muffler around my neck.
Receiving those affectionate and attentive touches, I let myself be led outside by Chloe’s hand.
#
Fully armed against the cold, we stepped out into the vast imperial garden, and a chilly wind whipped past.
The ground was already blanketed in a thick layer of snow, deep enough to sink past our ankles.
“Here, take this!”
Thwack!
“Ack!”
Before I could even take in the long-awaited snowy scenery while looking around the garden, Chloe hurled a packed snowball at my back from behind.
“Hahaha! You’ll get hit if you just stand there daydreaming!”
“Ugh!”
‘…Can’t fool imperial blood, resorting to a sneak attack like this.’
I pretended to be exaggeratedly surprised and lightly brushed the snow on the ground with my gloved hand.
Then, feigning wonder at the cold, crunching sensation, I opened my eyes wide and round.
“Wow…… it really is amazing. How does this ice powder fall from the clouds?”
“Hehe, isn’t it amazing? There are so many games you can play with snow! Snowball fights, sledding…… Ah, shall we make a snowman?”
“A snowman?”
“Yes! You roll snow up big and shape it like a person. I’ll teach you, so let’s make one together!”
Under Chloe’s lead, we dove into making a snowman.
Truthfully, even in my previous life, I had been terribly clumsy, and I had failed every time at making a snowman pretty and round.
Back in the army, making an igloo had been more fun than a snowman anyway.
What came out was genuine clumsiness rather than an act.
“Uh, Your Highness. The snow keeps crumbling instead of sticking together.”
“Ian, you can’t squeeze it with force like that! You have to roll it gently, like you’re coaxing it.”
At first, I fumbled around, scattering snow and ruining the shape while straining, but once I got the hang of it thanks to Chloe’s gentle guidance, I quickly began rolling a sizable snowball.
Though it was a calculated act for survival, the time spent touching and tumbling around in the crunching snow was genuinely enjoyable and delightful.
“Oh, it’s getting bigger now! Your Highness, I think my snowball is bigger than yours?”
“Shall we try putting them together? Heave— woa!”
“I just need to lift it, right? I’ll lift it. Hup!”
“Wow, so there was a point to training hard with Arthur! You’ve gotten so much stronger.”
The two large snowballs were stacked into one; we made arms from twigs and decorated the face with pebbles for eyes and a mouth, completing a fairly decent snowman.
“Ta-da! It’s our first snowman.”
Clapping her hands in satisfaction, Chloe untied the warm red muffler she had been wearing and carefully wrapped it around the snowman’s neck.
“Why are you wrapping that around it?”
“Because it might be cold. We can go back inside where it’s warm, but this friend has to keep standing out here. What do you think, Ian? We did a good job, didn’t we?”
“It is a very fine snowman, Your Highness.”
Standing side by side, we gazed at the large snowman wearing the red muffler, exhaling white breath as we smiled happily at each other.
#
A long while later.
In a corner of the imperial garden where silence had settled, the sound of two people’s footsteps crunchingly echoed.
It was First Princess Victoria, clad in a black uniform and a thick cloak, and her escorting knight with blonde hair, Amber White.
“Sigh…….”
Amber looked back and forth between the garden and the sky turned pure white, clicking her tongue with a cynical expression.
“More of that pretty garbage fluttering down from the sky again. Just thinking about having to deploy troops for snow removal on the drill grounds tomorrow because of these damn snowflakes already makes my head hurt.”
To Amber, an imperial knight practical to the bone, snow was nothing more than a terrible waste product to be cleared away.
Whether as the knight Amber White or in the impoverished days before she had become a knight, she had never had a good relationship with snow.
But despite her grumbling, Victoria, walking beside her, neither chimed in nor replied as usual, merely continuing forward in silence.
“…….”
How long had they walked?
Victoria’s steps, silently cutting across the garden, came to a sudden halt.
“Is something wrong?”
Amber’s gaze followed to where Victoria’s eyes had landed.
There, a large snowman someone had carefully made stood all alone.
Around its neck was a familiar red muffler wrapped affectionately.
Her younger sister Chloe’s muffler.
And the chaotic footprints of two people stamped all around it.
The identity of the other person who must have laughed while making the snowman together was obvious as daylight.
“…….”
Victoria quietly approached the snowman.
With a somber gaze, she looked at the red muffler fluttering in the cold wind.
Recalling that affectionate and warm scene where the man she and her sister loved so dearly must have spent time laughing together, a fine crack formed upon Victoria’s usually firm face.
A parting she had forcibly orchestrated.
She had repeated hundreds of times in her mind that it was the only way to save him, yet she could not perfectly control the stinging sense of loss and terrible loneliness seeping from deep within her chest.
Victoria raised her gloved hand, slowly reaching out unconsciously to stroke the snowman’s round cheek.
But just before her fingertips touched the cold snow, she paused in mid-air, then clenched her hand tightly and withdrew it desolately.
“Your Highness…….”
“……Let us go back.”
Victoria turned her back on the snowman with the red muffler without hesitation.
The Empire’s Sword Demon swallowed a deep, veil-like sorrow beneath her coldly hardened expression and silently walked back into the swirling gray blizzard.