"Oh, dear," Miss Shin gasped as she dropped the tray with deformed cookies. She must have hurried to the entrance when she heard Kai open the door, so that she could scold him for being late. What she probably hadn't expected was to find him soaking wet and half his face to be covered in tiny scrapes.
She just stared at him wide-eyed when he slowly took off his shoes with a stony-faced expression. It was only when Mr Kim appeared that Kai finally felt the urge to react.
"Did you drop into the sea?" Mr Kim asked and sounded very much unconcerned.

"I did in fact not," Kai said indignantly and when Mr Kim looked as if he wanted to pull another joke, he added, "And it didn't rain either."

"Honey, what happened?" Miss Shin asked in that dishonest worried tone he really hated. They were at home, so she didn't have to treat him like family, not when she obviously only saw him as a burden. He sighed angrily as he walked past her, and she suddenly seemed to be struck with a realization. "Kim Jongin, don't tell me," she began and already sounded more like the scientist she originally was. "Did you find the Snow Queen?"

He went to the bathroom to get himself a towel, because he didn't feel like answering. He had to be careful about his words, if he wanted to prove that he wasn't as useless as Miss Shin and Mr Kim had thought. Although he had indeed found that so-called Snow Queen, he had also made a terrible mistake.

"Kim Jongin," Miss Shin said sternly, when he kept ignoring her. He slowly peeled himself out of his jacket and threw it on top of the other dirty laundry, before he attempted to go to his room. He had to change.
"Number 38, I am not joking here," Miss Shin said in an even more demanding voice. "I'm sure you understand the consequences of purposely witholding vital information, so I will ask you again. Have you found the Type A?"

It made him laugh, because it was just ridiculous. Here she was, trying to boss him around with her authority, although she had absolutely no clue.
"You were wrong, Professor Shin," he smiled. "You were wrong about everything. I found that person, but they were not at all the way you imagined them, which was frankly quite a disadvantage for me, because I of course counted on your words. Look where that got me." He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and exposed his arm that was covered in even more scratches. The splinters he couldn't stop had hurt his face, but the majority had hit his arms and legs.

Miss Shin frowned but didn't flinch, as if she didn't fully understand his point, and he hated how much it bothered him that she didn't seem to care about his wounds.

"That guy's a Type C," Kai said coldly. "That's the conclusion I reached. As an eyewitness, I mean."

Miss Shin didn't trust his judgement, so his only choice was to follow all the leads she had already declared to be untrustworthy. Like a maniac he had gone to all the spots where people had supposedly sighted snow. He put them all into a map, until he slowly noticed something like a pattern.

Most of the sightings, just like the very first one, when the lady with the dog had seen someone crawling out of the water, were centered around the harbour, specifically around that part of the town that was traditionally inhabited by the fishermen and their families.  There were barely any sightings in the better parts of town.

Kai figured that Mr Kim must have brought Miss Shin a couple of stories that made it sound as though they were dealing with a Type C in that area, and that she might have ignored them simply because she didn't find Mr Kim to be very reliable. To her he was just an amateur, who didn't know what to look for, so his stories had probably seemed off. They obviously didn't fit into her pattern. Type As couldn't make it snow.

But Kai believed, or rather, wanted to believe, that he was right. Because of Mr Kim's work they lived relatively close to the harbour, so it wasn't difficult for Kai to sneak out in the evening or the early morning. On his way home from school he always made a detour, blindly following the idea that he would find that ominous Snow Queen if he just spent enough time around her home.

And then, finally, it snowed.

At first he didn't even notice it. The evening was quiet and relatively warm, although it was already mid-autumn. He heard the soft noise of the waves, and the winded tasted of salt, when he slowly walked along the lonely street between the small, old houses. He sighed and looked up at the darkening sky, when the street lamps were . Small shadows formed in the light of the lamp on the other side of the street. It was too late for insects and the shadows moved in a regular rhythm, so he held out his hand to see whether it was raining. It was then that he realized it. Snow. Snow falling down on one single spot. And a figure in the shadow of a low wall.

His proof had finally appeared in front of his eyes. A Type A could become ice, yes, but only a Type C could make it snow. He had been right.

And in his euphoria he became reckless. Like a blind man he teleported himself across the street, not minding whether anyone could see him. He appeared right next to the figure in the shadow. They wore a hooded jacket, so he couldn't see their face, but just the fact that this was a normal person, wearing normal clothes, made him even more excited. Type As didn't look normal.

After that everything went wrong. A snow storm surrounded them. Icicles hit him and forced him on his knees as he frantically tried to shield his head. The Type C walked away, and when Kai tried to teleport again, he was thrown back and passed out.

Kai had failed, because he had acted like an idiot by showing his target that he not only knew about them, but also was like them.
Still, he had also gained information that shattered Miss Shin's thesis.

One, the 'Snow Queen' was a Type C, who could make it snow.

Two, the 'Snow Queen' was a boy, who probably was scared of his own powers.

Before Kai lost consciousness he had seen his face and the panicked expression in his eyes. "Who the hell are you?" the boy had asked in a voice that was barely audible inside the storm. "What do you want from me?"

Kai had won. In a way.