A nano beat of pulse rising and dying in each passing second. Sooyoung's nape is covered in freckles from the winter's cold. One of her mittens lay with palms spread over blankets of snow. Head leaning over stiff body half covered in white, her beret keeps her hair away from her face.

He's alive, even though purplish with frail, pencil arms, dried blood below his chin. A graphic tee and cargo pants are the only thing covering him beside snow. Her fingers sweep through black bangs, sweeping it off his eyes. He's asleep calmly, contradicting his body in ruins.

She notices how he looks like an elf.

Sooyoung is thirteen and when she slips the boy's limp arm around her shoulders, and he is surprisingly light. 

It is the first time she carries someone home like this. Someone, not something, like that deer she found, hurt and unable to move. She always finds broken things and animals by the edge of the forrest. But it's the first time for her to find an actual human being.

Curiosity always tickles her under her stomach to delve deeper into the woods, but the trees are painted in a dark shade of green and they cram into each other, making it difficult for sunlight to crash and cracks a space between it. Therefore, Sooyoung only lingers around the entrance until the middle section of the forrest. She doesn't want to break so many rules her mother sets.

Looking down at the boy she is holding, freezing with trembling lips, it is a miracle how he is still alive. It must be difficult if he just escaped from the forrest with its enigmatic and dark secrets. 

The sting of Christmas' coldness seeps into her cheeks, lighting it in a shade of Rudolf's nose and she carries the brui