Winter had tried throwing her body against the door, rattled it with her fists until they were bruised, and shouted until her voice was hoarse. But all of them proved to be no use, as only the cold silence and endless darkness accompanied her. When she realised that nobody would be there to rescue her, she had cried small, bead-like tears which quickly proceeded into a gushing waterfall and then reduced to small beads again. She hadn’t bothered to wipe her tears away, because nothing hardly mattered anymore when she knew she was going to die. Winter approximated that she must have been trapped in there for more than six hours, because if it were daylight it certainly didn’t show in the basement. The basement, she realised belatedly, of course there isn’t sunlight in the basement!

After more than eight hours, the cold finally caught up with her as she had only thrown on a thin sweater and track pants as part of her training attire. She curled on the cold, hard floor, feeling the cold biting her skin, chilling her bones and pulling her into a darkness she did not want to enter. She had forced herself not to sleep in fear that she could not open her eyes again. As she counted away the time, thoughts filled with regrets entered her mind. She regretted coming to the basement, leaving her phone in the practice room, not wearing thicker clothes, not visiting her parents as often, ignoring Moon Bin… An image of Moon Bin popped up unbidden into her mind. He was smiling at her with that puppy expression that Winter loved so much she wanted to hug him whenever he did it, but she had restrained herself every time. I shouldn’t have restrained myself, Winter thought miserably as her eyelids closed, I should’ve done what I wanted… Without realising it her body gave one last shiver before she gave in to the cold and was enveloped by the darkness.

“Winter!”