It was a dark December night, the kind where the air seemed to freeze in place, holding its breath beneath the weight of falling snow. Each flake drifted slowly, silently, like fragments of forgotten time. The neighborhood, once full of life, now lay in a quiet slumber, houses veiled in pale shadows. There was no sound, no movement—only the cold, creeping through the empty streets, giving the world an almost eerie stillness. At the center of it all stood a snowman, misshapen and imperfect, its branches twisted into arms that reached toward the sky. Its face, carved hastily, carried a crooked grin that seemed more knowing than it should. The snowman stood just outside a small house, light flickering faintly from within as if the warmth inside struggled to keep the night at bay. The house had been there for as long as anyone could remember, though no one recalled ever seeing who lived there. It had always just... existed. The snow continued to fall, muffling the world, and for a moment, it felt as if time itself had slipped into some strange, endless loop. Somewhere in the distance, the faintest of sounds echoed—perhaps the wind, perhaps something else. But in this quiet, snow-covered world, the lines between reality and dream blurred. The snowman remained, still smiling, as though it knew a secret hidden beneath the layers of snow. The snowman's grin seemed to widen as the night deepened, its shadow stretching across the street like a secret unfolding beneath the snow. Hours passed, but time felt irrelevant in the stillness of the neighborhood. Then, through the falling snow, a figure emerged—a young girl, bundled in an oversized coat, her small footsteps barely leaving a mark on the ground. She walked with an absentminded curiosity, drawn not by reason, but by something else, something inexplicable. Her eyes flickered between the snowman and the house, as if both held pieces of a puzzle she was meant to solve. Without hesitation, she pushed open the door and stepped inside.