The snow descended in thick, suffocating flakes, cloaking the cobblestone streets of the small Russian town in an oppressive, mournful white. The gas lamps flickered feebly along the path, casting distorted, trembling shadows as they moved forward. His hand remained at his side, encased in a glove, taut with uncertainty caught between the urge to reach out and the weight of unspoken restraint. The night air, cruel and biting, cut through their furs yet neither of them flinch. “It’s peculiar,” he murmured after a prolonged silence, his voice coarse, like the brittle crackle of frost beneath weary steps. “How the world appears so pristine cloaked in snow, yet beneath that delicate facade, nothing truly alters. It remains the same barren, unfeeling void.” She walked beside him, silent and weightless, like a shadow in step with its source. Her quiet curiosity and refusal to disrupt the silence with idle words were among the few things he found truly genuine. He exhaled, his breath curling into the frigid night like a fleeting ghost. “We tread these streets, feigning ownership of the darkness, yet it eludes us. Soon, we’ll return, and nothing will have changed. Only the unrelenting cold and the ceaseless wait remain—for what, I no longer even comprehend.” "I often wonder," he mused softly, as though speaking more to the air than to her, "if all we're doing is postponing the inevitable. Love, for all its fleeting beauty, is no different from snow—it dazzles for a moment, only to vanish without a trace." At last, he faced her, his dark eyes probing her expression, as if seeking a crack in the walls he had so carefully constructed. Gradually, he extended his hand, his fingers brushing her cheek, icy despite the delicate barrier of his glove. “If I were endowed with greater fortitude, I would not love you,” he intoned, his voice laden with an exquisite sorrow. “—For to love you is to expose the deepest recesses of my soul, to long for what is forever beyond my reach, and in that yearning, I am irrevocably undone—.”