Chapter 1
In the extreme cold apocalypse, my husband Dulce stripped me naked and, together with his "first love", threw me onto a balcony at -94°F.
Holding his mistress while wearing my fur coat, he pointed at me and cursed.
"Esther, your skin is thick and you’ve got plenty of fat. Don’t compete with Aylin for clothes."
I froze alive into an ice sculpture.
I watched helplessly as they burned my wedding photos for warmth inside and slept together beside my corpse.
Then I was reborn. As strange snow began to fall outside the window,
I watched Dulce pack up the last of our hand warmers and bring them to the neighbor across the hall.
“Esther, Aylin is weak. Stop being so selfish!”
I smiled, opened the door for him, and sent him to his death.
Then I turned around and slipped into the underground bunker I had built with my entire savings, sealing the only entrance shut.
As he wailed outside, “Honey, I was wrong! Let me in! It’s minus fifty out here!”, I was eating hot pot and singing, blowing a puff of warm air into the ventilation shaft.
“Get lost. Don’t disturb me. I hear friction creates heat, so go rub against your beloved Aylin until you both die.”
*****
"Esther, what are you spacing out for? Come help me already!"
His nagging stabbed into my ears like a rusty nail.
I suddenly snapped back to my senses, my gaze pulling away from the strange scene outside the window to the face of the man standing right in front of me.
Dulce, my husband.
He was the monster who sent me to my death with his own hands in my last life.
Right now, he was holding tight to the last two boxes of heating pads we had left in the house.
Sweat was starting to form on his forehead from the strain.
"I’m talking to you! Aylin’s heating broke, her little apartment is already cold enough as it is."
"I was taking these two boxes of heating pads over to her to help her out."
Dulce casually took control of the supplies that belonged to me, as if it were only natural.
His voice dripped with that smug, self-righteous charity, like he was doing me a huge favor, when really, he was signing my death warrant.
I scanned the room, feeling that strange mix of familiarity and alienation.
In my previous life, it was at this exact time, the heavy snow had just begun to fall.
Dulce quickly took the supplies from our home and went to please Aylin.
I tried to hold him back, telling him these were all we had left and we needed to save them for emergencies.
And what happened?
He got right in my face and yelled at me for half an hour, calling me cold-blooded, selfish, and heartless.
He kept ranting about how tough it was for Aylin, living all alone in a foreign city.
In the end, he just took them anyway.
As for me, with no heating supplies left in that frozen hell, I got hit with brutal frostbite.
I got bad frostbite. My hands and feet became infected and started oozing.
In the end, he tore off my clothes and threw me out onto the balcony, leaving me to freeze to death.
"Esther! Are you deaf or what?"
Seeing that I didn’t move, Dulce frowned deeply, his tone growing even harsher:
"It's just a couple heating pads. Why are you acting like someone died?"
"Come on, you’re tough, with thick skin and plenty of fat. Missing a few won't kill you."
"Aylin’s not like you. She’s delicate, one little chill and she’ll get sick."
I looked at his fake, hypocritical face and suddenly laughed.
But the smile didn’t reach my eyes. There was only a deep, chilling cold.
"You're right. I can handle the cold."
There was even an oddly compliant tone to my words. "Since she's so fragile, you'd better hurry up and take them over."
"Don't let your precious Aylin freeze."
Dulce was taken aback for a second.
He clearly hadn't expected me to agree so easily, not even a single word of protest.
But he quickly put on that condescending, self-satisfied look, like he was doing me a huge favor.
"That’s more like it! You need to be more broad-minded. Don’t worry. Once the snow stops, I’ll go to the supermarket and buy a few boxes to replace it, double what I took."
Snow stopping?
Inside, I couldn't help but laugh coldly.
This frozen hell would last for ten whole year until humanity was nearly wiped out.
The snow would never stop.
"Sure, I'll be waiting," I said, locking eyes with him, every word slow and deliberate.
Dulce didn’t catch the sarcasm in my words. Hugging the box, he rushed to the neighbor’s place like an eager lapdog, as if looking for praise.
The door was left open, and Aylin's soft, flirty voice floated over from next door.
"Oh, Dulce, you're so sweet to me... But if you give me all your stuff, won't Esther get mad?"
"Her? She wouldn't dare! I'm the boss in this house. She's just a drama queen. Don't worry about her!"