The snow persisted through December, covering the city in a white stillness that dampened even the constant hum of campus activity. The students walked more deliberately now, the mist of their breath curling upward into the cold like wires of silver plucked from fires far away. The world itself was held suspended on a drawn breath, between the weariness of the just-ended semester and expectation of the next. This stillness, this quiet above the city, hummed deep inside Minjae.
He was not cold. Not at all. The cool, crisp air just seared off the fog jammed in his brain, leaving it stripped of disclutter and distraction so that his mind remained razor-sharp and uncluttered. Under winter's cover, his thoughts were plain, stripped to the essentials, clear enough to slice through the debris that so ruthlessly burdened it.
He preferred that. No, better yet—he required it.
He sat alone one afternoon at the college library, the gentle hiss of warmth from the heater humming low in the distance, pages rustling softly beneath his touch. An open book on behavioral finance lay across his lap, filled with charts, graphs, and lines charting out human errors in the markets like the shadowy outlines left behind by ancient runes.
His eyes darted over the pages, absorbing all the tales of greed and fear, of human patterns acted out blindly—reflections of his own. The unvarying unpredictability of humans enthralled him. Their illogical dancings around money, power, and fear were a mystery he could never crack, but stretching out to keep him grounded, his mind breathing.
"Still reading about why people make bad money decisions?" a low voice taunted over his shoulder.
He glanced up, and there was Hana, holding a pile of solid, richly colored art books against her chest. Her smile was easy, warm, and just a little wicked.
"Still sketching things nobody can understand?" he retorted, a flicker of amusement dancing at the edges of his mouth.
She laughed, falling into the chair beside him without reserve. "That is the point. I paint so that I can attempt to make sense of the nonsensical—feelings, randomness, people. Sometimes colors are better at speaking than words are."
He watched her for a moment, the way she cradled the books in her hands like precious things, the way her eyes sparkled with the intractable curiosity of an artist.
They sat in silence afterwards, the air between them neither vacant nor awkward. Just easy.
With a hesitation, she moved closer, voice falling softly. "Do you ever wonder why you're so attracted to it all? The numbers, the markets, the people?"
Minjae's gaze went back to the book, but his mind wandered beyond its pages. "I guess," he said slowly. "People intrigue me. How they behave. What they are afraid of, what they fight over or freeze for. How they hide behind walls when they are opened up, or how they break open when they are pushed too hard."
She leaned her head to the side, thoughtful. "More of a question for a philosopher than a finance major."
"Perhaps not so different," he whispered, his gaze following the path of a line on a graph plotting fear and market unpredictability. "Money is a language that people speak to tell their stories. or conceal the stories they refuse to tell."
Hana smiled, a smile that seemed to read unstated worlds.
Later that evening, Minjae's phone vibrated softly against the top of his desk. Jiha's name blazed on the screen, tentative, fragile. He picked it up, voice low and flat.
"I just… I needed to hear a voice that wasn't lying to me about everything being all right," she whispered, her voice held in the frozen night air, almost a sigh.
He said nothing, but listened. Allowing the silence to accumulate, a refuge through which the truth could seep.
"There are moments," she continued, her voice cracking, "when I feel like I'm going around in circles. Like everyone's moving forward, but I'm rooted…"
"Stranded in the same place, the same mistakes."
He shut his eyes, imagining her there—all alone in her bedroom, the faint sheen of a streetlight outside her window, the quiet weighing around her like a shroud.
"You're not alone in that," he finally said. "It's all right to feel trapped. Sometimes you must just be still and wait for a moment when the world catches up with you."
A hesitation, then a gasp. "Thanks," she panted. "I didn't know I needed that as badly as I did."
That was all Minjae needed. The harsh bluntness on the other end of the phone reminded that no matter how alone the winter seemed, connection existed, tenuous but true.
The house was quiet, too. His parents sat together at the kitchen table, under the dim light of the overhead fixture, digging through travel brochures. His mom ironed out a crumpled sheet of budget vacation packages, finger tracing along a line of locations.
"Somewhere quiet would be just fine," she said quietly, to herself, actually. "Some place where the noise is blown away."
His father nodded, his voice firm but low. "You've worked hard this year. We should reward ourselves with something quiet."
Minjae managed a small smile, the pressure of duty suffocating him. "Perhaps somewhere along the coast," he said, his mind reaching for vast distances and the tang of sea air. The empty space, the open sky—that was what he most desperately needed. Somewhere his thoughts could stretch.
Later, by himself in his small room, Minjae sat at his desk in the warm, golden glow of a small lamp. Dark, long shadows crossed the tidy pile of papers and the screen of his laptop, on which an article about exhibiting signs of vulnerability during the initial stages of the U.S. mortgage-backed securities market flashed.
All was arriving earlier than he had expected. Shudders beneath the surface were increasing. But he did not flinch.
He sat. He waited.
He settled into his chair and allowed the stillness to envelop him like a shroud.
There were no burning flames on the horizon. There were no great wars waging in the skies above. There were no mighty wings beating through dense clouds.
There was only the deep thud of winter, the still beat of ordinary life going on, out of sight and unforgiving.
But behind the silence, something deeper vibrated—something of an old cadence, an awakening of powers both known and unknown.
Minjae—who had once been called Valmyros—sipped it in, allowing it to soak deep within him as the snow melted gently against his window.