Chapter
Life is just a boring cycle — repeating itself, year after year. Every season comes and goes the same way it always has.
Like every year, winter has come again.
"I'll be facing a shortage of food soon, so I must act quickly. Even if the snowfall begins, it will become impossible to survive this winter without enough provisions."
I have been living here for some years now. It has been lonely — deeply, quietly lonely — but there is nothing I can do about it, because this was a decision I made alone, and alone I chose to carry it. I had left my town, my home, and everyone I knew, searching for something I couldn't quite name. Tranquility, perhaps.
And I found it, in a way. It is beautiful out here in the mountains. A freshness fills my soul from the clean, cold breeze that sweeps down from the peaks. Every rising sun paints the sky in gold and violet, and with it comes a quiet, unnamed hope. What more could a man ask for than these natural treasures?
But slowly, what once felt like freedom has begun to feel like a cage. The fun that greeted me in the first month has dissolved into a never-ending loop of repeating days, repeating silences, repeating skies. Now, in ways I never expected, I feel the weight of loneliness — and with it, the irreplaceable importance of company.
I had heard on the broadcast that heavy snowfall was expected in these areas starting the following day. I had to get to the nearest market by any means.
Descending the mountain in snowy weather is both treacherous and life-threatening. One wrong step, and the white sea below will swallow you whole.
I made it back before dark and prepared a hot, steaming meal. The cold had already settled in, thick and biting, and there is no sense in wasting a beautiful winter evening without warming yourself from the inside. So I ate, slowly, savoring every bite.
"Now I should sleep. It is getting even colder. That blizzard outside sounds like a serious one. Let me turn on the heater."
A pause.
"Did I just hear someone sneeze outside? How is that possible? No one would be out there in this weather. It must be my imagination — nothing more."
Then came the knock.
A deliberate, uncertain knock on the wooden door of his house. He froze. His heart jumped into his throat. He waited, thinking it would stop. It didn't. Again — knock, knock — quiet but insistent, followed by a fragile voice asking, pleading, for shelter.
It was past midnight.
With trembling hands, he opened the door.
A woman stood before him, dressed entirely in white — her gown, her skin, her hair, all shades of pale silver and snow. She looked like she had been carved from winter itself. He was struck speechless — not just by her appearance, but by the impossible reality of her standing there at all. His mind raced with questions he couldn't organize: Was she a spirit? A lost traveler? A trick of his starving, lonely mind?
"Where have you come from?" he finally managed. "Are you even human? What were you doing out in that blizzard? How are you still alive in this cold?"
She blinked at him with calm, curious eyes and smiled, just slightly.
"Can't you ask one question at a time? I can barely keep up with your pace — and I've already forgotten what the first question was." She tilted her head. "If you don't mind, could you repeat them? But slowly, this time."
He stared. Then, somehow, he obliged.
She answered each one with a disarming, almost childlike honesty:
"I was going somewhere — I think — but I lost my way. I no longer remember where I was headed. As for what I am... I genuinely don't know. I was simply lost. And the cold —" she paused and looked at her own hands as if noticing them for the first time, "— for some reason, I don't feel it."
"Would you like something to eat?" he asked, regaining himself. "I have some food left. I can warm it up for you."
"If you don't mind," she replied softly, "could I have some ice-cold milk? Or cold tea, perhaps?"
He stared at her again, longer this time.
She looked like an angel and spoke like someone utterly removed from the ordinary world — gentle, strange, completely sincere. And that night, she slept without a blanket, unbothered by the bitter cold that had him piling on layers, and he lay awake watching the ceiling, wondering what, exactly, he had let into his home.
"Good morning, Mr. Whoever," she said cheerfully the next day, as though she had lived there for years. "I'd like to ask you for another favor — to let me stay a little while longer."
She paused, then added quietly, almost to herself:
"I know you think I'm strange — you've already decided that much. But the truth is, I don't know where I belong. I don't even know who I am."
He didn't send her away.
One afternoon, he switched on the heater, not thinking. The room's temperature climbed slowly back to something livable.
Then she screamed.
It was not a scream of fear, but of shock — raw and bewildered — as she looked down at her own hands, her arms, and watched in horror as they began to lose their form, dissolving at the edges, turning translucent.
She was melting.
He turned the heater off instantly. The cold rushed back in. She steadied herself, trembling, staring at her hands as though they belonged to someone else.
"What is happening to me?" she whispered. "Is this my first time? Am I even human? I don't know — and I'm frightened." Her voice cracked and she wept — cold, glassy tears.
He had no answers. He was just as lost as she was. Days passed, and the mystery only deepened, settling like snow between them — unexplained but somehow accepted.
"Are you ill?" she asked him one morning, noticing he'd left the heater off for days, his breath misting in the frigid air of the room. "You don't have to do this. I can stay outside until you've recovered. And did you know — I've been learning to cook from watching you."
"I can't leave a girl outside," he said simply. "Even if you don't feel cold, I would. My heart won't allow it."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"You silly man," she said, shaking her head. "You are far too kind for your own good."
One day, he came home to find her gone — not missing, but dissolved. She lay on the floor as a thin pool of still water, silent and motionless. His chest seized with panic. He searched frantically for something — anything — and found a jar. With desperate, careful hands, he collected every drop of her he could find, sealed the lid, and held it close to his chest.
He set the jar beside him that night. And the next night. And every night after.
"Is she still in there? Is she alive? What does it mean for someone like her to simply... stop?"
He had no answers. Only the jar. Only the waiting.
For a full year, he kept her close. He carried the jar room to room. He spoke to it sometimes, on lonelier nights. He told himself it was foolish. He did it anyway.
Then winter returned.
One quiet evening, the jar cracked open on its own — a sharp, clean sound in the stillness.
"Hey, Mr. Whoever!"
Her voice filled the room before he even saw her. She stood there, whole and bright, as if no time had passed at all, as if she had simply stepped out for a moment.
He couldn't speak. He crossed the room and stopped just short of her — hands at his sides, jaw working, eyes wet.
"I was so worried," he finally said, voice breaking. "You left without a word. I didn't know if you were alive. I thought I might never — that I had — I was so afraid I'd lost you."
She looked at him with an expression she had never worn before — something deep and unfamiliar stirring in her chest. Something warm, though warmth was not in her nature.
Was this man, she thought, truly waiting for me? Keeping me safe, all this time, without even knowing if I'd return? What did he ever get from it? What did I give him in return?
That season, they grew closer than either of them had words for. They talked for hours, shared small things, and built between them a quiet collection of memories — and everyone knows that shared memories are the soil from which love grows.
She remained a mystery to him, and to herself. But it no longer seemed to matter.
One night, she came to him and sat quietly for a long moment before speaking.
"You gave me shelter without knowing who I was. You gave me food, warmth, laughter, and patience — and in doing so, you gave me something I had no name for. You taught me what it means to feel. Not just cold or the absence of it — but really feel. Joy. Belonging. Being known."
She looked at her hands.
"I didn't know what I was when I arrived at your door. But you gave me emotions I had never known before. You made me love you — and I want to thank you for teaching me what love even is."
She paused, and her voice softened to almost nothing.
"There is something I've always wanted to do. I've wanted to walk to you and put my arms around you. To rest my head against your chest and listen to your heartbeat. To feel your warmth."
Her eyes glistened.
"But I can't. And perhaps that is the saddest thing I have ever known. I love you — and I cannot touch my love. Maybe in another life."
He wept quietly, not hiding it.
"I want to hold you too," he said. "More than anything. But if I do — if I hold you close and warm — you'll melt. And I cannot bear the thought of losing you. Not again. So I will love you from this distance, the only way I safely can — and I will go on loving you this way, for as long as you'll let me."
She smiled — that gentle, tilted smile he had come to know.
"You foolish, wonderful man. Why are you crying? I can't wipe your tears, and it breaks something in me that I can't. If you keep crying, I won't be able to bear it — because it makes me feel helpless. And I never want to feel helpless when it comes to you."
The season began to turn. The days grew just slightly longer, the air carrying the first whisper of a different warmth. He felt the change in his chest before the weather confirmed it.
He went to sleep that night heavy with a sorrow he couldn't put into words, knowing what the morning would likely bring. He woke late, and lay still for a long moment before he opened his eyes.
The room was empty. She was gone — not even a single drop remained. He searched every corner, every surface, every place she had ever stood. Nothing.
The grief that followed was not quiet.
"Why didn't I do something — arrange something — anything to keep her? Why?! She is gone. Will I ever see her again? Where are you, my love? Where?
It was my fault. My carelessness. My arrogance.
She loved me without reservation — without keeping anything back for herself — and I could not even do the simplest thing. She gave me everything she had, and I failed her. I failed as a human being. As a person. As someone who was supposed to care for her.
There is no reason to live this life. She was my only reason. And I let her go. No — I didn't let her go. I drove her away.
I must — I cannot —"
The grief broke something inside him that language could no longer reach. He went silent in a way that had nothing to do with quiet.
He woke in a hospital bed. White ceiling. Muffled sounds. A sterile, unfamiliar kind of warmth.
He rose without a word and walked out to the road, hollow-eyed, carrying nothing. A man came after him, concerned.
"Where are you going? You look as though the world has ended. You should be glad — you've made a full recovery."
He turned slowly.
"I lost my life. My purpose. My love. And you want me to be glad? Should I celebrate that I killed her — the only person who ever made this existence feel worth living? You know nothing of what I am carrying. Don't lecture me."
The man looked at him steadily.
"Sir — I think you may be confused. You've been receiving treatment here for over two years. Your family visits every weekend. They never stopped coming. The fact that you're speaking to me right now — clearly, coherently — is a sign that your mind has begun to heal. I am genuinely glad to say: you are going to be alright."
"What treatment?" he said slowly. "What are you talking about? What recovery? What is any of this?"
"Look at the name of the building," the man said gently.
He turned.
He read the sign.
MENTAL ASYLUM
By
Hemanga Kalita
