“Your hair had turned gray.”

Shit. This happens. It completely slipped off my mind.

“Is it?” I feign ignorance. “You’re seeing things from all that climbing.”

“No, it is! I know you know! Are you growing old? Will your back be cuffed and will you suffer from dementia soon?”

I sigh. Why does she have to be so curious? “Put it this way. There’s iron in the human blood. I use up a lot of hemoglobin in my blood. So there’s a sudden deficiency of iron in my blood. Without them, hair turns gray. Hence, my hair turned gray.”

“But that is impossible! Nobody can just simply deplete their reserve of iron.”

“I’m kinda a wee bit different. You already knew that, didn’t you?”

She lifts her hand to protest, but lowers it before hesitantly nodding.

“I’ll walk you through it,” I say. “Not sure if it’s interesting, though. You want to hear this stuff?”

“Everything is interesting if you explain it well enough.” She quivers from the cold. Her hands grab on her shoulders and her teeth chatters together. “I have not learned much about you, come to think of it.”

Yeah. Like I know much about you, whatever your name is.

“I’ll tell you as we walk down the hill. This is the worst place to stay. Stay behind me; it’s going to get ugly.”

There will always be a windswept side when one treads on a mountainous terrain, and for us, it’s on the way down. The wind on this side of the hill wants to toss us into the sky. The gusts shriek like a flock of black crows howling above the graveyard. I turn back to see the wind teasing Alice’s hair, fluttering it back and forth like a pennant. A few strands of hair even get into her mouth as she shields the wind with her arms.

“I stand corrected!” I try to shout louder than the noise of the gust. “This is the worst place to stay!”

Even though we’re basically strolling downwards, which is one of the easiest walking challenges one’ll ever get (barring the wind), she still pants uncontrollably. I ask, “You never go outside, do you?”

“Y-yes. You. . . probably walked a lot, right?” She asks me back. I nod. She keeps on inquiring, “Even if it snows heavily?”

“We have to. Every time we march, they set daily targets for everyone to obey. Suppose the army’s goal is to walk fifty miles a day, one will have to walk that much, no matter rain, snow or adverse weather. Complaining as much as you did won’t get anyone anywhere. People only care about results. Doesn’t matter how you get there as long as you get there.”

I hear swatting noises and assume she’s trying to rub on her face with her hands.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I cannot feel my face anymore.”

“Don’t complain. If you don’t exercise, your muscle will degenerate.”

“R-really?” Her voice shakes.

“Yes. If you keep going at this rate for another decade, you’ll be paralyzed.”

“Alexei. . . Don’t scare me.”

“I’m not threatening. If you’re not paralyzed then they’ll beat you up until you are. Hurry.”

“I shall be hurry right now. . .”

I turn back to see her trying to run. I snort. “Look at you, funny little thing. Do you hate being paralyzed that much?”

“Yes. Animals have four legs. Humans only have two, so I need to keep them well. If you are paralyzed, you have to sit around all day. Such is not enjoyable.”

“What kind of logic is that?” My nose wrinkles, “So now I shoot your leg then I shoot the dog’s leg. According to your logic, you will be crippled because you only have one leg, but a dog is fine because it still has three legs!”

“No!” She hisses. “Alexei! You must not harm the dog!”

“Why?”

“The Professor once raised a dog. He is a white-bellied Sibir Husky, the cutest puppy I have ever seen. He kept me entertained every day. A dog is a friend, you would be a bad person if you torture him.”

“So I can’t shoot humans. I can’t shoot dogs. After I go to the river to fish, I’ll release it back to the river and let you eat the basket then?”

“N-no. Fish is okay. . .”

“Why is fish okay?”

“Because if I do not eat anything, I will starve to death.”

“Good. At least you still understand such things. Do you know how to catch fish then?”

“No. I have never fished.”

“Ah. You’ve never been outside.” It was foolish of me to have asked in the first place. I’m pretty sure they have no river underground.

“Yes. And the pine hill. . . This is the first time. . . I-I want to go back here. . . When. . .” She winces and sneezes, and I know she’s out of breath. “When it is not too cold. I want to feel the beauty of the hill more clearly.”

“What’s beautiful about this place?”

“You. . . can only. . . appreciate beauty. . . when you are at ease. It will be most poetic.”

“If you come back in the summer, you will see the corpses underneath the snow.”

“W-what?”

“Just kidding.”

Spread in front of us is an endless space. Snow clings everywhere: all over the ground, on the conifer needles, mixing the two shades of white and pine green together. Anyone who’s been outside enough will understand that it has to have been snowing all week for the snow to get so thick. A couple of drab cliffs lying close to the tree’s base don’t cling to the snow, emerging like a few rough spots in an otherwise gloomy picture. It is said that red is the color of death, because it is the shade of fire. For some, the color of death is the grey—the color of ash. But in Russia, one knows that everything isn’t fine when you wipe the dew on the windowsill and see nothing but white outside.

When heavy snow falls, you know for sure that there will be thousands of people who cannot stand the endless soldier march with only a few small packages of dry food with them. Therefore, no one knows that in the past decades, how many people have lost their lives under the snow like this. But dying here isn’t that bad. If anyone were to die in the mountains, their bodies would never decompose, and they would lie for decades, showing their faces to the mountaineers traveling upwards and downwards, for them to laugh on their faces and deem them as weaklings who cannot stand the winter.

Vasiliy once told me the story in a book he read about a climber named George Mallory. Before he started his journey, he was beaming with confidence. When the reporter asked him why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he replied, “Because it’s there”. In the end, what happened? George Mallory died when he was only two hundred and fifty meters up on the mountainside, and his body was discovered seventy-five years later, in one piece. Well, at least his body is still intact.

His story taught me one thing: never underestimate what nature can descend upon us.

It doesn’t take long for the woman to start whining again, something that has become a habit of her. This time, she complains about how the atmosphere is ‘burning’ her nose. I rebut.

“Nobody calls the atmosphere burning, ever. It is just dry out here. You found yourself uncomfortable because you aren’t used to breathing outdoors.“

“The Professor said that. . . the air up high is thinner than air. . . on the ground. . .”

“That height you mention is a few kilometers up. This is just over a hundred meters.”

“My leg hurts too. . .”

“Mine don’t.”

When we reach halfway, she slumps on the ground, lays flat on the snow, and curls up like a cat. “Can we rest?” She keeps on shivering.

“Rest? We’ve only walked for two minutes. I know you aren’t familiar with harsh conditions, but listen. It’s not like I’m pushing you because I like to. But you have to get up, otherwise you’ll die.”

“D-d-die?” I don’t know how her face can get any paler than it was before, but it happened.

“Yes. From hypothermia.”

“But. . . you will help me, will you not?”

“Dumbass! What can I do to make you warmer? I can’t light a fire inside your stomach.” I sigh as I squeeze my forehead. “Fine, you can rest. But two minutes only.”

Her eyes light up as she mutters a ‘thank you’ along with something that I can’t hear clearly. I feel like she clearly outstayed the two-minute mark, but at least she manages to recuperate.

“Now we shall walk!” She declares with utmost determination and a runny nose.

“Sure. I’ll tell you my story for as long as you can keep walking.”

“I cannot wait.”

I begin talking as we walk side by side. “About how my hair turns gray, let’s say that it has something to do with my advanced fight mode. You know how normal people burn their sugar, fat, and protein, right? My advanced ‘burning’ process is like this: my cells will be thrown directly into blood vessels, muscle bundles and run through. . . hmm. . . what are they called?”

“Arteries?” Her voice is timid.

“No, not that. Gimme a sec. . . Ah, neurons! So they run through neurons, destroying themselves and generating heat. So normally, I burn calories and protein to stay active like normal folks, right? But if I bypass that complicated intermediate stage and steal energy directly from the cell, I’ll extract an impulse boost, increasing my reaction time and physical strength by at least twice as much as my average intake. You’re listening, right?”

“Uh. . .”

I take that as a ‘yes’. “It’s like coal, you see. It burns hot, reaching its climax in just a few minutes, and when it gets the most intense, it can smolder a large piece of meat in seconds. But when it reached its peak, coal loses heat extremely quickly. You always have to keep on adding craptons of coal to the furnace. Too bad human cells aren’t like coal; how are you getting so much to throw into the system? When humans consume food, they will get energy in the form of sugar and protein in just a few hours, right? But it takes up to a week for me to be able to regenerate the lost tissue.” I turn around. “You get all of it, right, or am I going too fast?”

“C-can you repeat it, but slowly?” She curls up inside her coat, “The wind is too loud, I cannot hear well. Sorry.”

I sigh. “The advanced ‘burning process is like this. . .”

I attributed her inability to comprehend to the noise of the wind, for after she has caught all the information, she strings the pieces immediately. She’s a bright bulb.

“So there will be more side effects to this, right?” She asks. “For instance, blood cells carry oxygen, so you might find it hard to breathe.”

“Correct. But I’m trained to endure it.”

“Will your hair revert to brown after a few days?”

“Yes. I’ll be fine.”

“I am sure you will be. You are the toughest person I have ever met.”

“Of course I am.”

“B-but. . . can I ask you one more question?”

I half expect what that question will be. “What is it?”

“How can your body gain direct access to—”

Roaring sounds suddenly appear from behind me, rushing towards us like the sound of water gushing down from the headwaters.

I grab her wrist. “RUN! DON’T LOOK BACK!”

She complies without objections. We fully understand what that noise signals.

An avalanche.