Home/The Ice Age Came? And I Just Got Married?!/ch 2

Chapter 2.

The moment I witnessed the snowfall—

Beeeeep—

A sudden ringing in my ears struck, and I clamped both hands over them.

Then, abruptly, a novel I had read in my previous life came to mind.

A disaster novel called Survival Strategies for the Ice Age.

The final antagonist of that novel was Logan, who had repeated nine regressions.

His reason for regressing over and over was simple:

the death of his first love.

Whenever his first love died, Logan turned back time.

She perished in various ways.

Caught in a skirmish and killed by other survivors. Devoured by cannibalistic survivors. Abducted by mad scientists conducting human restoration experiments and subjected to live dissection.

The causes differed, but the culprit was always the same.

Humanity itself.

Logan grew disillusioned with humanity and came to despise them. At first, he tried everything to prevent the catastrophe—but it was futile.

He was always betrayed by humans, and his first love was always murdered.

Thus, when Logan regressed for the tenth time alongside his deceased first love—that was where the novel began.

It was his final regression. The mysterious ability that allowed him to turn back time was exhausted after the tenth.

In that tenth iteration, Logan had turned dark.

His hatred for humanity was immense, and that hatred reached its peak when his first love died once again in the opening of the novel.

He devised a plan for the extermination of mankind—and carried it out.

His first love, and fellow academy classmate: Eve Rania Everhart.

That was me.

"Let's hurry, Eve."

At Logan's voice calling my name, I snapped back to my senses.

I steadied my rattled mind and followed Logan into the passenger seat of the steamcar.

In the heart of the city, early spring snow was pouring down furiously. Within moments, the streets were buried in white.

Logan drove the steamcar himself.

"In three hours, the entire city will freeze over. These cars won't be drivable then, so we need to move fast."

I listened to Logan's words, gripping my seatbelt tightly.

Just how much driving experience did Logan have?

I mused on that as I gazed out at the snow-covered city.

Those who dismissed this as mere unusual weather were simply delighted by the pretty, cooling snow.

Quietly, I turned over in my mind the novel that had surfaced earlier—Survival Strategies for the Ice Age.

I could recall nothing of who I had been in my previous life.

Only the contents of the novel remained in my memory.

The story followed the protagonist, Aiden, as he built a survival base in a city struck by an unprecedented ice age, expanded that base, and sought a way to end the glacial period—a sort of territorial survival management tale.

And for this story to proceed, the antagonist Logan's first love—Eve—had to die.

More than that, the very world I had lived in all this time turned out to be a novel.

And I was a life fated to die soon?

Only then did Logan's enlistment make sense to me.

He had prepared for the coming future in every possible way, yet each time it proved futile.

But even so, he never gave up.

So in this life, he must have resolved to cultivate his abilities as a soldier.

Calmly assessing the situation in my mind, I fortunately regained my composure quickly. The survival instincts I had honed while drowning in debt proved immensely useful in moments like this.

Logan has regressed, and I know the future because I read the novel.

In terms of information, I had the upper hand. Logan only knew up to the ninth iteration.

"Logan, where are we heading?"

"Rosebrook."

"Why there?"

"Because Rosebrook is suitable for survival."

I had asked even though I already knew he would head for Rosebrook. I wanted to confirm whether it matched the novel's contents.

I can't die like in the novel.

My mind raced. I diligently recalled the novel's details.

As I watched the passing scenery and the increasingly violent snowflakes, piecing things together—

Rumble—

A low, rumbling roar shook the earth.

Logan glanced briefly at the side mirror, monitoring what was behind us.

"Avalanche."

He said it with utter nonchalance.

As if he had foreseen all of this.

Turning around, I saw a massive white avalanche collapsing from the southeastern mountain range of the capital.

CRASH—!

It looked as though an entire mountain was pouring down. A wave of snow, ice, and rubble surged toward the road at a terrifying speed.

It was far too close.

The avalanche swept people away in an instant. Those who had been rejoicing at the snow vanished beneath layers of ice and earth.

Screams erupted everywhere. Hell had unfolded.

I reflexively grabbed the half-lowered window. It was bitterly cold.

Startled, I let go—and the skin on my fingertips peeled off slightly.

I pulled out a handkerchief to wrap my hand and shouted at Logan.

"Logan, you need to floor it."

"Don't worry."

He accelerated.

My hands trembled uncontrollably, but I forced myself to stay calm and spoke to Logan.

"Logan, there's a tunnel under construction beneath the southeastern cliff. If we go through it, we can reach Rosebrook faster."

"What?"

Logan stared at me in surprise.

No one outside the project knew about that tunnel—it was still under construction.

But having read Survival Strategies for the Ice Age—or Ice Age Survival, for short—from an omniscient perspective, I remembered that a supporting character, not Logan, had used that tunnel to travel between the capital and Rosebrook.

"Left! Turn left now!"

Logan shot me a baffled glance.

"Logan, just a little further."

There was no time to hesitate, so Logan followed my words and immediately wrenched the wheel.

The very next moment—

BOOM—!

The avalanche swallowed the road we had been driving on just seconds before.

I gasped for breath, my body trembling, and stared ahead.

"Eve, can you give me more detailed directions to the tunnel?"

"Turn left in front of that cathedral straight ahead!"

At my words, Logan gave me a look of suspicion.

Given that we were both suspicious of each other, I wished he'd at least open his eyes a little wider. I still didn't feel like we were actually married.

RUMBLE—

Even amid all this, the snow and debris continued to chase us relentlessly.

"Damn it."

Logan pushed the speed even higher. Then, turning left in front of the cathedral, we saw the entrance to an underground tunnel, blocked off by a fence.

Remarkably, the mountain containing the tunnel was made of solid rock, so it was still holding firm.

"No choice."

Logan took his hands off the wheel. He must have lost his mind.

"Logan! Keep your hands on the wheel!"

"Trust me."

"Huh?"

He reached into the back seat, pulled out a large bag, and slung it over his shoulder. Had that been there all along?

Then he grabbed my hand, hoisted me up, and lifted me into his arms. He wrenched the wheel to the side and leaped out of the car.

The car was swallowed into the debris in an instant.

Just as the avalanche bore down on us, we tumbled into the tunnel.

RUMBLE—

And the entrance collapsed behind us.

Fortunately, the collapse of the entrance prevented the debris from pushing too far into the deeper reaches of the tunnel.

Drip—

And then, my nose began to bleed. I pulled the handkerchief away from my fingers and pressed it against my nose.

Logan, who had been holding me in his arms, sat up and looked at my face with alarm.

"Eve, are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine. I get nosebleeds a lot—it's chronic."

It bled at the slightest thing. I'd been frail since childhood.

For no apparent reason, whenever it felt like it, my nose would bleed—and the doctors always said nothing was physically wrong with me.

"Ah."

Logan reacted as if he already knew about my nosebleeds.

Then he took the handkerchief from me and helped stem the bleeding.

In my peripheral vision, I could see frost forming at the blocked entrance of the tunnel.

"We should go deeper inside."

I snatched the handkerchief back from Logan's hand. He looked at it wistfully for a moment, then nodded.

"Wait."

He rummaged through his bag.

He had even brought a bag—truly thorough.

"You knew this would happen from the start, didn't you?"

At my question, Logan's brow twitched.

But he didn't waver.

"Yes. I knew it would come to this. But the marriage registration was important—we couldn't skip that."

More important than survival? That didn't make sense. Something seemed a little off about him.

I recalled that at some point, the protagonist Aiden had called Logan a "lunatic over Eve," abbreviating it to "Lunatic."

This bastard really...

He was crazy about me.

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