The IV tube swayed faintly along the inside of his arm. White ceiling. Uniform fluorescent light. The smell of disinfectant and heating mingled together—the same scent found in any hospital. Rei=Cross lay with his eyes open, feeling the thin light that filtered into the hospital room shift with the passage of time. Tromsø sat at sixty-nine degrees north latitude. In December, even during daylight hours, the world held a faint dimness, and the boundary between day and night blurred into ambiguity. Third day of hospitalization. His left leg, immobilized in a cast from hip to knee, pressed down with a dull, heavy weight. A fracture of the left tibia—a simple but troublesome injury sustained when he fell to the bottom of a crevasse. The Norwegian Coastal Rangers had transported him by sledge and then by helicopter to Tromsø University Hospital. Third floor of the orthopedic ward. His attending physician was a thin man in his forties who had repeated the same questions three times over three days—"Were there any moments when your consciousness grew hazy?" "Any pain in the head?" "Did you maintain adequate hydration during your solo expedition?" Each time, Rei answered with minimal words. No problems. No effects to the head. He had taken water. Whether the attending physician sensed something, Rei could not say. Only that the doctor's eyes, each time, drifted unconsciously toward the overcoat hanging beside the bed. What lay in its inner pocket, the physician did not know. Should not know. The locker key was in his hand. The coat had been moved there. The film canister and that metal plate, together. Helge Strand—communications chief at the Norwegian Polar Research Institute, the man who had received Rei's beacon signal and organized the rescue team—had sent a brief memo two days ago. Not a direct visit to the hospital room, but a message passed through a nurse. The memo's contents were concise. *Attempted spectral analysis of recovered object. Unable to identify composition.* Rei had read that memo three times before folding it and pushing it beneath the sheets. Composition unknown. Which meant the research institute already knew of the metal plate's existence. Either it had been discovered in the coat while Rei lay unconscious during transport, or someone had confirmed it in the chaos immediately after rescue. Either way, it amounted to the same thing. The speed at which information leaked—Rei calculated it quietly in his mind. The institute knew. If the institute reported to upper levels, how long before it reached the ears of the Fortreder Committee—the joint investigative committee of the Norwegian government and the Arctic Council that had compiled the official report on the Alva incident five years prior? Rei had already researched that the committee's chair, Sigrid Blåten, currently held the position of deputy undersecretary at the Norwegian Ministry of Defense. Time was not abundant. A nurse's voice drifted down the corridor and faded. Rei opened the fingers of his left hand and gazed at the ceiling. The weight of the cast. This immobilized state. Fredrik's film. Fredrik's scrawled notes. The faintly warm air flowing from that opening. Beneath the ice, one hundred twenty meters down. *Got it. Take a look.* Fredrik Vålnes's final written words formed repeatedly in his mind. Seven years ago, on the ice of Greenland, back to back against a storm through the night—Rei had recalled that moment many times over these three days. They had spoken of nothing special. Only confirmed each other's existence through the sound of breathing. That had been enough. That had seemed enough at the time. Just past one in the afternoon, the door opened. There was no knock. Rei turned only his face. Not the attending physician. Not a nurse—that much was apparent at a glance. The figure standing backlit by the corridor light wore a paper visitor's badge on her chest, the kind hospitals distributed to guests. Whitish blonde hair—more precisely, silver, the color shifting with the angle of light—was bound at the back of her head. She wore a simple dark green outer coat. Her height was likely around one hundred sixty-eight centimeters. Her posture held no wasted motion. A face nearly symmetrical, difficult to read for emotion. Her sharp, narrow eyes regarded Rei quietly. Emerald green irises. On her right ear, the faint trace of a small communication implant. "Rei=Cross," Her voice was low, restrained. Not a question but a statement cast in the form of confirmation. "That's right," The woman nodded once and pushed the door closed with her hand. Then she crossed the room and pulled out the simple chair beside the bed. Before sitting, there was a moment—a pause where she seemed to measure the distance between herself and Rei. Not tension. Calculation. She was choosing where to sit. "I'm Ivarna Lund," The moment her name was spoken, something connected in Rei's mind. Ivarna Lund. The Alva expedition—officially titled "Seventh Arctic Geological Structure Survey Expedition"—radio operator. During the disaster, she had been stationed alone at the coastal relay station "Post Karina" at the southern edge of the Svalbard ice field, maintaining communication with the main team. Among all the bodies that failed to surface despite seventy-two days of large-scale search operations, she alone had been rescued as the sole survivor. Her name appeared in a fragment of Fredrik's notes. *Lund at Karina can be trusted.* And there she stood. Rei's expression did not shift. Instead, his mind began to calculate. From Post Karina to the coastal ranger station, forty-seven kilometers in a straight line. The actual hiking route, accounting for glacier detours, was estimated at sixty-five kilometers. Considering winter equipment and the meteorological conditions of that time—records showed average daily temperatures of minus thirty-one degrees, with blizzards reducing visibility to fifty meters or less for three consecutive days—the probability of solo arrival was statistically near zero. This woman had not been rescued. Or at least, not in the way the official record claimed. She sat in the chair and withdrew a folded slip of paper from her coat pocket, placing it on the table. A newspaper clipping. A short article of about thirty lines reporting Rei's beacon signal transmission and rescue. "I came from Stockholm. Night flight," No further explanation followed. Stockholm to Tromsø was approximately three hours by plane. A night flight meant arrival the day after reading the article. She had learned of Rei's discovery and moved immediately. Both her speed and her economical manner of explanation—neither belonged to someone motivated by mere curiosity. Outside the window, a weak wind scraped against the building's wall. In this season, Tromsø never lacked wind from the sea. Silence fell. Rei returned his gaze to the ceiling and took a breath. In this situation, he quietly assembled the most effective strategy. To draw out what the other person held, he needed to offer something first. Not an exchange of information, but a disclosure—through the other's reaction to it, he could reverse-engineer the contours of what she possessed. He would offer something within the range of what he knew, something she likely already knew existed. "A photograph film turned up," He spoke, his face still turned toward the ceiling. "It was in a waterproof case. Twelve exposed frames. Eight images of the subglacial structure—the artificial construction that exists one hundred twenty meters beneath the Svalbard ice field—showing its exterior and internal passages. The remaining four frames contain traces of light sources emitted from within the structure. Long exposure. Deliberately photographed," He paused. He observed Ivarna's reaction from the edge of his vision. Her expression did not change. The emerald green eyes remained fixed quietly on him. But—her right hand's fingers bent slightly on her knee. A motion as if she had begun to clench her fist, then stopped midway. That, Rei saw. "And there's a metal plate," The moment he spoke, Ivarna's breathing stopped for a beat. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. She drew her next breath as if nothing had happened. Trained restraint. Her history as a military communications operator had made it a habit to suppress emotion at the level of breath itself. But the silence had stretched one second too long. Rei etched that one second into memory. "The film hasn't been developed," She spoke words carrying information for the first time. Not a question but a certainty. "That's right," "After development?" "I haven't decided yet," It was not a lie. Not that he hadn't decided, but rather that he was still withholding decision—that was the precise formulation. Ivarna did not answer. Instead, her gaze fell to the clipping on the table. She was not looking at the article. Her eyes held the expression of someone organizing thoughts. "How far do you intend to go?" Her voice was quiet. Not an attack, not a threat. Yet the question carried unmistakable weight. Not an attempt to extract information—this was a refusal to disclose. By confirming the other's resolve, she was deciding whether to speak. Rei raised himself slightly on the bed and looked at Ivarna directly. "To find out what Dr. Fredrik Vålnes saw," A short, hard answer. Ivarna's eyes narrowed slightly. Not an emotional shift but a focusing motion. "What happened five years ago—within whatever range you can speak of," "The range is mine to decide," It came back immediately. A correction of his phrasing. A clear boundary: you do not set the conditions. "Only the night of the main team's final communication from Post Karina," She continued. Her tone of voice unchanged. Matter-of-fact, unadorned. "The main team's final transmission came forty minutes behind schedule. The reason was unclear even then. In the received voice, the quality of the team members' voices had changed," Rei said nothing. "It was not fear," She paused there, as if re-confirming the name of that emotion. "It was not fear. It was the voice of certainty. The voice of those who had seen something," Silence spread through the hospital room. Someone's footsteps passed in the corridor. The smell of disinfectant drifted faintly through the ventilation. Rei pressed further. "After that, communication with them—" "I won't say more than that," She cut him off. But not in anger—it was a decision. "Not now," She added those final two words quietly. Ivarna stood. She returned the chair to its original position and adjusted her coat. The motion held no waste. The movement of someone whose military habits had seeped into her body. Rei watched her. "Whether you truly have the resolve to proceed," She spoke while moving toward the door. She did not turn back. "I'll determine that first," The door opened and closed. The corridor light spilled in for a moment, then vanished. 　＊ Rei looked at the ceiling. The structure of having one's resolve assessed by another—it did not take long to understand what it meant. To entrust the correctness of one's judgment to another. That was something he had kept furthest away since K2 three years ago. Lucas Berg. They had been roped together. He had been beside him. Yet Rei could not reach him. From that day forward, Rei had clung to solo expeditions. His refusal to climb with others did not stem from a preference for solitude—it was rooted in a deep distrust of himself, born from the fact that he had failed to save someone who stood beside him. Perhaps not from fear of endangering others. But from a quiet despair at the fact of himself: that he was a man incapable of saving others. And yet logic, tonight, led to a single conclusion. Without the information Ivarna Lund possessed, he could not reach Fredrik's truth. That "voice of certainty" she had heard