“Plop.”
The brick-frozen boxed meal dropped to the ground, but Isac had no time to pick it up.
He hurried to the girl’s side and crouched down.
The girl’s complexion was deathly pale, her eyes shut tight, her lips tinged with an unhealthy shade of purple.
Yet even so, none of it could mask her astonishing beauty — paired with the swirling wind and snow around her, she looked like a princess born of a snow kingdom straight out of a fairy tale.
What a magnificent face.
Wait — never mind how good-looking she is for now.
No amount of beauty matters once a person’s dead.
Isac first pressed his fingers against the left side of the girl’s jaw — pulse weak.
Then he hooked a finger past her lips to confirm there were no obstructions in her mouth.
Finally, he held his finger up to her nostrils to test her breath — barely there at all.
Combined with her deep purple lips — hypothermic shock.
Isac made his preliminary diagnosis on the spot.
He swiftly stripped off the two sweaters he’d already warmed with his own body heat and draped them over the girl’s torso, then used his own body to block the wind.
But that wasn’t enough.
Isac realized they couldn’t stay out here.
He had to get her into the aircraft cabin as quickly as possible — otherwise the freezing wind would carry off her last spark of life, and he himself would succumb to hypothermia right alongside her.
Once this was clear to him, Isac didn’t hesitate.
He slid one arm under her armpits and the other under the bend of her knees, scooped her up in a princess carry, and hurried back toward the cabin along his own footprints.
After settling her in the deepest, most wind-sheltered corner of the cabin, Isac immediately set about administering first aid.
First, he opened her airway and undid her collar, exposing a delicate collarbone and a pale white lace camisole beneath.
Isac didn’t spare it a second glance.
In this moment, his eyes held only the desperate urge to save her.
Because he understood perfectly: saving this girl right now was, in truth, also saving himself.
One more person meant one more share of hope.
Isac pinched her nostrils shut with his left hand, lifted her chin with his right, drew in a deep breath, and bent down — lips to lips — to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
‘Never thought my first kiss with a beautiful girl would happen under circumstances like these,’ Isac thought, apropos of nothing.
After two rescue breaths, he immediately began chest compressions, cycling through thirty compressions and two breaths over and over, performing CPR without pause.
After who knew how many cycles, with Isac all but winded to the point of his own ribs cramping, he finally saw the girl’s chest begin to rise and fall on its own.
He immediately fastened her collar back up and stuffed the warm sweaters inside her white coat.
As for the crowd-pleasing development from countless novels — where the beautiful girl regains consciousness mid mouth-to-mouth — that didn’t happen.
In reality, patients almost never wake up during rescue breathing.
When that does happen, it’s almost certainly because the patient never needed rescue breathing in the first place — they were just fainted — and someone was simply taking the opportunity to cop a free one.
Isac noted that the purple tinge on the girl’s lips had faded considerably, and felt a measure of relief.
He glanced outside at the sky — noticeably darker than when he’d first woken up.
Daylight was nearly gone.
Looked like they’d be spending the night inside the cabin.
“Need to figure out how to get a fire started, fast,” Isac muttered to himself.
Just as Isac was thinking through his next move, the girl lying on his sweaters slowly began to regain consciousness.
Yukinoshita Yukino slowly opened her eyes.
Her vision was still blurry, her head fuzzy, unable to focus.
Her limbs wouldn’t quite obey her — as though she were trapped in sleep paralysis.
‘Where… am I?’
“You’re awake?” Seeing Yukinoshita Yukino’s eyes open, Isac immediately fished a piece of hard candy out of his pocket and held it to her lips.
“You went into hypothermic shock just now.
Have a piece of candy first, so you don’t crash again.”
Yukinoshita Yukino instinctively opened her mouth and took the candy.
The refreshing sweetness perked her spirits up a little, her scattered focus began to sharpen, and her brain — finally fed some sugar — started to function again.
“Who are you?” Yukinoshita Yukino asked.
“Isac.
Same as you — a survivor of the crash.
I came to a bit earlier than you, and while I was scavenging for supplies I found you collapsed in the snow from hypothermic shock.” Isac briefly outlined the situation, then asked in return:
“What’s your name?
Do you remember what happened before the crash?”
“My name is Yukinoshita Yukino.”
“Wait — your name is Yukinoshita Yukino?”
The moment he heard that name, Isac couldn’t help but cut in.
Was this the same Yukinoshita Yukino he knew?
Wasn’t she an anime character?
Crap — looked like this time he’d transmigrated into an anime crossover world.
“Is there a problem?” Yukinoshita Yukino furrowed her brow.
From the way he’d said it, it almost sounded like he knew her?
“No problem.
Could you tell me which flight you were on?” Isac shook his head and gestured for Yukinoshita Yukino to keep talking.
Yukinoshita Yukino found it odd that Isac was so focused on the flight — weren’t they on the same plane?
Surely two separate planes hadn’t crashed at the exact same spot back-to-back, had they?
“It was an international flight from London direct to Tokyo.
Flight number BAB911.”
“London direct to Tokyo… don’t tell me you’ve just come back from studying abroad in England to start high school?”
“How do you know that?”
Yukinoshita Yukino was genuinely startled this time.
This stranger seemed to know more about her than she’d have imagined — even that she’d studied abroad in England.
And yet, as far as she could recall, no one by the name of Isac had ever been part of her social circle.
“That’s not important.
Are you feeling any better?
Can you move?” Isac sidestepped Yukinoshita Yukino’s question and turned to her physical condition instead.
“A little better.” Yukinoshita Yukino said it even as she struggled to sit up — but her frail body clearly couldn’t support the effort.
Seeing this, Isac immediately reached out a hand, supporting her back so she could lean against the cabin wall.
“Thank you.” Yukinoshita Yukino offered her thanks politely — but mid-sentence, her slender brows twitched involuntarily.
Not because of Isac’s touch, but simply from pain.
The cold had dulled her sensations, but even so, Yukinoshita Yukino could feel the sharp throb radiating from her left ankle.
Even when she didn’t move her left foot, the stabbing pain clung like a parasite to the bone, hounding her pain receptors with every passing second.
Isac picked up on this with a sharp eye.
Earlier, with the emergency in full swing, he’d only had time to run a rough assessment on Yukinoshita Yukino using the CAB protocol — some oversights had been inevitable.
“Where does it hurt?”
Under these brutal conditions, Isac couldn’t afford to overlook any hidden danger.
He had to know exactly what they were dealing with before he could decide on their next move.
“Left foot.
The stabbing pain is sharp.” Yukinoshita Yukino clearly understood the same thing, and reported her symptoms without holding anything back.
“Let me have a look.”
Isac immediately began his examination.
Carefully, he rolled up the left leg of her trousers, revealing a pristine white cotton sock — and beneath the sock, an ankle swollen up like a steamed bun.
Well — no need to even put a hand on it to be sure.
Severe sprain.