The first time she met her husband was at a ski resort. He is an ice man, and they met in the lobby. He was young then and quietly absorbed in a book. Her friends whispered about him as though he were a contagious disease. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but he had striking eyes and she stared at him. He was found in the same spot reading every day and on her last day she struck up the courage to approach him.

He smiled at her and asked if she’d like to sit next to him and they talked awkwardly for a while. She wanted to ask about him, but instead he told her about herself and he seemed to know everything: her family, age, interests, school, and friends. When she asked him how he knew this, he said he just did and that ice preserves the past. After they returned to Tokyo, they got together every weekend and sat on a park bench and talked. They discussed almost everything, except for the ice man himself. When she asked him, he said that he knows the past of everything except his own. 

They came to love each other and when they started talking about marriage her mother and sister immediately said they were opposed. They worried about his lack of a past and wondered if he would melt. She defended him and said he wasn’t made out of ice, just a cold person. They got married without an audience, rented a small apartment and the ice man took a job at a refrigerated meat warehouse. 

People warmed up to him over time, but no one really trusted him. They were unable to have a child and she became very lonely. One day, she suggests they take a trip to the south pole. He resists at first, but seeing it will make her happy, agrees. In the days after this conversation, however, he grew colder and quieter. Five days before their planned departure, she suggests they go somewhere warmer, like Spain, but he ignores her. 

She grows frightened and has the feeling that something bad will happen to them. When they stepped off the plane at the south pole, she felt her husband’s body tremble beside her. The trip turned out to be extraordinarily lonely and there was nothing to see. Her husband quickly learned the native language and talked for hours with the locals, becoming a different person in her eyes entirely. 

When a winter storm blocked planes from coming in, they waited it out for three months and she soon realized she was pregnant with a tiny iceman. Her womb frosted over and she realized she’d never be able to leave the south pole. She cries and her tears freeze over.