Snow fell relentlessly throughout the night, and a long-forgotten mist had already obscured one side of the window. As a bone-chilling cold seeped through the soles of my feet, I stood barefoot on the ground for I don't know how long, hesitant to disturb my mother who was probably asleep—or maybe she, like me, was wide awake, but I couldn't be sure.

Over these many years, the room's layout had changed drastically; the once plush carpet was removed and discarded, possibly rotting in some dumpster. In my memories, my sister stood like an unfinished candle, casting a solitary shadow in the depths of my stranded emotions, her tears falling incessantly, accumulating into a small mound of milky wax tears, as if preparing for her in a trailing white gown. Subsequently, people would bless her with "happily ever after" on her wedding day, and this time it was real. But why was I so distraught? We used to play house together, my sister and I; we loved dressing up dolls in wedding gowns, and her image in that white dress remained vivid in my memory. Now, looking at discarded toys with missing limbs and feeling a chilling beauty that sent shivers down my spine, there was something profoundly unsettling. Deep down, something was already going wrong, a disaster no one had yet identified.

The room's soundproofing was still poor; I could faintly hear distant relatives upstairs clamoring loudly, the clinking of mahjong tiles on the table, occasionally rolling to the ground, disturbing the dog's slumber. I didn't need to go upstairs to see; I knew those people, with faces that were both familiar and strange, gambling and fighting at the card table, the small room filled with the metallic taste of poker cards and paper money. With a shout, the end of a round, and a swift spit on the floor, those muddy old shoes would brutally crush the unburned cigarette butts underfoot, yet there would still be a wisp of smoke, carrying an indescribable pain, rising from the icy ground, infiltrating my nostrils, my unresolved dreams, and my sister's hem.

It's hard to believe that here we are, in the month of December, with people staying up all night at the card table, some older relatives gathering again by the fireplace for warmth, casually continuing to discuss my sister's impending marriage. The flames were so close to their wrinkled palms, flickering intermittently; I dared not stare at them, fearing I might be bewitched by the false warmth of their light. Suddenly, from the next room, the chess room erupted in almost violent clamor; it must have been the moment a move was made, bringing joy to one family and sorrow to another. The fragile door seemed to have been kicked open in anger, and I saw Grandma's cat darting out in panic, inadvertently knocking over a nearby pot with thriving year-old oranges. One of them rolled directly into the blazing fire pit, startling everyone roasting by the fire. "What a pity, this orange is still so small, it didn't even have a chance to fully ripen," an elderly man grumbled.

However, soon the roasted scent of orange peel overwhelmed the room's smoke, and as I glanced out the window, I saw that the snow had stopped falling after a night of relentless snowfall. Along with the lifelong unresolved chill, like a piece of residual wax, forever frozen in my memory.