For the people of the Northern Frontier, eternal, unchanging white and black were the world's base colors.
Snow fell from the sky, stone grew from the earth, and together they overlapped like blades and teeth, interlocking and slaughtering one another. Every snowfall was this monster called the Northern Frontier opening its maw for a feast, its teeth chewing. The cold tide that rushed at them was the foul wind blown from the monster's mouth. The thunderous roar amid the wind and snow was its bellow.
To survive in such a world, there was only one thing to do every second of every minute.
Fight.
Make an enemy of the world.
Every time they faced the biting wind, every time they trampled snow powder and black rock, every time they climbed to a higher peak through a cold vicious enough to freeze off their noses and eyelashes, they were challenging all of it.
That was how it should have been.
The surveyor took pride in that as well. To conquer the world before his eyes, he wanted to charge deeper into that storm, to ever greater heights, no matter how many times it took.
If that bizarre, strength-draining melody had not come through his earphones...
"Doo-loo doo-doo-doo, doo-loo-loo doo-doo, doo-loo-loo-loo da-da-da."
"It's so cold, I'm playing in the mud in the Northern Frontier..."
"I have no home in the Northern Frontier..."
That singing, as crazed as a lunatic's rambling, sounded over the radio channel once again, following The Kid Picked Up a Stack of Cash. Just hearing it made his whole body go limp and gave him an unbearable urge to use the restroom.
Fuck, again?
Amid the wind rushing into his face, the surveyor cursed in the rough dialect of the Northern Frontier.
Several hundred meters behind him stood the