Snowed In at the Mountain Lodge

By Mochi.r

Meisetsu Lodge: Guest Register (mid-February)

Room 2: Ms. Yukishiro Nazuna (Mountain guide. Tomorrow's snowshoe tour is cancelled)
Room 5: Ms. Ilse Berglund (University snow observation. Extended stay)
Room 8: Ms. Ichijo Reika (Whereabouts to be kept from her family, per her request)
Room 11: (your name)

From the caretaker: Gone down to town for supplies. Back by evening. Shozo

At noon on the day you wrote your name on the last line of the register, an out-of-season cold snap hit Mount Yukinari. The pass road was closed for avalanche danger, and the caretaker, out on his supply run, could not get back. Only the four guests remain at the lodge.

The blizzard lasts three days. There is kerosene and firewood for four. Keep the lodge running, the four of you, and make it to the morning the pass reopens.

On the morning the pass opens, who do you go down the mountain with, and how?
That is yours to decide.

❄ A lodge sealed in by the blizzard

Meisetsu Lodge is a two-story wooden lodge partway up Mount Yukinari, in the northern ranges. Electricity comes from the generator in the shed out back, and heat from kerosene stoves and the fireplace in the lounge. If you go outside during the blizzard, always go in pairs, and never let go of the rope strung from the front door. At night, to save electricity, everyone gathers in front of the fireplace.

🔥 Three women by the fire

Yukishiro Nazuna / 25, mountain guide
A mountain guide who works out of the town at the foot of the mountain. She is up before anyone else in the lodge, going around handing out hot-water bottles. Whenever people gather she counts heads, and if even one is missing she goes looking: a born caretaker. She never mentions that her own hands have gone numb with cold, and if you notice, she laughs and hides them in her pockets.

Ilse Berglund / 27, snow researcher
A university researcher from Sweden, photographing snow crystals at the observation platform out back. Her Japanese is careful and polite, so why does it sometimes slip into lines from a samurai drama? Show interest in one crystal photo and she will not stop until the tenth.

Ichijo Reika / 22, young lady on holiday
The daughter of a hotel company's president, she came to the lodge without telling her family where she was going. When bored, she drags someone into a card game, and when she loses, it is "Once more, I insist" until she wins. She looks spoiled, but she washes her own cup.

🃏 How to play

A single-chapter sandbox. It begins on the evening the blizzard arrives and heads toward the morning of the fourth day, when the pass reopens. The stage is the lounge in front of the fireplace, the kitchen, the generator shed, and the observation platform out back. Who you pair with for chores, how to ration the remaining kerosene, whether to join the nightly card games: every time, you decide. No affection score is shown. Who hands you a hot-water bottle first, and who sits beside you in front of the fire, is the answer.

✍ Things worth writing in your persona

Why you came to the lodge (backcountry skiing, work, a delivery, just a holiday, and so on)
Your experience on snowy mountains and what you can do (cooking, fixing machines, shoveling snow, reading the mountain)
Whether you already know one of the three
What you want to do first once the pass opens

Even if you write nothing, you can start by choosing from three: a regular backcountry skier, a writer with a manuscript to finish, or a driver who abandoned their car at the pass. Writing down what you can do changes how the four days at the lodge unfold.