Chapter 1

It is another morning in the cold winter of Vienna, with Philip sitting at his desk with the laptop in front of him displaying Photoshop and Illustrator. Philip, a 24 year-old designer, gazes through the window and contemplates the gloomy, grey weather outside, with snow and rain falling on the streets around the building he works in. Being on the fifth floor, he can see much of the city and spends a few minutes immersing himself in the dim and unwelcoming landscape.

Reality kicks in with no warning and for no apparent reason, as he hears the multitude of sounds from the other eighty or so people that work around him in open office space.

"Shit, I forgot my headphones," he tells himself, realizing that he will have to cope with the annoying noise from other people without the relief of his playlist.

"Wanna go outside with me?" Ilene asks.

"Sure. I just can't focus today. Just let me grab a cup of coffee." Philip password-locks his laptop and goes to the coffee machine while Ilene calls the elevator down.

While listening to the sound of coffee being poured into the cheap plastic cup, he notices how sleepy and tired Ilene looks. His girlfriend, who had only entered the company four months ago, is clearly feeling the pressure of a newfound job and all the new skills and rhythms she has to get into.

For some reason, he thinks, she looks paler than ever. She was already kind of pale when he met her at university during Design Graduation, but not as much as today. Probably because, then, they spent much more time outside, unlike these days that kick them from work straight to home and back the next day.

That doesn't bother him too much, though. She still makes his thoughts wander to sex every time he takes a good look at her 21-year-old thin figure with long, straight dark hair. Even with her puffy white jacket on and blue jeans, Philip thinks of her slender pale body beneath all that clothing.

As they get in the dimly lit elevator, while staring at Ilene's light-skinned freckled face, Philip wonders if she's also getting even thinner.

"I think you're getting thinner."

"Yeah? Probably ... Maybe it's the smoking? I didn't notice anything myself," Ilene says, her dark brown eyes giving away that she knows she's smoking a lot more than she should.

"Have you been working out? I mean ... Well, I guess, no, right? Since we spend all our time together..."

"No ... The only exercise I see is yours." Ilene unenthusiastically says. Unlike him, she never runs or does any type of exercise. Her thin shape comes to her naturally, even with a considerably unhealthy lifestyle, with smoking and the regular beer part of her afternoons and nights, followed by scant dinners prompted by her lack of appetite.

Leaving the elevator, Ilene goes ahead and exits outside the company's building for a smoke, and Philip follows with his warm cup of coffee.

"It's fucking cold out here," Philip remarks.

"Just a quick smoke," she says.

While Ilene reaches for her smokes, Philip's greenish eyes wander down to notice what he notices a lot of times in her. Her jeans always manage to show behind her a bit of her crack. Although she is so very slimly built, her ass is nicely rounded. Not big, but rounded enough that the jeans she buys most of the times show a bit of that hot, sexy butt crack.

He isn't going to say anything to her about that, though. Not a tease, not a compliment, nothing. Ilene's a quiet and reserved person, and more often than not resents sexual comments, or any kind of observation about how's she looking.

That, strangely, made sense with her, maybe because of her continuous depressed look, with rare moments of pure joy or happiness. She's maybe like the cold and dim weather that was freezing the hell out of his bones, Philip thinks. So cold, that it takes away that throbbing feeling that was building up in his dick seeing Ilene's crack.

He wonders if Ilene is freezing as much as he is. He's considered well-built for a 24 year-old guy, 6 feet tall, that works out two or three times a week at home, with a toned body that usually stands out due to his choice of tight clothes, and most of the time he doesn't feel any cold. That's not the case today, and not this year, one of the worst winters to ever punish the streets of Vienna.

"How's the digital signage project going?" Philip asks.

"It's going well, I think. I'm still doing the graphic mockups for the different stores, but, yeah ... I think today I'm done at about 7 or 8 PM. And you?"

"I got my portal design approved; now I just have to code it ... But, I'm not really in the mood today. I haven't even typed one line of HTML. Fuck it, I have time, I guess."

"Let's go inside, I'm done," she says, throwing the cigarette to the street. "I'm freezing here!"

So, she's cold, after all, Philip thinks. Just goes to show that she doesn't show emotion at all.

They get back to the fifth floor, passing by some colleagues and cordially greeting them, even though Philip and Ilene don't know most of them that well. Philip notices some of the guys checking out Ilene's butt crack as they pass by.

A sudden pinch of envy hits him. Philip smirks. He can't blame them, he would do exactly the same. After all, besides being thin, pretty-faced, and relatively tall, compared to the other girls around with her 5 feet and 7 inches, no one could ignore that ass crack in the middle of a bunch of people who were wearing clothing to their teeth.

Back at his desk, Philip's day seems to race through lunch with the software development team, more coffees and smokes with Ilene and a lot of street gazing, for the lack of motivation to pull through some tough, tedious coding work, his least favorite part of his job as a web designer.

"I'm just having this meeting to give a quick status update on the portal with the Project Manager. Wanna wait for me to go home?" Philip asks Ilene, who sits across from his desk.

Looking outside, Ilene sees the heavy grim night already sweeping the streets. It's already 8 PM, and she wouldn't go alone, even though their apartment is only nine blocks away. "Sure."