In mid-nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, amid a harsh winter and an epidemic, a young Armenian student, Mikayel, happens to meet Mari, a girl who has lost her mother and been left alone. Love blossoms between them, but a promise Mari made in the past and her engagement complicate their relationship. Against the city’s cold and indifferent atmosphere, the power of first love, the sense of duty, and the price of a decision are revealed.