Chapter 1

[Thursday, October 3]

“Merde.”

The voice came from above, a mumbled whisper that sounded listless, as if somewhat disappointed, yet also annoyed and impatient. —What did it mean?

Erik looked up. He saw dark gray jeans with some holes and frayed edges, then a black jacket with a shiny metal clasp on the zippered collar. Further up, a sharply defined jawline that seemed a bit too angular from his perspective, and a mouth—a very attractive mouth—slightly parted, revealing a glimpse of pearly white teeth.

That word had come from those lips. A word he didn’t understand, paired with the most beautiful lips he had ever seen. Full and plump, the curve of the upper lip resembling Cupid’s bow.

Erik’s gaze lingered on those lips for a second or two, then moved upward, past the straight and sharp nose, a few strands of gold and black hair that had fallen loose, and finally met a pair of green eyes. It was like suddenly falling into a summer forest: a forest in early summer with deep green ponds, dense foliage shielding the sunlight, leaving only patches of shimmering, bright and dark golden spots on the ground.

It was a vivid and brilliant green, but not entirely pure: the emerald-like irises were streaked with light brown and amber, warm and bright, like sunlight filtering through the gaps in the trees.

Erik felt a strange dizziness. For a moment, he seemed to lose his bearings—as if he had stepped into a scene from an old fairy tale, in a magical forest, where a lost wood nymph flew toward him, with emerald eyes and wings of blue gossamer.—But a gust of cold wind blew past, snapping him out of his absurd imagination and bringing him back to reality: his body was tilted, his right knee bent against the rough rock wall, the ball of his right foot desperately pressing against the protruding rock marked with bright yellow paint, supporting his weight. His fingers tightly gripped the crevice above his head, anchoring his body to the cliff, his left foot lifted, searching for the next foothold among the jagged rocks.

Beside him was the sheer cliff face, a 127-meter vertical drop composed of countless jagged rocks and shrubs.

Sweat beaded on Erik’s forehead beneath his helmet. The wind on the cliff brushed past his damp cheeks and neck, rushing into his jacket, both hot and cold. He breathed rapidly, his heart pounding in his chest.

His left foot found a foothold, and he slowly shifted his weight over. Take it one step at a time, he reminded himself. The most dangerous moments were after overcoming a difficult section and just before reaching the summit.

He adjusted his posture, placed his right foot in position, firmly anchored himself to the rock face, then released one hand and shook it vigorously to relieve the pain and numbness from overexertion, then switched to the other hand.

Now, only a short stretch of rock wall remained above him. Just two or three more steps, and he would be able to climb over the massive boulder jutting out from the cliff edge, the “Wackelstein,” marking the end of the C11 route. Erik leaned upward, clipped the quickdraw onto the last bolt, then pulled up the safety rope and fastened it into the hanging carabiner.

He could sense those eyes above watching him, observing his every move. It made him feel uneasy, a bit nervous, and… that strange sensation, as if he were in another dimension.

He panted and looked up again.

“Hi,” he said dryly.

The green eyes stared at him without moving. For a moment, Erik couldn’t tell if the expression in those eyes was confusion or curiosity.

No response.

“Excuse me,” Erik said, struggling to step onto the next foothold. By now, the distance between them was less than two meters, and he could see the other person clearly: a young man, more like a big boy, who didn’t look older than twenty, with messy, shoulder-length blond hair, the ends dyed black—some strange hair-dye design. He wore a hiking jacket with a huge lynx print, looking a bit dirty, his pants and hiking shoes splattered with mud. Erik didn’t know where his earlier illusion had come from: the person before him was just an ordinary boy. Handsome, yes, but nothing to do with wood nymphs or magic.

“—Could you move aside for me?” he said with effort.

The boy silently looked at him. Just as Erik began to wonder if he could even understand his language, the boy suddenly turned away, took a few steps to the side, and jumped down from the rock he was standing on. As he turned, Erik caught a glimpse of a silver earring on his left earlobe—a bird in flight.

Erik exhaled, placed his arm on the surface of the large boulder, and with a final push, hauled himself up.

Finally done. He collapsed onto the ground, panting heavily, stretching his legs, feeling the heat and numbness wash over his limbs as they relaxed. This was his fifteenth time climbing the C11 route, but it was the first time he felt so exhausted, as if every nerve in his body had been stretched to the limit. The cold rock and gravel pressed against his back through his damp clothes.

After a while, he slowly sat up.

The boy stood a few steps away, watching him. Erik felt a bit at a loss and smiled at him.

“What’s that thing?” the boy suddenly asked.

This was the first time Erik heard him speak German—High German with a slight foreign accent. He paused and said, “What?”

The boy pointed at the red disk hanging in front of Erik and read the words on it. “’Silent Partner.’—What is that?”

“It’s a protection device for solo climbers,” Erik replied.

“Just you? No partner?”

“…No,” Erik said.

An unpleasant fact surfaced: the reason he was so exhausted was that without a partner, he had to spend a lot of time managing the safety rope, retrieving it, and tying preparatory knots. Doing these things on the cliff undoubtedly consumed a lot of energy, but even more draining was the sense of insecurity: the constant awareness that he was all alone, always worried that the protection devices might suddenly fail. And then he would fall, straight down from 120 meters, like a bird with broken wings.

“Can that thing really replace a partner?” the boy asked, examining the device.

“Not completely,” Erik admitted. “Even the best tools can fail. So there’s still some risk.”

The boy said, “People can fail too.—It’s all the same. If you’re going to fall, you’ll fall.”

Erik looked at him in surprise. But the boy wasn’t looking at him: he had turned to the side, gazing into the distance as if the words had just been an absentminded remark. The sunlight fell on his young face, casting a golden silhouette on his profile. Erik noticed that he was surprisingly thin, though it wasn’t as obvious when facing him, perhaps because those beautiful eyes captured all the observer’s attention—his thinness made those green eyes appear even larger.

“What are you doing here?” Erik asked.

“Traveling.”

“Alone?”

No answer, just a slight nod of that sharp chin.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

The boy shook his head.

Erik couldn’t think of anything else to say. The other person clearly didn’t want to engage in conversation, and prying with questions like “Where are you from? Where are you going?” wasn’t exactly polite.

He stood up, kicked his legs a few times, and walked around. He considered whether to start descending immediately. The sun was already setting, and time was running out; although the pain and numbness in his legs hadn’t subsided, it didn’t matter—he had been through much worse before.

But it was different then.… Now I don’t have a partner.

He shook his head, pushing away the unpleasant thought. He could use a controlled descent on the way down, and he wouldn’t need to check the route again, so it would be much faster.

He began checking his harness, tightening the necessary parts. After finishing, he picked up the safety rope and held it in his hand.

“I’m going,” he said to the boy.

He hesitated. He still didn’t know his name, but there was no reason to ask.

“Have a nice holiday,” he said.

The boy turned to him, the sunlight casting a shimmering golden light in his green eyes, which held a dazed expression, as if he had been lost in thought for so long that he had already forgotten Erik’s existence.

“Oh. You’re going down?” he said, looking at him. “I have water in my bag. Do you want some before you go?”

It was an unexpected offer. Erik paused, then couldn’t help but smile. He never carried a large water bottle in his gear, and today he had gone way over time, so he had been thirsty for a while.

“I’d really appreciate that. Thank you,” he said.

“The bag’s over there,” the boy pointed behind him. “Go get it yourself.”

In the direction he pointed, a gray canvas backpack lay at the foot of a tree. Erik walked over quickly, picked up the backpack, and suddenly hesitated.

“Hey, can I really open it?”

“You can do whatever you want,” the boy replied. He wasn’t even looking at Erik, instead walking straight toward the edge of the cliff.

Erik opened the drawstring of the backpack, and sure enough, there was a bottle of water, almost full. He cheered inwardly, unscrewed the cap, and gulped it down eagerly.

Wait… something’s off.

He put the bottle down, looked at the backpack in confusion, then picked it up again: the backpack was brand new, and incredibly light. He looked inside and found only a chocolate bar and a small pack of gum—nothing else.

No clothes, no toiletries, none of the things a traveler would carry.

Erik was at a loss. He put the backpack down and looked at the boy: he had already walked to the edge of the cliff, standing on the protruding rock.—The massive “Wackelstein,” marking the end of the C11 route, with one-third of it jutting out over the cliff. The boy had been standing on that rock the entire time Erik was climbing up the C11 route.

In a flash, Erik realized what he was about to do.

“No, don’t!”

Faster than his thoughts, the words burst out of his mouth, and at the same time, he lunged forward, grabbing the boy’s back. The boy struggled in his grip, but Erik was much stronger; he wrapped his arms around him from behind and yanked him off the rock—so forcefully that they both stumbled backward, falling to the ground and tumbling together. Erik’s arms tightly encircled the boy’s body, and he could feel the rapid heartbeat beneath the thin ribs.

“Don’t be stupid!” Erik almost yelled into his ear. Blood rushed to his head, and the words spilled out without thinking. “You idiot! You can’t do this, think of other people, those…”

His right ribs were suddenly struck hard. Erik’s jaw clenched, biting his tongue and cutting off his words. The sudden pain made his vision blur. The boy had already broken free from his arms, nimbly rolling on the ground and standing up. Before Erik could react, he kicked him hard in the stomach.

Erik groaned, curling up on the ground. He heard a rustling sound beside him, moving from near to far, and in his dazed state, he instinctively recognized it as the sound of footsteps crushing fallen leaves—the boy was running away. Thank God he was running toward the forest, not the cliff.

Erik relaxed, then felt waves of pain assaulting his body from all sides. He had never known pain could have such a rich and varied expression, as if a pain exhibition had opened inside his body: a sharp, fresh pain in his mouth with a metallic taste of blood, a dull and heavy pain in his ribs accompanied by a strong sense of nausea, and a twisting, searing pain in his abdomen… He almost wondered if an organ had been ruptured inside.

Erik lay on the ground for a while—maybe only a minute or two, but it was hard to judge time during the peak of the pain exhibition—and the nausea gradually subsided. He began to feel cold: the heat injected into his body from the intense exercise was rapidly dissipating in the chilly wind atop the mountain, and his thin functional jacket was no match for the damp, cold ground.

He sat up, closed his eyes, and tried to take deep breaths. The deep breaths didn’t bring any stabbing pain in his ribs or abdomen—thankfully, the blows hadn’t been as severe as they initially felt.—But what had just happened? he wondered. Fragments of the incident flashed through his mind like a slideshow. Such an unexpected and fierce reaction, like a ferocious little beast.

I’m such an idiot, he thought gloomily.—Where has he run off to now?

A few rustling sounds reached his ears.

Erik opened his eyes and was surprised to see the boy standing not far in front of him.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Those beautiful green eyes looked at him without much emotion, almost coldly. Erik was dumbfounded and instinctively replied, “I’m fine, thank you.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized how absurd they sounded, but it was too late to take them back.

The boy took a couple of steps closer, scrutinizing his face, and said, “You don’t look fine at all.”

Erik stared at him, unsure if he had detected a hint of amusement in his voice.—Did he find this situation funny?

The boy crouched down in front of him, facing him directly.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” he said, grabbing a strand of hair that had fallen in front of his face and pulling it, as if a bit embarrassed. “I hit you because… well, I thought you were attacking me.”

“I wasn’t,” Erik said.

“My mind froze. I only realized what you were trying to tell me after I ran off for a bit.” He tilted his head, looking at him. “You thought I was going to kill myself, jump off that rock, didn’t you?”

He wasn’t mistaken: there was a hint of laughter in his voice, and those green eyes sparkled with little glimmers of light.

Erik suddenly felt short of breath. He wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or frustration.

“You looked like a troubled runaway. You were a bit… strange, I mean, you didn’t seem like a local,” he stammered. “Your clothes and shoes looked like you had walked a long way. But your backpack had nothing in it.”

The boy reached into his jacket pocket, fished around, and pulled out a wallet.

He took out an ID card and handed it to him.

“I’m twenty-three, not some runaway brat,” he said. “That backpack was empty because I just bought it at the station.—I left my travel bag on the platform when I was transferring and didn’t feel like going back for it.”

Erik didn’t know what to say. He felt so stupid, incredibly stupid.

“What were you doing on that rock?” he asked quietly.

“Taking in the view. Isn’t this the lookout marked on the map?” the boy—or rather, the young man—replied. He looked up toward the distance. “The forest is beautiful this time of year, isn’t it?”

Erik followed his gaze. The sun had long since moved far away, casting a soft red and yellow hue over the entire valley. He saw the forest on the opposite hills, layers of green stretching to the horizon, mingled with golden and orange treetops, bathed in that soft light.

“…Yes,” Erik said.

The person across from him turned to him and extended a hand. “Can you stand up?”

Erik looked at that hand. Slender, long fingers with delicate, rounded tips. Suddenly, a mischievous—perhaps vengeful—thought crossed his mind, and without thinking, he grabbed the hand and yanked it down hard. The boy stumbled forward. Erik pounced, pinning him firmly to the ground.

The boy struggled in vain. Erik’s over eighty-kilogram frame pressed down heavily on him, his entire body seeming fragile beneath Erik’s solid shoulders and thick arms.

“If I really wanted to attack you,” Erik panted, “you wouldn’t have had a chance, got it?”

The boy tried to get up once or twice, then gave up. He lay flat on his back, arms twisted to his sides, his face flushed, chest heaving.

“Got it,” he whispered.

Erik paused, then a wave of shame hit him: what was he doing? Bullying someone weaker? He released the boy’s wrist, letting it slip from his grip, and stood up.

There was a moment of silence. Erik couldn’t think of anything to say. He didn’t want to apologize: his mouth still burned with pain, and he could still taste the faint metallic tang of blood—his own blood.

Finally, the boy broke the silence.

“Hey, can you help me up?” he said, weakly raising a hand toward him.

Erik took his hand and pulled him up.

At that moment, the name—the name he had just seen on the ID card—spelled itself out in his mind.

F-E-L-I-X.

L-O-R-B-E-E-R.

His name was Felix Lorbeer.

Felix.