Chapter 10

Felix stood in the massive main hall of the indoor climbing center, his eyes overwhelmed by the scene before him: an endless expanse of climbing walls and a variety of climbing holds, densely packed walls and bolts stretching from the ground up to the ceiling some twenty to thirty meters high. The hall was bustling with activity, ropes swinging everywhere, and colorful helmets dotting the space. Compared to this grand, imposing behemoth, the Fritz family’s climbing center seemed like a child’s playhouse. No wonder they had been struggling all these years, he thought.

“I had no idea there was such a huge climbing center here,” he whispered to the girl at the counter.

“We’ve been lucky to have so many visitors thanks to the ‘Romans.’ It’s even livelier here in the winter,” the girl said, blinking at him. She had beautiful eyes that shimmered with an enchanting purple-blue hue under her thick mascara and pearl-blue eyeshadow. “I heard they’re building an indoor ice rink nearby next year,” she added, handing him a glass of iced tea. “Three fifty.”

“Thank you,” Felix said, carefully counting out the coins and placing them on the tray.

“Erik’s class ends at 8:30. Do you want to give it a try? I can be your belayer.”

“No, thank you,” Felix replied. “I’ll just wait for him here.”

He sat on a bench, sipping his iced tea. The girl walked over and sat down close beside him. She was strikingly attractive, in her early twenties, with a lovely, delicate face and a curvaceous figure that was accentuated by her bright pink sweater and light gray denim shorts.

“Are you Erik’s friend?” she asked.

“No, we’ve just met.”

She crossed one slender, pale leg over the other. “Where are you from?”

“Strasbourg.”

“I love your French accent—I’ve always had a soft spot for Frenchmen,” she said, flashing him a charming smile. “Here for the weekend?”

“Yes.”

“What a shame,” she drawled. “Just this weekend?”

“Right, I’m heading back on Sunday.”

“So, any plans for tonight?” she leaned in closer. “We’re having a party after closing time. Want to come?”

“Thanks for the invitation,” he said with an innocent smile, subtly shifting away. “Will Erik be invited too?”

“If you come, then he’s invited,” she pouted her red lips, feigning a sulky expression. “But he’s so boring, I’m not interested in him.” She glanced at him from under her long lashes. “I prefer exotic types.”

“Does Erik work here often?” he asked, pretending not to catch her implication.

“Yeah. He teaches beginner and advanced classes, and sometimes takes on other jobs,” she said. “He charges less than others because we let him advertise here.”

“Why would you agree to that? Aren’t you competitors?”

“Not at all. That little place can’t compete with us. They mostly collaborate with the climbers’ association on outdoor projects. Many of the climbing routes in this area were developed by them,” the girl said, raising an eyebrow with a hint of amusement. “But a few years ago, old Fritz did have some issues with us because right when we opened, he had just borrowed a large sum from the bank to renovate his center. But that’s not our fault, is it? You just have to blame your bad luck when things like that happen.” She gave a disdainful laugh.

“But Erik convinced his old man and my dad two or three years ago, so now we’re in a partnership: their center is only used for private lessons and targeted training for outdoor climbing projects, they don’t take walk-ins. In return, we refer interested clients to them. I think he’s quite smart. After all, most indoor climbing clients will come to us anyway, so it’s better to collaborate.”

“I heard that center has closed down.”

“Right. Erik called this afternoon to say he’s selling the place. I helped him set up a meeting with my dad and Uncle Albert next Wednesday.”

“Are you interested in buying it?”

“Who knows? I don’t see what use we’d have for that place—everything there is old and outdated. But my dad does like Erik. I think he’d be happy to hire him here.”

Just then, a door in the corner opened, and a group of teenagers poured out, apparently from the same school, carrying various harnesses and heading toward the training wall on the east side, laughing and joking along the way. It seemed the theoretical part of the lesson had ended, and the practical session had begun.

Felix looked over at the crowd in the distance. Erik stood by the wall, demonstrating the use of different quickdraws, surrounded by a group of students—mostly girls—who were chattering and asking questions.

“He seems quite popular.”

“Those female students are all crazy about him,” she said with a scoff. “They often bring him cakes. But it’s all in vain. Erik wouldn’t like them.”

Felix smiled at her. “Do you like him?”

“I’ve already said, I’m not interested in him at all,” she rolled her eyes at him.

Yeah, right, Felix thought.

“That guy’s weird. He might look good, but there’s something wrong with him,” she said, tapping her forehead with a sharp, pink-polished nail. “He used to go to a special school, spending all day with blind kids at an assisted education center. That’s why he’s never had a girlfriend.”

“Never?”

“Well, there was one,” she said, somewhat reluctantly. “A few years ago. Even that one was handed over to him by one of his buddies. His buddy went off to university in Berlin and left behind his high school girlfriend here. She ended up dumping him too. I heard he’s not very good in that department.”

Felix looked over. The crowd had dispersed, and the students were practicing in small groups. Erik was checking the equipment on a few students, occasionally turning back to speak with a young woman. She was petite, elegant, and pretty, wearing a climbing center staff vest. She seemed very familiar with Erik—he remembered her as the girl who greeted them at the entrance, Lisa Faber, the center’s site manager. Shortly after, another black-haired young man in a climbing center vest ran over, punched Erik on the back, and said something with his arm around Erik’s shoulder. Then they both burst into laughter.

…A warm breath brushed his ear. He snapped out of his reverie and realized the girl had somehow climbed onto his shoulder.

“…You’ll definitely come to our party tonight, right?” she whispered in his ear. “Lots of people are coming. We’ve got an awesome DJ, the music will be amazing… It’ll go all night.”

She placed a hand on his knee.

“Our little spider is feeling triumphant tonight,” Lisa said, casting a disgusted glance toward the corner. “Looks like your pretty little friend is about to be completely devoured by her in less than an hour.”

Erik knew what she was talking about. He had been careful not to look in that direction, but occasionally, some images would slip into his vision: Felix, who had been sitting in the middle of the bench, had now retreated to the very end, his back against the wall, while Nina Hoff was practically draped all over him.

“Do you need me to rescue him?” she asked in a low voice. Like most women here, Lisa had always loathed Nina: ever since Nina had tried to seduce her boyfriend Fabian, Lisa had refused to call Nina by her name in private, instead referring to her with various animal names—usually female insects that ate their mates after copulation.

“Let them be,” Erik said.

“She’ll talk trash about you in front of him, you know she’s been doing that lately,” Lisa said. “Of course, no one here believes her: we all know she’s been trying to get into your pants and is furious that she can’t. But your friend is from out of town, he doesn’t know what that little bitch is like, he might actually believe her nonsense.”

“Let it be,” Erik said. “He’s not my friend anyway.”

He turned back to organizing the safety ropes and weight bags on the ground, trying his best not to think about the two people over there. Yet his thoughts were like a white mouse trapped in a treadmill, going round and round in circles. To be fair, if Nina was hitting on someone other than Felix, he would have been quite pleased, as it would mean her attention would no longer be on him—Nina Hoff was exactly the type of girl he dreaded dealing with: a stunning, sexy bombshell, flaunting herself everywhere, aggressive and domineering. He didn’t understand why she was interested in him. Her various actions and blatant hints made him extremely uncomfortable. He didn’t want to embarrass a girl who openly expressed her interest in him, nor did he want to offend the climbing center manager’s daughter, so he had been extremely careful in handling her. Despite this, Nina had become enraged: in the past month or two, she had stopped flirting with him and instead started spreading gossip about him to everyone they knew.

Now it seemed she had set her sights on Felix for the night, exuding an air of determination. And Felix didn’t seem to be rejecting her either. …They might end up together tonight, he thought gloomily. But that’s none of my business.

You have some mistaken feelings about me, he had told him.

Yes, he thought irritably. What exactly am I expecting?

Felix Lorbeer had nothing to do with him. His blond hair and green eyes. The beautiful lines of his lips. His soft French accent. …None of it had anything to do with him.

What a strange man he was. To travel all the way to a place where he knew no one, only to sit in his room listening to music on his computer, watching the pine trees and squirrels outside. He would light small round candles at night and place a flower on the breakfast table. He would bake soft honey almond cookies for afternoon tea. He seemed so sweet and warm. But the next moment, he would say something sharp, merciless, and frighteningly perceptive.

He was right. You can’t assume someone has something to do with you just because they broke down crying in your arms for a moment.

…A commotion interrupted his thoughts, someone was calling his name loudly. Erik looked up and saw the black-haired Fabian waving at him frantically from the other end.

“I’m telling them Route 29 can be climbed in under ten minutes. But they refuse to believe me,” he said, his face flushed, blue eyes shining with excitement. “Erik, show them how it’s done.”

Erik walked over to Route 29, where a small crowd had gathered, murmuring among themselves. As he began to clip on his safety rope, a cheerful and excited atmosphere quickly spread through the group. People started clapping and whistling, and some pulled out their phones. More people, drawn by the commotion, squeezed in to see what was going on.

Fabian, acting as the belayer, went through the routine safety checks while still managing to instruct the students around him: “See? As a belayer, you have to follow the rules before every move: ‘Check your partner, or you’ll lose your partner’ (Partnercheck statt Partner weg).”

Lisa squeezed in with a stopwatch. “Let’s go,” she said.

Erik leaped onto the wall. Using his hands and feet, he clung to the protruding bolts on the wall like a gecko, moving upward at an astonishing speed. Clipping quickdraws, attaching safety ropes, rope climbing—all his movements were swift and fluid, done in one go. Even the overhang couldn’t slow him down—he seemed almost as light and agile as if he had defied gravity. The crowd kept gasping in surprise and murmuring in admiration.

He quickly passed the halfway mark and began climbing the slope leading to the ceiling. “Five minutes,” Lisa’s voice came from below.

Now he reached the most challenging part of Route 29. Erik breathed heavily. He paused briefly on a larger blue hold, clipped on a quickdraw, and grabbed the protrusion to the upper right. Amid the crowd’s gasps, his body left the wall, swung in a half-circle in the air, and his right foot reached the next hold.

“Eight minutes,” Lisa called out. The crowd began to applaud enthusiastically.

“Go, Erik!”

Erik stepped onto a round protrusion. He quickly steadied himself, clipped the quickdraw onto the top carabiner, then reached out his arm to the other side, grabbing the short hanging rope of the little bell and giving it a pull.

The bell rang with a pleasant ding. He looked down. Lisa gave him a thumbs-up. “Nine minutes and fifteen seconds, a new record.”

A faint smile appeared on Erik’s lips. He was about to turn back when he suddenly caught sight of Felix below—standing in the crowd that was laughing and discussing, he was looking up at him, motionless: his eyes were filled with an unusually intense, almost blatant emotion.

Erik felt his heart gripped by an invisible hand. His foot slipped, and he plummeted straight down. The quickdraw acted in time, the safety rope tightened, and he was left hanging in mid-air, swaying like a fish just pulled out of the water.

The crowd let out a soft chuckle, then applauded warmly once more.

Erik returned to the ground. Fabian came over and wrapped an arm around his shoulder: “Good job! At least you fell after ringing the bell and not before—I won fifty bucks. Want something to drink?”

Erik shook his head. Lisa walked over to him. “Are you okay?” she asked with concern.

“I’m fine,” Erik replied, unclipping his safety rope. “Just slipped up there.”

Lisa studied him. “In the past few years, I’ve never seen you fall once.”

“Falling is part of climbing,” Erik said, walking over to sit down on a chair in the rest area. His gaze instinctively searched the crowd, but he couldn’t see that figure anywhere.

Fabian ran over with two cans of drink, handing him one of Powerade.

“Hey, looks like your little friend is going to challenge Route 29,” he said with a laugh, popping open his can of Coke.

Erik couldn’t help but stand up. Over the heads of the crowd, he saw Felix standing in front of the wall, fastening his helmet. Meanwhile, Lisa and Nina were facing off, tension crackling between them. From the snippets of conversation he could catch, it was clear that Nina intended to be the belayer, while Lisa—out of her duty as site manager or sheer malice toward Nina, depending on one’s perspective—was vehemently opposing it.

“Fabian, you go be his belayer,” Erik said.

Fabian, who was gulping down his Coke, was taken aback. “Why me?”

“I don’t trust Nina’s attention,” Erik said simply. “And if Lisa is the belayer, Nina will keep arguing.”

Fabian blinked, about to say something, but Erik snatched the Coke can from his hand. “Go!”

“Why don’t you…” Fabian muttered, but in the end, he couldn’t resist the firm push on his back and ran off in that direction.

Erik watched as Fabian convinced the two women and began tying the safety rope, doing the partner check, and secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He wanted to turn back and sit down on the chair, drink his Powerade, but found he couldn’t—from the moment Felix took his first step on the uneven wall, he couldn’t take his eyes off him.

Felix didn’t seem to be an experienced climber. In the first five or six meters, he moved quite slowly, clearly lacking confidence, pausing at even the simplest spots to confirm before proceeding. At this rate, he’d be exhausted long before reaching the most difficult part of the slope, Erik thought. A typical beginner’s mistake. Because he hadn’t overcome the fear of being in the air, his muscles were constantly tensed, quickly depleting his already limited stamina. By the time he reached the part that required explosive strength, he’d have nothing left. After all, Route 29 wasn’t suitable for beginners.

However, after a few minutes, Felix seemed to get used to the feeling of being on the vertical wall. His movements became more fluid, and his speed in finding holds and clipping quickdraws increased. He kept climbing steadily, not fast, but with no intention of giving up. Soon, he passed the halfway mark.

…Erik realized he had somehow moved to the front of the wall, standing in the crowd, looking up. He watched that body getting farther and farther from the ground: Felix had taken off his orange hoodie and was wearing only a white short-sleeved sports shirt. The blue-and-gray safety harness hugged his slender waist and the top of his thighs, and a bunch of shiny quickdraws dangled near his black shorts.

Erik couldn’t look away. He stood motionless, letting complex emotions rise and spread within him, gradually enveloping his entire being: on one hand, he was observing and judging him with his professional eye, silently estimating the likelihood of completing the route; on the other hand, staring so intently at his body, capturing every movement of his limbs, made him feel somewhat uneasy, mixed with a strange excitement and a faint sense of danger, as if he had never looked at another person’s body with such intensity—he wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he instinctively sensed the peril.

Felix reached the slope. His face was flushed, his chest heaving, clearly nearing the limit of his stamina. He paused briefly on the blue mark, gripping the wall tightly, trying to balance his body, then suddenly let go with one hand—just as Erik had done a few minutes earlier, he swung in a half-circle in the air, using his right foot to hook onto the protrusion. His foot slipped slightly, but he reacted instantly, tensing his body and reaching the protrusion again, stepping firmly on it.

Too risky, Erik thought. His heart jumped to his throat when he saw that move, pausing for a second or two before dropping back into his chest, pounding wildly. Using such a method when already exhausted required extreme courage, almost a touch of madness for a beginner—to fight against the innate human fear of heights and the sensation of weightlessness.

And he didn’t need to do that. Erik thought amidst his somewhat out-of-control heartbeat. Felix was different from him, much shorter, with thinner legs, so bending his knees shouldn’t have been overly hindered by the overhang. He could have crossed that part in a steadier, more secure way. Why take such a risk?

Was it lack of experience? So he imitated his move without thinking?

Erik couldn’t help but take another step forward, letting his view encompass Felix’s entire body. He had climbed to the other side of the slope, clipped on a quickdraw, and stretched his arm to the other side. His sweat-soaked white shirt clung to his back, outlining the shape of his muscles. A tense, beautiful, and powerfully dynamic figure.

This might also be what Felix saw when he looked up at him from below. He vaguely thought. Of course, it wouldn’t be exactly the same. Their builds were vastly different, their appearances completely dissimilar. But on the rock wall a dozen meters away, the differences in their bodies were somewhat erased, leaving only the postures and the tension in their muscles somewhat similar.

Was that why he had that expression? He wondered.

—But was that expression real? Or was it (once again) a figment of his imagination?

Erik tried hard to reconstruct the image he had seen in the second or two before he fell, but he couldn’t be sure how much was actual memory and how much was embellished by his imagination: that fleeting impression was too brief, filled with an unreal quality. He only remembered those green eyes wide open, a faint mist in them, seeming somewhat lost, yet at the same time, there was an unmistakable urgency in them. If he allowed his imagination to run further, he almost wanted to say that gaze was filled with desire. …Almost hunger.

Erik was startled by his own thoughts.

He stared blankly at Felix. The noise around him suddenly seemed to fade away, leaving him alone in another space, dazed, hearing nothing but the thumping of blood in his ears. His vision was filled only with Felix. The short blond hair peeking out from under his helmet. His neck, the tense muscles of his back, the muscles in his legs bulging from exertion. The hem of his shirt had come loose from the safety harness, revealing a narrow strip of his waist. He could see the dip of his spine, the beautiful lines from his hips to his calves, disappearing into the confines of the black fabric and the blue-and-gray safety harness.

“Hey, Erik, wipe your drool,” a teasing voice said. He couldn’t tell if it came from beside him or another world.

“—The way you’re looking at him, it’s like you’re completely infatuated.”

“Yes, I am.”

As soon as he said it, he came to his senses. The noise and chatter of the climbing hall suddenly returned to his ears. He saw Fabian standing in front of him, the playful expression not yet fully faded from his face, his mouth forming a perfect O. A low murmur rippled through the crowd around them. Several people started whispering and giggling. “Wow, Erik!” someone whistled.

Erik was dumbfounded. Reason told him he should react, laugh it off, or say something: if he acted quickly, he could still make everyone believe it was just a joke. But he couldn’t. He knew his expression must have betrayed him, he couldn’t control himself. He was like someone who had accidentally pressed a button and was now watching in horror as a nuclear bomb exploded on the horizon. A fact was rapidly forming before him, solidifying, like that mushroom cloud rising in the sky, and all he could do was silently watch it happen, helpless, unable to explain, beyond redemption.

—He had just come out in front of his students, friends, colleagues… half his circle of acquaintances.