AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"I can't climb on top of a volcano, Lei! Do you want me to spend the next eight weeks in the hospital?"
He looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes. He tried to hide it, but I could see amusement in his eyes. "Nothing will happen to you, I'll see to that."
"How are you going to do that? One wrong step and I'll fall into the abyss!"
"Are you afraid of heights?"
"No, but it doesn't matter. You can't seriously send me up a mountain like that."
"Actually, I'm not just sending you up there, because we're going to take a little shortcut halfway up." He patted the backpack he was carrying. It was full of ropes and other equipment that certainly wasn't meant to tie me to a tree in the jungle.
"Why exactly do you want to go through this again?" I demanded, without reacting to what Lei had said.
Lei stepped toward me, reached out and slid his thumb reassuringly over the back of my hand as I reached for it. "We're not doing this to torture you."
"But that wasn't my question."
"You should trust yourself. The only thing standing between you and conquering the volcano is you."
"What if I don't want to conquer it? What if I'd rather stay home in bed and look at pictures of it on the Internet?"
"You're giving your weaker self too much leash again," he replied, nodding toward the mountain. "Let's just get going and see what happens."
What would happen was that after a few hundred yards I would lose motivation and certainly not make it to the point where he would strap me in and send me straight up a rock.
It may be that Lei did this regularly for fun, but I felt quite comfortable with both feet on the ground.
Nevertheless, I followed him when he walked ahead. I was well aware that he was not doing this to bully me or to show me how little assertiveness I possessed. No, he sincerely believed that it would bring about a change in me if I successfully completed such a mammoth task.
He was probably right, but until that time came, he would have to pull me up with him and make sure I stayed on the ball and didn't give up halfway through and fail.
"When did you start doing this, anyway? Climbing things for fun?"
"Didn't you fall out of a tree and break your arm when you were a kid?" His question may have been justified, but it was not as if my parents had encouraged a wild childhood. Potential dangers were always recognized and averted in time. Without exception.
"No fractures. A few scrapes, and after that I was only allowed out under supervision. My nanny was a few years older and had a hard time keeping up with me."
Lei's face spoke volumes. From time to time, he seemed to forget what kind of family I had grown up in and that this treatment had continued into adulthood. Accordingly, no one spoke to me– let alone inquired where I had been all this time. I could have been in Europe all along and no one would have noticed.
"Well, then it's long overdue that you do something daring."
"Like climbing a mountain and relying on two damn thin ropes to get me there." The sarcasm in my words was hard to miss.
"Are you afraid you might not make it? If so, let me reassure you. You'll make it to the top no matter what."
What he really meant was that he would probably drag me by my hair to the top of the volcano if necessary, just so I could finally say I had made it.
"Besides, you don't have to be afraid. If you fall, I'll catch you. And failure, while not an option, is no shame. The world won't end just because you might not make it."
As we walked along the path, I just looked at him for a few seconds. His words evoked a feeling in me that I could hardly remember. If there were no consequences if I failed there was no reason to be afraid. Why be afraid of something that wasn't going to happen anyway?
After all these years, Lei knew my family well enough to gauge this pressure I had always felt. He knew it existed deep within me, even when I was not around said family. It wasn't even arbitrary– it was just what had been drilled into me over many years.
If I didn't give a hundred percent, I had better start thinking about what the consequences would be. If I didn't make it to the top of the volcano, I was a disappointment. If I didn't make it to the top, I would hurt someone.
If I did not make it to the wedding, I would be a disappointment and a pain to my parents at the same time.
While Lei continued to walk straight ahead, leading me in the right direction, I took advantage of his momentary inattention to look at him from the side. Was it his intuition that was doing him such a great favor, or was he actually interested in me, concerned about how he could help? Was this compassion something that only I experienced in this form, or could he also be a warm character with other people, making everyone feel comfortable?
