Hah…
Hah…
Hah…
Each breath came heavier than the last.
The mountain was enormous in a way that books had failed to communicate.
Leigh had read descriptions of mountain terrain — gradient percentages, altitude effects on oxygen levels, the way temperature dropped with every hundred meters of elevation gained.
He had understood all of it intellectually.
Understanding it and standing inside it were entirely different experiences.
The stone path had disappeared thirty minutes ago, swallowed by undergrowth and loose rock.
What remained was simply the slope itself — uneven, unpredictable, demanding constant small adjustments that accumulated into exhaustion faster than any single difficult step would have.
His left leg ached steadily.
Not sharply — just a persistent, low pressure that had been there since he started climbing and showed no intention of leaving.
He noted it.
Moved on.
The forest around him was dense and quiet.
Morning light filtered through the canopy in broken fragments, illuminating patches of moss and root and shadow.
Birds had gone silent some time ago.
Leigh wasn’t sure whether that was because of the examination or simply because of how deep into the mountain he had traveled.
He had been moving for over an hour.
He had seen no one.
That was intentional.
BOOM.
The sound rolled through the trees from somewhere below and to the left — deep, percussive, followed immediately by the distant crackle of something burning.
Birds exploded upward from the canopy in a panicked mass, their wings loud against the sudden silence they left behind.
A scream.
Brief.
Then nothing.
Leigh stopped moving.
He stood completely still for several seconds, listening.
The forest settled back into quiet.
Smoke — faint, acrid — drifted through the trees from the direction of the sound.
He noted the direction.
Noted the distance.
Then moved toward a nearby bush.
His hand touched the nearest branch lightly.
Something shifted in him — not a decision exactly, more like a recognition.
An awareness of the structure of the plant, the arrangement of its stems and leaves, the way it occupied its particular corner of space.
The bush changed.
Gradually.
Without violence.
The branches thickened and wove together, the leaves densified, the whole shape deepening and closing until the space he had been standing in no longer appeared to exist.
Not a constructed hiding place — simply a bush that had grown, through some quiet acceleration, into exactly the configuration that would make the space behind it invisible.
Leigh stepped inside.
Settled.
Waited.
Footsteps reached him thirty seconds later.
Three sets.
Moving quickly, not carefully — the footfalls of people in a hurry rather than people trying to be quiet.
Through the gaps in the leaves Leigh watched them pass: a boy carrying a sword with a fresh bloodstain on the blade, a girl with a spear held horizontally as she ran, and a third figure half-dragging an injured participant whose feet barely touched the ground.
They disappeared into the trees without slowing.
Leigh waited another full minute.
Then emerged.
He stood for a moment in the space the bush had returned to, looking in the direction the group had gone.
Then he turned and continued climbing.
Another hour passed.
The slope steepened.
Leigh’s breathing had become a constant companion — present in a way that ordinary breathing wasn’t, audible, effortful.
His left leg had progressed from a steady ache to something more specific, concentrated in the joint, flaring with each step that required his weight to shift unevenly.
He found a large tree.
Old — wide enough that the roots at its base had created natural depressions in the ground, sheltered from the wind.
He lowered himself into one of them and let his back rest against the bark.
The wood was rough through his bandages.
He closed his eyes.
Hah.
Hah.
Just for a moment.
“Hey.”
Leigh’s eyes opened immediately.
Someone was sitting on a branch above him.
Not close — several meters up, where the trunk divided into two main branches that formed a natural seat.
The figure sat there with one leg folded beneath him and the other hanging freely, as though he had been there for some time and simply hadn’t mentioned it.
Black hair.
Green eyes.
Glasses.
A suit that seemed entirely unreasonable for mountain terrain.
And in his hands, held with complete seriousness, was a book.
How to Become a Good Person.
Leigh recognized him immediately.
The boy from outside the gate.
The one who had made him quietly uneasy for reasons he hadn’t been able to fully articulate.
He said nothing.
The boy in the tree looked down at him with an expression of mild, genuine interest — the kind of interest that had no urgency in it, as though the answer to whatever question was behind his eyes could arrive at any pace and he would simply wait.
Then he closed his book.
Carefully.
With a bookmark.
And dropped.
The fall was several meters.
He landed cleanly, his knees absorbing the impact without apparent difficulty, and straightened immediately.
Then he walked directly toward Leigh and stopped a short distance away.
“Hello.”
Leigh said nothing.
The boy tilted his head slightly.
“Hm.” He studied Leigh for a moment with the same unhurried attention.
“You’re not very talkative.”
“I don’t like people like that.”
Leigh answered immediately.
The boy blinked.
Then something happened to his expression — a small brightening, as though the response had genuinely pleased him rather than offended him.
“Oh.” A pause.
“That’s the first thing you’ve said to me.”
Leigh was already tired.
And this time it wasn’t from climbing.
The boy raised his book slightly, as though introducing it.
“My name is Erick.”
Leigh glanced at him.
“Leigh.”
Erick blinked.
“You know my name?”
“We were both outside the gate this morning.”
“Oh.” Erick considered this.
A brief expression crossed his face — something that might have been mild disappointment.
“I thought it would be something more interesting.”
Leigh had no response to that.
The forest was quiet around them.
Wind moved through the canopy somewhere above, producing a soft, continuous sound that was almost calming.
Then Erick spoke again.
“You seem like a good person.”
Leigh looked at him.
“What?”
“You seem like a good person,” Erick repeated.
The same tone.
Completely serious.
“How did you reach that conclusion?”
Erick thought about it.
Actually thought — his eyes moving slightly to one side, his expression the careful one of someone consulting something internal.
Then he shrugged.
Leigh decided, quietly and firmly, that he did not want to understand how this person’s mind worked.
His gaze moved to the book in Erick’s hand.
How to Become a Good Person.
“You’re reading that seriously.”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
This time the pause was longer.
Erick looked at the cover of the book.
Then back at Leigh.
Then at some middle distance between them.
“Because I’ve never tried it before.”
The words landed quietly.
Leigh waited.
Erick continued — not with the speed of someone who had prepared what they were about to say, but with the slightly uneven rhythm of someone discovering it as they spoke.
“I’ve been many things.”
He turned the book over once in his hands.
“A mafia heir. A problem. A threat. A criminal.”
He said none of it with shame or pride — simply as categories.
Items on a list.
“But I’ve never been a good person.”
He looked at Leigh directly.
“So I’m curious.”
Something settled into place in Leigh’s understanding.
Not everything — far from everything.
But enough.
This person followed his curiosity wherever it led.
Without asking whether it was reasonable.
Without checking whether the destination was safe.
He simply went toward whatever interested him and waited to see what he found.
That was either very brave or very dangerous.
Possibly both.
Erick stood up and brushed dust from his suit with the manner of someone concluding a meeting.
“Well. I’m leaving.”
Leigh blinked.
“That’s it?”
“Hm?”
“You came here just to talk?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
Erick smiled — small, genuine, slightly lopsided.
“Because I was curious.”
He turned and began walking away, moving between the trees with the ease of someone who had already memorized the terrain without appearing to look at it.
Then he stopped.
Looked back over his shoulder.
“Oh.”
Leigh looked up.
“Don’t die.”
A pause.
“What?”
“You look like a good person.” The same tone as before.
Completely matter-of-fact.
“I’m still learning.”
He held up the book slightly.
“I need examples.”
Then he turned again and walked away, his figure growing smaller between the trees until the forest closed around him and he was simply gone.
The clearing was quiet.
Leigh remained where he was for a moment, his back against the tree, looking at the space where Erick had disappeared.
Then a single thought arrived.
…Weird.
He sat with it for a few seconds.
Then, slowly, he reached for the branch beside him and began pulling himself to his feet.
The mountain was still waiting.
And for the first time since the examination began…
Leigh found himself wondering, with something that wasn’t quite curiosity but was adjacent to it, whether he would encounter that strange person again.