["Some places are made of silence. This was one of them."]
I don't run the next morning. I walk.
Not because I'm tired... though I am... but because I need to see it again. The shelter. The place where time collapsed. Where the air felt like it had lungs of its own.
It wasn't part of my usual route. I don't think it was meant to be found. That's what makes it feel more real than anything else on this mountain.
My legs ache with every step, but it's the good kind. The afterburn of something earned.
I cross the same thorn-thick brush I cut through yesterday. My jacket sleeve catches again. This time I don't flinch. I let it tear.
The shelter is still there, exactly as I left it. Slumped like a collapsed runner. Half-eaten by moss.
I step inside.
The ground is damp, soft under my shoes. The broken roof lets in lines of light like they're searching for something.
I crouch and run my fingers across the wooden beam. The rot has deepened, but under the layer of green, I feel it—scratched letters.
I rub harder.
S.H.
Same initials. Same hand. I sit.
I let the quiet settle in.
Some places are made of silence. This was one of them.
I unwrap the page I took yesterday. Read the words again like they might have changed overnight.
"Karu eats those who stop moving."
He wasn't just talking about the mountain. He was talking about himself.
About me.
By the time I get back home, Grandpa is in the garden, trimming the plum tree with one hand and holding a cup of tea in the other. The sky is flat gray. The air smells like coming rain.
He doesn't ask where I went.
I don't offer it.
Instead, I walk straight up to him, hold out the folded page.
He doesn't take it at first. Just stares.
Then slowly, carefully, he lifts it from my fingers. Unfolds it. Reads.
The way he exhales—it's not surprise. It's memory. Heavy. Unwelcome.
"You knew about the shelter," I say.
He doesn't answer.
"You knew he was there."
Still nothing.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
He finally looks at me. His eyes are clouded like river stones.
"Because you weren't ready to ask."
He sets the page down and walks inside.
I don't follow.
I just sit by the plum tree until the rain starts to fall.
At school, I sleep through most of second period.
The teacher doesn't bother waking me anymore. I think they've all decided I'm some kind of burnout. A kid stuck between an athlete and a ghost.
Let them.
They don't know what I found.
Kara slips a folded note onto my desk during lunch.
"You didn't run this morning. You okay?"
I scribble a reply and slide it back.
"I walked somewhere more important."
She reads it. Looks at me. Doesn't ask more.
Good. She's starting to get it.
I skip the after-school run.
Instead, I go to the library.
We only have one in town. It smells like dust and lemon polish. There's a record of old hikers, climbers, and volunteers who mapped the mountain over the past fifty years. Most of it's handwritten. Fading.
I flip through a red ledger marked Karu Summit Entries: 1996–2003.
Near the end, one entry stands out:
Shun Hirota — North Ridge Attempt — Weather unstable — 6:12 AM departure — Last contact 9:41 AM.
There's no return time. No check-out signature.
Just a line in red ink:
—Not confirmed. Presumed unreturned.
________________________
Unreturned.
Not lost. Not dead.
Unreturned.
Like he made a choice.
That night, I sit on the porch again. Grandpa doesn't come out.
The sky is ink. The stars blur behind high clouds. The air smells like rain and cedar.
My body feels restless. Not tired. Not sore.
Hungry. Not for food. For something higher. Something just out of reach.
I don't sleep much.
By 3:58, I'm tying my laces.
At 4:07, I'm on the trail.
The mountain is quieter than usual. No birds. No wind. Just the sound of my breath and the crunch of wet stone underfoot.
I pass the Ridge Line without stopping. The trail narrows. The rocks tilt upward at crueler angles. This is the part most runners turn back from.
I don't turn back.
The climb becomes more hands than feet. I grip tree roots. Dig my soles into the dirt wall. There's no clear path here, just a direction—up.
By the time I reach the ledge, my palms are torn. My legs shake.
But I'm smiling.
There, carved into the face of the rock just past the shelter, are six initials. Faint. Almost hidden beneath moss.
S.H.
G.H.
S.O.
M.T.
R.K.
A blank space.
Six runners. Or five.
One still waiting.
I stare at the blank space.
I reach into my pocket. Pull out a knife Grandpa gave me two years ago. I was supposed to use it for cutting branches, rope, whatever.
Instead, I carve.
Z.H.
The blade cuts through stone like it's skin. My hand shakes, but the letters stay clean.
When I finish, I wipe the blade, slide it back into my pocket, and sit.
The wind hits the ridge, and the trees behind me hiss.
The mountain has seen me.
And now it remembers.
The wind doesn't stop.
It rises and falls like breathing—steady, drawn out, cold at the edge.
I sit by the carved initials until the light changes.
There's no sun up here. Just brightness. Pale and sour. It washes the world in grayscale. The only color left is the blood crusting on my palm and the green where moss clings to the stone.
I should leave.
But I don't.
Eventually, I stand.
My legs are stiff. Not with pain—just fatigue. A useful kind. The kind that tells me where I am without punishing me for it.
I descend slowly, boots dragging across loose dirt. The roots feel thinner on the way down, like they don't want to hold me anymore.
Or maybe I'm imagining that.
Everything on this mountain feels like it's thinking.
Watching.
Choosing.
Back home, Grandpa's waiting.
Not inside.
He's sitting at the edge of the back garden, near the storage shed where the climbing gear used to be kept. His jacket's zipped halfway, one sleeve pushed up to reveal a scar I'd never noticed before—a sharp crescent on his forearm, deep and faded like it was cut in stone.
I sit next to him without a word.
He doesn't look at me.
"You carved your name, didn't you?" he says after a long silence.
I nod.
"Good."
Another pause.
"I saw your father carve his."
That hits me harder than it should.
"You were there?"
"I watched from the tree line. Didn't go with him. Not to the top."
"Why not?"
He exhales. Long. Slow.
"Because he needed to go alone."
I look down at my hands. The cuts are still raw. Dirt in the creases.
"He never came back."
"No," Grandpa says. "But I don't think he fell."
That pulls my eyes to his.
"What do you mean?"
He looks at the sky like it has the answer.
"Some runners don't fall. Some… cross over."
I wait.
He says nothing else.
The next day, I don't run.
I sit.
All day. In the classroom. On the rooftop. At the edge of the trail after school.
The mountain feels farther away.
Or maybe I do.
Kara finds me near the suspension bridge.
"You're off schedule," she says.
"So?"
She shrugs. "I just thought... the mountain would be missing you."
I don't smile. But something in me does shift.
She sits beside me on the railing, her legs swinging over the drop.
"Can I ask you something?" she says.
"Yeah."
"Do you actually want to reach the top?"
I think about that for a while.
"No," I finally say. "I want to know why it's there."
She looks confused.
I don't blame her.
"Most people just climb because it's tall," she says.
"I don't care about tall. I care about true."
"What does that mean?"
"If the mountain's honest, it won't let me lie to myself. I'll either make it, or I won't."
She stares at the water below us.
"You think it killed your dad?"
"No," I say. "I think it showed him something."
I go home and sit at my desk for the first time in weeks.
There's an old journal under the drawer. One I used to sketch in back when I still thought I might be an artist.
The pages are half-blank. The rest filled with ridgelines, trail maps, rough profiles of peaks and animal tracks. Notes on breathing. Footwork. Heat loss.
I flip to a clean page.
Write three words:
(North Ridge Attempt)
Below that, I start mapping my next climb.
I know it's coming.
The next step.
The part of the mountain no one talks about.
The line between those who come back…
…and those who don't.