The Winter Project

46. Minoru

He was finally committing to his goal of cycling around the entire lake, and had been advised by Ricco to cycle along the Strada della Forra, Lake Garda's most famous road, notorious for being terrifying and yet indescribably scenic. He had asked Isabel to come with him, but she was working on the pier and promised to meet him later. Although he was convinced that he could very easily fall in love with her if he let himself, Minoru had promised himself to get to know her and to help her, and he was simply excited just to sit down with her and find out more about how her brain worked, how she saw the world and the things she liked and disliked. Even cycling, something he loved deeply, was no longer as interesting to him as finding out what Isabel's favourite sandwich was. Why was that? He couldn't work it out.

As he cycled along the road that Ricco had recommended, he was barely able to take in how truly magnificent it was. It felt like a level in a video game, full of colour and occasionally the roar of another player zooming past on a motorcycle. He narrowly avoided a serious incident as he cycled past a car that was pulled over to the side of the road just as another car was flying past in the other direction, and reminded himself to slow down and possibly take a break.

Just as he had cycled through an old stone tunnel and came out the other side, he saw a girl on the side of the road, staring vacantly out onto the lake. He realised on closer inspection that she was sat atop the railing that separated the road from the sharp drop below, her legs dangling aimlessly over a height that would most certainly kill her if she were to lose her balance. He used this as an opportunity to pull up and take a break from the cycle that had left him covered in sweat due to the blazing sun and constant uphill stretches of road.

"Good morning," he said as he apprehensively approached the girl. As he saw her from the side he noticed that she was probably his age or maybe slightly younger. Her pale skin was covered in freckles and a red tinge on her nose from the exposure to the sun. Her eyes were a stunning shade of blue that matched the water of the lake on a clear day, contrasting her long and straight red hair. She did not reply to him or even turn her head, but continued to stare vacantly down at the road below and the lake beyond it. "Are you okay?"

"No," she said, so quietly he almost did not hear it. "There's no point."

"No point in what?" he asked, all of a sudden aware that she was not sitting precariously on the edge of the road purely for the stunning views, but that something much more sinister was rattling around in her brain.

"Life, breathing, any of it."

"Well, that's just not true," he said. He nervously put one leg over the railing so that he could sit down, but kept a short distance from her just in case she was in the type of mindset that would cause her to push him down if he were to say the wrong thing. "Life is just an experiment, and we can have fun and discover the world."

She laughed sarcastically, and her mouth moved in the way that it would if you were to see something disgusting and feel repulsion. Minoru wasn't sure what to do, but he knew that he had a moral obligation to stay put and make sure that she wasn't going to do anything dangerous or he would spend the rest of his life wondering what had happened. Or even worse, he would hrear about it on the news and regret not changing the course of her fate with a few simple words.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked weakly.

"What's to talk about? What's the actual point? You don't know me, so you certainly don't care."

"I care about everybody," Minoru said with conviction. "It doesn't matter if I know you or not."

She turned to look at him this time, and Minoru could tell that she was analysing him, trying to work out why he was talking to her and what his motives were. Minoru believed that he had a high level of emotional intelligence, and that this was far more important than academic intellectuality. He prided himself on his ability to assess people, communicate effectively with people and bring out the best in them.