Chapter 5: Talking
Kouji grabbed her with both hands and said encouragingly,
"C'mon now! Don't get scared! Ungh…. I'm beginning to slip!"
Izumi's other hand slipped off.
"Come on Orimoto! If I can do it so can you so try to put your hand back up!"
Izumi struggled to put her fuchsia glove-covered hand onto the ledge. And it worked.
"Good. You better not let your weight fall loosely or I can't pull you up."
"All right! Just pull me up!" she screamed at Kouji.
Kouji grabbed her other hand and pulled her up, falling down, as Izumi fell on her head.
"Oww! Next time, don't slam me onto the rocks!"
"Well, sorry…" said Kouji as he climbed up another ledge with ease.
"Hey! Wait for me!"
"Well, hurry up."
"Well, I'm sorry if I cant climb as well as you, but you're going to have to help me."
"Says who?"
"Me. Or you can go ahead without me and leave me here in the cold to freeze."
"Okay," said Kouji as he started climbing the third ledge.
"Hey! Don't you know sarcasm when you hear it, Kouji? KOUJI? Come back here!"
She heard only silence. "Why, you! Stupid…." She grumbled. She climbed another ledge with her feet dangling.
"If I die Kouji, this is your fault!"
She tried her hardest to pull herself up, and she made it. She was really proud of herself, sort of.
"What an accomplishment…" she thought to herself sarcastically. As she stood up, she saw Kouji leaning onto the wall with hands in the pockets of his black pants.
"Hey… what are you doing here? I thought you left me!"
"No. I just wanted you to do it by yourself."
"What?" she said semi-loudly and hit him on the head, as his bandanna came off, and fell down to the first ledge they climbed.
"You'd better get that," said Kouji in a very serious tone.
"No."
"Why?"
"Because you made me think that you left me. We're partners for this assignment, then you leave me. Do you know what partners means or do I need to pull out a dictionary and tell you the definition?"
"Yes, I know. I'm going back down there to get it, and you'd better be here when I get back."
"All right."
Kouji put his backpack down, climbed down very quickly down the two rocky ledges, and grabbed his bandanna. He tied it up in his hair and went to climb up again. As he approached and climbed the third rocky ledge, he couldn't seem to get up.
"I could use a little help you know, Orimoto."
"No."
"Hey, if you don't help me, I can't help you get up the other rocky ledges."
"Yeah, well, if you don't want to sleep down there in the cold, you'd better apologize."
"Apologize? All I did was to help you learn to climb like normal people… and what do you mean sleep down here?"
"You left your backpack here. And I can see you have a lot of nice warm thing I could use during the night."
"Hey! Don't you touch my bag!"
"Hey, what's this nice sleeping bag I see here?"
"Don't touch my bag, Orimoto!"
"Well, apologize!"
"Okay. Sorry."
"You don't mean that, Kouji-kun."
"I'm REALLY sorry I scared you, okay, Orimoto-san?"
"Acceptable," said Izumi as she poked her head over the third ledge and held her fuchsia gloved hand out for him. Kouji grabbed her hand and pulled himself up. As he got up, he noticed his backpack first.
"So, you didn't touch it."
"No I didn't."
"Then why do I see my sleeping bag poking out?"
"It was sticking out."
"Oh," he said as he grabbed his backpack looked at the final ledge. "There's only one left. Then we can set up camp."
"How do you know?"
"My dad was here on business once and I was with him at the time."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, really. It's getting dark so we'd better set up camp."
Kouji looked up to the final rock-filled ledge as nothing. Izumi was thinking, "He'd better help me."
Kouji jumped and climbed up with ease. Then he held out his indigo-gloved hand out for Izumi to hold onto.
"C'mon. I don't have all day."
"All right, gosh," she said quietly and helped herself up, ignoring Kouji's hand.
She got up and said while smirking, "I'm a fast learner."
"Oh, shut up…" Kouji muttered, feeling stupid.
Meanwhile, Miyamoto grabbed a twig lying in the snow and opened her backpack. She took out an old red rag sitting on the sticky bottom of her backpack. She tied it to the stick and stuck it near a thin sheet of ice. She then bent down in the snow and grabbed an armful of snow to throw over the ice. She walked off into the mist and continued on…