Novel Lived
Chapter 487.
Chapter 487.
Chapter 487. Heading to the Peak: The Descent. (2/3)
My right leg moved forward in a flash and my foot planted down heavily on the corner of the cliff at a forty-five-degree angle.
I lowered my center of gravity, tensed all the muscles in my right leg, and grit my teeth.
“Just waiting for the leap of faith!” The sound of the world returned as Rosa sang out the lyrics jubilantly in sync with crazed laughter.
Through my back, I felt her heart pounding just as hard as mine as I pushed off the cliff with all my strength into the air.
“Hahaha! I love you, Ran!” She didn’t sound scared at all.
After that last lyric, the beat dropped the instant we reached the furthest distance from the cliff and began to fall. It was right then that Rosa deployed the chute.
Our bodies jerked in the air as the parachute slowed our descent.
“Hah… hah… hah…” I was out of breath from just that. My heartbeat was through the roof as I looked down. I could make out the ground below thanks to the moonlight and Rosa’s soul.
We were pretty close at first but we gained some ground when a gust of wind blew us forward.
“You’re already out of breath? You really need to work out more.” Rosa teased.
The parachute flapping in the wind above us was rather noisy.
It was scary looking down as the ground grew more distant.
“Rather than me working out more, maybe you should lose some weight.”
“What? Did you just say you want me to cut the straps with my nails?”
“... wow, you’re so light Rosa! Have you lost weight recently?”
“Hehehe, have I? I haven’t checked.”
Scary.
Rosa rested her chin on my left shoulder and nuzzled her right cheek up against my left cheek.
“It wasn’t so scary, was it?”
“Yes it was. Please don’t joke about cutting the straps.”
“I meant jumping, dummy.”
“I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t scary.”
“What? You doubted me?”
“No. But you never know for certain what will happen. What if the chute failed to deploy? What if the line snapped because it couldn’t hold our weight?”
“I checked and inspected it all beforehand.”
“Where did you even get a parachute? Aren’t they really expensive? Like 10k or something?”
“I saw it laying around at Dawn’s place and asked her about it. Apparently, Dawn’s parents used to go skydiving and base jumping together back in their university days. Dawn’s mother received it as a gift.”
“A gift from who?”
“Who do you think? The very same target who’s in love with her. He initially used it together with her before gifting it away, only for her to start using it together with Dawn’s father later on. Dawn’s mother didn’t take it with her when she left.”
“So it had that sort of story behind it...”
“Yeah.”
“But if it was a gift from his enemy, why’d he keep it?”
“When I asked him if I could borrow it he said he’d actually been wanting to get rid of it for a while but couldn’t bring himself to do so all these years. He told me I could have it.”
“I see. Though it was something from his enemy, it was still something he shared a lot of fond memories together with his wife.”
“Yeah. That left him with mixed feelings.”
“I wonder if they’ve made up by now or if Aurelia’s still hesitating.”
“We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey Rosa, was the reason you wanted your first time to be on top of a mountain under a full moon as simple as you let on?”
“Where’s this coming from all of a sudden?”
“It’s been on my mind since I didn’t get the chance to ask before because of how quickly you changed the topic back then.”
“Ugh, why’d you have to remember?”
“Was there really more of a reason?”
“It’s not like there wasn’t any reason…”
“What was it?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Just tell me.”
“... the reason was… because I couldn’t have your first time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I… wanted it to be a first for both of us, and since I couldn’t be your first time… I at least wanted it to be an experience that you’d almost definitely never share with another girl in the future... so I picked somewhere hard to reach where you’d likely never do it with anyone else.”
“So that was why.”
“Yeah…”
“Hah. You have an unexpectedly cute side to you sometimes.”
“Shut up, jerk. And what do you mean sometimes? I’m always the cutest.”
Together, having a nice long chat, we soared through the starry night sky illuminated by the moonlight through the mountains and headed for the lake we camped out the night before.
We might have been the first stupid couple to have pillow talk while falling from the sky.
It wasn’t a bad experience at all.
I felt strangely at peace.
Rosa aimed for the shallow part of the lake near where we left behind some of our stuff in a bush. We cushioned our landing in the water and retrieved everything we left.
The journey up the mountain had taken about forty minutes while the journey back down had been much shorter thanks to the parachute. Rosa really planned things out well. With how well it went, it was questionable which would have been more dangerous, trying to traverse the mountain during the dark or parachuting back to the ground.
In the end, it worked out well, but I’d definitely not want to take such a gamble again anytime soon. I definitely wouldn’t recommend anyone trying to replicate it either. Especially not when you were an inexperienced noob like me. It only worked out this time because Rosa had prior experience and could judge where it was safe to jump off from.
“Hey, now that you have some experience jumping off a mountain, want to try out a wingsuit next time?”
When Rosa asked me that while hugging my left arm on our way back to the lot I parked my motorcycle, I nearly tripped and fell over.
“Like hell there’s going to be a next time!”
“What? Why not? It feels even more liberating than just leisurely coasting along with a parachute.”
“Rosa… are you trying to get me killed? Did you take out a life insurance policy for me without my knowledge or something?”
“Hehehehe, no, but maybe I should.”
“Considering the things I’ve been up to lately… maybe it would be a good idea to take one out.”
“That’d be a waste of money. I’m not letting you die any time in the near future.”
“So you’ll let me die in the far-off future?”
“No.”
“Then when do you plan on letting me die?”
“I’ll torture you to death with love for eternity.”
“That sounds pretty scary. Like I won’t even be permitted to die.”
“It is scary.”
“Oh, I almost forgot something.”
“What?”
“I love you too.”
“So late~”
“I forgot to say it back when you said it because of the whole… you know… jumping off a mountain thing we had going on at the time.”
“Hehehe.”
…
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