I started up the trail. My too-big boots kept sliding. Murin wasn't heavy, but carrying any person for two hundred meters uphill was brutal.

  "You're doing great," Murin said.

  "Shut up."

  "Very encouraging."

  "I'm carrying you. I don't need to be encouraging too."

  Halfway up, I passed Akki, who was carrying Dev like it was effortless. Showing off, probably. For who? Dev?

  "Looking strong, Ashru!" Akki called out, not even breathing hard.

  "I hate you," I gasped back.

  "Love you too!"

  I made it to the two-hundred-meter marker, turned around, started back. My legs were shaking, shoulders screamed. The borrowed boots were giving me new blisters on top of yesterday's blisters.

  Ten meters from finish, my legs started giving out. I could see the line. See Dr. Cross watching with her clipboard. See Akki already done, lounging on the ground. My left boot caught on a root. I stumbled, recovered.

  Three meters. My legs just stopped working. We went down in a heap, tumbling across the finish line.

  Dr. Cross looked down at us. "Completed. Barely."

  I lay there staring at the sky, gasping.

  "Your turn to carry me," I told Murin.

  "Give me a minute to regain consciousness first."

  "You weren't unconscious."

  "My dignity was."

  Murin got me in fireman's carry position. He was lighter than me but not by much. He stood up and immediately his legs started shaking.

  "You good?" I asked from my position across his shoulders.

  "Perfect," he wheezed. "Living the dream."

  He made it maybe twenty meters before his legs gave out and we both hit the ground. Then he got me up again. Started up the trail, step by struggling step. His breathing was ragged. I could feel him shaking.

  "You can put me down," I offered. "You're going to collapse."

  "Then I'll collapse at the finish line like a man."

  He somehow made it to the marker, turned around, started back. His face was purple. His hands were trembling where they gripped my legs. He made it back, dropped me less than gracefully, and collapsed on top of me.

  "I think," he gasped, "that my cardiovascular system just filed for bankruptcy."

  "You made it though."

  "Spite is a powerful motivator."

  Nearby, Akki was doing stretches, looking fresh as morning. Dev looked exhausted but Akki looked like he'd just gone for a light jog.

  "How are you not dead?" I asked him.

  "Good genetics. Clean living. Positive attitude."

  "You're full of shit."

  "That too."

  Lunch was rice and lentil stew again. I was beginning to think this was the only food they knew how to make.

  Akki sat down across from me with his bowl, somehow having made his hair look presentable again despite two days without a shower. He stared across the campfire at where Prisha sat with her group. She was laughing at something, her whole face lighting up.

  I recognized that look on Akki's face. I'd seen it on my uncle's face at family gatherings when his ex-wife's name came up. That particular brand of hopeless wanting that made my chest tight just watching it.

  Akki poked at his lentils without eating. Murin sat down next to him and ate in silence, clearly noticing but smart enough not to comment. Priella joined us and immediately started making pointed eye contact with me, jerking her head toward Akki in that universal gesture of do something about this.

  I had no idea what to do about it.

  We ate quietly for a few minutes. The campfire crackled. Someone was tuning a guitar badly. Akki kept glancing over at Prisha's group like he was building up courage for something monumentally stupid.

  "Don't," I said finally.

  "Don't what?"

  "Whatever you're planning. Don't."

  Akki stood up abruptly, bowl still half-full, and walked toward Prisha's group. Murin and I watched in horrified fascination. Priella covered her face with her hands.

  Akki approached and said something. Prisha looked up. The smile on her face flickered and died. She said something short. Akki said something else, gesturing with one hand. Prisha's expression didn't change. She said something even shorter and turned back to her friends. Clear Dismissal.

  Akki stood there for a while, then walked back to us. His face was neutral, but his ears were red. He sat down and picked up his bowl. Set it down again without eating.

  "Well," he said to the fire, "that went exactly as badly as it could have."

  Nobody responded because what could you say to that? Murin reached over and squeezed his shoulder once, then let go. Guy code for that sucks and I'm here.

  Akki laughed without humor. "Two days. I spent two days thinking if I just tried hard enough, showed her I was worth noticing—" He stopped. "I'm an idiot."

  "You're not an idiot," Priella said quietly.

  "I asked someone out who clearly wasn't interested and made her uncomfortable enough that she had to explicitly reject me in front of her friends. That's pretty much the definition of idiot."

  I wanted to say something helpful but had no experience with this. I'd never even gotten close enough to rejection to worry about it. My romantic history consisted of one girl in first year who'd asked to borrow my notes and never returned them.

  We sat there in uncomfortable silence, nobody knowing what to say to make it better. The campfire crackled. Someone's badly tuned guitar went quiet. That's when we heard the screaming.

  Everyone's head turned toward the sound. It came from the trail that led away from camp toward the lookout point, maybe two hundred meters into the trees. Dr. Cross was already moving, her whistle forgotten. "Everyone stay here!" she shouted, but half the students were already standing, gravitating toward disaster like moths to flame.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  I was up before I realized I'd moved. Murin grabbed his medical bag. Akki was right behind us, his rejection forgotten in the face of something emergency. We ran toward the screaming. Through the trees, boots slipping on pine needles and mud. The trail narrowed, became rockier. The lookout point was ahead, a clearing where the mountain dropped away into a valley view.

  A group of students stood at the edge of the clearing, clustered together, not moving forward. One girl was bent over, hands on her knees, dry heaving. Another was crying. A guy I didn't know was backing away slowly, face white.

  Dr. Cross pushed through them and stopped. Her whole body went rigid. "Everyone back," she said. "Back to camp. Now." Nobody moved. "I said NOW!"

  That got them moving, but slowly, people craning their necks to see what Dr. Cross was blocking with her body. I got close enough to see before Murin grabbed my arm. "Don't." But I'd already seen.

  A girl hanging from a tree branch that extended over the cliff edge. The rope was ordinary climbing rope. Her feet were maybe three feet off the ground, swaying slightly in the wind. She was wearing jeans and a pink jacket. Her face was...

  I looked away. Too late. The image was burned in.

  "Get them back to camp," Dr. Cross said to Dr. Venn, who'd arrived behind us. "All of them. No exceptions." Dr. Venn started herding students away. Most went willingly, eager to unsee what they'd just seen. Some lingered, morbid curiosity overriding horror.

  "You three," Dr. Cross said, pointing at me, Murin, and Akki. "You stay. But you don't touch anything. Understand?"

  We nodded. She pulled out her phone, dialed. "This is Dr. Helena Cross. I'm at Hilltop Base Camp, trail marker twelve. We have a deceased individual. Apparent suicide by hanging. I need police and medical examiner... Yes, I'll wait."

  She lowered the phone slightly, looked at the three of us. "One of you go back and get Dr. Karim. Tell him to bring his forensic kit. Your forensic medicine teacher, he should be here."

  I hadn't even known he was on this trek. Apparently they'd brought everyone.

  "I'll go," Murin said, already turning.

  "And someone find out if we're missing any students," Dr. Cross added. "Check the attendance list from this morning."

  Murin ran back toward camp. That left me and Akki standing there with Dr. Cross and a dead girl swaying gently in the wind. The sun was still shining. Birds were still singing.

  "Don't look at her face," Dr. Cross said quietly. "I know it's hard, but don't. It doesn't help anyone and you'll see it every time you close your eyes for the next month."

  Too late for that advice. I'd already looked. Already had the image filed away in the terrible cabinet in my brain reserved for things I wished I could unsee. Akki was staring at the ground, jaw clenched. His hands were shaking slightly. All that bravado from earlier, all that confidence: gone. He looked like a young kid way out of his depth. "Is she..." he started, then stopped. "Do we know who she is?"

  "Not yet," Dr. Cross said. "But she's not dressed for hiking. Wrong shoes. No backpack. She came here specifically for this."

  I looked at the girl's feet, canvas sneakers, not hiking boots. Clean. No mud. Dr. Cross was right. She hadn't hiked up here. She'd probably driven to a different access point, walked straight to this lookout, and...

  Murin came back with Dr. Karim, a thin man in his fifties wearing glasses and carrying a metal case that looked like it belonged in a crime show. He approached the scene slowly, already in professional mode. "Everyone step back," he said. "This is a forensic scene now. Nothing gets touched until police arrive and photograph everything."

  He knelt near the base of the tree, examining the ground without touching it. "Footprints here. Looks like she stood here for a while before... Testing the rope probably. Making sure it would hold."

  My God! She'd tested it. Checked her work and made sure she wouldn't just fall and survive.

  Dr. Karim stood, looked at the rope, the branch, the body. His face showed no emotion, pure clinical detachment. "Ligature marks consistent with suspension hanging. Petechiae visible even from here. No defensive wounds on visible skin. No signs of struggle."

  He pulled out a small notebook and started sketching the scene.

  "You three," he said without looking at us. "You'll need to give statements to police when they arrive. What you saw, when you saw it, whether you touched anything."

  "We didn't touch anything," Murin said.

  "Good. Keep it that way."

  We stood there in horrible silence. The girl kept swaying. Eventually we heard voices, equipment, heavy footsteps on the trail.

  Police arrived, two officers in uniform, one older woman who was clearly in charge and a younger guy who looked greener than Akki. Behind them came a man in civilian clothes carrying a camera. The older officer introduced herself as Inspector Devi. She took one look at the scene, at Dr. Karim's sketches, at us standing there like useless decorations.

  "Students?" she asked Dr. Cross.

  "Medical students. They were first on scene after the initial discovery."

  "Names and statements. One at a time. You—" She pointed at me. "Start."

  I told her what I'd heard, what I'd seen, when I'd arrived. She wrote it down without reaction, asking occasional clarifying questions. Time. Position. Distance. Whether I'd touched anything.

  "Any students from your group unaccounted for?"

  "I don't know. We haven't checked yet."

  She made another note. "We'll need a full roster. Wait here."

  The photographer was taking pictures now. Flash after flash. They treating the dead girl like evidence, which I guess she was now. Inspector Devi made a phone call. I heard fragments. "...need the medical examiner... no, on-site... yes, it's clear-cut but we still need official... family notification is going to be a nightmare..."

  This girl had family. Parents who were going about their day, not knowing their daughter was dead on a mountain. Not knowing they'd get a knock on the door soon that would destroy them. The thought made me nauseous.

  Murin gave his statement. Then Akki. Both said essentially what I had.

  The medical examiner showed up around hour three. A woman in her forties with tired eyes who looked at the scene with the same clinical detachment Dr. Karim had shown. Estimated time of death at early morning, between 4 and 7 AM based on environmental factors and body temperature. While we'd been sleeping in our tents, complaining about discomfort and bad food, this girl had been walking to this cliff, tying her rope and testing it. Standing on the edge of oblivion and stepping off.

  "Can we take her down now?" Inspector Devi asked.

  The medical examiner nodded. "Photographs are complete. Scene is documented. Yes, we can recover the body."

  The body came down slowly. They laid her on a stretcher, covered her with a black bag. Just like that, she was no longer a person hanging from a tree. She was remains being transported for autopsy and investigation.

  Inspector Devi interviewed Dr. Cross, got the full student roster, confirmed we were all present. Then she gathered everyone together.

  "I know what you saw today was traumatic," she said. Her voice was professional but not unkind. "Some of you will process this easily. Some of you won't. If you need to talk to someone, your university has counseling services. Use them. Don't try to tough it out."

  Nobody responded. "This investigation will continue, but it doesn't involve any of you. You're free to continue your activities or return to campus, that's up to your faculty."

  She left with her team, taking the body, the rope, the phone, everything that might explain why a girl in a pink jacket had decided today was the day to stop existing.

  Dr. Cross called a meeting at the fire pit. Everyone assembled in silence, nobody making eye contact. "We're canceling the rest of the trek," she announced. "Pack your things. Buses will be here in two hours to take everyone back to campus."

  Relief rippled through the group, mixed with guilt for feeling relieved.

  "Dismissed. Pack quietly. Respect what happened here."

  People scattered to their tents. Nobody was talking. The usual chatter and complaints were gone, replaced by heavy silence. I packed my bag, rolled up my sleeping bag, stuffed in clothes. Murin packed next to me. Akki was sitting on his sleeping bag, staring at nothing.

  We finished packing in silence. The buses arrived on schedule. We loaded our bags into the storage compartments and climbed aboard. Same seats as two days ago, but everything felt different now.

  The bus pulled away from base camp as darkness settled over the mountains. I leaned my head against the window, watching trees pass in the dimming light.

  Akki was sitting next to me this time, Murin across the aisle. Akki had his eyes closed but I could tell he wasn't sleeping. Murin was staring out his window. The System flickered on briefly.

  I closed my eyes and tried not to see a girl in a pink jacket swaying in the wind.