Chapter 213.

“What, are you getting turned on checking me out you disgusting creep?” When she realized I was scrutinizing her appearance she suddenly asked me that with an expression of visible revulsion and disgust.

“Heeeeeell no. I’m just wondering what sort of walking freak show I’ve had the misfortune of encountering today. What kind of moron dresses like this in winter? You really are brain dead like I thought, aren’t you?” I couldn’t help but marvel at what kind of idiot it took to come out dressed like this in winter.

“Wimp, it’s not even that cold anymore. Minus twenty is nothing.”

“Sure, it’s nothing if you’re dressed appropriately, but you? You’ve definitely got loose screws in that empty head of yours.”

“You wanna throw down, dick head?”

“No thank you.”

“What? You think ‘cause you’re a guy I can beat you?”

“No, I don’t pointlessly waste energy on fighting with fists. I only fight with words.”

“Tsk. Pussy.” She let go of my collar and pushed me back in a foul mood.

Well, this escalated quite fast.

I picked up my phone which had fallen out of my hand when she pulled on my collar, stood up from my seat, and left without another word. The little scene we’d caused had drawn a lot of eyes and I wanted to get out of here.

What a pain in the ass. I hope I never run into that crazy goth chick ever again. No, actually, I hope I do run into her. Not good, not good. That was a close one, I almost tripped a future encounter flag. I have to be more conscious of such things. When you don’t want something to happen the world has a way of screwing you over. That reminds me, I still have a small bridge to jump off of.

I should really find one to jump off of soon.

Since there was still time until the mall opened I walked around for some time and scouted the area to see if I could find a small bridge.

There was a large river that ran through this area, the same one that passed by the university, so if I was lucky there might be a small stream with a bridge somewhere around here for me to jump off of.

I leaned on the railing of the bridge over the large river it stretched over and opened up the surrounding map on my phone. I zoomed in with the satellite view and scanned the region along the river to find any small streams that branched off from it. It didn’t take long before I found what I was looking for. There was a small stream that branched off into a park within a thirty-minute walking distance from where I was.

As I’d found my target I walked along the bridge until I got to the side of the river the stream was on. I walked down along the path down to the bottom and embarked on a small completely pointless little adventure.

Thirty minutes later I made it to a small bridge that stretched out over a frozen-over stream of water. I climbed on top of the railing and looked down below. It didn’t look very deep and the drop wasn’t too far. I judged the thick layer of ice wouldn’t break from a short fall of a meter or two.

While I stood there looking down, someone suddenly called out to me, “You idiot! Are you trying to kill yourself!”

I stiffly turned my head and discovered a certain goth chick had followed me here.

“What the hell? Are you some sort of creepy stalker? Please go away. I have business to attend to here.”

“Business? You mean suicide?”

“Suicide?” I tilted my head to the side and looked at her strangely.

“Yeah, you were obviously so depressed that the girl you suddenly bumped into on Valentine’s Day by pure chance so heartlessly shot you down that you walked out dejected with your head down. I got a bit worried that you might go and do something short-sighted like committing suicide so I followed after you when I noticed you heading down the river bank.”

Huh? Is that how I looked? No, I’m just a naturally gloomy guy. Did she develop that sort of misunderstanding because of that?

Wait, wait, wait a damned minute here! Is this not mirroring the words I said before? Yeah, that’s right, the whole point of jumping off a bridge was to avoid a situation where I would no longer be able to count the number of women I was involved with on one hand.

Wasn’t this situation… like… a really bad one?

I broke out into cold sweat as I tried to process what to do.

“If you jump, I’ll jump.” The idiot goth girl suddenly climbed up onto the railing and said that.

“Dumbass, what does that achieve?” I facepalmed as I asked her that.

“It’s obviously a deterrent for you to not jump, duh.”

“I don’t mean to kill the mood, but have you even taken a look at how deep the stream is here?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“The bridge here was quite literally built over the shallowest point in the stream. Nobody’s going to die from jumping off of it. If I was going to jump off a bridge to commit suicide, I’d obviously choose a much taller one.”

“Wha- for real?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh? Then why are you jumping off such a short bridge?” She tilted her head to one side and asked with visible confusion in her eyes.

“To avoid a fate worse than death,” I answered seriously with boundless conviction.

“Uh… jumping off a short bridge like this will help you avoid a fate worse than death? How? I don’t get it.”

“Freedom. Jumping off this bridge represents freedom. I say screw this world and its ironic twists of fate. Such unfunny jokes, really.”

“I don’t get it at all…”

“You don’t need to get it. Now, can you please get down from this railing and leave. Actually, scratch that, just fall down from it, break your neck on the ice below, and die please.”

“Why don’t you go die instead? Really, why was I even concerned about such a piece of shit committing suicide? Go jump, idiot. When you break your neck, see if I care.”

I sprung forward, pushing off the railing with all my strength and no hesitation. I landed on the ice, my body facing the bank as I squatted down low like I was snowboarding, I slid across the surface just barely keeping my balance and staying on my feet. When I came to a stop, I breathed out a sigh of relief. Thankfully, the ice hadn’t broken under my weight.

Honestly, my heartbeat sped up quite a bit both while mid-fall and keeping my balance across the ice. Even if a fall like that wouldn’t hurt very much, it was still a bit nerve-wracking. I’d come to a stop about ten meters away from the bridge. The ice was quite slippery and very smooth. 

There was only a very thin layer of snow covering it, someone had likely cleared it away at some point during the winter to use it for ice skating or something. No, considering the length of the straights of this stream,  it may have actually been used as a mock precision speed skating course to really test one’s control atop the ice when under pressure. If you messed up a bit, you’d fly headfirst into the tall snowbanks on the sides of the stream.

If it was simple ice skating, the wide river would have been more than sufficient.

“Oh! That looked kind of fun.”

I suddenly heard that from my side in the direction of the bridge I’d jumped off of.

The instant I turned my head, I saw the goth girl mid-air on the way down to the ice. She somehow landed it and mimicked my actions sliding across the ice on her feet. She was on a collision course with me, so I took a step back on the ice to get out of her way. As long as you applied perpendicular force and kept your horizontal force minimal it was possible to walk atop the ice. Living in a winter climate, you became accustomed to keeping your balance and walking very carefully through the snow every day for months on end. 

The goth girl passed right by where I stood seconds before and slid three meters farther before she suddenly lost her balance and fell on her back. She had a pair of knee-high thick goth boots with several metallic belt buckle clips along two slits on each side of both boots that revealed her skin beneath. Though her boots had thick heels, it was still much harder to keep her balance with a smaller flat surface area in contact with the ice.