The morning came too fast. It felt like only a second ago that I fell asleep in Aarón's arms. He didn't wake me up. I woke up to a drenched pillow. The small fan whirled and creaked above me. The wind from the window carried hot air, so it was almost useless to have the fan. Aarón's stuff was nowhere to be seen inside the small lodge, but I heard his gravelly laugh outside. I took a quick shower in the six by six square feet bathroom. As expected, the water was not as cold as I would love, but at least, it washed off my sweat. Stepping over the threshold, my thigh spasmed again for the hundredth times since the last five days. I grabbed the Oxy on the side table and swallowed one pill together with a big, satisfying gulp of water.

The sun peeked through the foliage far on the horizon when I stepped out of the cabin. The overcast sky impeded the orange glimmers; the gloomy clouds contradicted the hot wind. It was useless to have clouds too. The air smelled of burned leaves and something savory. My stomach made a flip. I was putting on my shoes when the door on the adjacent cabin creaked open. Professor Smit was stretching his arms behind his back, yawning. His black diamond ring caught the morning light and gleamed.

I greeted him as I strapped my rucksack on my back.

"Yes, morning," he answered, tying his hair into a bun. He had taken off his stud earrings; he had several of them on both ears until yesterday.

This village was the transition point to the other part of the jungle. Like us, the people here stopped by to restock on boat fuel and sustenance. Trucks and bikes passed us every minute. Naked children ran after the moving vehicles, lobbing stones over their heads. One boy, around five years old, threw a stone toward a bike that carried a rattan-like plant, but it collided with his friend's rock and hit Professor Smit's chest instead.

Uh oh!

He scanned the crowded village with a clenched jaw, not moving his head an inch. Then he saw the culprit. "Brats." He approached the kids. They screamed, scampered away for their lives.

I bit my lower lip to stop myself from laughing out loud.

Professor Smit halted when two monkeys climbed down the tree beside him. He seemed lost on what to do when they approached him; his face scrunched up.

Uh oh!

He clearly wasn't a fan of monkeys. Feeling somehow responsible, I reached him and shooed the monkeys away.

He turned back and stared at me, then gave me a curt nod before putting on a beige fedora hat, the same kind Indiana Jones wore.

A collective of laughter came from the triangular hut across the lawn, where the delegation was having breakfast. 

"Hey, Jona, Luuk. Únete a nosotros." [Come join us.] Aarón showed something that looked like a flimsy flatbread in his hand. Several tribeswomen were serving them food.

"Since when am I Luuk to you?" Professor Smit said, but too low for Aarón to hear. He glanced at the monkeys that were now on the cabin's roof and made a sharp U-turn.

"You're heading to the boat, Professor? Aren't you having breakfast?" I asked when he took the path toward the river. "We have an hour before the next boat ride."

"I don't eat breakfast." 

"But it's the most important—" 

"It's important to Japanese like you, and only if I chose to make it important. I've disregarded it for thirty-four years." 

Woah. He's an old man! 

"I'm sure your mother fed you as a child though," I whispered to myself, still wrapping my head around the fact that he looked ten years younger than his age.

He stopped mid-stride and spun around. "No, she didn't."

That broke my heart, even when I didn't know what he meant by that. Although breakfast wasn't Japanese-specific, as a Japanese, my mother had been very meticulous about it, making sure the family ate a complete meal every morning.

"And why are you following me?" he asked, brow raised.

I gave him a grin. "I don't feel like eating either."

He hummed. Turning around, he continued walking through the open ground stretching back to the woods. There was a wide trampled path in the grass and low bushes that led to the river.

Every now and then, we passed the villagers who were carrying things needed for sustenance. A group of four tribeswomen carried a bucketful of tapioca each toward the river. Ten seconds later, a man without teeth, who looked at least ninety, toted two containers full of gasoline in each hand. He greeted Professor Smit in an accented Portuguese. They talked about the river and rain or something for a minute. I couldn't tell for sure. The accent was alien to me. The old man walked away after he gave Professor Smit the same leaf-wrapped food I saw a tribeswoman had put on the delegation's breakfast table just now. 

"Professor, posso lhe perguntar algo?" [Professor, can I ask you something?] 

"Faça outra pergunta então." [Ask something else then.] 

He really sounds like a native.

We moved to the side when a flat-bed truck full of planks passed us. Thick dust that looked like ground fog rose around our legs. 

"Você morou em Portugal ou no Brasil?" [Did you live in Portugal or Brazil before?] 

"Não. Eu sou holandês. [No. I'm Dutch] Came to America when I was twelve. We lived in Ohio for some time, then moved to California."

"Ohio?" I had no idea why the answer made me laugh. 

"Why? Ever been to the Buckeye state and experienced something funny? Well, that's the only kind of experience you could get there." He chuckled himself. 

"No. No, never been there. The closest was Kentucky. Went there for Christmas at my friend's hometown once. Sorry." I laughed. "I just... didn't expect that. You're so fluent in Portuguese and the dialect here. I couldn't even understand the boatman yesterday. It even sounded like German."

"Because it was German. Though his accent sounded funny." 

"Falam alemão aqui?" [They speak German here?]

"Minority of Brazilian, yes. Maybe two percent of them?" He scratched his nostrils. "Two hundred thousand Germans settled here in the nineteenth century. They bred like cats, so by the year 2000, twelve millions of Brazilians claimed to be of German descent. Some of them refused to give up their native tongue, so German dialects make up the second most spoken first language in Brazil after Portuguese."

"How many languages do you speak?" I asked.

"Are you writing a biography on me or somethin'?"

I looked at my green shoes, suddenly afraid I was intruding. “Sorry. I—”

He tsked. "Enough to survive this dystopia. You could say I have an obsession with learning languages." 

We forked to the right. On the right was the long, gentle slope of the riverbank. The green slow boat was in view after several seconds. 

"Really? Why? I can barely store four languages in my head. It has been so long since I have had a proper conversation in Japanese. I might forget it someday."

"Four? That's hella impressive." He scanned me up and down with a skeptical frown. Then he took off his hat, gazed at the sandy ground, and suddenly put it on my head. "Hold it for me." He bent down and tied his shoelaces. "Doesn't it scare you when you don't understand strangers? What they could be planning in front of your nose, and you don't even know what they're talking about?"

He had an interesting view of life. But it sounded tough for him to think that way. "You make it sound as if the whole world is against you." 

"And I have plenty of evidence to prove that." He closed his eyes for a second and glanced at me. He took his hat and continued walking. 

"I've never viewed the world that way. We couldn't possibly know all the languages in the world. Our brain is not made to cater to that. And strangers don't scare me." I shrugged.

"Posso ver isso claramente." [I can clearly see that.]

The sound of the torrent became clearer as the trees around the path thinned out. It must be raining upstream. The river was violent. The dry path we were walking on earlier was now muddy as we reached the berm. When the sky was clearly visible, my assumption was proven right. On the far south, heavy and oppressive clouds were concealing the sun.

"I teach martial arts for a reason. Poison can't harm you if it's far away. You should be aware of the people closest to you. They are the ones who tend to be toxic. The moment you realize it, it already runs in your blood." I ended up whispering the last few words. 

"You sound like a paranoid mother." 

The back of my eyes prickled. I brushed my palm down my face and said, "You're right. My paranoid mother told me that." 

He flinched and gritted his teeth. "Ah. I'm—"

I looked down, and the first thing I saw was three crocodiles a few yards away from me. My whole body jerked. "Holy shit!" I slipped and almost fell down when I reached out for Professor Smit.

He wrapped his arms around me when I was falling face-first into the cinnamon current. My shoes were drenched. 

"What the hell's wrong with you?" He helped me stand straight.

My heart pounded in my ears. I pointed at them and stepped away, dragging him with me. "Crocodiles."

He glanced at the three crocodiles sprawling on the riverbank. They were probably more than ten feet long. "They're the Black Caimans. There are no crocodiles in the Amazon." He pulled me away from the spot and scraped his soiled red shoes on the grass behind us. "You sure you don't want to pull back from the trip? We're yet to start the journey." 

"Why would I do that?" I stared at the caimans. Now I know I'm not only afraid of spiders. Even Karma scared me at first... at times. 

"I know about your cataclysmic accident with the bus."

I looked at him. "Aarón told you?" 

"No. Instead of opinions and facts, my students enjoy trading hearsay." 

"Dr. John said I'm good to go, as long as I don't push myself. Staying idle is no comfort at all. I need to move to recuperate."

He shook his head. "Now you sound like a naïve kid." 

"I told you I'm not a kid." 

"I hate to break it you, but you should know this trip isn't going be a comfort." 

I rolled my eyes at him and whispered, "As long as I can join the trip, I don't even care if the fucking crocodile eats me."

"Watch out!" He pointed behind me. His eyes widened.

My heart jumped into my throat. I gripped his arm, not even trying to look behind me.

"See, kid? You don't really wanna die. Don't speak of death casually. I've seen death, and it's not something fun to see again." He patted my cheek a little too hard, and my skin prickled. "Let go." He shoved my hand away. "They're still lounging there." 

I shoved him. "Não é engraçado, porra!" [It's not funny, dammit!]

He shrugged and strolled along the jetty, leaving me alone on the riverbank with the caimans. He threw his rucksack into the boat. One caiman was moving and my heart almost stopped.

"You getting on board or what?" he shouted. 

As much as I didn't want to get near to the caimans, I didn't want to approach Professor Smit either. He seemed like he had a stick up his butt at times. I sat on a big root away from the caimans. I would wait for Aarón. I should have followed him and not the mad professor.

"Goodness gracious. You're such a veritable piece of work," Professor Smit said when he grabbed my arm. "Let's go, kid." 

I shook my head, pulling my hand away. 

"For God's sake. Shall we go before we become the caimans' food? They're coming, and I'm not joking this time, ya know?" 

I peeked at them. Yes, one of them was crawling toward us, ever so slowly. I took Professor Smit's hand, and half of my worry went away.

"Let's go." He then said something in a language I was not familiar with as he pulled me across the creaking jetty. 

I pushed my dignity aside and clenched his arm for dear life. He must have hated my guts. Even I hated my own guts. First the airport, now this. I had been to more than ten jungles all over America, but none gave me this level of jitters. I had become a pussy after my accident.