By the end of the session with Rene, I’d run the route seven times. He only calmed down once I managed to complete it without falling three times in a row. And even then, he still didn’t look satisfied. He kept sighing like I’d completely missed the point of the exercise.“What’s your problem with it?” I finally snapped. I was still twitchy from the runs, while he, despite following me every single time, looked fresh as ever.“That it took you fifteen tries. The whole idea is to train you to adapt quickly. You didn’t adapt, you just memorised the route. And we’ve only got three facilities where techniques like Monkey can be trained. Which means I’ve got just two more chances to give you new experiences.”“Well, there are more than two floors here,” I said, gesturing around. I could see now that the concrete-junk construction actually went higher, and if needed, the route could be extended up to the third or even fourth floor. With each level, there were fewer footholds and wider gaps, but it was doable.Rene sighed again.“The other problem is that you’ve gotten too used to me catching you. You don’t feel the fear anymore.”“Well,” I said, “you didn’t do that much catching…” I’d had my fill of falling. My cheek was scraped, my right knee was bruised, there was a dull pain in my right elbow, and my left ribs gave a worrying twinge whenever I took a deep breath.“Then how about I leave, and you try running to the third floor?” Rene teased.It was obvious sarcasm, and he waved it away before I could fire back.“Anyway, we’ve got less than an hour left for the handwork. And we’ll start with a basic forward handspring. Can you do one?”“No.”Rene demonstrated. He turned away from the edge of the second floor, took a short run-up, raised his arms, dipped forward, gave a light push off the ground with his hands and landed upright a pathetic two metres from where he started.I tilted my head (...)