Andrew hurried on to counter, “Right, but for your lonely maniac!”

“The fact is that he was not lonely,” Victor remarked in jest examining the multiple remnants of the devastation. “And judging by traces left this ‘leader’ was more likely a representative of the local fauna and had four paws and even maybe a tail. Obviously he was the first in our food shelter.”

“Right,” Eugene stood up for the unknown animal. “He ate too much there. He was bored and invited all he could to this party.”

“Nice party,” Stas hemmed. “Who will clean up all of this for them?”

“Make a guess with one try,” Eugene proposed to him with a smile and looked satisfied towards me.

Then as if it suddenly came to his mind he started to look actively for our improvised broom made from branches bound together. It happened to be ‘half-dug’ in the sand. Eugene raised it, shook it down, pretended having blown away the last specks of dust and handed it over to me with an open hand.

“Take it, Cinderella! Today you will forget about the rest on the sea shore. A bet is a bet.”

I took up the broom because I understood that we should bring our camp to order anyway. And I began to plan in my mind where to start the big cleaning of the territorium from. Meanwhile Sensei took away the broom from my hands and addressed to Eugene, “But she didn’t lose the bet yet.”

“But she is unlikely to win it,” the smiling guy uttered with self-confident expression on his face.

“I would propose the following,” Sensei said. “If it turns like this, let’s complicate the task…”

“Noway! A bet is a bet, as agreed upon,” Eugene started to protest as he thought that Sensei would propose now something extraordinary for his person.

“But you will benefit from it!”

Eugene calmed down looking with suspicion at Sensei and trying to figure out where was the dirty trick. Meanwhile Sensei went on, “Take an assistant. Your total time under water will be summed. That is, the time you both stay under water against her one diving.”

Eugene hasn’t found out anything onerous for himself and immediately agreed fearing that Sensei would change his mind.

“Alright, alright!” and he added toadily, “Sensei, I have always known that you are the most fair judge in the world. However, who knows,” he pointed out to me with a cunning smile, “Maybe she grew gills instead of lungs on the way.”

Everybody laughed and I pretended laughing, too. However, a rapid wave of doubts that it was just a joke rose in me. If they didn’t joke, then it meant a real disaster for my person. I didn’t know how to dive at all, not speaking about long breath-holding. And this bet is against two well-trained guys! “I got into a mess,” my person thought scared.

“Well,” Eugene rubbed his hands anticipating his victory after he chose his partner. As I assumed, it was Stas, “Let’s not lose time and go to the sea!”

He made an inviting gesture to all our group suggesting to witness this event. The people eagerly agreed on the proposal of our comic fellow and followed him leaving the things. Lighting a cigarette Sensei remained behind, together with Nikolai Andreevich. I and Tatyana also stayed there as we used to pack up the left things in one heap. Meanwhile Nikolai Andreevich said in low voice adressing to Sensei, “Eugene is so sly. As soon as condition of the deal became favourable, he immediately changed his attitude to the situation. However, many people do like him. This is a typical example of egocentrism.”

“What can we do,” Sensei shrugged his shoulders and answered in the same low voice. “Man seeks a better fate like fish seeks deeper water,” and he added with a smile, “How can he deprive himself the dearest? Indeed, this egocentrism is an automatical habit of people. How can we talk about the love for one’s neighbor if they don’t even want to understand each other?”

“It’s the most sad thing about all of it.”

Meanwhile I and Tatyana have already finished our work. I came with doubts to Sensei hoping to solve a dispute before starting to realize its conditions.

“Well, I…”

Sensei didn’t let me finish the phrase and express all my numerous doubts. He said in a kindly manner, “Go and get ready. Get used to the water.”

His soft confident tone calmed me a bit. Still hoping that it was just a joke I went to the sea together with Tatyana. There was already a ‘support team’ presented by Kostya, Andrew and Slava. I should mention that our big group has divided itself to two parts: those ones who ‘supported’ Stas and Eugene and those ones who ‘sympathized’ with me.

Unlike the senior guys who ran to the water with much noise like torpedoes and dove deep at once in order to cool off their bodies warmed-up by sun, I and Tatyana tried to get used to the water as usually, step-by-step. However, the guys who so to say ‘supported’ us decided to speed up this process and started to sprinkle us from all sides pretending to help us intensively to get used to the water. As they were intentionally attacking us from shallow water, I and Tatyana had to run away to the depth, of course, with a following submergence.

Having seen enough of Eugene and Stas breath training before diving Kostya put up the ‘crown of the winner’ from twisted algae on his head and began to play the role of my mentor in ‘diving in shallow water’. All this process was accompanied by killing jokes of the guys. But despite the philosophical teachings of Kostya I wasn’t able to hold breath under water for long. Kostya even tried to slightly hold me in place under water fixing my shoulders and mumbling from the surface his ‘instructions’. However, all of that just scared me even more as sooner or later my instinct of self-preservation prevailed and I managed to ‘scramble out’ to the surface with amazing quickness sometimes even drowning my ‘mentor’ at panic. After several unvoluntary submersions Kostya exploded with even more ‘innovative proposals’ on improving the diving method, for example by making my body heavier in the water with a ‘necklace of bricks’, ‘beton handcuffs’ etc.

“Finally, what task do you have?” Kostya said in jest shaking out water from his ear and adjusting a hanging algea which fell down after his another submersion to water by his ‘bad disciple’. “You need to submerge under the water. Right? Right. But nobody said about emersion.” We laughed again.

“You are so kind, indeed!” Tatyana said with a funny intonation.

So unlike the senior guys who didn’t lose time and seriously trained we had a total clownery. Therefore just in case I mentally reconciled myself to my future one-day role of Cinderella.

Finally Sensei and Nikolai Andreevich came closer to us. I thought that looking at our attempts Sensei will turn this bet into a next big joke and everything would be over with it. But when he came up and seriously asked, “So, let’s begin?” my heart sank. Being afraid of showing my fear in front of my friends I started to talk to Sensei with lips trembling either from fear or from cold water, “Sensei, I can’t… I’d better go to tidy up at once.”

Sensei calmly replied to me, “Don’t give up. Keep off your fear. Take away all the doubts. Believe since it’s said ‘Lively faith brings everything’.”

I looked confused at him with a silent question, “How can I do it?” But Sensei answered looking at my eyes, “Just relax. Don’t think about your breath. Your task is to achieve a deep state of meditation with a minimum of thoughts. Concentrate on the count from one to ten. You will stand 10 seconds, will you?”

“Well, if it’s just ten seconds, I will stand easily,” I replied with proud for my such a small ‘result’.

“So why do you worry? Count to ten and emerge. And don’t count quickly like 1,2,3… but slowly, with pauses, count three-digit figures like 501, 502, 503 etc. Is it clear?”

“Yes.”

These words not only calmed me down, I got even curious. I have never done before a meditation under the water. Strangely enough but my curiousity turned to firm confidence that everything would be alright. And this feeling grew from some my internal belief and absolute trust to Sensei. It wasn’t trust actually but some hidden knowledge of my soul about his Essence which was expressed only intuitively, on the level of perception.

“So be it, I will dive,” my person thought after a range of sharp breathes in and out. The same was done by my first ‘opponent’ Eugene. Getting ready to start, when it was counted ‘three’ I breathed in with all my chest as much as I could and submerged at the same time with Eugene under the water. Sensei put his hand on my head in the regions of Sahasrara (the seventh chakra) and pushed it a bit, so I thought that he didn’t want to let me emerge before time. Instead of expected panic, I relaxed and began to count slowly to ten according to the advice of Sensei. Freely fulfilling this task I decided to sit a few more seconds under the water in order to add some more time to my ‘score’. But when I started to count again, I felt that some strong hands, obviously of Sensei, draw me out of the water. Frankly speaking, I was even a bit upset as I could stay there a bit longer. Only ten seconds?! Emerging to the surface I immediately began to express my indignation, “Why? I’m ready, let’s continue… I can stay longer…”

But when I glanced at the others, I didn’t understand anything. Everybody stood in some dumb amazement, looking at me like at an alien who came from another Universe. Eugene and Stas were among the guys and also didn’t take their eyes from my indignant person in some strange amazement. I even thought that maybe they didn’t dive at all, maybe something happened? Only Sensei kept Olympian calm.

“That’s enough of you,” he smiled good-natured. “You have already stayed ten minutes under the water.”

“Who?! Me???” my person grinned thinking that it was a joke.

“Well, well, everything can happen in life,” Stas uttered scratching his head. “Just it’s a pity that not everybody can get this ‘everything’.”

“You see how all of them are anxious, especially some boasters,” Sensei waved towards Eugene who opened his mouth and stared wide-eyed, either for fun or really in surprise as if he was stricken by something. “Now someone will have to clean everything and to turn into Cinderella.”

Eugene seemed to ‘come to himself’ after these words, comically chattered with his teeth and put his jaw to its normal state helping himself with a hand. After that he uttered in his usual joking voice, “Cleaning everything is not a problem! But we didn’t make an agreement that I would have to change my male sex.”

Stas began to ‘quiet’ him launching a new wave of laugh.

“’Cinderella’ is just a sort of individual entrepreneurial activity when you have to do a maximum of work in a minimal time and by the way for free...”

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