I slid away and inched backward until my back reached a big tree that prevented any further retreat. At that moment, I thought I was going to die. Who would save me now? I thought desperately. Koharu would return any minute now but what could she do as she was only a petite woman? I tried to think about my options, but my brain went completely blank. I kept my eyes tightly closed, thought of my parents and prayed.

“Stop teasing him like that, he is already scared now,” Koharu’s voice said from behind.

“Koharu … Koharu!” I cried out.

“Please calm down, he’s not going to harm you,” she said. “That’s enough, don’t you see that he’s very frightened?” she said while putting down an armful of fruits that she had just picked.

She went to the tiger, stretched out her hand and gently patted the giant beast on its head.

As soon as her hand touched its head, the angry tiger transformed into a tame feline. As Koharu gently scratched its neck, it responded by sweetly closing its eyes, like a cat.

“He told me that he could sense the hatred in your body. He has never smelled this scent before, so he only wanted to sniff you closely,” Koharu said.

“Uhh … you said he, you mean this tiger?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

“You can talk to the tiger?” I asked, wide eyed.

“Of course, we use telepathy,” she answered, as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

“Telepathy is the universal language of souls. Both humans and animals use it as a means of communication,” she added.

“I’ve never thought that you can use telepathy to communicate with animals, too,” I said.

“Not only with animals, but also with trees, and with every other living thing, actually,” Koharu replied.

“In the beginning, humans on planet Gaia used this soul language to communicate with animals as well,” she said.

“Really? You mean us, human beings on Earth?”

“Yes, but it was such a long time ago.”

“But why can’t we do that anymore?” I asked while watching the tiger as it sat down and laid beside Koharu.

“It’s not that you can’t do it but rather you forgot how,” she replied.

“Let’s have some fruits now to replenish our energy before we resume our trip.”

She had collected many different kinds of fruits. I knew only some of them, and could identify mangoes and grapes. For the others, I had no clue what they were.

“Try this one.” She handed me a fruit I didn’t recognise.

“What’s the name of this fruit?” I asked.

“We call it Seiko.” She tried pronouncing the name. “I like it a lot.”

I took it and examined it. It had a large oval shape, almost as big as a papaya, but its peel was hard and took on a shiny black colour like mangosteen. The only difference was that the unique fruit in my hand was darker. When I opened it, its contents resembled mangosteen but its form was longer and the seeds were soft and white. It might have belonged to the same family as mangosteens but perhaps, a different species. It was very sweet, juicy and refreshing, and our stomachs were filled after we ate a fruit each.

I picked a bunch of grapes as I was curious to know if they would taste different than those of my world. From the first bite, I could already feel that they were different, the flesh was harder and sweeter than that of any other grapes I had tried before.

“The grapes here taste delicious,” I told Koharu.

“What did you call them?” she said as she smiled gently.

“We call them grapes,” I replied.

“That sounds funny.” She gave a little laugh.

“And you? What do you call them?” I asked in return.

“We call them sulfa,” Koharu replied.

“I think this name sounds even funnier,” I said.

“What about this one, what do you call it? “ I asked, picking up a mango.

“It’s a sumeena,” Koharu said awkwardly.

“Ah! This name sounds nice,” I answered

“What do you call it?” She asked back.

“Mango,” I replied. This time, she burst out laughing.

“You call sumeena a mango, ha ha,” she laughed out aloud.

“Is mango an odd name?” I asked.

We continued with our ‘name-and-taste-that-fruit’ session for the rest of the fruits collected, laughing hilariously at the odd-sounding ones, and bantering with each other as we ate. For a moment, we had almost forgotten about that big but not so ferocious ‘cat’, now resting beside us, that had now dozed off.

“Uh … looking at him made me curious: what do tigers actually eat? Do they hunt for food like those of my world?” I asked.

“Yes, they hunt deer for food by instinct,” Koharu replied.

“They’re predators, then,” I continued.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I see, s… s… so, there’s a high probability that he could eat us at any time,” I stuttered as I felt the tiger lying against me.

“You need not worry, 99 percent of this species don’t eat human flesh.”

“There’s still this nagging thought that he may represent that one percent and may prefer to switch his diet today to human flesh!” I said.

“Uhm …” she seemed to be thinking about that possibility.

“We shouldn’t trust animals that are natural predators and assume that they won’t attack us!” I insisted.

“Let me tell you something so that you feel more at ease. I’ll explain why this tiger and other carnivores in this world don’t prey on humans,” she said as she tried to calm me down.

Koharu continued, “When I didn’t reply, it’s not that I didn’t know what to say, but I was rearranging my thoughts and turning them into words to help you understand rationally. That’s because I know it’s very difficult for you to believe and trust this idea. Tim, it’s all about ‘love’ and that’s what I’m trying to explain to make you understand.”

“What does the question of tigers eating humans have anything to do with love?” I asked.

“It’s about the response to the frequency,” she answered.

“Oh, now you’re taking it too far,” I said.

“Calm down first; if you want to understand what I’m about to explain, you have to understand this principle first.”

“Ok, please go on,” I said grudgingly.

“Among all living things on Earth and in the universe, humans are the most complicated,” Koharu continued. “If you could invent a device that measures the frequency emitted by people, you would find that the frequency varies from one person to another, unlike all animals that always emit the same frequency. There may be small differences between the various kinds of animals, but it’ll always be similar among the same breed.”

“Most animals send out a medium frequency, but some of them may send out a slightly higher one. However, none of them emit a very low frequency.”

“In short, animals usually emit a mid-range frequency, always hovering around the median and never reaching the highest or lowest end of the spectrum,” Koharu went on.

“As for us human beings, we can emit frequencies at every range, from the lowest to the highest.”

“All animals, whether in your world or this world, can sense the frequencies emitted by both humans and animals. And there’s one natural law; each living being to respect the more powerful one. This law is present in the fundamental behavior of all life forms throughout the universe.”

“Here, on this planet, every human being always emits a high frequency, which we call the ‘love frequency’. Thanks to this high range, animals respect us and don’t dare to attack us,” she explained.

“Oh … I understand it now. You are telling me that because people in my world don’t emit a high frequency, the so-called love frequency, we risk being attacked and devoured by wild animals, am I right?” I concluded.

“That’s it. If you look back, people in your world used to live in close company with wild animals day and night. All the great men in your world were able to defeat them. Some even kept these wild beasts to protect their masters from being attacked. These are true stories, not a fantasy, and they demonstrate the power of the high frequency, or the love frequency, to be precise.”

“If you hadn’t showed up in time, I might have been eaten since I wasn’t sending out the love frequency like you do,” I said.

“I don’t think so, for two reasons: firstly, these tigers don’t recognise low or hate frequencies, he was only curious. Secondly, people who emit a low frequency cannot live on this planet anyhow.”

“You mean that I can emit a high frequency, too?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” her answer puzzled me.

“Yes, because you have the love frequency. And no, because it’s still weak. It may be at the same level as the tiger’s,” Koharu explained, pointing at the animal.

“But … it’s afraid of you because your frequency is higher than his, and you also have a high potential.”

“High potential? In what sense?” I asked.

“Let me compare each of us here to a water tank. Supposing that I am a small tank, and I’m filled to the brim with water. You are twice the size of me, but your tank is nearly empty now with only a bit of water at the bottom. You can’t share the water with others yet as you don’t have enough, but since you have potential high capacity, you are able to store more water than other tanks. When you are filled with a lot of water, you’ll then be able to share it more with others,” she explained.

“Now, all of us have been assigned to fill your tank with water,” Koharu said.

“All of you … have been assigned? Everyone told me the same thing,” I replied as I recalled all the things Meen and Yoshida had said.

“The day that you understand everything, will be the time that you would have understood the meaning,” she explained.

“Right,” I said. “As far as I can understand now, ‘love’ is the answer to everything, isn’t it?” I asked.

“In my discussion with Meen, he talked about the smallest particles to the largest ones in the universe, and I was informed that they emerged from the positive frequency, which is love. That the world and the universe revolve around themselves is caused by the love frequency. The evolution of us humans into a highly evolved beings is also caused by love. The communication with souls and access to universal knowledge is also caused by love. Your culture of working without expecting anything in return is again caused by love. And even wild beasts don’t harm us because we have the love frequency,” I concluded.

“Now you really seem to comprehend. I told you that people on Gaia don’t understand love, or that they don’t appreciate it as it really is, but you do now, don’t you?” Koharu asked.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Among all the processes that create the love frequency, there is one that we often get confused about and we mistakenly think that it’s the same thing ….” she said and hesitated.

“What is it? Please tell me,” I insisted.

“The sexual desire, or the love between a man and a woman,” Koharu replied.

“What do you mean? If I love you and you also love me, both of us feel love and desire for each other. In that case, the love frequency would have doubled, don’t you think so?” I raised that question for debate.

“That’s what I mean when I say that you and most people have misunderstood it,” she answered.

“How?” I continued asking.