They were up the tree for what felt like hours.  Jongin and Kyungsoo played I-Spy until they ran out of things to call, but Jinsu and Sehun remained largely silent.  The tiger continued to prowl around the base of the tree, sometimes sitting and watching them, and other times winding around the trunk.

Sehun was remarkably stoic for somebody who’d had their leg gashed open.  The injury was bleeding profusely, and the limb dangled down from the branch they were on as it was too painful for him to bring it up to balance properly like the other one.  The only other outward sign of discomfort he showed was a slight tremor in his breathing.

The treebark and surrounding dirt that was getting all over her had been more than enough to put Jinsu on edge without the tiger, but the sight of blood staining Sehun’s clothes was a bit much for Jinsu’s OCD to take, and she began fidgeting nervously.  Sehun grabbed her as the branch creaked under their combined weight.

“Stop,” he said weakly.  Jinsu peeked up at him.  His expression very much said he wanted to throw up.

“Sorry.”

“If you’re freaking out about the dirt again, I’m warning you now, I’m not going to be able to keep hold of you.”

Jinsu stilled, trying to work out if it was a threat or if he was trying to be friendly.

“Just remember it’ll be muckier down there than up here,” he added.

Friendly, then.  She nodded.

He was silent for a while.  Jinsu could hear Jongin and Kyungsoo murmuring to each other round the other side of the tree.  The only other noise was the breeze rustling the leaves: the tiger padding on the earth down below was soundless – so soundless it was terrifying.

She didn’t realise she was still fidgeting with her fingers until Sehun impatiently took hold of her injured hand and began pulling the dressings off.  She flinched back, almost slipping off her perch.

“What are you doing?” she protested, trying to pull her hand back.  Sehun tossed the dirty bandages and splint away.  Ignoring Jinsu as the tiger pounced on the castaways, sniffing around them and then attempting to eat them (it spat them out with what Jinsu could have sworn was an expression of disgust), Sehun leant back a little for a better view around the other side of the tree.

“Kyungsoo,” he called softly.  “You got any water?”

There was rustling and then something landed in Sehun’s outstretched hand with a soft thunk.  Jinsu barely had time to register a sports-capped plastic water bottle before Sehun was tipping its contents over her hand.  She threw him a disturbed look.

“Don’t want this getting infected,” he mumbled as he brushed the dirt that had got under the dressings away, making her hiss with pain as he put pressure on the bruises that were still there.  “We’d all have to go back early.”  His gaze dropped to the tiger still prowling below.  “Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing,” he added under his breath.

It took a moment or two to twig that Sehun was being genuine in his kindness as well as practical, because Jinsu initially took the idea of having to go back early for medical reasons as a complaint.

“Y-you should do your l-leg,” she stuttered as he capped the bottle again, her heart rate abruptly picking up.

He grimaced, looking down at his leg, then the tiger, and then back her, holding out the water bottle.  When Jinsu made to take it, he had second thoughts.

“Hold still.”  His voice cracked a little, and he reached out to balance the water bottle on her head.

“What—?”

“You only have one functioning hand.  You might fall.”  Bracing himself against the branch and the tree trunk, Sehun hauled himself up so that he could inspect his injured leg.  Once he felt he was seated securely, he took the water bottle back.  A bit miffed he didn’t bother to thank her, and also that his arm was no longer around her waist, Jinsu looked away.

Something brightly coloured and human-shaped was visible between the trees.  She sat forward, squinting, and apparently freaked Sehun out enough for him to grab at the back of her clothing to haul her back.  She almost shrieked when cold water spilt down her back.

I think I just saw a person, was what she wanted to say, but what came out instead was, “Your face is green.”

Sehun looked like he was too ill to take offence.

“I hate heights,” he said weakly.

Jinsu felt herself turning scarlet.  She tried to find something reassuring to say, like how brave she thought he was (only that sounded like she was hitting on him), but before she could get her tongue to cooperate with her, Kyungsoo spotted what she’d spotted.

“Wait, there’s people!  Help!  HELP!”

The tiger let out a snarl at the noise, flattening its ears against its skull, and Jinsu saw that three young men had come into full view, all wearing brightly coloured clothes that practically screamed your dinner has arrived! at the tiger.  Two were bearded and froze up at the sight of the big cat whisking around towards them, but the third had the situation appraised in a matter of seconds: before anybody could blink, a bow was off his back with an arrow nocked.  There was a twang and a thwack! as he released the arrow straight into the chest of the pouncing tiger, and then a second and then a third.  He had a fourth trained on the animal, ready to fire again, but it collapsed, unmoving.  Satisfied, he put his weapons away, and he and his companions moved to the base of the tree.

“Do you need help?” he called up.

Kyungsoo and Jongin went scrambling down the tree like monkeys.  Sehun tilted his head back against the trunk, closing his eyes.  He was blocking the way for Jinsu to have the sturdiest footing down, but it wasn’t like she could climb with only one hand.

“I don’t think I can get back down,” he admitted.

Neither.  The word left Jinsu’s mouth as an unintelligible croak.

“You need to jump!” the archer called up to them.  “We will catch you!”

Swallowing, Jinsu looked down.  Sehun gave a very audible gulp beside her as he did the same.  Jongin was pointing up at them as he talked to one of the bearded men, the archer hovering at their shoulders.  After a moment or two, Jongin stepped back, and the other four lined up under the branch Jinsu and Sehun were sitting on, two on each side with a distance of about two feet between them, and then they braced their arms against the shoulders of the man opposite.

It took a bit of persuading for Jinsu and Sehun to overcome their misgivings, but Sehun courteously offered to help let Jinsu down, sprawling himself over the branch as he grasped her wrist with his hands and lowered her as far as he could.  It was still a fall of a good number of feet once he released her, but it wasn’t as far as Sehun had to let himself fall.

The three men agreed to walk them to the nearest village – or rather, insisted on it when they saw Sehun’s bleeding leg, because there was apparently a fantastic healer who could look at him for a very low price.  Sehun hobbled along, grimacing with pain and attempting to use Jongin for a crutch, but then swapped him for Kyungsoo since Jongin was too tall.  Jinsu dawdled at the back of the group again, eavesdropping on their conversation.

The archer introduced himself as Han.  He was from the north of the Balhae kingdom and alternated his time between hunting and being a mercenary.  Jinsu suspected there was also a third element of poaching, not least because he made a point of dragging off the tiger’s carcass into the undergrowth to reclaim at a later point, and because he kept glancing back over his shoulder as if worried somebody would appear out of nowhere and steal it.

Han had a babyface and proved to be quite a chatterbox.  His two companions remained at the front of the party, cautiously going around corners as if they expected another tiger and never even saying a word.  Han introduced them as Hoon and Bin anyway and then launched into how he’d first met them, which was apparently on one occasion that he’d been travelling along a major trade route between two cities and had been ambushed by brigands.

“It even happens here sometimes, too,” he said, drifting back so that he was walking on a level with Jinsu.  Sehun looked like he was in too much pain to really care and Jongin frustrated that he’d found somebody who liked talking just as much as he did, but Kyungsoo was listening with rapt attention.  Jinsu swore she saw his phone peeking out of the sleeve of his hanbok and wondered if he was possibly recording the situation.

Siguing his conversation with ease from Hoon and Bin adopting him while he was away from home, Han proceeded to tell them that he was nineteen and that he had five younger brothers, and that once the hunting season was over, he was planning to make his way to the royal court and try his luck there, since he had contacts at the palace.

“What about you?” he asked, offering his arm to Jinsu with the reasoning that she looked tired.  “I can tell you’re not from around here.”

There was a silence that went on for just a little too long.  Sehun and Jongin tried to hide their non-plussed expressions, and Jinsu could see the cogs turning in Kyungsoo’s mind as he tried to think of the best way to answer, and of the names of any small places that had actually existed back in the time of Balhae.

“We’re from down south,” she piped up when it was obvious nobody else was going to.

Han frowned.  “From Silla?”

“Yes,” Kyungsoo agreed.

One of Ha