Over coffee and a couple of rehydrated gourmet breakfast pouches that Seolhyun left behind, Jungkook breaks out his big topographic map of the area and a black metal compass that unfolds to reveal several dials, a clock, and a ruler. He makes several measurements and jots down numbers with a mechanical pencil, and it all looks complicated.

"How are you?" Jungkook says, nodding toward my arm, which I'm scratching.

"A little itchy," I confess. Last night's bear attack and fight sent me back into Hive Overload. "I've got some stuff to put on it, but -"

"But what?"

"It's that stuff from that Ajumma."

He makes a face. "Oh, God. The miracle weed lotion that smells like a scented candle factory got hit by a bomb?"

I point at him. "That's the stuff. And not only does it make my eyes water, I'm sort of afraid to use it here after last night. I don't want to attract bears."

"Hmm," he says. "Your worry is valid. I'll try to think of a solution. In the meantime, here's the route I have in mind."

He turns his map around to show me and opens up his journal, laying it on top. Across two of the journal's pages, he's drawn a not-to-scale map of our planned route, complete with a few tiny symbols sketched at various stopping points. I spot a notation for a waterfall near the bottom and point.

"This is us?"

"This is us," he confirms.

"And these tents are -"

"Camping spots. We have to pass over two claims of mountains to get to Apsan Park."

"Rock climbing?" I say, suddenly freaked out.

"No. Patience, grasshopper. If we go this way," he says, tracing a dotted line with his finger, "we can hike through a network of caves that passes under the mountains. The caves have four exits, and one of them is on the south side of the mountain. Once we make it through, there's an excellent valley where we can camp tonight."

"Hold on. Back up. Spelunking?"

"Walking through a cave is not spelunking. It's walking."

"In the dark."

"We'll have headlamps." He holds up his phone. "I saved a PDF of a hiking book that covers backcountry trails. It says there are several big caves along these mountains, but this one is the longest. And once we get to the other side of the mountain, we'll be able to pick up a bigger trail."

I look at where he's pointing on his homemade map. "I see three sets of tent symbols. Three nights?"

He nods. "To make it to Apsan Park without killing ourselves. And if you change your mind, this is the nearest ranger station. It's on the way, and we'll be passing by it tomorrow. Whatever happens, I won't leave you stranded. If you're thinking that I've abandoned you before -"

"I wasn't." I totally was.

He presses his lips together, then adds. "We can do this, I promise. As long as we follow rules, we shouldn't have any more bear problems. This will be safer than spending three days in civilization. You're more likely to die in a car accident than in a national park."

"There you go, bringing up the possibility of death," I say drily. "I had forgotten about it, but now it's fresh in my mind, thanks."

"You're welcome," he says, smiling. "Now, let's pack up and hit the trail. Miles to go before before we sleep."

Okay, I can do this. It's not the plan I wanted, but it is a plan. One that's been calculated and drawn on paper. I like that. It makes me feel less panicky. I just wish it were my plan and not Jungkook's.

Getting ready to leave takes longer than I imagined. The group didn't leave just the corpse of Bogum's destroyed tent behind. They left Seolhyun's and Hyejeong's tents too, along with a bunch of camping supplies Seolhyun purchased for this trip. Guess she doesn't intend to use them again, but aish, what a frivolous waste of money. Jungkook is mad, because of all this mess completely violates the leave-no-trace policy of the backcountry. And we can't physically take it with us: That would be impossible. All we can do is pack some food inside our bear canisters and scavenge a few items we may need. A single-burner camp stove. An additional Nalgene bottle. A backup lighter. Eco-friendly wet wipes. Seolhyun's water filter. Because of my telescope, I can't hold much of anything else in my pack, so Jungkook carries most of it, attaching things to the outside of his pack with carabiner clips. What we don't need, he stacks in a single pile inside Seolhyun's tent.

"We can report this stuff when we get to the ranger station," he tells me. "They'll send a ranger to pick it up."

"If the bear doesn't come back and destroy it all first."

"Or that," he says with a sigh.

After all of this finished, it's late morning. I change into fresh clothes, brush my teeth, and try to tame my hair into a ponytail. When I'm finished getting ready, I take down my dome tent. It's harder to pack than it was to unpack. And after watching from the sidelines, saying, "Nope," and "Wrong way," Jungkook finally takes pity on me and helps. Then it's just a matter of getting it inside my backpack, and I'm ready to go.

As ready as I'll ever be, anyway.

We climb to the top of the waterfall, where Minjun and Bogum took turns diving the day before. I still can't believe they're gone. Or that I'm alone with Jungkook. This is crazy. And it's also physically demanding. Climbing a hilly trail, as we did yesterday, is far different from pulling yourself up tiers of rocks with a giant backpack. It takes me longer than Jungkook, but halfway up, I begin to get the hang of it. There's a sort of rhythm to climbing, one that's careful and patient. Looking for the right handhold, taking time to push up my legs, leaning into it. By the time we get to the top, I'm breathing heavily but feeling exhilarated.

"Goodbye, Angel Falls," I say, looking down into the waterfall's pool below.

Jungkook laughs. "The book I found it in called it 'Unnamed Waterfall #2,' otherwise known as 'Gagner River Falls.'"

"Those are terrible names."

"Angel Falls sounds way better," he agrees. "When I write my backpacking book, that's what I'll name it."

"Oh, you're a writer now? And when can we expect to see GCF's Guide to the Dark Wilderness on the shelves?"

"You remembered my code name," he says, smiling.

"Of course I do. I'm the one who came up with it."

He makes a satisfied noise, and we smile at each other for what I'm now realizing is a little too long, so I break the connection and look away. You know, before things get weird.

Weirder.

"Come on," he said. "The trail I originally used to find this place is just beyond that boulder."

We make our way through the brush and spy Jungkook's trail. Much like the one we used to get here, it's narrow and barely there. It could even be confused as a deer trail, or some sort of animal path. That makes me a little nervous, but Jungkook assures me that it's a real trail for real people. And at least it's mostly under the trees, because the closer it gets to noon, the hotter it gets. I was prepared for this; I strip off my long-sleeved T-shirt to reveal a short-sleeved one beneath. It's all about layers.

After a half hour or so of hiking in silence, I feel more comfortable with both the trail and being alone with Jungkook. He's intense and quiet, walking steadily alongside me with his eyes constantly scanning the distance. And despite the patches covering his denim jacket, he looks . . . not out of place, weirdly enough.

"When did your interest for camping start?" I ask.

He pushes bangs away from his eyes. "Last year, I guess. I was . . . going through some stuff, and Jin suggested the family trip to Daegu Valley. It just clicked for me. I loved everything about it."

"Sleeping on rocks?" My hip still hurts from the rock poking into it last night.

"No, but that's better with a bedroll beneath your bag," he says, reaching back to pat the rolled-up pad attached to the bottom of his pack.

Wish I had known that.

"I just thought wilderness camping was thrilling," he explains. "You're alone out here with your thoughts. No stress or pressure. No schedule. You could read all day, if you wanted to. Just set up your camp and do whatever. And I liked doing it all myself. At home, everything is provided for you. School is scheduled, dinner is served. Your turn on the TV and everything's programmed. But out here, nothing happens unless I do it myself. And that may sound weird, but I feel like I'm doing something real when I build a fire and cook over it. Like, yeah, if the end of the world came, I could actually survive. Most of the people at school would die in the wilderness after a week or two, struggling to stay warm or forage for edible food, or getting attacked by wild animals."

"You were pretty impressive with the bear last night," I admit. "If you hadn't told me, I would've run and probably ended up as bear dinner."

"Bear attacks aren't common, but if you follow a few basic rules, you're fine. If you were aggressive to a mom bear around her babies, then the chances of you being mauled are higher. It's basically just common sense."

"Still. You knew what to do."

"The trick is avoiding them altogether," he says. "But when you can't, and the people you're camping with blockheads -"

"Not all of us," I chuckle.

"No," he agrees, a hint of smile in the corners of his mouth. "But when you can't avoid animals, you just have to treat them as a real threat and respect that they have the upper hand."

That makes sense. "So you got into camping because you like making fires and outwitting bears?"

"I feel like I've accomplished something that's measurable. I can feed myself -"

He figured out how to make coffee out here, which is pretty much the pinnacle of cooking in my eyes.

"- and find my way without a computerized voice telling me which way to turn. I know first aid basics. I know how to collect water if there's no river in sight. I know how to build a lean-to in the woods. And that's . . ."

"Not nothing."

"Yeah," he says. "It's being a capable human being, which is something I think a lot of people have forgotten how to do."

"So you come out here to feel like a manly man," I say.

"Right," he says sarcastically. "Big, well-built lumberjack. That's me."

Well, he has the well-built part down. When I walk by his side, his tall frame keeps the sun out of my face.

"I come out here because of all that, and because look at this place," he says, gesturing toward the trees. "It's serene. When Jung Hoseok said, 'I believe in beauty,' he was here, in the valley. Maybe even walking this same path."

I have a weird sense of deja vu, because this sounds like the Jungkook I know, rattling off obscure quotes and talking about the city lights as if they were magic. So maybe I do understand why he'd attracted to hiking.

He becomes self-conscious now, and laughs a little. "Besides all that, you never know what can happen out here. And that's the thrilling part. A million things can go wrong."

I groan. "No, that's what I don't want to hear. I like all my things to go right."

"That's not how the world works."

"It's how it should work," I say. "I like plans that go smoothly. That's the beauty I believe in. Nothing is better than when things go exactly how I expect."

"I know that's what you like," he says, eyes squinting out the sun to peer down at me. "And there's comfort in that, sure. But there's comfort in knowing that when your plans fall apart, you can survive. That the worst thing imaginable can happen, but you can get through it. That's why I like to read horror fiction. It's not about the monsters. It's about the hero surviving them and living to tell the tale."

"It's nice that you feel that way," I tell him. "But I'm not sure I have the same level of comfort. Some of us weren't meant to survive."

"You survived the group abandoning us."

"For the time being. It's only been a few hours. I'm weak. I may not make it through the night."

He chuckles. "That's why I'm here. If you can't survive on your own, hire help."

"I hope you know that the Baes are broke as a joke and you will get no reward for bringing me back alive."

"Alive or dead, then. Excellent. That actually takes a lot of pressure off me," he says with a devilish smile. "Oh, look. Here's the trail that leads to the caves. Am I good or what?"

A wooden post with several vertical symbols carved into it sits where our trail crosses with a wider one. It appears that the caves are a mere five-hour walk. In the midday sun. Uphill. Fantastic. It all looked so much simpler and kinder on Jungkook's homemade map.

We walk until early afternoon, chatting occasionally about landmarks int he surrounding area and the places Jungkook's hiked previously. But when I fail to answer a question because I'm staring too hard at the rocky path, worried I might be close to passing out, Jungkook makes us stop for lunch.

We take off our jackets and sit on them, and after draining half of my water supply, I break out eomma's gifted turkey jerky while he pulls out roasted peanuts and dried fruit. We decide to share. He informs me that high-calorie, high-salt foods are the best things to eat when you're hiking. These are pretty much my favorite foods, so maybe hiking and me will work out, after all.

After lunch, we fill up our Nalgene bottles with filtered water from a nearby creek and hit the trail again. The land here is rockier, which , because an hour into the hike, I'm getting tired already, and my feet keep stumbling over loose pebbles that slide over the sandy ground. It's like trying to avoid thousands of land mines. I'm thinking the hiking boots might be better in this situation.

"Not much longer now," Jungkook tells me after I slide and nearly fall.

I don't think I can make it. I really don't. The sun is low in the sky, and we've easily been hiking for hours. I'm one slippery pebble away from casting aside my pride and begging him to stop again, when we crest a hill and find a small trail breaking away from the main one. I look up, breathing heavy, and am surprised to see a massive granite mountain across a field. One second it was in the distance, and now it's right here.

"This is it," Jungkook says excitedly, pointing toward the smaller path. "One of the cave entrances should be at the end of this trail."

"Oh, thank goodness, I thought we'd never get here," I say, finding a renewed burst of energy to head down the new path. It doesn't hurt that it's level ground. "I can't feel my feet. Should I be worried?"

"No. You should enjoy the numbness," Jungkook says. "Later, when they hurt so badly and you're begging me to cut them off, then you'll look back on these moments with nostalgia. Oh, look. Do you see it?"

I do. It's a black mouth leading inside the gray mountain. And as we cross the field and approach it, I'm startled by how big it is. The path just ends. No warning. No posted sign.

"I thought you said this cavern has been explored," I say. "Shouldn't there be a park sign announcing it, or something?"

"That's only on the commercialized caves. A few around here have lights strung through them for tourists. This one gets a lot of cavers."

"Cavers."

"People who explore caves."

"I thought that was a spelunker."

"Spelunkers are the idiots who get lost in caves and have to be rescued by the cavers." Jungkook slides a glance down my face. "Bogum would make a great spelunker."

I roll my eyes, but secretly I'm thinking he's probably right.

"So what's the plan?" I ask when we pause in front of the cavern's entrance to unhook our packs and retrieve our headlamps. I decided to snag the one Seolhyun left behind, since Jungkook pointed out that it cost several hundred dollars more than my basic model and would be a shame to waste.

"It's only about two miles from here to the exit on the other side," he tells me as he straps on his headlamp. "It's completely safe, so don't worry. Thousands of people have been here before us."

"Okay," I say, feeling cool air emerging from the darkness inside. It's like natural air conditioning. Feels nice. "What's the catch? Is there a cave troll we have to fight?"

"This isn't a fantasy, Suzy. We aren't crossing the Misty Mountains."

"Evil armies of miner dwarves?"

"You mean orcs. The dwarves weren't evil. Did we not do an annual Christmas viewing of The Lord of the Rings trilogy during Sunday dinners every December?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"You loved them."

I did. "Okay, Kookie. What's the catch about this cave?"

"No Balrog to fight. No catch. That I know of. I mean, I've never been inside this cave."

"But you've been in others, right?"

"Just the Daegu Hills Caverns and Zip Lines," he says, the corners of his mouth lifting.

"On that school trip?"

"When Kim Seokjin vomitted on the bus after the zip lines."

"Those are the only caves I've been inside too," I say, alarmed. And it was basically just an excuse for them to build a gift shop and charge everyone a million dollars for sodas. "Maybe we shouldn't do this."

"We'll be fine," he assures me. "The book says the tricky part is that the tunnels are all connected. It's one big maze. There are supposed to be a pair of ropes that lead up to a higher level of tunnels, and that's what we're looking for."

"We're climbing ropes?" This is gym-class horror all over again.

"No."

"Oh, thank goodness," I mumble.

"The ropes are just our visual landmark. There are several exits, and the one we need to find is near the ropes. It will take us out to the northern side, where there's a big trail that leads to that valley I told you about." He slips on his hoodie. "You might want to put a jacket on. It's going to be chilly inside. And it should take us about an hour to make our way through. Then there's an easy path down into the valley on the other side, where we can make camp by a creek and have dinner."

An hour. I can do that. Better than climbing up that rocky path behind us. And at least it's out of the sun. I should have brought a hat like eomma suggested. I think the part in my hair is sunburned. Pretty sure my cheeks are too. But who's got a vitamin D deficiency now, huh?

I flick on Seolhyun's headlamp as we step into the mouth of the cave. The entrance is a big, round room. Scattered rocks lay in heaps, as well as a couple of empty water bottles and what looks to be a pile of toilet paper. So much for "leave no trace."

A fat tunnel at the back of the room leads farther into the mountain, and that's where we head. Once we are inside, sunlight wanes at our backs, and our headlamps become our new sun. It's much chillier here, and the air smells damp and musty - like rock, I suppose. I never thought about rock having a strong scent. It's not an unpleasant one, though, and the cool air feels good in my lungs. Clean. Uncomplicated. Much like our path. The tunnel is wide enough for the two of us to walk side by side, and the ceiling is several feet over our heads. Veins of color thread through the rock walls - marble, Jungkook guesses - and though the floor is rock, it's better than walking outside.

"This isn't so bad," I say, letting my headlamp bounce around the walls.

"I told you."

We soon come to another tunnel. Two, actually: one to our left, one to our right. They're both about the same width as the one in which we walk.

"What now?" I said. 

"You don't need to whisper, Suzy."

"Everything echoes in here."

"Echo, echo, echo," Jungkook says in his deep voice, cupping his hand around his mouth. "If an echo bounces off the walls of a deserted cave in the middle of the woods, does anyone hear it?"

"Are you finished?"

"For now." Jungkook unhooks his black compass from the belt loop of his jeans and flips it open. "We need to head south. Seems like this is the maze part I was telling you about."

"This isn't going to be like the hedge maze in The Shining, is it?" I ask.

"Oh, I hope so. I love that movie," Jungkook says. "Did you know that in the book, there's an army of topiary animals that come to life?"

"Please don't talk about that while we're in the middle of a dark cavern in the middle of the wilderness where no one can come to our rescue," I say. "And no ghost stories,. Did your survivalist teacher really tell you that story? Wait. Never mind. I don't want to know."

"I should tell ghost stories for a living," he says. "That was fun. Until the bear. Well, that was fun too. Until the fight." The bright beam from his headlight shines in my face. "Too soon?"

I hold up a hand to block the light. "Can you not do that?"

He turns his head away to beam light in front of us. "Sorry."

"I'm not sad about Bogum, if that's what you're thinking," I tell him.

"Good. He's not worth your tears. Though, for the record, you have a terrible taste in guys," Jungkook says, shining his light back to the compass in his hands.

"Pardon?" I say, lightly shoving his compass hand with mine.

He chuckles. "You're pardoned. And forgiven. And absolved for all your sins. So let's focus and get through here, because I'm starving." He steadies his compass again. "Okay, so as I was saying, all of these tunnels eventually lead into a huge cavern room. If we hit that, we've gone too far west. So I think we can just choose a tunnel and try to walk in a northern direction."

"We go to the right, then?" I say.

"Wrong north. Otherwise known as south. Take a left."

He's awfully merry for someone who has only a vague idea about where we're going. We head left and continue into the cave, walking in silence for several minutes. A noise echoes in distant tunnels, and this raises my pulse. I probably should have asked about bats. Or maybe I'm better off not knowing.

As he navigates a sharp turn in the tunnel, I stew over his words.

"Sins?" I say.

"What?"

"You said I was absolved of all my sins. What did you mean by that?"

"I was just teasing."

I don't think he was.

After a long silence, he says, "I mean, you know how I feel about Bogum. But Kim Taehyung, too? Are you into jocks, or something? What was up with that?"

This conversion is moving into territory that I don't care to relive. "Taehyung was nice to me when I needed a friend."

"Yeah, I saw him. Being nice to you." He pauses and then says, "But I didn't know you were seriously seeing each other. Bogum caught me up and told me . . . well, more than I needed to know."

I stop walking. "What did Bogum tell you?"

"Can we talk about something else?" Jungkook says,

"No, we can't. Because if Bogum was gossiping about me, I think I have the right to know."

Jungkook considers this and continues walking, until I have no choice but to either catch up with him or be left behind in the maze.

"Tell me," I insist.

"All right," he finally agrees. "Bogum said you and Taehyung were, you know . . . exchanging body heat."

That's a funny way to put it. In a way, it makes it seem worse. Like Jungkook - someone who sees all kinds of crazy toys on a daily basis - can't even bring himself to saw what Taehyung and I did out loud.

"Taehyung and Bogum talk," Jungkook adds. "Multiplayer."

"What?"

"Online gaming. One of the sports games, or something. I don't know. I only play survival horror games. Maybe a little Minecraft. Okay, and some League of Legends, but don't tell anyone about that."

"I don't care."

"Hey, I didn't ask for it," he says. "Bogum volunteered it."

"I only saw Taehyung for a couple of weeks."

"I saw you guys out at Thai Palace once."

"You were spying on us?"

"The restaurant is across the street from my workplace," he says irritably. "So no, I wasn't spying. I don't own a telescope."

Ugh. I was hoping we could avoid bringing up that mishap. Like, forever.

"And if you want to know the truth," he continues in a crabby voice, "I thought it was sort of ty of you to flaunt that in my face."

"I didn't even know you saw us! How could I be flaunting?"

"A million of restaurant in town, and you pick that one?"

He's actually 100% right. I did pick that restaurant on purpose. I was still mourning Jungkook at the time, so yeah. I wanted him to see me with someone else. I know it was shallow, but I was in pain.

What's puzzling me now is his complaining about it. Because if I didn't know better, I'd think he sounds as if he's mad about me dating Taehyung, and why would that be? Could there be some truth in Bogum's torch-carrying remark?

Is he having second thoughts about us? Why? What changed?

The path splits again, but this time one of the tunnels only heads east. Jungkook hesitates, checking his compass and looking down at our current tunnel. It looks to curve ahead, and that's back where we came from, so he points us down the eastern-tunnel.

It's even wider here, and the walls begin changing. Gone is the smooth rock. Now it's craggy like the fabric of a curtain, and the ceiling is much higher. It also feels as if we're ascending.

"Funny that you heard all about me," I say after several minutes of walking. "Because I didn't even know you were dating someone."

I hear my own voice, and it sounds petty. What is wrong with me? Maybe I'm grumpy because of the dropping temperatures in here. My fingers feel like ice, and I really wish I weren't wearing shorts.

"Maybe you weren't paying attention." He's said this before, and I don't understand why. Am I missing something? Before I can ask, he throws me off guard and says, "I dated Lee Jieun."

Oh.

Jieun. She's one of the best singers at school who hang out at the music room with the other musical kids. I don't really know much about her. I certainly had no idea she and Jungkook were a thing. "When?"

"We started seeing each other a few months ago. We like a lot of the same musicians."

Suddenly, all the defenses I've built up over the last year come crashing down like a poorly played jenga move, and a horrible warmth floods my chest.

What is this strange feeling? Jealousy?

"Are you still dating?" I ask, and immediately regret it. Take it back, take it back, take it back! I don't want to know.

And when he doesn't respond immediately, I fear the worst.

That's when it hits me like a kick to the ribs.

I'm not over Jungkook.

I tried so hard. I ignored him. I got rid of all the stuff that made me think of him. I stopped going places we used to go. I cried until there were no more tears to stop me from getting angry. And then I moved on.

Only, I didn't.

How did I not realized this before?

Something hits my shoulder. I swing my headlamp up to see Jungkook's arm blocking my path. He's staring intently down a branching tunnel. I follow his gaze and squint into the darkness beyond my headlamp's reach. A shadow shifts.

"Someone's in here with us," Jungkook whispers.

My pulse picks up speed, thought I'm not sure why. This cave is open to the public. It's probably just another hiker. No cause for alarm.

"Hello," Jungkook calls out. His big voice reverberates off the rocky walls. No answer.

Okay, this is starting to worry me. The dark was fine when it was just the two of us. Sort of calming. Peaceful. But now that peace feels threatened.

Jungkook gestures for me to move back a step, and then he leans down and whispers in my ears, "I thought I saw a man. But maybe I was imagining it."

"Why are we whispering, then?" Something drips on my arm, startling me. It's just water from a stalagmite. Or stalactite. I could never get those right. Whichever one grows from the ceiling.

Jungkook shakes his head and his chuckle sounds forced. "It's just freaked me out a little."

Yup, me too. We listen for a minute. I don't hear anything. It's eerily quiet in here. Images of ax-murdering miners flood my anxious brain.

"Shouldn't we be out of here by now?" I say.

"We've got to be close to the exit."

"Is that the way we're supposed to go?" I ask. "Where you didn't see a creepy shadow troll?"

Jungkook studies his compass and looks around. If I squint, I think I can make out two more branching tunnels ahead of us. Possibly a third. This maze is getting complicated.

He sees the tunnels too. "Stay here. I'll go check those out."

I watch his back disappear past my headlamp. I don't like this. At all. I'm beginning to feel a little claustrophobic and have to force myself to calm down when water drops on my shoulder again. I shift positions to get away from the cave drip and accidentally kick a big, loose rock. It clatters against the wall.

I wince and look down. Something's moving. It's a back-and-white striped ball. Only, one end of the end of the ball is unraveling, like yarn. Shiny yarn.

IT'S A MOTHERING SNAKE.

Thank you guys for reading!!