The week went on as usual. Kris got up to go to work, Tao would go over and make them something to eat or they’d go out to eat. They’d usually make small talk about their day and what they did.  Everything was normal until Friday night when Kris asked Tao what he should bring along with him. Tao just told him to bring some comfortable clothes and some hiking boots if he had any. Other than that nothing was said that night.

            Kris was nervous the whole night until Tao left at around 11pm. He got even more nervous after he had left. He wasn’t sure if he should go camping with Tao and his friend. Even if his friend didn’t speak Korean he himself could speak Mandarin. So he wasn’t too nervous about the language barrier. He was more worried over what kind of person he was and who he was to Tao to begin with. He knew that he was Taos friend but he didn’t know if he was something more.

Tao could sense Kris’ nervousness. He didn’t mention anything about it though. He thought that Kris might just be a little scared of meeting his friend. Tao himself on the other hand was completely ecstatic. He hadn’t seen Luhan in over a year. Sure he loved being in Korea and having something close to a family but he missed his friends from China. He had met Luhan in school. They became friends instantly. Over the course of their friendship Tao had developed a crush on Luhan but was never brave enough to tell him. Luhan did offer to have Tao stay with his family when his parents had died, but Tao refused. He thought that if he stayed with Luhan he would do something to him because of his feelings towards him. So he decided to run away to Korea. He did leave a note to Luhan only saying that he would be going to Korea. He didn’t specify a certain city or town because at the time he himself didn’t know.

He had regained contact with Luhan not long after Kris’ parents took him in for good and decide to fend for him. He was really grateful that he had Kris’ father had found him in front of his office. He still had Luhans e-mail and phone number in a notebook he took with him. He decided to e-mail him first since it didn’t cost anything, unlike an international phone call. He got a reply the very next day and almost instantly they were e-mailing each other daily. Not long before Christmas Luhan had mentioned to Tao that he wanted to see him so he was planning to take a trip to Korea with a couple of other friends and asked him to join on their camping adventure. He agreed instantly. At that time though he still hadn’t met Kris and Kris wasn’t such a big part of his life. Now Kris was a big part of his life and he couldn’t just ignore him for a weekend. That’s why he invited him.

When the morning came Kris had gotten up early and went to pick up Tao from his parents house. Tao was waiting for Kris in the living room ready to go. His parents where in the kitchen eating their Breakfast. There weren’t many words exchanged between him and his parents. He greeted them and made small talk then he bid them farewell and left with Tao in the passenger seat.

Once in the car Kris decided to talk to Tao since it was a pretty long drive to the camping grounds. They talked about little things and then things that they had seen on TV but hadn’t told the other.  They were once again comfortable. The nervousness on Kris’ side stopped. He was happy that he was going to be able to spend his weekend with Tao even if someone else was going to be there. The whole car ride was filled with talking and laughing with the radio station turned to low volume almost like the background music to a movie.

When they reached the camping grounds there were a couple other people there. There weren’t going to be a lot of people camping at the time since it was still winter and most people weren’t insane. Apparently those other few people that were there all knew Tao and once they pulled up into a parking spot everyone gathered around Kris’ car waiting for Tao to get out so they could greet him. Tao got out of the car almost instantly. Right when he got out a very thin boy with blonde hair pulled Tao into a death grip and hugged the life out of him. Tao did the same back to him but picked up the smaller boy since Tao towered over everyone except Kris.

“I missed you so much Tao.”

“Me too. Me too Luhan.”

“Well as you can see the other guys came with me.”

“I see that. I also see Xiumin sending me a deadly glare at me.”

“Oh. well that’s probably because you brought someone else.”

“Oh right. Guys, this is Kris. His parents are the ones that took me in when I came here.”

“Do we have to speak Korean to him? You know our Korean isn’t well up to par.”

“I speak mandarin.”

“Oh. okay. Well it’s nice to meet you Kris I’m Luhan. This is Xiumin, Chen, and Lay.”

            Luhan pointed out all the other people to Kris as he introduced them to him. They all seemed like relatively good people except that Xiumin guy since he was glaring at him almost like he wanted to kill him. Everyone else introduced themselves to Kris individually and greeted him with kindness. They all shook hands and then decided to set up the tents together as sort of a bonding experience with Kris. Luhan told them what to do since he said he was in charge of cooking for the trip he wouldn’t build anything, instead he read off the instructions on how to build the tents out loud to the other five.

            Once everything was built and set up they set up everything that they needed to eat. Xiumin and Kris were sent to go find wood to build a fire while the others set up the rest of the things that were needed so they wouldn’t die over the weekend.

            The moment that Kris and Xiumin were out of site, Xiumin grabbed Kris’ arm and dragged him deeper into the woods than they were ment to be. Kris knew that something was wrong. He instantly tried to free himself from Xiumin and succeeded in a short amount of time. He turned Xuimin around in order for the both of them to be facing each other instead of front to back.

“What’s your deal?”

“Who are you, really?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tao said your family took him in. By the looks of your car I’d say your family’s pretty wealthy.”

“I guess we are. But why does that matter?”

“No rich family is ever that nice to just take in a complete stranger.”

“Well my parents did.”

“What does he have to do? Is he like a slave to you?”

“No. He lives with my parents and I live in my own apartment.”

“Then do you know what your parents do to him?”

“They treat him as if he was their own child.”

“I’d like to believe that they do. But they don’t.”

“Dude seriously, what’s your problem?”

“I don’t want your family to see Tao as a toy that you can take in and take care of for a while then when you get tired of it you just leave it out until it eventually just disappears one day.”

“I’d never let that happen. Tao has become such a big part of my life. I wouldn’t be able to let him go even if he wanted to leave.”

“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

“Because the first night that I met Tao is when I told him about my whole life. I told him things that not even my parent know about me. The moment I said that to him he became a part of my life. Not because I shared my past with him but because he stayed by my side that night. He stayed and he made me laugh a real laugh for the first time in years. And then after that he comes over every night just so I won’t feel alone. That’s why I wouldn’t be able to let him go. He’s become too big of a piece of my life that I wouldn’t be able to function properly without him.”

“I guess I’ll believe you for now. But if Tao tells me anything different I will hurt you.”

“For such a cute and small guy you surely have a lot of anger in you.”

“I am not small. You’re just a giant.”

“Alright I’m the giant but you still have a lot of anger or just emotions in you.”

“Shut up. Let’s hurry up and get the wood before they start to look for us.”

            So they did. They collected enough wood to serve them through the night and for some in the morning. They didn’t talk much while collecting the wood. Xiumin would pick the wood off of the ground while Kris just carried all of it. When they got back to their camping station everything was set up already. All they had to do was start the fire which was easy since they took the easy route and used matches instead of doing it the way boy scouts do it.

            They all sat around the fire to keep warm and just told stories of their times in China. Kris just sat down and listened to it all. He was still a stranger to these people but they were willing to share a part of their past with him so he felt comfortable. To him it didn’t matter that he wasn’t in any of the memories that the others talked about he was just happy to look across and see the Tao was laughing alongside Luhan.

Hi guys. i know this chapter is a bit shorter than the other ones but only by a couple hundred words. i wanted to split this up into 2 parts since i realized that all i want to happen on the trip would be to long to put into 1 chapter.

also tomorrow is my brothers' birthday. he's turning 24 so we're having a food party since its going to be pretty cold and raining most of the day we're going to have to keep it in the house . i don't like people in my house especially in my room. T-T

if i have time to update tomorrow before or after the party i'll try and update this. if not then you'll have to wait till next week.