The smell of car fumes seems so out of place in the depths of the jungle. Passing through the outer treeline had felt like entering another world entirely, a paradise untouched by man, a sacred place for nature to reign within the winding walls of a thousand trees and beneath the steadfast roof of the canopy. Though the sun is blocked out by the leafy umbrella overhead, everywhere seems to glow as though it radiates light itself, a light that bounces off its surroundings until all colours – the vibrant pinks of the orchids and the stark yellows of bananas – are as every bit as stunning as the objects themselves.

With the window wound down, Baekhyun hangs his head out of the frame and takes a deep breath of air, finding it moist and dewy, smelling of the earth and things that grow. It’s refreshing too, even the whiffs of excrement here and there. Mud splatters against the metal side of the Toyota Land Cruiser, the road – more of a dirt track – slushing with murky water beneath the thick tyres. The car itself jolts from left to right, the path unpredictable and probably only meant for walking on in good weather conditions. Nevertheless, at least they can get a ride though here; the thought of staggering the whole ten-mile trip with their five trunks of heavy equipment lugging behind them makes Baekhyun cringe.

“There was big storm!” their driver exclaims, a man native to the local village on the outskirts of the jungle, a place where tourists are most known to take their rest stops, thus the car. “Big, big, big! Five—Five days long!” His English is thickly accented and uneven, but it’s good enough to understand, a long- hand making great movements to portray the size of the weather. It helps, really, as Jongdae has only learned the basics of Swahili for the trip; it’s typical that he is fluent in nine languages but not this one. “Water all around! Big, great wind! Flood!” 

“Ahh,” Jongdae vocalises his understanding, sharing a nod and a wide smile with the local, both of them sat in the front of the car. “Will there be another storm? Another storm here soon?”

Baekhyun brings his head back in from the window and looks between the two headrests before him, interested in the man’s reply. If there is to be another storm while they’re in the middle of the jungle, who knows what could go wrong. Still, nobody said this was going to be easy. In fact, no one really said anything at all; they’re the first group from their university to brave a trip like this. Everything Baekhyun knows about this place either came out of a textbook or off the internet, the rest he’ll have to suss out for himself.

“No. No more storm.” The native laughs, shooting a smile at Jongdae and then in the rear-view mirror; Baekhyun just catches it when he looks up and returns one kindly. “Just sunshine and good—good times.”

“You hear that?” Jongdae grins, twisting around in his seat to face him and Yixing in the back. “Just sunshine and good times from here on out, my friend and my boyfriend.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes at Jongdae’s extravagance, smiling despite himself when Yixing also doesn’t look too impressed. “You’re so embarrassing, Jongdae,” he murmurs blankly, casting his gaze out the window.

“That’s why you love me, isn’t it?” Jongdae waggles his eyebrows, then gets flicked on the forehead between them.

“It’s good news, though,” Baekhyun pipes up, leaning forwards against the seat in front to better look at both of his companions. He also breaks up Jongdae and Yixing’s annoyingly sweet moment, not so accidentally. What can he say? He’s been alone and progressively miserable for over a year now, he must share that with the other couples of the world. “I never fancied being stuck out here in a downpour. Bring on the good times, I say.”

Their driver apparently understands him, as he peeps a celebratory honk of the horn and cheers, rising laughter from Baekhyun’s throat. Nevertheless, they are not here to get suntans or explore for recreational purposes. They’re here as part of a project funded by their university, in the field to collect samples from a recently discovered plant, to run a number of tests to spy out the similarities and differences of growing it in an artificial lab versus its natural habitat. It sounds as boring as it does on paper in a verbal conversation, yet when Baekhyun get to visit places like this – and for free – picking this line of work makes sense again.

In order to carry out these tests, they’ve brought all their lab equipment with them, stacked up in the boot of the car in big trunks and polythene bags to keep them protected from water. Carrying them through the jungle undergrowth won’t be the easiest of tasks but Baekhyun is always up for a challenge, even an impossible one. His blind ambition is both his strength and his weakness and has ended a few of his relationships in the past, both platonic and romantic. People tell him that he’s never satisfied when all he sees is room for improvement.

His mind is brought back to the present when the car engine clatters to a stop, sounding alarmingly like rapid gunfire as the exhaust pipe spits out fumes. The smell of petrol soon clouds the air like a poisonous gas, feeling suffocating in a place so organic. Naturally, Baekhyun’s first reaction is to think that they have arrived at the camp, a small tourist lodge at the end of the trail that caters to both scientists and explorers alike, except when he looks around, all he sees is trees.

“Oh,” Jongdae grunts, then muttering a painfully sarcastic, “great.”

“What is it?” Baekhyun immediately asks, sitting up in his seat and staring through the windscreen, discovering a huge, fallen tree blocking their path. “Ah... I see.”

“It was the storm,” their driver speaks up, making wild gestures with his hands as if representing the movement of the wind. “It must have blown over tree. I did not know.” He turns apologetically to Jongdae who is quick to comfort him, softly speaking words in his native tongue while Baekhyun and Yixing watch on.

The tree itself is humungous, one to rival a redwood, so there is no point in them even thinking about trying to move it out of the way. With this being the only path to the lodge as well, they don’t really have much choice in how to proceed.

“There’s no reason why we can’t just walk the rest of the way,” Baekhyun remarks, tone hopeful, his hand already going down to collect his backpack from where it’s squashed between his parted legs. “How far away are we?”

Jongdae glances at him before attempting to translate, and after a few moments of foreign conversation he reports that they still have five miles to travel. “The sun is going down too, it’s already past seven,” he mutters with a frown to his watch.

“And have you seen that tree, Baekhyun?” Yixing interjects, pointing for emphasis. “How the hell are we supposed to climb over that? And we have the trunks too, not just ourselves.”

“Okay fine, let me think for a minute.” It is safe to say that Baekhyun doesn’t like it when people poke holes in his plans, or finds the holes that he failed to see, so in order to boost his reputation again he starts thinking of alternatives. With a glance to the roadside and what looks to be a small footpath, a lightbulb pings over his head. “Why don’t we just ditch the lodge? We’re self-sufficient anyway. We have our own food and fuel. We can just walk a hundred paces away from the road and find a flat clearing to make our own camp in. Sorted.” Baekhyun beams, very happy with himself and his solution.

Jongdae and Yixing share a long look before the latter crumbles and nods. To their regret, they really don’t have any other options. “Fine,” Jongdae quips. “But if we get lost, Baekhyun, it’s on you.”

Baekhyun doesn’t even take notice of the threat because, to be quite frank, he has just saved the day. He’s already jumping out of the car and heading to the boot by the time Jongdae has just managed to pay their driver for bringing them this far.

“This way looks promising,” he tells Yixing as they swing open the back door to reveal their equipment. “Looks like some kind of footpath.”

Yixing hums in thought, picking up the camera hanging by a strap around his neck to take some shots of their surroundings. “It had better be promising,” he murmurs, a faint warning aimed straight for Baekhyun’s optimism.

One by one, he starts to drag their trunks down from the car, collecting them on the road for them all to take to wherever their future camp may be. He scuffs his knees several times and gets oil on his shin from accidentally walking into the towbar, his shorts proving good for keeping him cool but not for keeping him clean, but at least he’s doing something other than taking pictures of ants walking along the side of the road. Besides, any injuries he obtains will be the fruits of hard labour; he shall wear them as badges of honour, even though he’s only a botanist.

Just as he’s unloaded the last trunk off the back of the car, Jongdae is jumping out the passenger seat and waving a cheery goodbye to their driver. “He says he doesn’t know when the tree’s going to be moved so he’s going to pick us up from this spot in nine days.”

“Sounds good to me,” Baekhyun chirps, rubbing his palms together eagerly. “We won’t go too far away from the road.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Jongdae chuckles, striding up to their equipment and taking two trunks by the handle, wheeling them a few paces towards the path as the Toyota’s engine splutters back to life. Baekhyun glances at the grey smoke puffing out of the exhaust pipe and spares a moment to worry over pollution before he too moves out the way of the turning car.

They wave to their driver as he goes past, the joyful shout of “Kwaheri” – also known as, goodbye – leaving his lips. Jongdae is quick to shout it back, waving animatedly as the local retreats towards the village on the outskirts of the jungle.

In the silence, with almost all of the outside world beyond their cocoon, Baekhyun looks around in awe. He never realised how loud the jungle would be. There are birds whistling, insects squeaking and what sounds like a gushing waterfall in the distance. Above them, the leaves rustle in the breeze, Baekhyun catching the movements of small rodent-like animals with his eyes. Everywhere he turns there is something new to look at and he is unsurprisingly blown away by it all.

Soon enough, when Yixing has finished taking his pictures and quietly contemplated over them with Jongdae, they start to navigate their way through the undergrowth. On foot, the paths feel a lot more level than they did in the car, but the wheels on their trunks don’t exactly agree – not that having to wrestle them over rocks, tree roots and random burrows helps that much.

The path leads them downhill, the trail clearer towards the top and becoming more overgrown the further they travel. Bushes and ferns spew over the track borders on either side, Baekhyun braving through them until he is stung by a branch covered in thorns. Yet as botanists, the idea of cutting down what is in their path doesn’t even cross their minds, for it is unthinkable to kill that which they love – even if it does leave Baekhyun’s shins itchy, red and swollen.

Just when the sun is starting to fully set, bleeding a warm, golden orange through the canopy, the ground levels out and the plant-life gives way slightly to a small clearing. Although it is still covered in bamboo and lianas – peculiar looking trees that twist and wind like veins – it is the best place they have found so far, only a ten-minute walk from the road. With some exchanged looks of mutual understanding, they begin to set up camp for the night. Even with his overflowing enthusiasm, Baekhyun admits that they can’t keep this as their camp for the whole nine days, and it seems as though the others agree too.

“Being at the bottom of a bank isn’t the best really,” Jongdae grunts, using a long stick to move leaves and other fallen natural debris to level out the ground.

Baekhyun sighs, stretching his arms above his head after fastening their trunks to the ground with storm straps. “We can move in the morning. Only unpack the essentials.” Still, even with only unpacking the essentials, they manage to empty a whole trunk and a half.

The tents go up next, erected atop tarp and surrounded by mosquito nets. Baekhyun gets one to himself whereas Yixing and Jongdae share, Baekhyun threatening that if he hears any suspicious noises, he’s going to throttle them with his microscope.

After warming a few tins of tomato soup over a gas hob, they finally retire, Baekhyun giving his manual one last skim by the light of his battery powered lantern before closing his eyes and listening to the calming soundtrack of the breathing jungle.

✿

The night passes, dawn breaks, and Baekhyun rouses to the smell of brewing coffee. He crawls groggily from his tent, Jongdae kindly unfolding his small camping stool for him as he makes his way towards him and Yixing.

“Sleep well?” the latter asks with a smile, handing him a small metal cup, the contents steaming.

“Sort of,” he replies, voice crumbling in the early morning air before he takes a small sip. “I’ll take a look around while you two can pack up if you want, find a new place.”

There are nods, smiles, and then Baekhyun is on his way, gently scouring their surroundings for a better location. Within three hours, their trunks have been transported several kilometres to the north – compass coming in handy to log their direction – and they are unpacking fully, leaving no trunk unopened.

Baekhyun gets to work positioning the solar panels beneath a gap in the canopy, while Yixing takes out his collapsible shovel and starts to dig a trench around where they’re staying. Once Jongdae has finished clearing the ground, he starts pegging down vast sheets of tarp for their equipment and living essentials to sit on. Folding tables are erected, their resources unpacked and presented under the protection of a portable gazebo with zip-on walls, lit with solar powered lanterns that become wired up to the panels. It almost feels wrong to Baekhyun to be bringing so many man-made things into a place like this, but he comforts himself with the fact that their stay is only a short one.

The place they have chosen has a grass carpet, littered with the bright red flags of heliconia petals and clusters of waxy ferns that resemble fountains. Scents of dirt, moss and bark hang sweetly in the air, a gentle breeze keeping things circulating enough to blow away the smells of their own body odour as they work to build camp. All around them, the jungle thickens. To the right, things grow right up to the end of a deep ravine surrounded by great boulders and mighty palm trees, concealing a deathly drop of a hundred feet. To the left, the ground slopes down massively, revealing the source of the trickling water sound as a lazy river can be seen through the greens and browns, breaking into white bubbles as it is cut by rocks in the bed. Above them, vines as tall as two-story buildings hang down from the branches of kapok and ceiba trees – or so Baekhyun thinks. It is hard for him to identify the kind of tree from their bark alone.

One of the last things they do is create a fire pit and set light to their kindling. For lunch, they eat the bland contents of several tins mixed together with a set of disposable spoons, and once they have regained their strength, they set out to find the Oranda flower, their new experiment. Split up and communicating through wireless radios, each of them head in a different direction and report back what they find, Baekhyun burning with jealousy when Yixing claims he has just seen a gorilla taking a stroll with its baby on its back. So far, the only animal life he has seen is some ants and a woodpecker. Very pedestrian.

Nevertheless, he is the first to come across their desired specimen, the achievement and exhilaration bubbling through his body. He wastes no time in telling his friends, only to get a rather suspicious silence in response. Baekhyun narrows his eyes, drawing his radio to his mouth again and pressing down the button. When the white noise stops, he darkly warns, “If you two are ing somewhere, I’m going to leave the both of you here to die.”

He stares accusingly at a random tree unfortunate enough to be in his line of sight while he waits for a response, getting a delayed one from a breathless Jongdae who starts stammering in his own defence.

 “H-Hey Baek, we’re not—stop it—we’re not ing at all, honestly. We’re just—get off, Yixing—taking a little b-break.”

Scoffing, Baekhyun clips his radio back into his belt and decides to focus all his energy on work instead. Dropping his backpack off his shoulder, he begins to collect samples, carefully clipping off small pieces of the petals, leaves and stigma without harming it. With petals the shades of a smouldering sunset and serrated, roundish leaves with a cool blue tinge, it really is a breath-taking flower. Although the origin of it is unknown at this point, Baekhyun believes it to be a creation of both the water lily and the small dwarf jade tree, despite the fact they grow in two completely different climates and are undoubtedly the most dissimilar plants ever. It has yet to be proven, but once he’s back in the lab at university, it will be the first thing he does.

The next days that pass are warm and peaceful. Baekhyun does his best to avoid Yixing and Jongdae as they slink around the camp together and disappear into their tent in the middle of the day. He doesn’t want to know what they’re doing, but of course his mind insists on filling in the blanks for him; the lewd moans don’t really help either. Be that as it may, Baekhyun makes a pact with himself, one that states that he will not interfere with any of their business unless he starts hearing . The last time that happened, he was traumatised (and still is).

He sits at his portable desk, peering through a microscope at the different samples he has collected from various different Oranda flowers, trying to find patterns and similarities between them that he can compare against their own lab grown versions. Visually, the only difference he has found so far is that the leaves are much waxier on the plants grown here, probably because of the climate. It’s all tedious and boring when he is not discovering anything, and Baekhyun decides to finally end proceedings for the day when he smells something frying outside the gazebo.

“Just cooking up some sausages,” Jongdae greets him, his lips after as he stares at the fat sizzling in the pan. “Found anything?”

Baekhyun sighs in fatigue as he sits down on his camping stool, shaking his head. “Nothing substantial. I bet I would find something if I had my two fellow botanists actually helping me, but what can you do? They’re too busy being in love.”

Jongdae looks at him with a quiet smile. “To cheer you up, I’m going to let you have an extra sausage.”

Chuckling, his spirits lightened, Baekhyun thanks Jongdae and then receives a cool can of cola from Yixing. They toast to the jungle, their lives, and all the Baekhyun is sure to get once they go home and party, before they eat dinner and play a few card games beneath the radiant shine of the sun between the trees.

When Baekhyun lies down to sleep that night, he finds himself smiling faintly at the ceiling of his tent. He hopes he does meet the man of his dreams soon. It would be nice to have somebody to share his life with, especially the little moments.

After zipping himself up in his sleeping bag and plumping the pillow, he finds himself a comfortable position and smirks at how he gets all this room to himself.

Three hours later, in the dead of night, when Baekhyun wakes up to hear some ominous animalistic grunting on the other side of his tent, he decides that yes, he would love a boyfriend right now, even a ty one, because what the is that? Those sounds are definitely not coming from Jongdae or Yixing, and they are starting to get closer.

Baekhyun’s ears home in on gruff panting, the sheer volume of it implying that the creature it comes from is much, much bigger than him. Too afraid to turn on his battery lantern and even more afraid of contacting the others through the radio, Baekhyun lies there in terror. He can hear the footfall now, the sound of the tarp crunching under the animal’s weight so deafening in the silence of the night that he’s even scared to breathe; surely, it must have woken Jongdae and Yixing up too. He really doesn’t think he can deal with this on his own.

The foreign breathing gets louder, Baekhyun shrinking further into his sleeping bag and wishing he could disappear when he swears he sees a blurry figure casting a shadow on his tent wall. It’s wide and tall, but it could just be his eyes playing tricks on him in the darkness, his mind making him see what he is expecting (more like dreading) to see. Nevertheless, the noises are as real as the sun and they are most definitely not going away. In fact, the creature – Baekhyun truly hopes that there is only one of them – sounds like its sniffing his external mosquito net. Then it snorts.

A million animals run through his mind as he tries to blindly identify whatever it is, using only the noises it makes and his completely unfounded guess at its size. Trouble is, the thing keeps snorting, which means all Baekhyun can think in his minute state of panic is that it is a giant pig with a giant slobbery mouth and red demon eyes that’s hungry for human flesh. The only thing that calms him upon coming to that conclusion is that pigs have terrible eyesight, and so long as he doesn’t make any noise and he still smells of insect repellent (not of human), he should be alright. He can wait out until the mutant rainforest pig has had a good look around and decided that everything is boring, because yes, botany is boring and Baekhyun is sure as hell not going to die for it.

Apparently, Jongdae and Yixing think otherwise.

Baekhyun gawks at the sound of a zip coming undone, momentarily petrified at the prospect of the pig undoing his tent until he realises that he is still secure. He wants to yell out for the others to stop but he can’t for the life of him find his voice. Making a noise would make himself a target and although he is terrified for his friends, he’s not ready to die yet. When Jongdae screams, that completely changes.

He grabs his lantern, he grabs his emergency torch, he grabs the first sharp item he sees (a pair of nail scissors), and then he leaps from the tent to find himself shining a light into a midnight black face. A pair of beady eyes, hooded beneath a prominent brow bone, twinkle in the presence of his small LED light. The leathery, wrinkled skin of the creature carves its way over a hollow-looking nose with upturned nostrils and a slim, drooping mouth. Everywhere beyond is covered in thick black fur, and that’s when Baekhyun realises he has just come face to face with a gorilla.

Just as he yells out in fright, the gorilla lets rip a heart-stopping roar and stands up on its hind legs to beat its chest, leaving Baekhyun to stumble back into another hard object that, to his relief, turns out to be his friends. When Yixing takes him in his arms, either hugging him from behind or using him as a human shield, Baekhyun gets the chance to briefly glance elsewhere, only to wish that he hadn’t immediately after. They are absolutely surrounded, about twenty gorillas alone creating a wall between them and the rest of the forest – their escape.

Cursing himself, Baekhyun realises he dropped his lantern on the ground. He starts to pray that the battery will run out soon, his eyes staring at the bulb with such intensity that they trick him into thinking it’s dimming. Truth be told, he really doesn’t want to watch death barrel towards him in the form of a giant, one-hundred-and-sixty-kilogram gorilla. He would much prefer to be oblivious and be taken by surprise, even though he knows it’s coming anyway.

“What are we supposed to do?!” Yixing hisses desperately, his body leaning almost completely against Baekhyun’s back, which really won’t help the either of them in the short term or the long term because Baekhyun feels like he is about to collapse.

“I brought my gun,” whispers Jongdae, suddenly whipping his firearm out of his pocket and readying it to shoot.

“Are you mad?!” Baekhyun jumps into action, throwing his hands over the weapon to deter him. “Shoot that one—” ‘that one’ starts banging its fists on the ground as if preparing to charge— “and the others will come running for us!”

Baekhyun can just about see Jongdae’s face when his friend turns to look at him in panic. “Then what do you suppose we do? Stand here and wait to be bludgeoned to death?”

And that seems like the reality of it all. The unexpected has come to bite them all in the and there’s nothing they can do about it. They were here to test plants, not rival wild gorillas. How are they supposed to defend themselves against an army of them?

To put it simply, they can’t. They won’t. And as surreal as it may feel, they are about to die.

Baekhyun has never been one to sit and contemplate death in the shower, on a bus ride or in those moments before sleep. Naturally, he has always seen it as a far-off thing, something not to worry about until he’s eighty or older when he has lived his life and has some material wealth to show it. Now he’ll never get married, never get his master’s degree, never own a house without Yixing and Jongdae soiling the couch with their wasted children.

There is movement in the sky, Baekhyun crying out when he realises that gorillas can fly now and are coming to take them out like cannon balls. He closes his eyes just as a vine swings across his vision and the threatened gorilla starts stomping forwards on its hind legs. He always thought he’d be brave, but in his last moments, he wants to shut out the world and think of home. He thinks about his parents for a long time, about all the Christmases they spent together, all the birthdays and the holidays. He thinks of the time he broke his leg while skiing and almost drowned in a three-foot deep paddling pool, and then he thinks that he has been thinking for an awfully long time and decides to open his eyes.

He expects to see nothing but white, Death’s waiting area, when instead, he finds himself staring at another face. With the lantern behind the figure, Baekhyun’s bleary eyes can only find his outline in the darkness. Still, he must be hallucinating, for although he is sure that this thing is not a gorilla, his brain is telling him that it is a man.

Yixing and Jongdae make small noises of shock behind him while he just stares. Somehow, he harnesses enough brain power to flick on his torch, and that is when his jaw drops to the ground. There is a caveman in front of him.

“Is this a dream?” he whispers, this whole thing so utterly ridiculous that there can be no other explanation. Nevertheless, his theory is debunked when Yixing grunts out a snappy “No” and Jongdae punches him in the back.

Awed, Baekhyun slowly moves the beam of the torch over the man’s body from top to bottom. His skin is tanned and dirty, pale scars scattered here and there in various sizes and shapes. All he wears is a loincloth, a material of a murky beige colour that looks like it is made from an old hoodie he happened across, the rest of his body (feet included) bare to the world and its elements. Despite his arguably disturbing appearance and sudden arrival, Baekhyun’s thoughts are surprisingly clear when he mentally remarks on how soft and kind his face looks, framed by waves of long black hair that just touch the skin beneath his defined pectorals.

Now, Baekhyun is awestruck. And confused. Though when he opens his mouth to say something, the mystery man relieves him of their intense eye contact and turns around to where the previous gorilla had paused mid-charge. They look at each other, as though they’re familiar, and Baekhyun gasps when they start having some kind of conversation with a collection of random snorts and huffs. Not a moment later, the gorillas are leaving, sinking back into the darkness whence they came, leaving their camp and their lives untouched.

“Jongdae,” Yixing whispers, reminding Baekhyun that his friends still exist and that they’re not dead. “Did you put my weed in the dinner we ate?”

Jongdae gulps. “I wish I had.”

Distracted, Baekhyun gasps, “You brought ?!”

“Shh! The big one’s leaving!” Yixing quickly changes the subject, hitting him on the arm and urging him to look around at the caveman again. As if defending himself, Baekhyun aims the torch straight back up again. He holds his breath as the man walks closer until they are only a foot apart, his torch now aimed upwards and casting creepy shadows on his face. As Yixing had said, the big gorilla has now gone. They all have, thanks to the caveman.

“H-Hello.” Baekhyun finds himself talking completely by accident, trembling hands clenched around his plastic torch so tight he accidentally turns the light off. Plunged into darkness, Baekhyun panics before he hears Jongdae powering up their generator. When the lanterns around their camp blink to life, Baekhyun finds the caveman to be several inches closer than he was before, causing him to awkwardly strain his back when trying to lean away.

“Thank you for s-saving us from the—the gorillas. Thought I was a goner,” he laughs awkwardly, the blank stare he’s getting making him feel uneasy. Once he clears his throat, he drops the sweet act and squares his shoulders, trying to compare. “Um… Can you understand me?” After a beat, Baekhyun gets an idea, calling Jongdae over to talk some Swahili to him.

From a five-metre distance, Jongdae calls out a shaky “Habari!” as a hello. Yet the caveman seems intent on looking at Baekhyun and Baekhyun alone. “Asante!” Still nothing. “Well, I tried. You deal with the jungle boy, Baekhyun. I think he likes you.”

“Yeah!” Yixing quickly agrees. Just typical, Baekhyun thinks as he clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes, leave him alone with the weird monkey man. Great. “We’ll be in our tent if you need us.” Baekhyun gets patted patronisingly on the shoulder and left alone, but a part of him does prefer it this way. At least Jongdae isn’t here to wave a gun around. “Turn the lights off when you’re done!”

Deciding to ignore Jongdae and Yixing – something he should really do more often –he concentrates on the new arrival. His eyes are a deep, chocolate brown, bordered by soft, sweeping lashes. With lips parted in concentration, the caveman ducks his head down to line their faces up and begins to sniff at him. Baekhyun blanches when he feels the man’s nose pressing against his neck, his palms shooting up to barricade himself from the personal touches.

“Woah,” he chuckles awkwardly again, strained and high-pitched, not that the jungle boy notices. “I probably stink a bit but… Uh… Yeah…” As gently as possible, so as to not startle him, he presses his hands against the caveman’s (ridiculously hard and toned) chest to peacefully ease him away. The intrigued eyes drop to look at his hands, his palm becoming the focal point of the situation when jungle boy brings up his own hand to press against it, unfolding it from the knuckles and splaying out his fingers to mirror Baekhyun’s own. He seems to be confused, eyebrows twitching into what almost becomes a frown, as he takes in their similarities. Then, he grunts at Baekhyun, looking expectant as though he’s just asked a question. Baekhyun flinches.

“Um…” He decides to ignore the ‘question’ and ask one of his own instead. “Do you live here?” It would be plausible, he reckons. It would explain his haggard and weathered appearance, lack of a language too. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop it from being frightfully strange. “Ah, um,” Baekhyun stammers, thinking of a way to rephrase the question that jungle boy doesn’t appear to understand without realising their hands are still pressed together. “You,” he points at him, “home?” He points around at the rainforest in general, gasping like he’s been stabbed when the caveman nods and lets out a low, rumbling, “Yes.”

“You speak!” he cries, startling the man back a few paces before cupping his hands over his mouth. “Sorry! Sorry!” He waves his arms around, flashing a friendly smile to convince his new friend (debatable) to let his wariness go. “How peculiar,” he murmurs thoughtfully afterwards, rubbing his chin while his arms are folded. “Do you have a name?” Of course, jungle boy stops understanding things, so Baekhyun places his hand over his chest and clearly announces his name. “Me, Baekhyun. You, name?”

The caveman narrows his eyes at him. Baekhyun can almost see the cogs churning in his mind as he tries to figure out what’s going on, but it doesn’t take long before he’s grunting again and taking another bold step forwards. “Baekhyun,” he almost growls, voice feral and thunderous as he gestures across to him. When he gestures to himself, Baekhyun watches the plump lips as they carve around the word, “Yeol.”

“Yeol,” he hums in thought, the man then getting excited at the fact he’s said his name. “I’m right? Your name is Yeol?” He laughs lightly, admiring the man as he hunches down a little and bounces on his feet. “Well, it was nice to meet you, Yeol.” Out of courtesy, Baekhyun bows, smiling at Yeol following him eagerly with his eyes when he dips down and back up. “But it’s late. I think I’m going to go and sleep now.” With a point to his tent, Baekhyun does his best to help Yeol understand. “Me, sleep. Goodbye, Yeol.”

He hoots something, a gorilla sound, as Baekhyun starts to make his way towards the generator to turn the lights off. When he turns around again, the camp still illuminated just for a moment, he witnesses Yeol as he lowers himself to all fours and crawls into the dark cloak of the trees, as though he were a gorilla himself. With that image ingrained in his head, Baekhyun switches off the lights and zips himself up in his tent. Perhaps when he wakes up, he will realise that this was all just some crazy dream. A part of him hopes that it is real, though. That it did just happen. What a story to take back home.

✿

Baekhyun wakes with a start when he hears shuffling outside. Instantly, his mind is consumed with visions of the giant demon pig again and he thrashes about in his sleeping bag trying to get away from something that isn’t there. It’s safe to say that he feels somewhat stupid when he realises how irrational that is – and how pathetic he must have just looked, scrambling for his life away from something completely imaginary – but at least he is inside his tent where no one can see him. Despite that, he doesn’t feel any less embarrassed, and with a moan and a cringe, he starts to get up.

He goes through his small morning routine of rolling on some deodorant and grabbing a mint from his little stash in his backpack. Once he’s ped his tent, he bangs his boots on the ground upside down just in case there’s something unsavoury lurking inside and sets to work lacing them up around his ankles, briefly glancing at Yixing and Jongdae already hunched around the smoking fire, both staring at something off to his right. They seem to be absorbed in whatever it is, not necessarily in fear, though they still look a little tense.

Is it another gorilla?

Baekhyun’s eyes widen and he rushes out, almost falling over his own feet on the way, and stares in the same direction. There, crouched behind the trunk of a thick tree with his head peering hesitantly around, is Yeol. It wasn’t a dream after all.

When Yeol notices him, his posture straightens. He perks up like a dog that has just had its name called, and he takes a few eager steps forwards on his feet and knuckles with intent, blinking eyes.

“Oh, wow…” Baekhyun gasps when his eyes drop to the floor, finding a ginormous pile of fruit stacked up like a m