By the time Namjoon got back from across the valley, lunch was ready and, as they ate, Seokjin filled him in on what happened while he was away. Namjoon didn’t look particularly surprised or affected.

N: “You okay?” he simply asked both Jungkook and Taehyung before both of them confirmed they were alright, then he continued to address Jungkook in a calm tone: “It’d really be a good idea to go to the E.R. tomorrow morning and have your wound checked ‘cause it might get infected.”

Jungkook clicked his tongue, but eventually agreed to go. Taehyung noticed that Jungkook wasn’t unlikely to listen to others if those others didn’t nag at him or order him around.

S: “Oh, I just remembered – Here, JK! Try this.” Seokjin said, handing Jungkook a glass of milk.

J: “You know I like milk, so what’s with that devilish expression?”

S: “This milk is freshly procured from the cow’s udder this morning.”

Jungkook’s face contorted in disgust, but he started drinking the milk anyway and, as he emptied the glass, his expression changed drastically.

J: “Where can I buy this? I could drink it on a daily basis.”

S: “You can’t. You need to buy the cow, raise it and milk it every day in the morning and in the evening.”

N: “Or you could move to a place such as this one and buy it from the neighbors.”

J: “I’ve got an empty room in my apartment now. Think I could raise a cow in there?”

S: “I’m not even gonna bother answering that…”

N: “So do you guys have anything specific you wanna do this afternoon until we start the BBQ?”

J: “Can we go back into that abandoned hut? I think I saw some furniture inside.”

S: “Didn’t you say we could go looking for berries and mushrooms uphill since the weather’s good?” Seokjin asked Namjoon, deciding to just ignore Jungkook’s suggestion.

N: “Yeah, we could. You guys up for that?”

Since everyone was in agreement, they set out to do that. Taehyung barely climbed a few dozen meters and he was already out of breath, so there was no way he could make the trip to the hut from the town on foot. Namjoon explained a lot about every type of mushroom they encountered and said he was searching for a certain kind that looked similar to a . While Taehyung was reluctant to eat the berries growing wild on the ground that Namjoon picked for him, Jungkook picked up and tried eating every type of mushroom Namjoon talked about, spitting them out shortly after because they tasted bad.

S: “I was wrong in calling you a 3 year old earlier…” Seokjin said as he gave Jungkook a water bottle to wash his mouth of the nasty taste. “Joonie, we might have made a bad move by bringing a toddler on a mountain top.”

J: “Ha-ha.” Jungkook sarcastically let out.

S: “Don’t you mean “Goo-goo, ga-ga”?” Seokjin then said, and everyone laughed, even Jungkook.

They explored some more, took some pictures, Namjoon showed them where the spring with drinkable water was and where the relatively small river they could use for baths was, then they went back down to the hut and started the BBQ.

Taehyung was having a really good time, especially since the 3 dogs from the day before came back there again for Seokjin to feed them and stuck around to play and maybe get more food later on. Namjoon said he and Seokjin gave the dogs pills for ticks to not stick to them, even if they weren’t their dogs, so Taehyung ventured out and tried petting them. From there it only took him a couple of minutes to fall in love with those dogs.

But then Taehyung remembered Jungkook was supposed to drive them back to the guest house that night and Taehyung had seen him drink around 3 beers and take a few puffs from the joints Seokjin rolled up for himself and Namjoon. And with the war flashbacks of Jungkook’s speeding, Taehyung seriously considered just spending the night in the woods. Or even the abandoned hut…

After getting into the car with Jungkook and as they started descending the mountain, Taehyung asked:

T: “Are you gonna be okay driving under influence?”

J: “Yeah, I’ve done it before hundreds of times.”

Taehyung took a deep breath to not start panicking and just prayed he would get out of this safely.

J: “You scared?”

T: “Honestly, yes.”

J: “Don’t worry.” Jungkook said after letting out a small laugh. “I wouldn’t get behind the steering wheel if I didn’t think I was capable of handling things.”

T: “I don’t know about that… I mean I haven’t known you for even 24 hours yet, but from what I saw today it doesn’t seem like an exaggeration when Jin calls you reckless.”

J: “Yeah, I don’t know about that either. People say I’m reckless, but in my mind I’m just doing what I want to do or what I feel that I need to do. It’s just that I’m not as afraid of things or a fan or rules like most people.”

Taehyung considered asking what that means or what that’s like, but then Jungkook spoke again:

J: “Are you afraid of many things?”

T: “Well, at this point there’s no use lying about it, so… yes.”

J: “What kinds of things?”

T: “Uhm… pretty much everything, I guess...” Taehyung admitted, mentally getting ready for Jungkook to either mock him or deny that such a thing was even possible, but instead:

J: “Wow… What’s that like?”

T: “Well… if you were to look at it from a positive perspective… it’s like any little everyday occurrence can become thrilling. Because you see potential for bad things to happen in everything, everything becomes thrilling and, whether something bad happens or not, everything can become a memorable event because your emotional investment was high.”

J: “Can you give me an example?”

T: “Yesterday I got held hostage by a goat.”

J: “Say what?”

T: “A goat positioned itself at the end of 1 meter-wide bridge and didn’t move for over half an hour. So I was stuck on the other side of that bridge because there weren’t any alternatives for crossing the river, there were no people in sight, the goat had horns and I didn’t know how aggressive it could get. Eventually I found a stick and gathered some courage to approach it, ready for a confrontation of epic proportions, but it decided to move out of the way on its own when I was 2 meters away. That’s one of my most memorable events on this trip so far and I wouldn’t have it if I had been chill about the whole deal. I’m assuming you wouldn’t have been afraid and just walked past the goat, forgetting about the whole incident in a matter of hours.”

J: “You’re right… Ha! Now I’m kinda envious about being afraid of a lot of stuff. If small incidents like that can become thrilling, life would feel so full and fun.”

Taehyung let out a breathy laugh in disbelief. Jungkook was unlike anyone he had ever met before.

Then, suddenly, Jungkook stopped the car and started getting out. Through the window shield, Taehyung could see 2 long tree trunks, one on the side of the road and one definitely blocking their way. There was no chance for the car to avoid the second one, so it had to be moved out of the way.

After Jungkook got out and went to grab one end of the tree trunk, Taehyung did the same and grabbed the other end, but they couldn’t lift it at all with how heavy it was. So Jungkook tried pushing one end towards the side of the road and yelled for Taehyung to get out of the way so the other end wouldn’t end up falling on him if it fell from its position a bit higher than the road.

It eventually fell after a great deal of pushing and pulling from Jungkook, but now it was all in the middle of the road. It could just be rolled like that to the side of the road, but the other tree trunk was blocking it, so Taehyung suggested that they move that one further downhill to make space for the problematic one on the side of the road. It took a lot of strength from the both of them to accomplish that set of tasks, but finally they were left with only pushing the one in the middle of the road to the side.

T: “How did these get here?” Taehyung asked as they were catching their breaths a bit.

J: “Someone must have been cutting several trees for some purpose further uphill. Then these 2 rolled down till here and that someone didn’t bother coming after them.”

T: “Oh, boy…”

J: “Ready to finish this business?”

Taehyung said “Yeah” and they both put their backs into pushing the problematic trunk to the side. When they were done, they got inside the car still breathing heavily, Taehyung found the water bottle in the back, opened it and gave it to Jungkook to drink, the latter said “Thanks” after drinking and handed the bottle back to Taehyung who also drank from it before closing it, putting their seatbelts back on and starting the engine again.

At one point during the ride uphill earlier that day, Taehyung thought that, if Seokjin’s driving style was like a surgeon, Jungkook’s was like a butcher. But here they were, with Jungkook driving at 5 km/h and with intense focus to get past the tree trunks without the wheels on the left side going over the edge of the dirt road and Taehyung would’ve never otherwise believed Jungkook was capable of driving that carefully and with that much precision.

T: “Whoop!” Taehyung joyfully let out, throwing his hands into the air after they passed the trunks.

J: “Whoop!” Jungkook also joyfully let out and they high-fived.

Then Jungkook lit himself a cigarette and let the window down for the smoke to escape before he restarted his engine and they continued to descend the mountain.

But when the asphalted road began, another fun thing also began. They encountered fog so thick you could barely see anything 2-3 meters in front of the car. Taehyung was getting worried and then Jungkook abruptly hit the brakes again. A dog was crossing the road, completely oblivious to the danger it had put itself in. Taehyung saw the dog only after Jungkook had stopped the car, so he wondered if it was justified giving Jungkook any about driving under the influence of alcohol and weed when he was this much more alert and focused than Taehyung.

T: “How…”

J: “Huh?”

T: “You had to drive yourself all the way here early in the morning, then drive uphill to the hut, then you were injured, then you had alcohol and weed, then we had to move those trunks in the middle of the night, then there’s this thick fog… How are you still able to be so focused and react so fast?”

J: “Oh… I guess I’m just used to driving under any conditions. Aside from the thing with the tree trunks, I’ve been through everything many, many times. So, since I’m used to it, I guess it’s just normal to drive properly even under these circumstances.”

So things weren’t as challenging for Jungkook as they seemed to Taehyung because he was used to it. Taehyung was again struck by the realization that people get stronger the more they’re faced with difficult situations.

Luckily, nothing else happened on their way back to the guest house and, as they were both unlocking the doors to their respective rented rooms, Taehyung turned towards Jungkook and said:

T: “Thanks for the rides today. And thanks for bringing us back here safely.”

J: “Thanks for coming to help me inside the abandoned hut earlier today.”

Nothing else was supposed to happen that day, it had already been an eventful day, even just the ride back to the guest house could be considered an adventure in and of itself, but something was happening inside Taehyung’s chest because Jungkook smiling sweetly at him while saying “thanks” knocked the breath right out of Taehyung and he felt his heart start to beat faster. But he quickly set that aside because he wanted to ask a few other things:

T: “Is your leg okay?”

J: “Yeah, it’s fine. And I’m not bullting. But I’ll go to the E.R. in the next town tomorrow morning, since I said I will.”

T: “Want me to come with you?”

J: “Why? You don’t trust that I’ll go unless supervised?”

T: “It’s not that. I just thought you’d prefer having company. And it’s better if you have someone with you if you need help with anything or if they give you meds that’ll make you too drowsy to drive. I can drive us back here at least.”

J: “You can drive?”

T: “Well, yeah, just not under any bad weather conditions, at night, in heavy traffic, on unfamiliar or difficult roads and so on… I’m still a noob.”

Jungkook studied Taehyung for a bit with an unreadable expression, then he smiled again and said:

J: “Alright. See you here at 8. Good night, Taehyung.”

T: “Good night.”

It was back again, the feeling that something was happening inside Taehyung’s chest caused by the fact that Jungkook said his name after saying “good night” coupled with that weird stare he just gave him. But Taehyung didn’t want anything more to happen, at least not that night, so he just chalked this weird feeling up to some kind of “suspension bridge effect” and brushed it off before entering his room and going to sleep with the lights off for the first time since staying there.

A.N. These are the 3 dogs that are mentioned. Real names: Novac, Virga and Baiatu' (from top to bottom)