“‘Once upon a time’ . . . that was usually how most fairytales start, ending with ‘and they lived happily ever after’; how cliché” – unknown

After dinner, when all the dirty dishes and cutleries were cleared and washed, the others all started to feel a little sleepy.

Did they put some sleeping drugs into our food? Luhan wondered, glancing at EXO-K. But then he noticed that they looked sleepy too, so it can’t have been them trying to poison their guests. Chen and Yixing would’ve noticed, since they helped cooked.

Suho, however, was the only one who seemed wide awake. He grinned as he took his usual sit on the arm chair in the middle of the burrow. It looked like it was the living room, except there were only chairs but no television, and an animal skin in replacement of a rug. There weren’t any coffee table, either.

That jolted Chanyeol and he immediately sat in front of him, all straight and eager like a cute puppy (a giant one, though) waiting for something to happen. “Yay! I can’t wait!” he gushed on excitedly.

“What’s this?” Kris asked, glancing at Chanyeol. He noticed the rest of EXO-K and Sohee were sitting down on the floor.

Suho looked up to him and smiled. “Story time, before I send these kids off to beds,” the leader explained.

Story time?

“I’m too old for stories,” Tao scoffed, rolling his eyes as he folded his arms across his chest. “Right, Yixing gege?”

But Yixing was sitting next to Chanyeol with an equally eager look on his face. “What kind of stories will you tell?”

Tao facepalmed, betrayed by his gege. He couldn’t believe that Yixing was older than him and still acted somewhat like a child.

“Well, what kind of stories do you want to hear?” Suho asked everyone. He glanced at EXO-M and realized that they were still standing up. He gestured toward the floor. “C’mon, don’t be shy. Sit down.”

Everyone looked at Kris, waiting for his orders. Kris sighed, feeling the burden of being the leader, and sat down, cueing them to sit around the floor. Since EXO-K and Sohee (and Yixing) had taken the space right in front of Suho, the rest just lingered behind them, feeling like they were going to sleep.

“Anyway, so, any story suggestion?” Suho asked and suddenly the whole burrow was filled with shouts of story titles.

“The Little Mermaid!”

“Cinderella!”

“Little Red Riding Hood!”

“Snow White!”

“Sleeping Beauty!”

“Jack and the Beanstalk!”

“Hansel and Gretel!”

“Peter Pan!”

Everywhere, stories were being called out by everyone, including the guests (well, mostly Yixing). Suho looked a bit overwhelmed at the number of stories to tell that night (and it grew since Yixing kept shouting, too) but nevertheless he laughed good-naturedly and held his hand up to silence everyone.

“Okay, one at a time. I’ll tell you all the stories and then you’ll have to go to bed, okay?” he finally decided.

“Okay!”

“Read Little Mermaid first!”

He chuckled lightly and began telling the first story, The Little Mermaid. “Once upon a time, in the depths of the wide ocean blue . . .”

As everyone settled down and relaxed into the stories, only three pair of eyes remained on the only girl among the thirteen of them.

XiuMin smiled softly, looking at his sister, a new sense of determination in him. He was going to get to know her.

Luhan, too, was gazing over at her. She was so immersed into the story, her eyes wide in anticipation; she looked really cute. He couldn’t help but crack a smile.

Sehun glanced over to Sohee, who was sitting next to him, and smiled when he saw the comfortable expression in her eyes. There was nothing more than her happiness that Sehun would love to see in the world, and seeing her like this, being able to see it first-handedly . . . it was more than enough.

Sohee felt a strong hand being wrapped around her and turned to her right to see Jongin smiling at her. She smiled back before she turned to her left the same time Sehun scooted closer to her and she rested her head on his shoulder. The three of them closed their eyes, enjoying the sound of Suho’s sweet voice, the maknaes together. Being the youngest among the group, the three of them tend to look out for one another.

Chanyeol leaned backward, resting his head on her lap and she his locks gently. Kyungsoo, who sat behind her, edged closer and began to play with her hair before he settled down to braid it, tying the ends with a spare hair tie on his wrist in case Sohee would need it at moments like this. Baekhyun reached out from Sehun’s right side to take her hand and began playing with her fingers, shaking his head when he noticed her nails were uneven, making a mental note to cute it later.

Luhan and Kris exchanged glances by the way the boys were interacting with her. It was an unusual sight to see, indeed.

Kris shrugged but Luhan felt . . . disappointed?

XiuMin’s heart was sinking too, when he saw just how close all the boys were to his sister. He felt this new surge of bitterness arising in him, forming a lump in his throat and he did all he could to fight it back down. The strangest thing was, he wasn’t feeling resentful toward them; he was beating himself up inside.

Finally, when Suho had miraculously finished telling the younger ones all of the stories that were mentioned, he beamed down at them, clasping his hands together. “Well, I just had this thought,” he spoke up.

“What is it?” Chen wanted to know.

“Who’s up for hiking tomorrow?”

“Hiking?” everyone chorused, confused. They glanced at each other, wondering just what was on Suho’s mind.

Suho nodded enthusiastically. “I think it would be a great idea to show our guests around the island as we make our way up to the waterfall.”

If everyone could see just how their eyes twinkled at the mentioned word waterfall and soon excitement was sparked. A trip to the waterfall sounded really fun!

“Cool! There’s a waterfall here?” Tao exclaimed in awe. “I want to jump down! I want to jump down from the waterfall!”

“It’s very high, though,” Suho frowned.

“If you’re scared of heights, you should stay away,” Sehun snickered, although he couldn’t see how anyone could be scared of heights. He practically loved the thrill of seeing himself so high above the ground.

“Or water,” Chanyeol added, eyesmiling happily. “There’s going to be lots and lots of water. I mean, it is a waterfall.”

Luhan blanched at the word ‘height’ and Chen’s face paled at ‘water’. They glanced at each other worriedly. If they would mostly be on high surface surrounded by water, how were the two of them going to survive the trip? If they wussed out now, they were pretty sure EXO-K would scoff at them.

What if Sohee thinks I’m a chicken? Luhan panicked and decided that he should ‘man up’ and face his fears. “Sounds great!” he said flatly, ing a weak fist into the air. “Waterfall, here we come!”

“Yeah,” Chen echoed faintly, sounding just as enthusiastic as Luhan did.

Unfortunately for them, the rest of their friends were too excited for tomorrow’s trip to hear them or remember their fears, so they were stuck going. It was going to be a long day for them the next day.

“Okay then,” Suho said brightly, standing up. He smiled his usual pleasant smile and looked at the time. It was time to sleep. “Well, you guys know where you would be sleeping. It’s time for us to go.”

“Are you really going to sleep outside on the trees like the monkeys did?” Yixing blurted out innocently.

Chanyeol snorted and Baekhyun laughed but not meanly. “We’ve got our own beds, don’t you worry,” he reassured the older boy.

“Oh.” He nodded like he understood what he meant.

“He so did not get it,” Tao snickered and Yixing glowered at him.

“All right, all right, time to sleep,” Suho said loudly over the noise and soon the whole place was filled with groans. He gave them a stern look and they kept quiet. “Kids, follow me. We have to wake up bright and early tomorrow.”

 “How early?” Tao wanted to know. He was not a morning person.

“Early,” Baekhyun replied, unaware of how indefinite the answer was. He was also unaware of Tao’s dark scowl. “It’ll probably take us the whole morning to hike uphill, so we’ll be there by lunch time.”

“Whole morning?” Yixing repeated in disbelief.

Chanyeol nodded twice. “Yeah, whole morning, seeing as you’re probably not used to the hike,” he explained. “It’s going to be a tough climb.”

“We go hiking every weekend, we are fit, okay,” XiuMin protested defiantly. He paused and looked at his friends. “Well, we walk around the open park back at home, and there are a lot of steps to climb.”

“Trust me, this is worst,” Kyungsoo spoke up out of nowhere. He had been pretty quiet in the back. “There aren’t any steps, and you’ll have to be careful of where you step in case you go falling down.”

Chen’s eyes went wide. “F – Falling?”

Luhan groaned inwardly. Great. Even better. Not only was he going to be afraid of heights, he had to be afraid of falling from the hill tomorrow, too.

EXO-K and Sohee followed Suho out of the door, saying, “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite!” to EXO-M.

Kris stared after them as they exited. He was curious to know where they would sleep but he figured they would have some place to spend the night. He turned back to his friends and shrugged. “Well, I guess we better hit the shack,” he told them. “It seems like we’ve got a long day ahead tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait for the waterfall, to be honest,” Yixing said as they retreated to their respective rooms. “It sounds exciting.”

“I just want to get closer to Sohee,” XiuMin replied.

“I don’t want to wake up early,” a yawning Tao spoke up, going inside Kyungsoo’s room. “Good night, gege!”

“Good night, Tao,” everyone else chorused and went to bed themselves.

The next morning, before the sun had even risen, Sohee had already waked up. She went to prepare herself for the day, dressing in a simple green halter-neck top and a pair of light brown pants before braiding her still-wet hair. Then she went back to see that the others had just only begun to wake up.

“Sohee-yah, why must you bathe when we’re going to sweat and get wet by the waterfall later?” Chanyeol asked curiously.

She smiled and shrugged. “I don’t want to smell even worse,” she answered. She packed her things. “Are you all not going to bathe?”

The six boys shook their heads.

She wrinkled her nose in disgust and Jongin smirked, coming over to her. She glanced warily at him as he wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, nuzzling her shoulder with his chin. “We’re doing this for the sake of letting you see the sweat rolling down our hot, y bodies,” he whispered huskily into her ears, nipping the tip gently.

Chanyeol and Sehun burst into laughter as Sohee’s face turned beet red. Baekhyun sighed and Kyungsoo tilted his head in confusion. Suho gave him a warning look.

Jongin chuckled lightly, releasing her. “C’mon, let’s go,” he said, tugging onto Sohee’s hand. “The sun’s rising, and we still need to go back and prepare breakfast and lunch.”

Kyungsoo raised an eyebrow. “We?”

“I mean, you,” he corrected, grinning.

Shaking his head with pure disgust, Kyungsoo abruptly walked past him, brushing against his shoulder deliberately, while muttering curses under his breath.

“So petty.” Jongin grimaced as everyone made their way to the burrow.

Once they arrived, they smirked, seeing that everyone else was still asleep. They knew, by the sound of the loud snores echoing the burrow. Sohee helped Kyungsoo in the kitchen while the others went inside the rooms to wake EXO-M up. But, unfortunately, they could not wake any of them up. They were, apparently, deep sleepers.

Suddenly Chanyeol got a great idea. He rushed toward the kitchen and grabbed pots and pans before banging them against the spatula, yelling on top of his lungs, “FIRE! FIRE! THIS PLACE IS ON FIRE! THE BURROW IS ON FIRE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES OTHERWISE YOU WILL DIEEEE!”

In a flash of lightning, just like a stampede of panicky elephants escaping danger, six bodies rushed out from the rooms, scared and terrified — until they realized that the ‘fire’ was really just Chanyeol’s mouth.

“That was not funny!” Tao whined. He stomped on his feet and turned to Kris. “Ge! Look! He tricked me!”

“He tricked all of us,” Chen muttered crabbily.

“Why are we up?” Yixing rubbed his eyes sleepily.

“Forgotten the fact that we’re going out today?” Suho teased lightly, looking at each of their sleepy, disorientated faces.

“Waterfall!”

That woke everyone up and minutes later, thirteen bodies were squeezed around the dining table for breakfast. They would need the energy for the upcoming hike, especially since it was going to take a long while.

“What time is it?” XiuMin wanted to know.

Baekhyun glanced out of the window, looking at the direction the sun was at. “Hmmm . . . seven in the morning,” he replied.

Kris choked on his juice. “S – Seven? You woke us up before seven just for this?” He was outraged. He really wanted to sleep more.

Suho only beamed cheerfully. “I think it’s time we start our hike,” he said, totally ignoring Kris’ outburst. “Kyungsoo, if you please.”

Kyungsoo cleared the table, with the help of Yixing, and in half an hour, they were ready to set out to the waterfall.

“Waterfall, here we come!” an enthusiastic Yixing, Sohee, Sehun, Jongin, Chanyeol and Tao cheered.

Kyungsoo, Baekhyun, XiuMin, Suho and Kris chuckled lightly, watching them as they made their way to the waterfall.

Luhan and Chen exchanged worried glances. “Yay,” they muttered half-heartedly, already falling behind. They were so not up for this.

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OMG I am so sorry for not updating, didn't have the wifi to do so >< could only go on AFF, couldn't update orz >< will still be slow in updating cos wifi isn't stable at home yet since I shifted houses ><