~*Chapter Eight *~

“Baekhyun?” you asked again. He stared at you, eyes travelling over you as if to try and work out who you were.  You shuffled closer to him, waving your hand in his face. Kyungsoo, Kai and the other boy, who you had yet to figure out the name of, stood by awkwardly unsure of what to do.

He opened his mouth to speak but then shut it abruptly again putting a finger to his lips. “What was your name again?” he finally asked.

Your eyes widened in shock before narrowing, “Are you being serious?” you asked, crossing your arms over your chest. “Because that’s a pretty sick joke if you’re not.”

“I know I brought you here,” he said simply, shrugging his shoulders, “But I don’t know who you are or why I did it.”

You didn’t feel sad or shocked like you thought you would. Instead, you felt a burning rage, an anger you couldn’t describe, coursing through your veins, clouding your vision. You pinched the skin on your arm until it went red and you almost cried out.

Baekhyun stood in the doorway with an amused smirk spread across his lips and a raised, patronising eyebrow. You stood speechless, trying to find the right words. You wanted to lunge at him and rip his stupid, perfect hair from his head, but you were grounded in your spot.

“So all of those things you said… they were all lies? All of those places you said you were going to take me and all of those wonderful things you told me… you didn’t mean any of it?” you shook your head, backing away from him.

“Woah, shrimpy,” he chuckled, extending a hand to put on your shoulder.

“Don’t touch me,” you snapped, backing further away from him.

Kyungsoo coughed awkwardly and straightened up, “I think we should leave you guys alone…” he trailed off, grabbing Kai’s arm, pulling him towards the door.

“No, it’s-”                                                                                         

“It’s not OK,” you snapped, cutting him off.  “You lied to me… You told me I’d forget, so why have you forgotten and I’m still here remembering everything like it was yesterday?”

“Listen, I don’t know what I told you back in that other land, but I can’t remember any of it so if you’re just going to be difficult, I’ll get Tinkerbell to take you back and you can forget this even happened.”

You gritted your teeth and held yourself back from cursing at him and slapping his pretty little patronising face. “I wanted to forget everything else, not this,” you threw your arms in the air, gesturing to your surroundings before biting your lip to hold back the tears that had suddenly built up behind your eyes.

“Well, I can’t help you,” he shrugged again, puffing out his cheeks.

You scowled at him again before storming out of the doorway he was standing in, making sure to bump his shoulder on your way out. He yelped as you nudged him and his hand automatically went to his arm to rub it.  You didn’t look back and he didn’t run after you, you just stormed through the wooden house, searching for any way out of it that you could. You didn’t care if you had to wander around Neverland alone, homeless, anywhere was better than with that liar.

“Maybe you should go after her, Baek,” Kyungsoo said quietly, avoiding eye contact with him, “She looked kind of upset.”

“That’s not my problem,” he shrugged again.

“Well, it kind of is,” the taller one spoke up, twiddling his thumbs.

“Chanyeol, really? You too?”

“He’s right, you did bring her here, whether you remember it or not,” Kyungsoo rubbed the back of his neck with an awkward smile, as if hoping not to get Baekhyun mad.

“I’m not getting involved with this,” Kai dismissed himself, putting his hands in the air when Baekhyun looked to him for his input.

***

You found your way down some stairs, muttering profanities to yourself under your breath, your feet stomped heavily creating loud noises on the wooden floors of what appeared to be a tree house, a very large tree house. The air smelt of wood; it was like you were walking through a carpentry shop and it made you sneeze and your nose itch. You were never fond of the smell of wood, you didn’t know why, but it just made you irritated even more.

You stopped dead in your tracks when you wandered in to a room and there were two other guys that you hadn’t seen before, sitting down on thatched sofas with huge fluffy pillows that looked like they were made out of animal fur. You stared blankly at them and they did the same to you.

“Is that Wendy?” the blond one asked the dark haired man in a hushed tone, but you still managed to hear him.

“Who the heck is Wendy?” you snapped. You shook your head, “Actually, don’t answer that. Just tell me where the freaking door is.”

Neither of them spoke, taken aback by your sudden outburst. The dark haired one pointed to the other side of the room where another wooden door stood. You stormed over to it and yanked it open, shocked to find that there wasn’t another room or corridor, but the outside world and a long drop with no floor to stand on. You almost fell, but you held on to the door frame to steady yourself. After regaining your posture, you looked down and found a bamboo ladder you immediately climbed down that took you to the ground. All around you, for what seemed like miles, was jungle terrain. Huge trees the sizes of buildings with roots that spread out across the ground making it uneven and bumpy. There was a quite drone of chirping from what you assumed were crickets or grasshoppers; if they even had those insects here.

You jumped off the last step and landed on the muddy ground with a thump. As you landed, a stray twig dug in your foot and you cursed loudly, hopping on one foot to try and rub away the pain. You leant against the ladder and sat on the bottom rung, closing your eyes to stop the world from spinning. It was like that time when you stood on one of your brother’s pieces of LEGO as a kid and screamed the house down crying for twenty minutes. It didn’t feel like a twig or a piece of LEGO, it felt like someone had just stabbed you in the foot with a knife and you bit the back of your hand, squeezing your eyes closed tight until the pain ebbed away.

When you stopped seeing stars, you got to your feet and started off for the trees. You didn’t care where you ended up, although, you were a bit worried of what you might bump in to. You were, after all, completely out of your comfort zone having not been in the outside world for a very long time. You’d been in to the garden of the asylum, but you were definitely not accustomed to real life anymore.

You fought your way through the foliage, cursing out loud every time a stray branch from an overgrown bush would graze your arm or snap back in your face. You had to admit though, you did feel cool trekking through the jungle alone; it was dangerous yet exciting, not knowing what was going to jump out at you. It terrified you, yes, but you still felt thrilled and exhilarated.

However, your lack of energy began to take its toll when you started to feel exhausted. You must have walked for at least two hours and you were getting absolutely nowhere. How big was this place? You hadn’t come across anything; not a lake, a clearing or any of the places Baekhyun had told you about.

Baekhyun.

The thought of him made you angry again. You had placed all of your trust in him; allowed him to take you from your home to forget the devastation of the loss of your family. But where were you now because of your stupid instincts? You were in the middle of a jungle, hopelessly lost with all of your memories fresh in your mind. You reminded yourself never to open up or trust anyone ever again. You had thought Baekhyun was different; you were even starting to fall for him a little bit. With his adorable smile, sparkling eyes and the way he told you the stories of Neverland, you were entranced and intrigued.

You were violently brought back in to reality when you heard a gruff, deep voice shouting in the distance. You couldn’t make out what it was saying, but when the speech was finished, you heard a loud cheering followed by clapping. You stood still, unsure what do to. Baekhyun hadn’t mentioned that anyone else lived here, had he? You couldn’t really remember, the excitement of actually getting here had clouded your memories of the details. The cheering started to get louder, signalling that the voices were getting closer. Your head snapped around and survival instincts kicked in, you searched for a place to hide, but of course there weren’t many; you were in a jungle after all. The only option you had was to climb one of the trees surrounding you. It couldn’t be that bad, right? You used to climb trees all the time when you were younger.

It wasn’t that easy at all. You lost your footing a couple of times and almost fell to the floor. As you got in to the swing of scaling the tree, you noticed how high up it was and when you looked down, you almost fainted. The world seemed to sway beneath you and you held on to the branch you had swung yourself around to straddle for dear life. You held your breath as you tried to cover yourself with the leaves of the tree, doing your best to camouflage yourself.

 Just as you settled down and placed a hand over your erratically beating heart, the group of loud voices burst through the foliage that you had stood next to minutes ago. It was a group of six men, the leader carrying a pair of sharp, twin blades that were hooked at the ends. He passed the blade in his right hand over to his left, carrying them both in one hand, while he ran his free hand through his blond hair pushing his fringe out of his face. You couldn’t help but be mesmerised, he was one of the most handsome guys you had ever seen, along with his little group of friends.

“When I find that little I’m going to kill him,” the blond one muttered through gritted teeth, “And he’s only been back a few hours.”

“Kris, calm down, you know what he’s like,” the ginger one with the cute cheeks said, patting him on the shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. Kris shook him off, “I don’t care, that’s the final straw,” he growled.

“You said it was the final straw the last time when he cut that hole in our flag in the shape of a di-”

“OK, Chen, I get it,” Kris snapped, “Let’s just find the bastard so I can beat the crap out of him.”

You knew who they were talking about, it was obvious. Baekhyun seemed so sweet and timid back in the asylum, but here, in Neverland it seemed, he was a devious little troublemaker. You couldn’t help but smirk to yourself when you heard of the things he had done. However, you quickly shook your head and reminded yourself of how much you hated him, regardless of how funny he may be.

The group continued through the jungle and when they were well out of sight, you began your decent down the tree. That task was much harder than actually getting up there. Your hands were red raw and you had scratches all up your arms when you finally jumped down the rest of the distance when you thought it was safe enough. You straightened up and rubbed the dirt off your trousers before starting off in the opposite direction of the others.

***

Your legs were beginning to ache after another long walk and you wanted to sit down on your old sofa in the asylum and read your book. You let out a huge sigh and shuffled forward, throwing your head back, groaning as you went like a child throwing a tantrum. Your groan as cut off however, and turned in to a scream when suddenly, rope walls enclosed around you and you were hoisted high up in to the air. You screamed again, cursing loudly as you noticed that you were now suspended in the air in a rope trap, swinging back and forth gently.

“For ’s sake!” you yelled, gripping on to the rope around you to try and move yourself in to a comfortable position. Your legs were trapped underneath you and the rope was harsh and rough on your skin. Even though you were in a net and there was no reason for you to be claustrophobic, you still couldn’t help but panic when you couldn’t move around very well. You groaned as you pulled yourself up and you managed to manoeuvre yourself so you were sitting cross legged  in your little rope cage. You tried jumping up and down a little to see if you could break the trap, you knew you would fall to the floor and probably injure yourself, but it was better than sitting up in the air, waiting to starve to death. Your attempts were fruitless and you eventually gave in, leaning back against the rope wall.

***

You awoke to a small rock hitting you in the face. You screamed as you sat up straight, batting your face, thinking it was an exotic bug or something worse. Still constricted in your rope trap, you looked around on the ground and found the offender; a brown haired boy with startling green eyes. He looked up at you with a beautiful smile and you felt your insides melt.

“Are you OK?” he called up to you, waving his hand to catch your attention.

“Yeah, I think so, could you help me down, please?” you asked fidgeting, itching to get out of this uncomfortable position. Your legs had gone dead and you could feel pins and needles creeping in through the soles of your feet. Your was also sore and you could feel the rope digging in to your skin from all directions.

“Of course, stay there, I’ll get you down in no time.”

“Thank you so much,” you sighed in relief. You watched as he walked to the tree and pulled out a long knife from a sheath attached to his belt. He swung it backwards and then went to bring it back down on the rope that was keeping you up. You went to protest, knowing that this was going to result badly on your part, there was no way he could catch you in time. However, it was too late, the rope was sliced in two and you went tumbling down to the ground under the weight of the ropes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I guess it's kind of a cliffhanger? ㅎㅎㅎ

Stick with me guys, Baekhyun's behavious is all part of the plan ;-)