☆ The Past  ☆

Hyukjae tossed and the lumpy sleeping pallet.  Camping was definitely not his style.  Thankful that today would be his last night of torture, he e more time to find something quite unexpected waiting for him.  There on his pillow, body glittering in the moonlight, was a bug.  But not just any bug.  Quite possibly the largest and most ferocious looking cockroach known to man was staring straight into Hyukjae's young soul.

The small boy pushed away his pillow with a terrified shriek and kicked wildly at his sleeping bag to free his legs.  His wild thrashing caused him to fall from the pallet and onto the rough wooden planks of the floor, where he watched the man-eating vermin fly towards one of the darker corners of the cabin.

Not willing to risk his life by staying in the infested cabin of horrors a minute longer, he tugged on his shoes and ran for the door.  Shutting the door firmly behind him, he took a minute to see if any of the other campers were going to come running over to check on him, and when they didn't, he frowned.  "I could die and nobody would care.  Camping ," he muttered.

The night air was chilly, but going back into the cabin to retrieve his jacket wasn't even an option.  By now it was probably infested with roaches plotting on how to eat him alive.  He was sitting on the porch thinking about what he should do with the rest of his night when a bright light suddenly shot across his vision.  His first thought was that it was a rabid firefly come to end his short life, so he began swatting madly at the air.  Once he realized the object was not a harbinger of the apocalypse, and actually a shooting star, he blushed at his cowardice and tried to pinpoint the exact location of the stars landing.  He decided that it was close enough that even a city boy like himself had a chance of finding it.

Brushing the black fringe of his hair away from his eyes he gathered up the tattered remains of his courage and headed off into the woods to find a star.

 ☆

It was about 15 minutes into his journey when Hyukjae, looking carefully through the bushes for wild predators, heard a screech echo through the trees.  If he had stopped to think about it, he would have realized it was an owl, but in his young mind it sounded a thousand times more sinister.  He instantly froze and pretended to be invisible while he waited for the unseen predator to pass, but when he heard the sound again, this time much closer, he knew it must be coming to eat him.  He screamed in terror and started to run as fast as his thin legs could carry him. 

He was still running for his life a minute later, his eyes constantly scanning for the doom behind him, when he bumped into something soft and fell to the ground.  Something that grunted.  Terrified all over again, Hyukjae forgot about the man-eating owl and turned his attention to the form in front of him.  Rising from the earthen forest floor next to him was something big and dark with fluffy brown fur. 

"BEAR!"

He kicked and he screamed.  He shouted every foul word he knew and displayed all of the made-up taekwondo, karate, and boxing moves he could think of to scare off the ferocious bear.  When he felt the animal retreat from his wild kicks, he scrambled up from the ground and ran.  He had almost taken his second step when the creature grabbed his leg and he fell to the ground again.  Hard.

"Relax!  Stop hitting me!  Ow, that was my face!  Stop!"  The words registered in Hyukjae's ears, but not in his brain, and he continued to lash out until the bear had both of his wrists trapped and was sitting on top of him.  "Will you relax?  I'm not a bear!"

Hyukjae whined and squirmed with his eyes clenched shut, not wishing to see the sharp teeth and dark beady eyes of the bear before he was devoured, when he suddenly realized that bears do not speak.  Well, maybe they spoke Bear, but they definitely didn't speak Korean.  He kept his body tense, but stopped squirming long enough to peek at his assailant.

It wasn't a bear.

A boy, about his height and age, with fluffy brunette hair and a wide crooked smile was sitting on top of him.  "See?  I told you I'm not a bear."

Hyukjae yanked at his wrist and the boy released him.  The mysterious boy stood up, then offered Hyukjae his hand.  Hyukjae let the boy help him up then snatched his hand back.  "Of course you're not a bear," he snapped.

The mysterious boy chuckled at the peevish camper.  "What's your name?"

"Hyukjae."

"So... Why are you screaming bloody murder in the middle of the forest so late at night Hyukjae?"

"I wasn't screaming bloody murder.  I was looking for a star."

"Oh really?!  Me too!  I saw it fall and was going to look for it when I heard you screaming bloody murder."

"I wasn't-!  Whatever!  Fine.  I guess you can follow me if you want."  Hyukjae hoped the boy would accept his offer.  He really didn't want to be in the woods by himself anymore.

"Okay," he chirped

"Really?"

"Sure.  We're both going to the same place anyway, right?" 

The boy gave him another friendly smile and Hyukjae felt himself relax.  "Okay, but I'm the leader."

"Okay.  You can call me Nemo, by the way."

"Nemo?  Like the fish?"

"Exactly!  Except instead of finding me, we're finding a star!"  The boy giggled to himself as if it were the funniest joke ever told.

"Is that your real name?" Hyukjae asked suspiciously.

The boy, whose real name was Donghae, shrugged.  "People call me Fishy sometimes, but you can call me Nemo.  It's practically the same thing."

"Yeah, you're fishy all right," Hyukjae mumbled.  He looked around the forest, which still looked like any other forest, and tried to decide which way they should go.  It didn't help that his chaotic run had gotten him utterly and hopelessly lost.  "Umm... which way is it?"

"It's over there," the boy said as he pointed.

"I knew that." 

Donghae shrugged again and started walking along beside Hyukjae without a second thought.  "So did you make a wish when you saw the shooting star?"

"Not really.  I was just thinking that it was boring by myself and I wished someone would hang out with me."  And protect me from the vermin.

"Really?" the brunette asked with a laugh.  "I guess you got your wish then!  My wish was something close to that too, so I guess both of our wishes came true."

They walked for a few minutes in silence before Hyukjae heard a familiar screech.  He grabbed on tightly to the brunette's waist and buried his face between the boy's shoulder blades.  "Did you hear that?!"

The boy grinned.  Hyukjae's voice was muffled by the cloth of his jacket, but due to the older boys terror, his voice was loud and abnormally high-pitched, allowing the brunette to hear him easily.  "It's just an owl."

"How do you know?"  Hyukjae's fingers hurt and his knuckles had gone white because of the kung-fu grip he had on the boy, but he refused to let go.

"I know because that's what it is.  What do you think it is?"

"A gorilla- NO!  A lion!"

"There are no gorillas or lions in these woods."

"How do you know?"

"Because I live here.  I know everything about this forest, including what will and what will not eat you."

"You're not a camper?"

"Nope."

"Oh."  Hyukjae felt a little better, but he stayed glued to Donghae as they traveled through the woods.

"Will you stop?"

"Stop what?"

"Your breath tickles."

"So you want me to stop breathing?"

Donghae laughed.  "Just stop breathing on my neck."

"Fine, then I'll just- ow!"  Hyukjae stumbled into Donghae's back when the lead boy suddenly froze.

"Shh!"

"W-w-w-what is it?" Hyukjae whispered as he tried to peer in every direction at once.

"Do you hear that?" Donghae whispered back.

"W-w-what is it?  I don't hear anything!"

"Exactly!  That's when you need to worry.  It means there is something that even the forest creatures are afraid of."

"Oh God!  What is it?!"

Donghae shrugged and started w