016 - The Gates - Part 2

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"We've been walking for hours, gege. Let's rest." Kris rolled his eyes at the younger boy's whining. They had only been walking for around forty minutes since they found each other.

"I don't know how long you might have been walking before we met up, but quit it, Tao. We need to find whatever it is we're supposed to find and leg it back to those demons." The younger boy cringed at the thought of going back to those witches, who had, most likely, tortured that Jongdae guy, judging by those bruises across his body.

Trained martial artist or not, he was the worst out of himself, Kris and Chanyeol at handling interrogations. He would always break when pressure was involved. That's why the other two often left him in charge of breaking, entering and exiting. He was the liability of the group in pressured situations.

  "Hm? What do we have here?" The two paused as Kris knelt beside the base of a tree's trunk. Tao peered curiously over his shoulder.

"What is it?"

"Haven't you noticed that while we've been walking, every other tree has this mark at the base?" Tao nodded. Of course he had. He hadn't thought of them being left in a pattern though.

"Looks like something that Yeol-ge would have done." He observed the almost childish pattern and was reminded of the few times their brunet cohort had thrown a tantrum, grinning. Although Kris smiled a little, his eyes didn't leave the mark.

"Tao, let's follow this. By now Chanyeol has to be resting or something. Let's find him and get this dumb evaluation over with together." Tao released a grunt of frustration when he realised that they weren't going to take a break and rolled his shoulders to stop himself from making a statement that Kris would surely make him regret.

The two hadn't been walking for more than half an hour when they were stopped, this time by Tao, demanding a rest. Squatting down, he was about to sit when he noted that a patch on the ground appeared to be flatter than the rest of the area, in a paw shape. Turning to inform Kris, he was met with the sight of his colleague's back.

"Gege... what exactly are you doing?" Kris seemed to be struggling get something out of a thick, pointed bush. Tao jogged over and helped dislodge whatever it was from the brush, letting Kris take most of the weight.

"Whoever put this here must have been in too much of a rush to hide it properly." Kris suggested, lifting the body of the mechanical bear with ease as he inspected the large hole with a small branch protruding from its neck. The two Chinese youths subconsciously cocked their heads to the side as they tried to figure out the reason the creature was attacked in the first place.

"Think this was Chanyeol as well, Tao?" Kris asked, trying to clear his mind. Tao tapped the ground as he thought.

"No, ge. You and I both know that Chanyeol gege doesn't attack things like this, and he definitely never leaves evidence of what caused the problem. Maybe someone else did it?"

"Maybe someone's with him?" Kris glanced over his shoulder, making eye contact with the younger youth. The possibility had never even occured to him. Of course! Apart from himself, Tao and Chanyeol, there were nine other people out here with them.

"Gege, there are more marks on this trunk here." Tao seemed to have caught onto Kris' sudden sense of urgency and the pair quickly began making their way again, searching for any more signs of Chanyeol as the marks on the trunks began to thin out until there were none. By this time, they had reached an area that didn't even begin to resemble the rest of the forest they had just been wandering in. Tao silently reached out and gripped Kris' sleeve as he took it all in.

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