HIKE

06 | little bit lost

"Oh my god, this is all your fault, Jaemin!"

"What the fuck? How?"

"If you hadn't picked such a damn good song like Mr. Simple, we would've actually gone the right way," Donghyuck accused, folding his arms across his chest.

"I wasn't the one who put on the music!" Jaemin objected. He raised his hands in defence, shooting Donghyuck a sharp look in protest.

"So it's Renjun's fault then," Donghyuck decided, easily able to shift his accusation, as long as he himself wasn't the one to blame.

"It's not Renny's fault," Jeno murmured. He squinted into the distance as he tried to process the amount of things going on in this situation.

"How about we just look at the map?!" Jaemin exploded, and the papers rustled aggressively as he shook them in one fist.

"Oh yeah."

"Good idea."

"Go on then, Jae."

Jaemin took a deep breath and examined the map, doing his best to regain his composure. "Okay. here's where we are," he explained, pointing to where they were on the map, coming onto the cliff path marked out.

"So?" Donghyuck peered over his shoulder, suddenly uncharacteristically calm. "How far off are we?"

Jaemin gave a heavy sort of sigh and dragged his finger way across the map to path they were supposed to be on. "And here's where we're supposed to be," he finished. "We turned onto the wrong road after going through those fields, I think."

"It's way too late to go back then," Renjun guessed. He peered over Donghyuck's shoulder, wincing at the distance between the two points Jaemin had referenced.

"Fucking great," Donghyuck sighed. "We're gonna miss dinner."

"It's time we stopped for lunch anyway," said Jaemin, taking on a leader role in the group. "We could put our stuff in this cave-ish thing, and eat for a bit?"

"Let's go see what's down the cliff, Jae," said Jeno. He grabbed Jaemin's hand and dragged both him and the map in the direction they had been heading.

Renjun watched them go, skipping along with a spring in their step after leaving the heavy bags behind. Eventually he heard the sound of rustling packets, and turned to see Donghyuck lounging back in the pile of rucksacks, munching on a family-sized packet of Doritos already.

"What?! I'm hungry," Donghyuck reasoned, looking mildly offended at Renjun's apparent judgement. "Don't look at me like that, Kim Renjun."

"I'm not a fucking Kim, you idiot." Renjun perched on the edge of a rock nearby and rolled his eyes.

"You aren't?" Donghyuck frowned. "But everyone's a Kim in Korea."

"Hyuck, you're not even a Kim," Renjun reminded him with a scoff. "Also, I'm Chinese."

Donghyuck's eyeballs nearly shot out of their sockets, until a moment of comical realisation hit his face. "Oh, yeah, forgot, ha," he mumbled through the large packet of doritos. "What's your surname again?"

"Huang."

"Huang," Donghyuck repeated slowly, formulating a new joke in his head. "More like Huang yourself. Stop looking so fucking miserable."

He laughed at his own joke, but to his surprise Renjun burst into tears.

"Ren? Oh my god, I didn't mean it," Donghyuck rambled in apology. The doritos went flying all over the grass as he scrambled over to the crying boy. "You know I'm only joking, right? I'm never serious about suicide jokes..."