The AfterLife [ON HOLD]

13

Y-EN

"So what brought you here to Gravity Falls, Y-En?" Mabel asked me as we made our way through the forest.

"I could ask you the same question," I said smugly, and she smiled at the response.

Candy, Grenda, Dipper, Mabel and I have been looking for, at this point, anything since we started our second mystery hunt, like an hour ago.

Which I was not comfortable with at all for a few reasonable reasons.

First, like I said before, I don't really know these people.

Second, this mystery hunt was not in any way interesting.

Third, my legs were still aching fron the first hunt we went on.

What? I'm lazy. Sometimes I don't like walking.

Anyway, while Candy, Grenda and Mabel were walking ahead of me, chatting excitedly, I noticed Dipper was falling behind a bit, so I walked a little slower for him to catch up.

He looked up from his book as he caught up to me and raised an eyebrow. "Are, you OK?"

"Yeah, why?"

"You were falling behind from the rest of them."

"Oh, see, I was doing that purposely so you could catch up."

He frowned a little as he turned some pages. "I was holding up just fine."

"You were literally like, 30 steps back. If we came across two different paths, you'd probably go a different way from us – and this book would be to blame."

He closed it and put it in his hand that wasn't next to me. "I'm not that distracted."

"You are."

"How would you know? You've only known me for 2 minutes."

"In that case, you seem to be."

He shook his head and walked ahead of me. "Let's ask these three whether this is actually a mystery hunt, or we're just walking around aimlessly."

I smiled and skipped on.

Grenda, Candy and Mabel were still gushing over what they did over the summer when I got their attention. "So do we have anything in specific we're looking for?"

"Oh, YES!" Mabel grabbed my arm. "We're on a hunt for… Dipper, what can we find here again?"

"Um, let me check in the—"

"NO! We'll surprise ourselves! Let's go!"

As she was pulling me along with her, with Candy and Grenda close behind, Dipper called out, "Um, Mabel, you do realize not knowing what we'll run into is a really bad idea, right?"

"Oh, shush!" Mabel did not stop in her tracks for a second as she glared back at him playfully. "You're ruining the fun in surprises by thinking logically. We just came back. Loosen up a little, will you?"

Dipper sighed in response as we went on.

★

"This is taking long," I stated.

"Come on, Y-En," Mabel urged, "just a few more minutes and we'll find something for sure. It usually takes a shorter time than this, so I guess we just have bad luck for the day."

Wonder why.

"Besides, there is so much we could do in this forest!" Candy exclaimed.

"Like what?"