All Those Years - Taejin

XIV - Hiking

When I woke up the next morning, I saw Taehyung gripping and holding onto my chest while curled up. The sight made me smile and I slowly pulled away from him and freed myself from his grasp.

I got out of the tent and saw Amaya already sitting on the bench. I sleepily walked over to the benches and sat down on the bench next to where she was sitting.

"Good morning, Amaya." She seemed to be spaced out before I said anything. "Oh, hey, morning." She gave me a quick smile and looked down at her phone.

She seemed to giggle at something on her phone but for just a brief moment. She had already put her phone away before I could even glance at what she was looking at.

"You know, tell me more about your and Taehyung's relationship, it makes me curious how you two get along so well." "There isn't anything very special about it, just childhood best friends, that's all it is for now." I shrugged and looked down the mountain where we were at the time.

"Childhood friends? No wonder then. But why did you stop speaking all of the sudden anyways? You still haven't given me a proper answer. You got along so well, but, well, now you two have like something blocking you." She spoke freely as she let her eyes wander around us. "Blocking us? No, I think it is all my fault. But I don't know if I will be able to tell anyone about an incident we had."

"Is that all? Really?" "I'm not willing to tell you more. Maybe some other day." I was being serious, I wasn't really up to tell anyone yet. I still had to wait, it would have been for better cause.

"Well...okay, I'll let it go. But don't forget to tell me, please." "It is something I will never be able to forget anyways, so alright." I shook my head lightly and heard the sound of the tent zipper opening.

I looked back at our tent and saw Taehyung walking out of it. He saw us sitting and made his way over to us and sat down on the single bench that was still not occupied.

We all had a small talk about what we dreamed of and what we thought of them. Amaya, naturally, saw a dream of her boyfriend and expressed how much she missed him. Taehyung told us he hadn't really seen anything and he remembers just a blank screen. I wasn't totally honest when I also told them I didn't remember the dream I had had the night.

We decided it was the right time to start moving again. We packed all of our stuff we had set up, put them on our backs and started to keep going again.

- -

"Here we are, this is where we start." "Huh." Taehyung and Amaya nodded and said in sync. "This will take us approximately a few hours to complete, so this will take a while."

"I bet this is going to be so much fun! More time to talk and get to know!" Amaya expressed enthusiastically. "If everything is ready, I think we are ready to start the journey." And so we started.

The mountain was quite flat at most of the places, but one of the routes we passed was very rocky and we could slide off easily. And that was basically what happened.

We needed to be extra careful, but despite the caution, Taehyung got his foot stuck, yelped, fell on his knees and almost slid of the edge before I could grab his hand. Luckily I was able to grab onto him at the right time and pulled him up again. "Please, we don't want anybody to fall off the cliff." "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention to where I was stepping." Taehyung said apologetically and gripped onto my arm when we were safe. "It's fine, just don't let it happen again."

We kept on walking up the rocky part of the mountain, but were definitely more careful. "Are you okay? Did you get hurt?" Amaya asked us, her voice concerned. "I'm fine, my hands are just a little scratched and my knees are a little bruised." Taehyung responded to her calmly and smiled reassuringly. Amaya seemed fine with the answer she was given and payed her full attention to the path ahead of her.

Once we were off the bumpy part and safe again, Taehyung finally let go of my arm as he felt safe enough on the flat area again. I was glad nothing serious had happened to us on the more dangerous areas.

- -

After the assumed few hours, we reached the top of the mountain, which had an even more beautiful view over the mountain area. "This is absolutely gorgeous!" Commented Amaya with her jaw dropped. "This really was worth it." "Definitely. We have to do this again someday," I said before continuing: "but we still have the same long way to go down again." Amaya and Taehyung nodded bravely and we all started going down after watching the scene for a few more minutes and taking a little break.

The way down was way calmer, but not all good either. We all fell on our backs at least twice and slipped because the way down was even steeper than the way up and we all went down quicker than we thought. We were down on the ground ahead of time and could start going back even sooner.

It was already late but we needed to get back. There wasn't anything we could do about it. We decided it was better just to deal with the time and walk back to the car.

It was even later in the night when we got to my car, since it was a long walk to the parking lot. We set all of our stuff in the back and sat in. Next stop was the dorm house and it was in the middle of the night, but since it was a Saturday night, it wasn't anything to worry about, we could crash as long as we wanted to in the morning.

The car ride back was full of chatters and laughs and games. We all had a good time while all chatting happily and bonding further and recalling the hiking further. It was a few hour drive but we waited patiently and got through the wait and difficulties, like all of our bladders and tiredness.

I parked the car into the parking lot when we got back and we all exited. We took our luggage again and made our way inside the building, which was dead quiet at that time of the night, our footsteps and luggage making noise being the only sounds in the long halls of the dorms.

We sent Amaya if to her dorm, wished her a good night and went up to our own dorm. The halls were quieter as one of the factors making noise had gone so there were only us two making any kind of noise that echoes through the hall.

I opened the door to our dorm with my key and let us inside. We took off our shoes and jackets and went into our rooms and wished each other good night by a hug and had more to talk about.

"Thank you for saving me back there. I could have fallen if you weren't there to grab my hand." "Oh, please, no need to thank me, I wouldn't want you to fall, never." I said and pulled away from and we both smiled at each other. "Have a good night." "You too." And we parted our ways from the exhausting day that was behind us.

A/N

Thank you for reading this chapter! I really appreciate you being here for this long and for reading all of this! Readers are gods and have to be appreciated more and more!

Now, how did we ever get here? 1K? Definitely not ready for this, such a big responsibility and I am honestly so so flattered! And I thank everyone for reading this, no matter if you are an older or a newer reader, all the support and feedback matters a lot! But, since summer is here, I'll put more effort into the last chapters, I think this story is slowly reaching its end, but there is still important details coming!

I'll leave it here for now! Thank you for staying!

~Author