They kept moving.
---
Then Ha Joon saw it first.
Smoke.
Rising through the canopy in a thin column.
Pale against the darker green above it.
---
Their pace changed without discussion.
Faster.
Not running yet.
Just faster.
---
Then they saw it.
---
A tent.
White.
Clean white against everything around it that wasn't clean or white.
The fabric taut.
Held properly.
Someone had put it up with care.
---
And in front of it.
A small fire.
---
And beside the fire.
Chi-Long.
Seated.
Cooking.
---
A rabbit on the fire.
The smell of it reaching them before anything else.
Moving through the trees toward them like something deliberate.
Like it had been sent.
---
Their stomachs answered immediately.
Both of them.
One sound and then the other.
Rising together into the trees.
Carrying into the forest around them.
Mixing with the birds.
With the wind.
With everything.
---
Their eyes went wide.
---
Then the other thing arrived.
The thing underneath the hunger.
Fear.
Cold and immediate.
The realization of what they were looking at.
The unthinkable specific thing of it.
---
She was sitting down.
Relaxed.
Her back mostly to them.
The fire between her and whatever direction they'd come from.
---
Slowly she turned her head.
---
Their eyes met hers.
---
She smiled.
---
Small.
The same smile from the clearing.
The one with no warmth in it that somehow looked warm anyway.
---
Then she looked back at the fire.
---
Back at the rabbit.
---
Like she had simply noted something and moved on.
---
They ran.
---
No discussion.
No signal.
Just both of them moving at the same moment in the opposite direction.
Back into the trees.
Their feet destroying the trail behind them.
Mud flying.
Footprints becoming chaos.
The careful signs of their passage turned into evidence of something panicked.
---
They ran.
---
The forest moving past them.
Branches finding their faces.
The ground uneven beneath their feet.
---
Then Ha Joon's body decided.
---
A sound like something heavy meeting the earth.
His legs simply stopping.
The rest of him continuing briefly without them.
Then the ground receiving him.
Mud erupting outward from the impact in chunks.
Landing on Eun Byol's legs.
Her clothes.
---
She stopped.
Looked back at him.
One second.
---
She bent down.
Got him up.
Both arms.
All of it.
---
And ran.