--Moon Hyunjoo's Point of View--
"Are you sure that teaming up was a great idea?" Yua, Song, and I are the most scared ones among all of us in the group.
And most of us can already tell that this game of tag will not end on a happy note, especially if someone from my school wins.
'Other than that...'
Even the process sounds like it actually won't be a good memory for any of us.
"This is better than any ideas I have had for the past 16 years of my life!"
The cyan-haired friend of mine whispered back as he crouched down near a tree to hide from anyone possibly lurking around the premises.
"I can't believe we agreed to play this game with a bunch of bloody fighters! And at almost nighttime..." he added, holding onto a burning candle.
"SHHHHHHHHHHH!!" Yua held onto his mouth as the sound of the river splashing became audible from a distance.
The three of us may be the easiest team to spot in a quiet forest but do you know what we're good at? "I see you scaredy-cats!"
A team from my school caught us after we stumbled on each other's clumsy feet, getting caught when we reached the river.
"RUN!" screamed Song, he was already running as fast as lightning, far away from getting tagged by the other team.
"Hey, are you going to leave me behind??" Yua yelled at me.
Her foot was stuck in a hole so I did what a scared person would normally do...
'Of course, I didn't leave her behind like a coward such as Song.'
I carefully dug deeper into the hole, freeing her leg from being stuck before carrying her as the other team drew closer to where we were.
"These little kids are fast runners, hurry up to them!"
They were still trying to cross the river which means... "We didn't really have to panic and run, proving that we are a bunch of scared kids like they always see us be."
Yua and I tried to catch up with Song who is nowhere near around.
"I think we're pretty much in the clear since they obviously can't catch up with a bunch of scared kids like us!"
"Will you stop talking in a loud voice?! We aren't kids anymore nor do we have to be ashamed of being young." we both stopped talking the very moment that Song came into vision, he was watching another team from afar.
Specifically, Sora, Haesu, and Honey Lou's team.
"What are you doing? Spying on some girls??" Yua smacked him on the head.
"I think they're the taggers..." he motioned us to get down and hide from the girls, they looked rather harmless yet chill.
"Have you caught anyone?"
Haesu came back to their side, breaking some twigs after the other girls dug a large hole in the ground, setting up a trap which was kind of alarming.
Given the fact that this is a game of tag.
But if you think about it, this is a mind game where you can strategize to win instead of wasting your time, chasing for your opponents.
"I caught Sungyeon's group, and they made a truce to help us catch more teams in exchange for not getting eliminated yet until we tag them again."
Doesn't that mean they gave them a chance to win though?
"Are you even thinking, Sora?" Honey realized this after she completed tying her shoelaces, hearing the same noise of leaves rustling nearby.
Everyone stopped talking and moving as the sound of another team came closer to where we were standing, and the voices of those people were mostly men...
"It's them." Honey whispered.
--Author's Point of View--
They watched the three girls climb a tall tree, leaving their places to ambush the arriving team that was bound to trigger.
"I could have sworn that she was headed here." said Kim Young.
"We've got plenty of time, just chill. Will you?"
Sungyeon spectated the two of them arguing about what to do next after seemingly defeating the other teams no more than 5 hours into playing this game of tag.
"I'd be careful if I were you!" he finally spoke.
"Oh, help!" Jay Hwang fell inside the hole which the girls from earlier had dug into.
"I was right then, they were here."
Kim Young yelled in victory, getting his point clarified by a trap.
"Instead of exposing our location, why not help me?"
The two other males tried to reach for his hand and lift him up from the hole. "On the count of three, you climb. Okay?" Sungyeon guided his younger friends, unknowingly putting themselves at risk in that very second.
"Tag them!" the girls on top of the large tree jumped off on Haesu's command but unfortunately, instead of tagging the three of them.
"Dude, why would you push them in?? How are we supposed to tag them now?!" the oldest female scolded Sora after they landed on foot.
Successfully trapping their friends at the cost of not being able to tag them properly.
However, little did they know the exact rules of this game...
"Nobody said anything about us needing to touch their skin, all Ji Eun mentioned is a game of tag, right?" a total of three teams took a moment of silence to try and perceive all the information she was trying to tell them.
Except for the fact that the other team isn't known to be around.
"Ack! What I ought to say is that we touched more than half of their team so it counts." she threw her hand in the air, tired of her not-so-intelligent friend and violent sister.
"Is that true?" Jay Hwang asked to verify from his two friends.
"You aren't supposed to consider their word for it since it is like admitting the fact that it could be true..."
Sungyeon stared at Haesu for a moment before turning his eyes on Honey Lou, looking up at them before sighing and giving them the look of acknowledging his cousin's statement.
"Well, now that your team is out. We're heading off!" Sora Young stood there shocked and in awe at what was happening in front of her.
"Are you coming or not?"
"I'm coming!" she jumped with exhilaration as she followed the other girls to a different spot in the forest, meanwhile, Yun Oh, Dan, and Miles' team were trying to predict the locations of the other teams, they had a map in hand to keep track of their whereabouts after eliminating 3 teams so far.
"Have you found them..?" Yun Oh held onto his left temple.
The dirty blonde-haired male, Dan Nevuerra, ran ahead of his friends to try and regain his composure after running for miles just to tag Song Ji Eun's team.
The girl, having Jihyun and Sihyeon on her team, knew that Sihyeon would tell her things that she might know about what the future holds.
'But little does she know...' Yun Oh had a proud smile on his face while placing his hands behind his back as the remaining two of them calmly chased Dan.
"This is all going according to plan." the eldest male commented while the three of them walked side by side across the river from the other end of the forest.
Gaining on the last few teams left ahead of them.
"What do you mean?" Miles held onto his friend's shoulder to ask for assistance, feeling some uncomfortable pain in his shoes.
"I told you not to wear those, anyone can tell that wearing shoes with heels isn't the best idea when you're out here..." the second youngest male, Dan scolded him.
Even though he seemed arrogant for being right, the dirty blonde-haired male assisted his friend toward a rock on the ground, letting him rest for a little while.
"Let's take these off first, and I am getting paid for doing this whether or not you asked me." he demanded, giving the other individual a concerned and stern glare.
"We do not have any spare time to waste, we must keep moving." the two males stopped and turned to look at him with very threatening eyes, ignoring his words since they pretty much had a high chance of winning the game of tag.
'These crappy guys.' he thought, shaking his head from left to right, and walking away on his own deeper into the forest filled with crows, crowing.
Yun Oh strolled alone while the sun slowly glimmered into an orange yet pinkish shade in the majestic sky, and nothing seemed to anger his mind now.
'This is... Great." the male didn't have a care in the world at that moment, he was somehow revived from feeling dead.
Speaking of feeling dead, Honey Lou explored the forest with her two female friends, they were beginning to feel weak and running out of energy as time went by.
"How much longer till the game ends? Are we the last other team remaining??" Sora dropped herself on Haesu whilst they traveled on foot.
Forcing the older friend to carry her on her back.
"If you plan on asking me to carry you, then do it properly before I do the exact opposite of helping out." the 18-year-old crouched down slowly to let Sora on her back.
"Thank you for being my friend till the end!" the youngest of them commented, feeling tired from their game and not giving care when she spoke anymore.
"What?!" Honey put out her hands in front of Haesu before her sister even laid a finger on the other girl, resulting in an unpleasant argument.
"Just breathe in and out." she advised.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The moon replaced the sun without anyone expecting the game to last this long, there were only a total of three teams left and the rest of them returned to the lodge, slightly far away from the forest as the game continued.
"What is taking them so long to get back?"
Ji Eun asked out loud, worried about her lover as they were still nowhere in sight.
"Does he not already have a girlfriend? Lee Haesu, was it?"
Shin Haru approached the worried girl, leaving his group to confront her since he knew that there was something wrong with the friendship of the other group.
"As if I care!" she backfired, pushing him away from herself and then, walking further from the lodge to their cabin where she decided to wait.
'Nothing happened between us.' it was just a made-up story to try and break them apart as he did to Kim Young and Song Ji Eun although, he didn't have the right to meddle with their issues, in the end, he still couldn't turn a blind eye.
'But why aren't any of them doing something about this?' he questioned their friendship, thinking to himself if they were okay as a whole behind the scenes or in other words when no one else was around to see the real side of them.