How It Should Have Ended Part2 (The Continuation)

Chapter 16 (Bonus Chapter): The Trip

Ga Eul gently squeezed her hand.

...

"There, that wasn't so bad!" Yi Jung proudly declared. He and Woo Bin both stepped back and admired their work.

The girls all looked at each other, their expressions a mixture of confusion and amusement. The tent was up, but it was severely lopsided, leaning heavily to the right.

Woo Bin looked at the piece of paper in his hand. "How come it looks nothing like the picture?"

Yi Jung waved a hand dismissively. "They probably staged the picture there to look way better than it is – you know, as a marketing tactic?"

Or as a guide on how it's supposed to look, Jan Di thought, but she did not say it out loud.

"Ah. Makes sense." Woo Bin seemed convinced.

Jan Di bit her lower lip to stifle a laugh.

"Sunbaes?" They both turned to look at her. "How come there are a lot of extra pieces over there?" She pointed at the ground beside them.

Woo Bin gave a nonchalant shrug. "I think those are spares, you know? For when you lose or break a piece."

"Spares? On a tent?" Ga Eul whispered to Jan Di.

"I think they're called tent poles." She whispered back, and they both started laughing hysterically. The boys cast a questioning look at them.

"What I wouldn't give for a working phone to record all this right now." Jan Di wished her phone hadn't died earlier.

"Are you sure?" Ga Eul asked the boys, feigning ignorance. "It doesn't look very...stable."

Yi Jung frowned and picked up the instructions again. "It would help if the instructions weren't all in Japanese!"

"You had to buy the most expensive and most complicated one out there huh?" Woo Bin argued. "You'd think they'd have some English or Korean instructions in there!"

"This was what the store clerk recommended – it's light and easy to set up. And can fit 3 grown men with room to spare!"

Woo Bin shook his head. "I thought they made those things called pop up tents? I heard those things practically set themselves up!"

Yi Jung pointed exasperatedly at the tent. "This is supposed to be a pop-up tent!"

"For the price you paid for it, it should have come with a person to set it up for us." Woo Bin was not backing down.

"Well, it will have to do for tonight," Yi Jung decided. "I'm beat."

Jan Di saw Hye Jin approaching the tent with a confused look on her face. "That's not how..." she began, but Jan Di pulled her over to the side and shook her head.

"That will collapse on them while they sleep," Hye Jin quietly protested.

"We'll fix it when they leave," Jan Di whispered. She called out to the boys. "You guys should go get us some water, our bottled water is about to run out."

"I can't get the fire started," Ji Hoo sighed, as he walked towards them. Jan Di saw wisps of smoke coming out of the pile. She also noticed his hands had small blisters on them. "How come it looks so easy on tv?"

"Go, we'll figure it out." She pushed him towards the other two. "Don't take too long."

The boys all nodded. Yi Jung proudly took out six empty white bottles from his backpack. "Each bottle has a built-in filter – so we can fill it up wherever we want and won't have to worry about getting sick!" He looked at his map. "There should be a stream not too far from here." The boys all trudged towards the direction Yi Jung pointed.

When the boys had disappeared from sight, Jan Di stood up.

"Okay girls, let's fix this tent before they kill themselves on it tonight."

...

It took the boys around half an hour (maybe more) to find the stream that Yi Jung was talking about. They filled the bottles and walked quickly back to the campsite. Fortunately, it was still light out, and they had walked almost in a straight path, so it wasn't too bad finding the camp site again. They were almost to the site when Ji Hoo heard the girls talking about them. He signaled for the other two to stop and keep quiet. All three boys perked their ears up and listened.

"Well, isn't this quite a different date than what we're used to?" Ga Eul's voice said out loud.

They heard the other two laugh. Then Jan Di's voice: "They said camping is not a date - it's an endurance test. If you can survive camping with someone you should definitely marry them on the way home. It means you can survive anything together!" The girls giggled together.

Hye Jin's voice: "That totally makes sense. It will show how strong your relationship is. I guess we'll have to see which couples survive this trip!"

Ji Hoo looked at the faces of the other two boys. Both Woo Bin and Yi Jung were listening attentively. They all nodded in unison, their faces set with determination.

Right, Ji Hoo thought. I'm going to do anything to survive this camping trip – even if it kills me!

...