Chapter 254: Bonding Moment With My Hony.

We walked.

Bridge to platform to bridge, the usual rhythm of the vine village, the rain soft enough now to almost be comfortable against the back of my neck. I watched my feet for a while. Then I looked at my hand.

Specifically, at the hand that wasn't mine.

Jisoo had taken it somewhere in the first thirty seconds after we left the residential platform and had not given it back.

Her grip was tight, hard.

I tried pulling back slightly, testing. She looked back at me immediately with a look that resolved the test conclusively, then took my hand back immediately and wrapping both of hers around it.

I sighed.

The conversation from earlier was still sitting in the air between us, not said and not unsaid.

What happens when you're done here. I answer it honestly. I wasn't sure I was supposed to have thought about it, and I hadn't, not really, not in the way she was thinking about it, and that gap between us was still there.

She was holding my hand like it was a solution to something.

"So," I tried. "What's up."

She looked at me. "I'm not letting you go anywhere," she said. "You're mine. Don't leave me."

"•́ ‿ ,•̀... Okay," I said.

I closed my mouth after that.

We kept walking.

The village went on around us— the regular sounds of it, the chickens doing their chicken things on their dedicated vine islands, the rope elevators moving, kids running a route across three bridges that I'd seen them run twice before and was starting to understand was a game with rules I didn't know. Normal.

The vine platforms swayed in their slow gentle way.

The rain came down soft.

After several minutes I figured I'd try to start a conversation. Normal conversation.

"Should we stay here long?" I asked.

Jisoo tilted her head, thinking. "We don't have much choice for now." She glanced at the water visible between the vine platforms, the grey expanse of it in every direction beyond the village. "We're in the middle of a flooded region and we don't have a boat and swimming through whatever's in there is not a solid plan."

A pause.

Then she looked at me with an expression that had gone softer, the one she deployed when she was making a point she was going to pretend wasn't a point. "But I like it here. It's nice. Just— relaxing. With you."

I scoffed softly. "Alright."

"Next question, Hon Hon."

"Do you think there are other vine islands out here? Besides this one?"

"Probably." She was quiet for a moment, calculating. "The conditions that made this one possible apply to the whole region. If there are enough large vine masses and enough time, you'd get multiple clusters." She nodded to herself. "I'd estimate yes."

"What?"

She looked at me. "Oh… I mean, in short if some vine is drifting in there too, it could possible grow and become vine island too! So yes… it's possible that there's another Vine island to."

"Good." I looked at the water. "Okay. Different question.This whole region— I thought it was a swamp when we saw it from the crane. But this isn't swamp water. This is—"

"Rain," she said immediately.

Then she blinked. Looked at me. "Wait. Yes. You're right. The rain doesn't stop in the western region, so it accumulates. The ground level flooded first, then the lower floors, then— it just kept going. Over enough time."

She looked at the water with fresh eyes, like she was reclassifying it. "This is all just... rain. Collected. It's not sea water. It doesn't have salty salt in it, bleee.."

"Which explains why the current runs in specific directions instead of randomly," I said. "It's draining somewhere. Or circulating."

She stared at me.

"Hon Hon is smart," she said, with the energy of someone announcing something. "You're right. Yes. You figured that out yourself."

I looked at her.

Talking like she doesn't know… She definitely knows this. Is she— is she flattering me right now? Is this what that is? That's actually kind of—

I nodded and smiled. "Yep."

Cute?

And then kept that thought very much to myself where it belonged.

"Next question, Hon Hon." She squeezed my hand slightly, which I think was her version of clapping.

"Do you think the exit gate is in the west wall?"

She tapped her chin. Thought about it with appropriate seriousness. Then she looked at me with an expression that was doing its best at wisdom.

"Hmm. Probably not west specifically. Could be north. Could be east. Could be south. We genuinely don't know." A pause. "Hehe."

"Smart Jisoo," I said, giving a thumbs up. "Approve."

She beamed, taking the praise with both hands like I'd handed her something valuable.

I watched her do it and thought about the way that she's actually doing everything alone, before I came here, and the fact that approval from me apparently still landed that way, and—

"Okay NEXT QUE—"

KABOOM!!!

The world moved.

Not shook— moved, the whole vine island shifting under our feet like something enormous had hit the water nearby, a wave impact transmitted through the root system all at once, the vine platform pitching sideways and then lurching and then going from stable to actively not-stable in under a second.

We both went down, knees and palms, the bridge swaying violently on either side of us.

My hand.

I checked my hand.

Jisoo still had it… ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ Both of us on the ground, the platform rolling, and she had not let go of my hand through any of it. I didn't know if that was impressive or concerning.

I decided it was probably both.

I looked at her face.

She was facing toward the direction the impact had come from, her expression doing something I rarely got to see this days— the actual intimidating version, the one that didn't bother being polite about it, eyes narrowed, jaw set.

She was whispering to herself, low and specific, and I caught the words: "I'm having a bonding moment with my Hon. What the actual fuck just happened. Who. What. I will—"

I kept looking at her.

She glanced over and noticed me looking.

Her face changed instantly. Completely. The intimidating thing folded itself away and what replaced it… was soft and wide-eyed and slightly sheepish, her grip on my hand loosening from the combat-ready tension it had been at a second ago.

"Hon Hon," she said. "That was scary, right?" She looked toward the explosion direction, then back at me, and somehow managed to look both concerned and excited simultaneously. "Should we go check it out?"

I looked at her.

"ಠ_ಠ;;, s-sure?" I said.

She blinked at me with complete innocence.

I stood up. "Yeah," I said. "Let's go check it out."

The rain kept coming down soft as we moved toward the source of whatever had just decided to interrupt us, and Jisoo walked beside me, and somewhere behind us the chickens resumed their opinions about things, utterly unbothered, as chickens tended to be.