181 — Under the Stars III

"Ugh. Please tell me we won't miss it..." Su Ah whispered. "It can't just... storm. That'd be terrible timing, wouldn't it? We're not equipped to stay more than a day here..."

She shivered, letting out a slight grimace, turning her dark blue, puppyish eyes my way.

"Even if you look at me like that, I'm still not a weather mage." I gently chided, feeling genuinely sorry for her. "Come on, let's hurry."

With one last forlorn, fleeting look at the sky, and then at the majestic view in front of us, she turned, and packed up. I did the same.

I wondered if Su Ah had accidentally angered some weather deity because we barely had enough time to jog up the path when the rain arrived, pattering in irregular gusts against the tree branches above. The world started to blur and drip around us.

My new T-shirt clung to my back immediately, sticking there.

"Noona?" I turned towards Su Ah, who was still standing there, dazed and numb. The rain came down in streams and rivulets.

A waterfall's worth of rain hammered us.

Su Ah's clothes became soaked. Her t-shirt grew semi-transparent, and with that, so did her bra. "What should I do? I really wanted to see it, and it just... oh, damn it all!" Su Ah grumbled, visibly devastated by the sudden turn of events. Well, it had been something she'd been looking forward to seeing for a while.

The odds had been pretty stacked against her with the likelihood of having a shower of the magnitude this one was, but, well...

The world had a cruel sense of humor.

Her bra was a pale pink against the white shirt, now practically see-through through the fabric. An interesting visual, but I figured she'd rather not be flashing the mountain fauna right now.

"What should we do?" Su Ah asked. She turned to me, her hair plastered to her cheeks, those blue eyes looking so damn sad I nearly handed over a box of tissues I didn't have. "I waited months for this night. One specific night, Jae-il. With you..."

"I know, Noona." I said, raising my voice a little over the rising cacophony. "Maybe it'll stop later, but that's no excuse for you to catch hypothermia."

She bit her lip.

I grabbed her hand. Her fingers were cold. "We'll have more occasions to see the stars together, Noona. Come on."

She nodded, defeated, and squeezed my hand back.

That's about when the sky decided it hated us with a passion as the steady pitter-patter gave way to a proper, full-force downpour. Raindrops hit the leaves around us, sounding like a spray of automatic fire. The sound reverberated all around us. It was almost deafening.

The light pitter-patter transformed into the percussive hammering of a heavy metal drummer. A true wall of water swept down the mountainside, tearing at everything in its path. We could barely see the trail, let alone walk on it. Mud was now an oozing suction cup attached to our boots.

"Change of plans!" I shouted over the roaring of the water and wind. The bus stop was basically thirty minutes away from the foothill; there was no way we'd make it there and wait under the pathetic, useless cover of a small, plastic roof while huddling on the floor, soaking wet. "We need to find shelter!"

Su Ah was quick, sharp, and intelligent, but her weather related and survivalist knowledge was quite low on the ground. So it fell on my shoulders to find the first solution, or lead, on where to take shelter, or better said, which place on the mountain or near it we'd be able to spend the night.

We stumbled onward, basically blind. I held her hand tightly.

A particularly deep puddle almost took my boot clean off, and Su Ah shrieked as her foot slid, and I barely managed to catch her and yank her upright right before she could take a mud bath.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Her nod was jerky. "Just... great." She breathed out, hair plastered to her face.

Then, just as a bolt of lightning ripped the sky open, casting a strobe-like light over our surroundings, I saw it.

"This way!" I yelled, pulling her from the slick path and towards a thicket of thorny bushes near a rockface.

She didn't ask questions; she just followed my lead. We pushed through branches that scratched angrily at our ankles and clothes. This path was way off the trail.

Nestled into a recess in the rock, almost completely hidden from view by the overgrown flora, was a dark opening. A goddamn cave. God—fucking—finally!

I dragged her inside. The sound of the storm dulled a little.

"W-where... are we?" Su Ah stammered. She stood dripping on the dirt floor. Her t-shirt clung uncomfortably, outlining more than it should.

"Shelter..." I said with finality, unloading my pack. It landed with a damp, heavy thud. Our things were wet. Everything.

Still, a cave was better than nothing, though it offered little protection, besides keeping out the worst of the rain.

"Hopefully, we can wait it out in here. That's it."

As she shivered, her eyes studied the surroundings, moving to me and then the outside. It was slowly getting dark. With the clouds and the rain and the growing shadows of the mountains...

She still looked on the verge of bursting into tears of frustration, her mouth downturned into a disappointed pout as she gazed outside towards the sky. She could have probably punched the clouds right now if she could.

The cave was small. I could touch the ceiling if I stretched my arm up. It was no vast cavern; more like a large, shallow scoop taken out of the mountainside. The stone floor was damp and gritty.

Su Ah hugged herself, rubbing her arms. Her teeth chattered. The temperature had dropped with the rain. "It's... c-cold..."

"Stay there."

I rummaged through my pack. My sleeping bag. It was waterproof. I unrolled it, the rustling of the synthetic material loud in the enclosed space. I spread it out on the flattest patch of ground I could find. I also pulled out a towel from the side pocket—a small, travel-sized one, but it was something.

"Here." I gently pushed her down onto the sleeping bag. "Get out of that wet shirt."

Her head snapped up. "W-what?"

"You're going to get sick. We both are, if we stay in these." I pointed to my own soaked shirt. "So, take your clothes off, dry yourself, and get inside the sleeping bag." I said, my tone leaving no room for argument.

Su Ah's blush, even in the dim light, was visible. It traveled from her cheeks all the way down to her neck. She fidgeted for a moment, frowning, not giving a clear, intelligible answer.

"Here." I handed over the small towel to her.

She tentatively accepted it.

I averted my eyes politely until a sound I hadn't heard in a while—her slightly annoyed grunt—echoed across the cave. Then the soft slither of cloth followed, a clink of the zip coming undone, then—

A light, pleasurable feeling slithered its way through me and reached my groin. I looked, of course, I'm no saint. I turned, and the image was pure sin.

The most beautiful, delightful curve of a womanly back was greeting me. Soft skin, milky white. Her tiny waist and the smallest dip along the arch, making the illusion of an inviting slope that lead further downward to what I knew would be a luscious, rounded butt.

The bra was off, and I could see the edges of those pretty round mounds from her crossed arms.

Su Ah briefly turned towards me, the blush on her face as intense as her dark blue eyes.

"......"

She toweled herself dry as I looked around the cave, looking for any sources of firewood, but couldn't find anything useful. Then again, we wouldn't freeze to death with the equipment we had and the warm sleeping bags.

Still, a fire would've made things way more cozy.

When I turned around, Su Ah was already nestled inside the sleeping bag. Her clothes were neatly placed over some rocks to dry.

Her eyes flickered from the ground, the rocks, then finally to mine.

I unfurled my own sleeping bag, settling it right next to her, and began to take my own clothes off. I hadn't had any spares with me as we'd have gotten back home sometime early morning before midday.

I peeled the soaked shirt off my skin, the fabric making a sloppy schmuck sound as it came away.

Muscular arms, defined with lean edges honed from years of training, emerged into the dim light that came from outside. A narrow waist, a solid slab of rippling pecs, defined abdominals, all cut to perfection by strict dieting, balanced exercise and blood, sweat and tears... well, no literal blood or tears, but definitely sweat.

Across from me in the sleeping bag, Su Ah shifted. A faint whimper slipped past her lips.

I found a pair of eyes looking up at me. She averted her gaze, seemingly looking down at her breasts, but ending up glancing back at me anyway. Her teeth worried her bottom lip.

"What's with that shyiness, Noona? You can look, you know. You've looked before."

She stared. At what was pretty much an erotic sculpture of a boy on the verge of adulthood with muscles on display to rival Olympic gymnasts; well, perhaps that was an exaggeration, but I certainly didn't look fifteen.

"Shut up..."

She closed her eyes and shivered, opening them again. She fixed her gaze somewhere on my chest, tracking a bead of water sliding down from the middle of my throat and down my sternum.

I scoffed, unbuckling my belt next, letting it fall. Her jaw seemed to tick in an up and down pattern and her gaze widened at the noise.

Su Ah's breathing quickened in that telltale way. Not panicked, but aroused. Two quick inhales followed by a pause she thought was subtle. Honestly, I was quite hardening myself.

She drew the sleeping bag tighter around herself, as if the thin synthetic could serve as armor against my very naked flesh. Her eyes were screwed shut, eyelashes quivering as if an earthquake was going on in those dilated pupils of hers.

The blush speckled across her cheeks and nose was almost feverish now.

With a shuddering breath, this older sister of mine shifted and turned around.

Just as I was about to move towards my own sleeping bag, she softly called out.

"Jae-il...?"

I glanced up at her. Her back was still facing me.

"Can I... can we... just for warmth...?" She quietly asked. "I'm still a little bit cold... so... can we just...?"