People were walking toward the cabin, arms full of bags and boxes, voices overlapping in a messy chorus. Someone cursed about the weight, someone else laughed too loudly, and a stray plastic bag flapped uselessly at someone's side like a flag of surrender.
Shapes in motion. Colors. Sounds.
Then their faces sharpened, as if someone adjusted the focus in his mind.
Friends.
Kevin, loud enough to count as a noise violation even in the middle of a forest.
The short guy stuck to his side, hyping every sentence like he was paid commission on enthusiasm.
The couple welded together on principle, moving as one two-headed organism.
The shy girl hovering just a little too close to his shoulder, as if caught between stepping away and staying near.
It felt familiar.
Comfortable.
Like plans made months ago, finally happening after too many "we should totally do it" messages.
Didn't we talk about going to Kevin's grandpa's cabin once…? Did we actually plan this? When?
His brain tried to flip through memories and hit static. There should've been texts, calls, arguments about dates and rides. But there was nothing clear enough to grasp.
"Hey! You coming or just gonna stand there and stare?" Kevin shouted from ahead.
Hao blinked and realized he'd stopped walking.
Cold air hit his lungs when he inhaled. Pine. Damp soil. Old wood. The kind of clean that didn't exist near roads or buses or apartment blocks.
It was nice.
Too nice.
He stepped forward, boots pressing into the frost-touched ground, following the others toward the cabin. Each step left a faint mark in the pale crust, already softening at the edges.
I'm forgetting something, he thought. A faint itch bloomed in the back of his mind. Something important.
The feeling tightened for a heartbeat, sharp and insistent, like a word on the tip of his tongue.
Then it slipped away, dissolving as if he'd never had it.
Up close, the cabin looked like it had grown out of the forest instead of being built in it.
Thick wooden beams, dark with age. A roof weighed down by slow-gathered moss. The windows were small, yellow light leaking out around heavy curtains. The porch creaked when Kevin stomped up onto it.
"Home sweet fortress," Kevin announced, shouldering the door open.
"More like murder documentary material," the short guy muttered, still grinning.
Hao followed them inside.
Heat swallowed him in one step.
The air was stuffy with woodsmoke and warm dust. The floorboards groaned under everyone's weight, but the cabin's bones felt solid. Old, but not fragile. Lived in.
Music crackled from a speaker already perched on a side table, someone's playlist jumping between songs like it couldn't commit. Bottles clinked on a low table. A couple of half-unpacked bags had been torn open, their contents spilling clothes and snacks across the couch.
Hao drifted toward a wall, watching.
Kevin was in the center of it all, naturally. He'd barely put his bag down before he was already narrating something, hands moving, voice booming, smile bright enough to run on grid power. The short guy beside him provided commentary, throwing in jokes, laughing too hard at nothing in particular.
The couple had claimed one corner of the couch and part of each other's air supply. They had the look of people who would vanish into a room the second the lights dimmed.
The shy girl hovered in their peripheral orbit, close to the group but not quite in it. Every time she shifted, her shoulder brushed Hao's arm, then flinched back, then drifted forward again like she couldn't decide whether the contact was accidental.
What was her name again?
The question rose clear and sharp in his mind.
He frowned.
He'd definitely heard it before. He could see her face easily enough: hair, clothes, the way she smiled more with one corner of her mouth than the other. But when he reached for the name, the music jumped a few decibels and someone laughed loudly, and the thought broke apart.
By the time he tried to catch it again, it was gone.
Someone shoved a plastic cup into his hand.
"Here," the short guy said. "House special."
The liquid inside smelled faintly like pineapple. Hao took a tentative sip.
It tasted like warm vanilla. Too smooth. No burn. No cheap alcohol sting. No aftertaste curling up from his throat.
He pulled the cup away and looked at it.
Dream alcohol.
That was the only label that made sense.
He stared into it for a second, waiting for his brain to object, to call it out as impossible. Nothing came. The edges of his doubt felt blurred, like someone had pressed a thumb into wet paint and smeared it around.
He decided not to think too hard about it.
Time stretched.
Conversations wove in and out, dissolving into background noise the moment he stopped focusing on them. People laughed. Someone argued with the speaker over music choices. The glow of his phone screen flashed from where he'd left it on the table. Cards slapped against wood in a game he only half followed.
Whenever he let his attention drift, the whole scene felt almost too… clean.
No awkward pauses. No off-topic rambling. No one checking messages mid-sentence. Just a smooth loop of "good time with friends" with nothing sticking out.
Every time something felt off, the sensation slid away again.
It's just a normal night, he told himself. So what if I don't remember planning it? People forget stuff.
The shy girl laughed at something Kevin said. Her shoulder bumped his again and stayed there a heartbeat longer this time before she pulled away, cheeks a little warm.
He tried to imagine the messages they must've exchanged. The invite. The "you're coming, right?" The directions.
Nothing came.
Eventually, Kevin climbed onto a chair.
He wobbled a little, arms out, soaking in the attention like sunlight. Someone booed half-heartedly. Someone else shushed them with exaggerated drama.
"Heeey! Listen up!" Kevin called, grinning wide. "This place is huge. Hide and seek?"
A chorus of half-drunk agreement rose immediately.
"Bro, we're not five," the short guy said, already laughing.
"That's why it's funny," Kevin shot back. "We do it in the dark. No lights. Full horror game mode."
"That's how people die in movies," someone commented from the couch.
"So don't be a movie extra," Kevin replied, shrugging.
Hao felt all their gazes slide past him, expecting him to roll his eyes, to drift toward the couch and stay there, to do what he always did: exist at the edges of things.
"Sure," he heard himself say. "I'll be it."
The room seemed to blink with him, just once.
He surprised himself more than anyone else.
"I'll be it," he repeated, firmer this time.
Kevin stopped mid-grin, then laughed and pointed at him like this had been the plan all along.
"See? Hao gets it," he said. "Alright, then. You're seeker."
Hao lifted the plastic cup to his lips again, tasting that fake, warm vanilla.
Something about his own voice felt different in his ears.
Like it belonged to someone who had finally stopped watching from the wall.