Chapter 2: The Morning's Hard Truth
The first thing Jun Ho felt was the press of warm, stagnant air against his face. The second was a dull, urgent throbbing between his legs. He blinked, the grey fabric of the tent ceiling coming into fuzzy focus. The dream—a tangled, soundless thing of his father’s spreadsheets melting into rivers—dissolved, leaving only the solid, embarrassing reality of his body. He was on his back, and the thin material of his boxers was strained, tented obscenely by a rigid morning erection.
A soft chuckle came from his left.
“Morning, Kitten.”
Jun Ho’s head snapped to the side. River was already awake, propped on one elbow, head resting in his hand. He hadn’t put a shirt back on. In the flat morning light seeping through the nylon, the ink on his skin looked like bruises. His expression was a mix of amusement and genuine curiosity.
“Sleep well?” River asked, his eyes drifting pointedly downward for a second before meeting Jun Ho’s horrified gaze.
Jun Ho scrambled to roll onto his side, curling in on himself, but the small space made it a futile, awkward shuffle. The movement only made things more obvious. Heat flooded his face, his ears burning. “Sorry,” he muttered into the foam pad.
“For what? Basic biology?” River’s voice was light. “Happens to the best of us. Worst timing, usually. Mine’s like a fucking barometer. Wakes me up before a storm.”
Jun Ho said nothing, willing himself to disappear. The throbbing hadn’t subsided; it felt amplified by his shame, a trapped, frantic pulse. He could smell last night’s woodsmoke on River, and the sour-sweet tang of their shared sweat.
River sighed, a quiet, practical sound. “Look. It’s uncomfortable. You’re all wound up. We’ve got a long walk today. Sade will work you into the ground.” He paused. “You could just deal with it. Quick. I won’t watch if you don’t want me to.”
The offer hung in the humid space. It wasn’t lewd. It was transactional, almost kind in its bluntness. Like sharing water. Jun Ho’s mind blanked. Every rule, every shred of propriety he’d ever known, screamed at him. But those rules belonged to a world of locked bathroom doors and silent, shamed solitude. Here, there was no door. Just fabric, and another person who didn’t seem to see a crisis.
“I…” Jun Ho’s voice cracked.
“Or I could help,” River said, even quieter. “Hands are hands. Gets it done faster. Less… theatrical.”
Jun Ho couldn’t breathe. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, his face pressed into the musty foam.
He heard the rustle of River shifting. Then a warm, calloused hand settled on his hip, turning him gently onto his back again. Jun Ho kept his eyes squeezed shut, a prisoner in his own skin. River’s fingers hooked into the waistband of his boxers and tugged them down just enough. The cooler air on his exposed flesh made him gasp.
Then the hand wrapped around him. It wasn’t like his own. The grip was firmer, knowing, with a rough texture to the palm that was utterly foreign. A thumb swept over the tip, spreading the bead of moisture that had gathered there. Jun Ho’s whole body jerked.
“Easy,” River murmured. His breath was close. “Just breathe. It’s just a release. Nothing more.”
He began to move his hand, a steady, efficient rhythm. Jun Ho bit his lip hard, trying to stifle the sounds climbing his throat. The sensation was overwhelming, a direct line of pleasure that short-circuited his brain. It was intertwined with the terrifying intimacy of it, the sheer animal reality of another person’s touch in this crude, open way. He heard a soft, slick sound and risked a glance.
River was looking at him, his face calm, but his own free hand was moving in his lap, stroking himself with the same unembarrassed rhythm. Seeing that, the mutual participation, somehow unknotted a tension in Jun Ho’s chest. It wasn’t something being done to him. It was something they were both doing. It was, bizarrely, shared.
The relief built fast, a tide he couldn’t hold back. His hips stuttered off the pad, and a choked-off sound escaped him as he came over River’s fingers and his own stomach. The waves pulsed through him, leaving him trembling and utterly empty.
River worked him through it, then released him, wiping his hand casually on the edge of his own sleeping bag. He finished himself off a moment later with a sharp intake of breath, a few quick strokes, and a quiet grunt. Then he reached for a bandana from his pack, cleaning himself up before tossing it to Jun Ho.
“Here.”
Jun Ho took it with shaking hands, cleaning the mess from his skin. The shame was still there, a hot echo, but it was now mixed with something else—a profound, dizzying gratitude. He couldn’t look at River.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
River just laughed, a soft, breathy sound. “Don’t mention it. Seriously. Ever. To anyone.” He pulled his boxers and jeans back on. “Consider it a welcome-to-the-woods survival lesson. Managing resources, including tension.” He zipped the tent flap open, letting in a blast of cool, damp air that smelled of pine and wet earth. “Now get dressed. Sade’s already judging us for sleeping in.”
The log was exactly where River said it would be. A massive, water-rotted fir trunk, half-sunk in the loam at the edge of the clearing. It was a test, naked and obvious.
Sade stood nearby, sipping from a metal cup of something steaming. Maya, a wiry woman with a shaved head and a spiderweb tattoo climbing her neck, was rolling a sleeping bag tight. She gave Jun Ho a slow, appraising nod.
“The camp moves today,” Sade said, not looking at the log. “That stays, it trips someone in the dark. It goes.”
Jun Ho looked at the log. It looked back, immense and passive. He walked over, knelt, and pushed. It didn’t budge. The bark was slick and crumbly. He dug his fingers in, found a grip, and threw his weight into it. A shudder, and a chunk of bark came off in his hands. He fell on his ass.
Maya snorted. Sade sipped his drink.
Jun Ho’s face burned again, but this was a different heat—frustration, not shame. He got up. He walked a circle around the log. One end was thicker, more buried. The other tapered slightly. He went to the tapered end, knelt again, and tried to lift. The weight was unbelievable, a dense, wet core of dead wood. A grunt tore from his throat. He got it an inch off the ground, muscles in his back screaming, before dropping it.
He stood, panting, his soft body already protesting. He remembered his father’s voice: Brute force is the resort of the unintelligent. He hated that voice. But the idea clung.
He left the clearing, scrabbling up a small, rocky slope. Sade’s eyes tracked him but he said nothing. Jun Ho found what he needed: a football-sized stone. He hauled it back, the rough edges biting into his palms. He placed it a few feet from the thicker end of the log. Then he went and found a sturdy, shorter branch, a lever.
He wedged the branch under the thick end of the log, planted the stone as a fulcrum, and leaned his entire weight on the branch.
For a terrifying second, nothing. Then, with a wet, groaning suck, the log’s end lifted. Just a few inches. It was enough. Jun Ho scrambled, got his shoulder under the raised end, and pushed sideways, walking it like a clumsy, giant wheel. It rolled off its perch, thudded onto the ground, and then, with the momentum, was easier. He leveraged, pushed, rolled it again. He repeated the process, his breath sawing in his lungs, sweat stinging his eyes, until the log was clear of the camp’s perimeter, lying parallel to a game trail.
He dropped the branch, hands on his knees, dripping and heaving.
A shadow fell over him. Sade. He looked from the relocated log to the lever and stone, then back to Jun Ho’s flushed face. His expression didn’t change. He just held out the metal cup.
Jun Ho took it. The liquid inside was bitter and hot, some kind of strong tea.
“Drink,” Sade said. “Then pack up. We walk in ten.”
He walked back to the fire pit. As he passed Maya, Jun Ho heard him say, low and to her alone, “Kid’s not stupid.”
Jun Ho drank the tea, the bitterness a clean feeling on his tongue. River appeared at his side, beaming, and slapped him on his sore back. “Told you. Not a complaint. Just a smarter way. Let’s go, genius. The main camp’s waiting.”
They broke camp with a quiet efficiency Jun Ho tried to mimic, rolling the tarps, scattering the ashes, leaving no trace but the turned earth where the log had been. As they shouldered their packs and filed onto a narrow deer path heading north, Jun Ho took one last look at the clearing. It was just a damp patch of woods again. But he felt its imprint on him, a new set of coordinates etched somewhere deep. He turned and followed the others into the trees, the weight of his pack feeling, for the first time, like it belonged there.
The trees swallowed them whole. For hours, there was only the rhythm of boots on soft earth, the labored saw of breath, and the creak of pack straps. Jun Ho’s world narrowed to the worn heels of River’s boots ahead, the distant, silent figure of Sade a ghost between the pines. His shoulders burned, a bright, clean pain that felt like earning. The forest air was cool and thick with the smell of damp fern and decomposing wood.
They stopped only for water, passing a single canteen in silence. River pointed out a cluster of oyster mushrooms on a fallen alder, pinching a few for the evening pot. Maya spotted a deer trail Sade had missed, her voice a low, proud mutter. Jun Ho just drank, and walked, and tried to keep up. His city legs were jelly, but the jelly was learning to hold.
Late afternoon bled the light to a dull gold. Sade halted where the land dipped toward the sound of rushing water. “Here,” he said, the word a gift. They shrugged their packs into the dirt with collective groans. This new clearing was smaller, perched on a slope above a shallow, rocky creek. The ground was drier, dotted with flat stones.
Jun Ho’s body screamed as he knelt to unbuckle his pack. Every muscle had been rediscovered and was now filing a complaint. He watched the others move into a well-practiced dance. Maya began clearing a circle of stones for a fire pit. Sade unsheathed his knife and vanished into the brush, returning minutes later with an armful of straight, dry sticks.
River stretched, his spine popping audibly. He caught Jun Ho staring blankly at his own unopened pack. “First rule of making camp,” he said, walking over. “Get the fucking thing off your back. Second rule: water. Always claim your water source.” He nudged Jun Ho’s boot with his own. “Take the filters down to the creek. Fill the big bag.”
It was a simple order. Jun Ho took the grimy, collapsed water bag and the filter pump, stumbling down the short bank to the creek’s edge. The water was achingly cold. He sank his burning hands into it, letting the shock travel up his arms. He focused on the mechanics: bag in water, pump attached, a smooth, repetitive motion. The clear water rose in the container. It felt like creation.
By the time he lugged the full bag back, a small, efficient fire was crackling within its ring of stones. Maya was unwrapping a packet of dried noodles. The smoky, savory smell made Jun Ho’s stomach clench with hunger.
“So,” Maya said, not looking up from the pot she was setting near the flames. Her voice was gravel and smoke. “You two have a cozy little wake-up call this morning?”
Jun Ho froze, the water bag heavy in his arms. His face ignited.
River, who was unrolling a tarp, laughed. “God, Maya. Eavesdropping is a vulgar habit.”
“Wasn’t eavesdropping,” she said, finally glancing at Jun Ho with a smirk. “Tent canvas is thin. Sounded like a spirited mutual aid society meeting. All that… strenuous cooperation.” She stressed the last word, her eyes glinting.
Jun Ho’s mouth was desert. He couldn’t form a word. He just stood there, hot and stupid, the memory of River’s hand flashing in his mind like a struck match.
“Leave him be,” Sade rumbled from where he was sharpening his knife on a stone. But it wasn’t a reprimand. It was a fact, placed between them. Jun Ho fumbled the water bag onto a flat rock.
“It’s fine,” he mumbled, desperate to seem unaffected. He failed utterly.
“It’s biology,” River corrected, his tone airy. He stood up and pulled his sweat-darkened t-shirt over his head. Then, with the same practical motion as in the tent, he undid his jeans and stepped out of them, kicking them toward his pack. He stood naked in the firelight, a lean, tattooed figure utterly at ease. He scratched his patchy beard and walked toward the creek bank, entirely unselfconscious. “I’m covered in grit. That creek’s calling.”
Maya didn’t look up from stirring the noodles. Sade tested his knife’s edge with a thumb, satisfied. To them, River’s body was just a body, a piece of the landscape needing a rinse.
To Jun Ho, it was a lightning strike. His exhausted brain, stripped of its defenses, reacted with pure, stupid instinct. The heat that had receded from his face flooded downward again. He was wearing thin, worn jeans. There was no hiding it this time. The fabric tented, obvious and humiliating in the open air.
He hunched forward, turning slightly away, but the damage was done. Maya’s sharp eyes caught the movement. She let out a low, amused whistle, shaking her head. “Jesus, kid. Trigger-happy.”
River heard, turning from the bank. His gaze swept over Jun Ho’s hunched posture, the blatant evidence. He didn’t grin. His expression was one of faint, weary understanding. He shook his head once, a tiny motion.
“Go dunk yourself in the creek,” River said, his voice quiet but carrying. “The cold water. All the way under. Do it now.”
It was an order, a prescription. Jun Ho fled, stumbling down the bank, his face on fire, his body betraying him with every step. He didn’t undress. He walked straight into the shallow, icy flow, the shock of it punching the air from his lungs. He sank down, letting the water numb him, watching the firelight flicker on the faces of the people above who had seen everything, and who, somehow, were just waiting for him to get it together. The cold was a brutal mercy. It settled him. The frantic pulse between his legs retreated, shamed into submission.
He sat there, shivering, until his teeth chattered. When he climbed out, dripping and heavy-limbed, the camp had moved on. Maya was handing out bowls of noodles. Sade was checking the sky. River, now wearing only his jeans, his torso still damp, handed him a blanket without a word. Their fingers brushed. Jun Ho took it, wrapping the coarse wool around his shoulders. No one mentioned the creek, or his jeans, or anything at all.
The silence wasn’t judgment. It was just space. He sat by the fire, eating the salty noodles, the heat from the flames slowly seeping back into his bones. The embarrassment was still a low burn in his gut, but alongside it was a dawning, gritty realization. Here, his body’s clumsy signals were just weather. Not a moral failing. Not a crisis. Just a predictable, manageable phenomenon, like the rot on a log or the need for a lever. He had a lot to learn.