18 THE FOREST

Their seemingly interminable staring contest lasted only so long, before Yue brought up her hands pressing against his chest endeavoring to nudge and push him aside and away from her. She knew she couldn't maintain her tough-looking composure for a much elongated period. It was all but a donned vizard of acting resilient. Though being titled as 'Troublesome' pestered her, she knew she had no chance of going against a well-built man as himself, neither physically nor in a battle of words.

He chuckles as he fumbles behind lowly in his steps on her hands trying to impel him of the route to the open doorway. It took her to muster her entire vestiges of strength to move him off her avenue, yet he only moved a few steps back, that too were voluntary since he was in a waggish mood. Otherwise no matter the amount of core strength she would have strived to shove him off, he wouldn't have budged an inch.

Yue stomps off in suffering a noticeable disgrace. "You wouldn't want to go out there." She could undeniably sense the mirth in his words, he was undermining her entirely, as she took her words of concern to be only a challenge against her, which from his side were not. She was far from being enlightened of his genuine warnings of what lied ahead if she stepped out of the safe haven she currently stood at.

'What does he take me to be, a petite delicate lady who needs protection? I am nothing near the definition of delicate.' With the thoughts of accepting the provocation she treads towards the sliding door, a large glass window opening in a structure that provides door access from a room to the outdoors, fresh air, and copious natural light.

On reaching the fringe of the room, she turns halfway to look over her shoulder, her gaze fixating right at him, who stood casually in front of the mattress. With one of his hands comfortably residing in his trousers' pockets and the other holding the sweatshirt he brought out, he gave the departing lady in nearly no clothes on her body, a roughish smile.

"Does it look like I care?" she smiled sarcastically in return to his forewarning before jumping out the door panel. She didn't give it even a single sensible thought that she shouldn't venture forth in an area she was incognizant of. She had forsaken the fact that it wasn't her world or city of whose each lane and street she was an erudite in. It was a domain of which she was the only nescient soul.

Yet still unmindul of the hazards that could lie ahead she marched at an incredulous speed in exasperation into the vast stretch of the dark, foreboding forest ahead. She huffed in annoyance as she continued in her steps out of anger on a perilous trail. Subconsciously she might have thought of plodding down in a definite direction, but the paths twisted back and forth so strangely that she wasn't ascertain where was she heading off to exactly, only she had in mind was to get away from the man who considered aiding her an increasingly onerous task.

The pine forest that she unknowingly had stormed into rose over what otherwise would be a bare rain-washed rocky scree, creating an artwork of untold beauty on a canvas that required the hand of God.

However, had it not been past midnight, and had she not been practically naked in these low temperatures, she probably would've been able to admire the natural grandeur of the forest.

Prioritizing her dignity and self-regard, she had lost track of how deep down into the forest she had transcended into. Her morale had seemed to overpower her survival insticts and sensibility in its totality. With each step she took further, and as the wind she walked against made her shiver more and more, she began to realise with leaden steps that she might as well have overreacted. With each step farther into the frightening terrain she went about, she knew that the whole forest, with its trunks and branches, it's thickets and fallen logs, closed in upon her like an impenetrable prison from which she could never escape by herself.

The sounds of the bats overhead startled her as she hurried through the blood-curdling forest. Yue gulped as she finally took a halt in her thoughtless motion at last and turned around. In all directions she turned towards, there was nothing but boundless expanse of shadowy forest. She had no idea how far she had walked into it.

Her hands instinctively wrap around her bare arms, rubbing across her freezing skin striving to warm herself, which was for obvious reasons a futile act. Even if she had to break free of his authorisation, she was deeply repentant of her imprudent verdict of not opting the fleecy fabric he had to offer.

Her vexation at her unwise decisions was immediately replaced by a intense feeling of trepidation and helplessness as in all curves and crevices she gyrated at, she could observe only the darkness that had descended over the forest. With it's abstruse enclave, the dearth of light not only enhanced the perils of being somewhere within the unbounded forest, it also amplified her gloom and despair of being stuck in a hopeless situation.

She had no clue of where to take a turn to end up on a road perhaps, neither she had any knowledge of which way she came through to at least get back to where she earlier was. She had absolutely no sense of direction in the forest or otherwise in that world she now resided in.