It's December now, and the girls are on the couch. Brooklynn's sipping cocoa from a mug and Charlie's mug of matcha has been resting on the table next to Brooklynn's laptop. Charlie's laptop is on her lap and she's concentrating on what she's reading with a focused face, one written with a vague sulk.

Brooklynn licks fudge off her spoon. "We should go to the park. I hear it's a real winter wonderland. Like Narnia."

Delayed, Charlie says, "Huh? Oh...yeah," without taking her eyes off her laptop though she moves her head towards Brooklynn.

Brooklynn shifts her eyes with flat sass. "And then we could go look at the Christmas tree at Lotte Palace?"

"Totally..." Charlie's staring at the screen.

Brooklynn sarcastically tries to see what she's so focused on. "Um, hello?"

"What?" Again Charlie moves her head but not her eyes. Brooklynn waves her hand in front of Charlie's face, who abruptly shuts her laptop altogether, making Brooklynn frown suspiciously.

"Did you hear what I said...about going to the park and Lotte Palace?"

"Oh! Yeah...um...why don't we just go to an actual park? Like, one of those campsite ones outside the city?" she suggests excitedly.

Brooklynn furrows her eyebrows with a speechlessly open mouth. "And why would we do that...?"

Charlie shrugs. "It'll be fun. A nice little adventure. We can go hiking and rock climbing and look at waterfalls..." she says in a cajoling singsong voice.

Brooklynn squints. "Ok...but...we can just go to the local park and enjoy nature there. Mostly because it's free and doesn't require a car."

"I'll pay for it! It's all on me." She's starting to insist, piquing Brooklynn's concern.

"Ok. Since when are you all pro-nature and outdoorsy, anyway? And where are you gonna get the money to take us to some mountain?"

Charlie sighs. "It's not as expensive as you think. Anyway, I'm not taking no for an answer!"

And suddenly Brooklynn finds herself in a red flannel parka with thick wool inside, and Charlie's in the same parka except hers is red. And they're in black bunny tail beanies and blue snowsuits and brown boots and hauling rucksacks on their backs. They're standing on a seemingly endless cobbly concrete trail at the foot of a green mountain, with a diaspora of fellow hikers leisurely but happily passing them. There's no tour guide. Just compasses and survival instincts, neither of which Brooklynn nor Charlie have.

"Ok...let's go!" Charlie says in a here-goes-nothing voice.

"Oh god, I can't believe this..." Brooklynn mutters as she strolls miserably with Charlie up the trail from the parking lot, where they got off a shuttle coach bus. They took a park-and-ride with a rented smart car that Charlie drove.

"So we have to find our way to the peak, and back down here by the time the bus comes back," Charlie tells her.

"Yeah, if we don't get eaten by a bear before then."

"Don't be ridiculous," Charlie rolls her eyes with a smile.

"Let's just follow these old white people."

"No, let's find our own way. Let's beat our own path and blaze our own trail!"

"And the award for Shittiest Uplifting Speech goes to?"

Charlie laughs as they amble across the pavement, with intentionally challenging bumps and rockiness for light exercise.

Brooklynn hears a crunch and a drop. "Oh god! What was that!?" She stops and stands extra close to Charlie, frantically looking into the surrounding parallel forest on either side of the walkway. Charlie stops and watches too but with nowhere as much alarm.

"It's nothing. Probably just squirrels or something. Come on..." she keeps walking.

"That must be a damn big squirrel. It sounded like a fucking dinosaur." Brooklynn reluctantly keeps walking.

"You watch way too much tv, girl."

It doesn't stop Brooklynn from worriedly snapping her head in a glance in every direction every so often as she walked, gripping the straps of her backpack.

And soon it was just a cacophony of pop-up sounds from animals she heard but never saw. And after about 10 minutes, she started to get the hang of it.

"Feeling it now?" Charlie asks hopefully, wearing a grin.

"Yeah...well...bit underwhelming. Are we really just walking through the woods?"

"It's therapeutic, it's exercise...!" Charlie gleefully announces to the wind before her.

Brooklynn widens her eyes then rolls them stiffly.

"But if you really want fun," she adds in a lower voice. "We don't have to take the trail, you know." She smiles mischievously.

"You're talking about the whole beat your own trail thing?"

"Blaze your own trail, beat your own path," Charlie corrects her patiently with a smile.

"Oh. Right."

Charlie cranes her neck surreptitiously, looking through some trees. There's not really anyone around. "Come on!" she whispers loudly, beckoning her head. She runs on her tiptoes off the trail and into the bushes and vegetation.

"Charlie!" Brooklynn calls hoarsely, rushing after her.

Their boots crunch over earth and they bushwhack with their hands. "What if there's poison ivy?"

"That's what antihistamines are for!"

And shortly after, they're the only things standing on an unbeaten twiggy, leafy and snowy stretch, other than all the ancient trees. They're identical and neverending in the distance. It's dead quiet and gloomy.

They stand in the vast openness of the forest. They look left. They look right. They rotate and twirl with increasingly heavy breath.

"No, it's not fun anymore. Take us back!" Brooklynn sharply commands Charlie.

"Oh my god. Calm down. I'll just use the map to—oh my god!" Charlie's phone has died.

"Oh great. Fucking great! Fucking perfect! Fucking fantastic!"

"Just use your phone!"

Brooklynn sighs in relief but it's dying by the minute. She tries to connect to a signal and it won't. She holds it high and there's stubbornly nothing.

"No..." she says lowly. "Nooo!" she wails loudly at her phone screen.

Charlie looks saddened with growing panic. "Ok. Ok. We'll just..." she rummages through one of her pockets. "Use this map." And she unfolds this obnoxiously big poster covered in a collage tiny colorful lines leading nowhere. "What the fuck is this shit?" She and Brooklynn look at it helplessly and hopelessly.

Brooklynn punches a hole through it with a growl. "Arrgh-ya!"

And she marches away.

"Well that was fucking genius." Charlie folds it back up less than perfectly and shoves it back in her pocket. "We could've used that."

"The only way we'll ever know how to use a paper map is if we look up instructions on the internet," Brooklynn says. "But we can't because...oh yeah, that's right: Charlie got us lost in the woods!"

"We're not lost. One thing people always forget is that where they came from is around. All they have to do—is go back."

"Well then lead the way, Aragorn."

Charlie looks at her flatly. "Haha. Very funny. It's not like you can help us."

"I told you to follow those old white people. But no. Miss Beat Your Own Trail just had to go and wander off. You're not Tarzan. You weren't raised in the woods."

"First off. It's blaze your own trail, beat your own path."

"Oh, fuck off."

"And second: follow those white people if we get lost in the woods is like saying we should follow a random black person if we get lost in the ghetto."

Brooklynn loudly scoffs genuinely. "If I had known my best friend was racist."

"Racist? I've fucked more black guys than you have."

"Yeah, because you love to meet strangers on dating apps." Brooklynn triumphantly keeps walking.

"Yeah because excuse me if I want to go out and experience life and have fun instead of being a couch potato!" Charlie follows her as she rants.

"Save me the melodrama, please." Brooklynn keeps her back to Charlie.

"And where are you off to?"

"Looking for the yellow brick road, you?" Brooklynn rolls her eyes.

"Look for a centaur to drag you away while you're at it."

"At this point, it's exactly what I can hope for."

And then thunder rumbles.

They immediately pause at the same time.

"Oh god..." they say under their breath.

Brooklynn whips around. "Seriously, we have to get the fuck back to the entrance before it storms and gets dark!" she tells Charlie.

"Well, we were walking in this direction. So why don't we just...turn around and walk in that direction. That's our best bet."

And then the clouds make everything a darker gray, and the rain makes no hesitation, and falls on them without hesitation. They just stare at each other blankly.

"HELP US!" For the next minute they scream and wail over and over to nothing, to no one.

"Ok, wait, wait!" Charlie holds her hands up. She takes her backpack off and Brooklynn stares hungrily while she rummages through it. Then she finally pulls something out. "I have an airhorn."

Brooklynn stares anti-climactically. "Oh and what are you gonna do with that, sunshine? Sing for the moose and the birds?"

"It's to call for help."

"We just need to stay dry and warm right now." Brooklynn runs in the direction Charlie suggested, before slipping and sliding down mud and ice. Charlie awkwardly runs after her and helps her up with that big backpack.

"What do you have in here, anyway?" Charlie takes Brooklynn's backpack off and finds her laptop, makeup, hair supplies, a hoodie and jeans, and sandwiches. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

Brooklynn protectively snatches her backpack. "How the fuck was I supposed to know we'd be stranded in the woods during a rainstorm?" She puts her backpack back on. "And what do you have, Bear Grylls?"

"We're gonna have to build a shelter," Charlie concludes.

"I haven't built anything since I was 5 using toy blocks."

"It's really easy!" Charlie picks up branches. "You can help you know."

"Ugh!" Brooklynn stomps over and helps her lean branches against trees. "Everything's really coming together!" Brooklynn notices with grinning hope.

"I should really try out for a tv show!" Charlie grins back.

And then while propping up a branch on another branch, Brooklynn lets out a heavy sneeze, knocking the shelter down in a domino effect. They stare silently as the branches lay dead in a messy pile.

"Sorry." She sneezes again.

"Ok. You know what. Fuck it." Charlie snatches up her backpack and keeps walking.

"I'm sorry!" Brooklynn says with a stuffy nose, stumbling after her.

They walk with leafy tree branches over their heads, using it as a makeshift umbrella. It's progressively got darker by the minute during the rain, but them building the shelter passed the time of the storm thankfully, which has subsided almost magically. But now everything on them and around them is uncomfortably soaked and heavier and grosser with wetness. They stop walking to rest, and sit on their umbrellas hopelessly.

"Well I guess we'll just...have to become one with the earth and nature, until someone finds us or, until it gets lighter and drier," Brooklynn says. And then she starts passionately humming a somber, made-up folk song, like a widow on a frontier. Charlie looks at her, and then solemnly joins in. Now their voices are overlapping as they riff.

"La da dummm..."

"Hmmm ummmm..."

"Da dooo dummmm...Your humming is distracting me," Brooklynn says.

"You're distracting me," Charlie retorts.

Brooklynn sighs. "Well this is fun..."

Charlie: "Sorry," she sadly says.

"Why did you really want to come out here?"

Charlie sighs long. "You know when we were applying to jobs and stuff?"

Brooklynn impatiently acknowledges it.

"I applied to a teaching job...in Japan. Never in a million years thinking they'd get back to me or...even say yes."

Brooklynn blinks.

"And...I got accepted today. And...I have to leave next week."

Brooklynn's face is vacant but her eyes are heavy with sadness and a little devastation. She chuckles and looks away. "Wow..."

"I mean, we can go together. And I can definitely get you a teaching job too!"

"Yeah right. You've always been a selfish bitch." And as soon as Brooklynn gets up to leave, a snake drops from the treetops on her head and back. She screams like she's never screamed before, twirling hysterically and reaching but failing to get the creature off, who's kind of wrapped around her. Charlie's hopped to her feet and finally finds a moment to grip the animal and yank it and throw it with all her might. It plummets on the ground and slithers away. It was a regular adult garter snake.

"Did it bite you?!" Charlie helps her check.

"No, I'm..." she looks at Charlie resentfully, "I'm fine." She snatches herself away. "When were you gonna tell me? The day of your flight?!"

"I...I don't know. I didn't think you'd be mad. We've always wanted to go to Japan but could never afford it and we don't have Bachelors. But this job is an employment agency that hires virtual tutors, but they'll deploy in countries where they teach if you choose. And they beg for employee referrals so if we start now, you can at least get interviewed when we land...if we go together. And sure, everything goes left with us but we always find a way to make it work. We can do this together, too," she pleads as she becomes lachrymose. "We can go to karaoke and maid cafes and host clubs," she adds charmfully.

Brooklynn cracks a smile. Charlie holds her hands out, and Brooklynn walks in to hug her. They hug tight with tearful smiles for several seconds, and then pull apart. "Now let's build a fire." Brooklynn laughs. "I have matcha and matches." She holds up both as she says the words.

They sit back down and look for something to light on fire.

"Everything's wet," Brooklynn laments.

"I know..." Charlie takes out the map and rips pieces off quickly. She lights the edge.

Brooklynn: "Now let's get out of these clothes before we catch pneumonia." They stand up and disrobe. Before they fully peel off their snowsuits, they're standing there in their bras with the rest of the snowsuit around their waist and still on their legs.

"Um, excuse me?" A stern woman's voice sounds. A head pops up over the bushes, then a few others follow.

"Oh my goodness, people!" the girls exclaim as they rush over.

"What on earth are you girls doing? Making fires and getting naked?!" passersby ask and bike riders, crowding around, some with dogs.

The girls blubber while looking like deer in headlights. "We were stranded, and thought we'd be here all night, so we were going to get dry and we built a fire."

"Stranded?" someone else asks. The park visitors laugh. Their kids laugh too.

"You're not even far from the path. It's right here," a handsomely gray-haired man tandem biking with his wife tells them between laughter. He points ahead of him.

"What?" Brooklynn and Charlie tiptoe out the bushes, and as soon as they do, they're on the paved path again.

Brooklynn and Charlie stare at each other in a stupor as everyone hysterically laughs at them. Park rangers walk over and tell them to get their things.

"We'll let you guys off from arresting or fining you since I see you two have...issues. But you're banned from the park. Let's go."

"I was attacked by a snake! You guys should really work on controlling your wildlife. You're lucky I don't sue!" Brooklynn says while everyone keeps laughing and the park rangers roll their eyes and shake their heads as the girls scoop their things up. A park ranger pours water on the fire from a water bottle.

"Brooklynn, let's just go. I can't wait to get the fuck out of here."

EPILOGUE

Brooklynn and Charlie are taking selfies and vlogging with pure joy and big smiles, in the middle of Triangle Park in Osaka, Japan. They picked up their whole life and put it in two suitcases, and now share a 2LDK working as floating and virtual English tutors at cram schools and eikaiwas. With their pay put together and prior savings, they do just fine, as well as with money from selling their precious coffee table and couch. They also have sold a lot of Charlie's art since moving to Japan, especially right here in Triangle Park. 

Where will their Japanese adventures take them?...