“Is it time away from you?” Seyoon chirps.
“Rude. Just for that, I’m giving this to Dean.”
He pulls a folded note from his pocket and plops it in my hand. “The incentive you two won yesterday for giving Blake the best performance.” Garrett pats each of our heads. “Don’t get lost out there.”
Everyone splits off into the woods, trailed by the usual team of camera and sound operators. I catch Blake whispering to some of the techs, and when Seyoon and I head out, there are double the usual number of cameras following us. A restless buzz thrums under my skin as the techs circle us on every side, constantly in my periphery. There are already cameras installed in the trees—is this really necessary?
Once we’re away from the other contestants, we unfold the clue. The scrawl is messy and haphazard.
Vince, Garrett, and Jungeun, sitting in a…
Seyoon squints. “Is this cursive?”
“I think Garrett just has bad handwriting,” I say, then read it aloud. “The answer has to betree.Problem is, which one?”
“What a shit clue. They want us to look for a needle in a haystack. No, a needle in a pile of other needles. See? Even the metaphor sucks.”
I purse my lips and gaze out across the woods, thinking back on the fifteenth season and any particularly memorable locations this could be hinting toward. The scenes flash through my brain like a highlight reel. I gasp when I realize.
“The treehouse!” I scour the map, searching, andyes,there it is. I point it out for Seyoon. “In the final challenge, the obstacle race led to a treehouse at the finish line. Do you remember?”
“Oh—you’re right!” She beams at me. “Nice work, partner.”
I try not to preen too visibly at the praise.
According to the map, there’s no paved road or hiking trail to get to where the treehouse is located, which is clear on the other side of the perimeter, so Seyoon and I get to work trekking through the woods. The others must be scrambling high and low in search of their own Funko Pops, but wherever they are, it’s not nearby. It’s just me, Seyoon, and the tiny militia of underpaid film workers behind us.
Seyoon grunts, stepping over a fallen tree. “Good thing we got that clue, huh?”
“That’s all thanks to your sweet little spiel yesterday.” With the cameras in earshot, I can’t call it what it actually was: a damn convincing performance.
Seyoon shoots me what’s supposed to be an obnoxious grin, but it’s kind of accidentally charming. “That was all from the heart, lover.”
“Lover?”
“Yeah, I’m testing out some pet names. We’re dating, it makes sense. You don’t like it?”
I don’t understand how she can say things likewe’re datingso flippantly without combusting. Damnit. She really is better at everything than me. “Feels one-note,” I say to shed off the embarrassment.
“What about ‘babe’?”
“Please don’t.”
“Pretty boy?”
“Now you’re just teasing me.”
She loops her arm on a nearby trunk and swings around it, twirling in front of my path. “Yeah, maybe. But you make it so easy…sunshine.”
That one makes my stomach flip. Ignoring it, I press the back of my hand to her forehead.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Checking for a fever. You must have contracted a flesh-eating virus from swimming in the lake every day, and it’s gnawing away at your brain.”
She doesn’t bat my hand away. Well, now it’s going to stay here. Okay, too long, I’m removing it.
“What, you don’t like ‘sunshine’?” Seyoon asks.
