The next day, when Fei Fei and Anne 'awoke', they didn't say anything about the night before. It was like it hadn't even happened at all; they might as well had been talking about the weather. Realistically, they both knew that wasn't good, or heathy, after all, they hadn't gone through their respective coming of age journeys for nothing, after all. But every time one of them opened their mouth to say something, nothing came out. Everything they had to say was said yesterday. Whether or not their loved ones were here had nothing to do with this mission, and all Fei Fei and Anne could do was move forward.

Still, they'd be lying if they felt alone, or burdened. Despite not a word being exchanged between them, Fei Fei and Anne had been through enough that they were well aware that they could count on each other, lean on each other, no matter what. They felt better together than apart.

Fei Fei and Anne ate the rest of the fruit for breakfast, and then put out the barely-there fire. Not really worth starting a forest fire, no matter how little the chances of that there was. After all that was done, Fei Fei turned to Anne.

"You had a plan, did you?" she asked. "Of where to get the flowers."

"Oh, yeah!" Anne remembered. She led Fei Fei to the edge of the cave and the two poked their head out. Anne pointed out the door, now in plain sight in the bright daylight.

Fei Fei gulped. "That... That was there the whole time?!" she cried.

"Whatever's in there has to be huge..." Anne mused. She gave Fei Fei sly look. "Like a man-eating giant, maybe?"

"A what?" Fei Fei gave Anne an odd look, and Anne gave her one right back, before realization sunk in.

"Oh... uh, guess we were raised with different kinds of giants," Anne said, shrugging. Fei Fei blinked, before shaking her head.

"Right... So you think the flowers could be in there?" Fei Fei asked.

"Well, yeah, they show up when you're dead, giants eat people... well some of them, anyway," Anne explained. "The dots connect!"

"If you... say so," Fei Fei said uncertainly. She turned back towards the door. "How should we get in? We can't move that door."

"Weeeell," Anne said. "I COULD explain an overly complicated plan that is relayed over a montage of us acting out said plan, and then also have the plan fail in the end anyway, or we can just go through this tunnel."

Surprised, Fei Fei looked up at Anne, who was pointing backwards, and then down the tunnel. She wasn't worried about it last night, considering they were staying pretty close to the entrance, but now... well, it certainly looked dark and ominous, like a monster was waiting down in the darkness.

"I worried about that, too," Anne told Fei Fei before she could voice her doubts. "But think about it! If the doors that big, then the house is gonna be huge! Spanning all the way over here where THIS tunnel goes into it! This tunnel MUST go into it!"

"...Must?" Fei Fei asked, titling her head. "Why would someone have a tunnel they couldn't fit in lead to their house?"

"Uhhhh...." Anne had to think about that for a second. "...Ventilation?"

"...I don't know what that word means," Fei Fei admitted.

"It's used a lot in movies," Anne explained, which was the worst explanation for anything Fei Fei's heard from her yet.

She couldn't even reply to that. She didn't really get the chance to, anyway, because the next couple seconds was filled with a loud creeeeaaaak, that made Anne and Fei Fei flinch.

"What the-?" Anne cried as both she and Anne poked their heads out of the cave entrance, the first thing they saw was that the door was opened, and the next was the giant praying mantis that towered over them, and almost definitely came from the giant door.

"W-Wow," Fei Fei gasped.

"They had those in Amphibia!" Anne noted, her eyes wide. She and Fei Fei wore twin expressions of horror. "They were big, but way less big than this..."

Suddenly, the praying mantis turned, and Anne and Fei Fei ducked in through the door, hoping that the thing didn't spot them. However, they had no luck, as the booming footsteps of the monster walking got louder and louder as it stepped closer.

"Anne?" Fei Fei asked. She and Anne had flattened themselves against the wall, their joints locked in terror. Neither moved a muscle, as if they were subconsciously trying to blend into the dirt wall.

"Yes, Fei Fei?" Anne replied back while also trying to stop the shaking in her jaw.

"That plan you had... did it involve this?" Fei Fei questions.

"Something like it..." Anne answered. "Though it started with us luring the monster out by pretending to be pizza deliverers with pizza."

"What?!"

"The plan had been a joke, Fei Fei!"

"Yes, yes..." Fei Fei winced as the earthquakes stopped, and outside the cave a terrifying and weird leg stood. Fei Fei had never wanted a close up of a praying mantis leg less. "What was the next part of the plan?"

"Sneak around it and run? I don't know!" In her horrified state, Anne tried, and failed, to shrug.

"Let's do that then," Fei Fei decided, and Anne gave her an alarmed look.

"What, how!?" Anne cried. Fei Fei ignored her as she reached forward to grab her wrist.

"Go! Better to be out there then cornered in here!" Fei Fei pointed out as she sprinted towards the entrance, Anne in tow. But Anne was shaking her head.

"But we're not cornered!" Anne argued, but she didn't resist when Fei Fei pulled her forward, even though every cell in her body was screaming at her, too. She trusted Fei Fei, more than she probably should, really, but she couldn't help but think that as soon as sunlight hit them, the praying mantis would make a quick meal of them.

However, they never got to the praying mantis, because when they were only a couple feet from the entrance, a wall descended before them, cutting off their escape. Fei Fei and Anne stopped just in time to stop from crashing into it.

"Huh?" Fei Fei cried, dropping Anne's hand. Anne blinked up at the wall, somewhat bewildered. The fact that they weren't dead was the thought that circled around Anne the most, but in a smaller part of her brain, Anne recognized the texture.

"Oh, it's wood," Anne realized. She still sounded breathless, as well as relieved. "The monster must have taken a log from the pile and blocked the entrance with it."

"Why would it..." Fei Fei trailed off, and, to Anne's surprise, she started pushing against the log with her entire body. But no matter how much Fei Fei pushed, the log didn't budge. Not even when Anne helped railed against it, too. It might as well have been a real wall.

"Huh," Anne said after they'd given up. "Creepy tunnel it is, then."

Fei Fei groaned.

Despite it being Anne's preferred choice, she wasn't any happier in the tunnel than Fei Fei was. Occasionally, the tunnel shook, and pebbles showered down on them like rain. Since there was no light, Fei Fei and Anne had to hold onto the walls, following it to get to wherever it led. The tunnel twisted and turned, and as Anne tried to follow along in her head, she was almost certain now that it would lead to that things house.

Still, when the ground underneath the two suddenly slopped up, nearly making Anne and Fei Fei trip and fall.

"Careful!" Anne cried at the same time Fei Fei yelled out in surprise. "Geez, how long is this thing?...Er, nevermind."

Anne shuddered; she could feel Fei Fei giving her a dirty look through the darkness.

"Uh, let's head up," Anne said quickly, and Fei Fei just followed along quietly. Anne could hear her footsteps in the darkness. Actually, now that she was listening, Anne heard something else, too, and the sound made her pause.

Behind her, Fei Fei crashed into her and yelled something, but Anne barely noticed.

The clink of pots and pans, utensils stirring around a soup, the small hum of fires burning and something bubbling on top of it. Heck, Anne could even imagine a nice aroma wafting in the air through a tunnel. Or was that real?! She couldn't tell, but the entire thing took her back. After all, Anne could recognize those sounds in a heartbeat. They were heading towards.

"A kitchen..." Anne whispered, and she hadn't even realized she had said that out loud until Fei Fei was tilting her head, too, her eyes widening.

"Hey... that's right," Fei Fei realized, leaning against the wall. "It's just like..."

"The kitchen at home," Anne finished. Both of their voices were full of identical emotions. Longing, pain, heartbreak... their talk from yesterday came back in a rush.

"I want to go home," Anne said. She collapsed onto her knees, the wait of her statement too much to bear. "I need to! I need to make sure they're okay! I just want to go back to my house and the restaurant and my parents-!"

Fei Fei sat beside her, sliding down against the wall.

"I... I... why are we here?!" Anne called out the darkness around her, but her voice became progressively quieter, until it was just a whisper. "Why'd we come here? Who did this to us? Why us? How can we... How can we possibly know the people we love are safe...?

Anne trailed off. Not because she didn't have anything more to say, but because she couldn't force anymore words out into the terrible silence that only ever seemed to withhold answers when they desperately needed them most.

"...We'll find out," Fei Fei replied eventually, even though Anne hadn't been talking to her. "Anne, we... right now, we can't to anything except stay alive. But after this, we'll double down. When we know why we're here, we can figure out whether everyone else is or not. We just have to not die."

"Huh?" Maybe Anne was out of it because she was freaking out, but she couldn't follow what Fei Fei was saying. "We just have to..."

"Not die," Fei Fei confirmed. After a few moments of feeling around in the darkness, Fei Fei found Anne's shoulder and patted it. "After that, after all this, we'll get the answers and get out of here, but right now, we need to help our friends."

Anne pondered that, but soon, she saw that Fei Fei was right. A small grateful smile broke across her face. The worry and fears were still a tempest in her gut, but Fei Fei was right. One thing at a time.

"You're right," Anne agreed, patting Fei Fei's hand. Fei Fei let out a small sigh of relief. "Sorry, Fei Fei, I lost my head for a second."

"But you're ok, now?" Fei Fei asked, and try as she might, she couldn't keep the desperation out of her voice. She cringed at it. Anne was one of the bravest and most responsible people she knew, a born leader, and even though their friendship was an equal partnership, sometimes it was Anne dragging Fei Fei around, leading her around. Anne shone like a bright star, and though Fei Fei did, too, she didn't do so as confidently. Perhaps it was because, previously, Fei Fei had exclusively spoken English in a class setting, and she wasn't that good at the language, but also because Anne loved new people, while Fei Fei was far more independent.

Regardless, seeing Anne done in despair was terrifying. Fei Fei understood the feeling, of course, but she'd have thought that Anne would be confronting her, not the other way around.

...Perhaps that was an awful way of saying it, but she couldn't help it.

Under Fei Fei's hand, Anne straightened up.

"Yeah, I'm good," she replied, and Fei Fei relaxed. There was that confidence Fei Fei relied on. "You're right. Let's get these flowers as fast as possible, right?"

"You're right," Fei Fei agreed quickly, and Anne stood up, once again leading the way forward.

They were a lot quicker this time, moving up through the tunnel like something was right on their heels, and even though the tunnel upwards was a lot longer than the one previously, it took only half as much time. Unfortunately, all that waited at the end of it was only disappointment. Anne found it first, slamming into a fall and falling back. Soon after, Fei Fei found it, too, tripping over Anne's prone body, falling headfirst into the wall, then falling back beside Anne.

They laid on the floor for a couple minutes, faces and pride severely wounded.

"So... that end of the tunnel is blocked, too...?" Fei Fei wondered out loud as they laid there.

"Why?!" Anne cried, and Fei Fei cringed. Right here, the sounds of the kitchen were loud and clear, as if they were right next to it. And if they could hear the kitchen, the kitchen could almost certainly hear them, too.

Fei Fei didn't get to voice her concerns, though, because in the next moment, Anne had jumped up, feeling at the wall. Anne opened her mouth, ready to rant angrily, much like Fei Fei did at the wall that was put up in front of them before, before she paused. The confusion took the place of her anger, and Fei Fei frowned, confused as Anne continually pat the wall in front of her.

"Hey, Fei Fei, we got lucky!" Anne cried, and Fei Fei jumped, getting up, too.

"You need to be quiet!" Fei Fei hissed at her, before Anne's words sunk in. "Wait, why?"

Anne stepped forward, and started digging through the wall in front of her. The loose dirt fell away easily.

"This isn't like the other walls around here, it's way looser!" Anne explained as she dug. "We can dig through it!"

A little confused, Fei Fei stepped up beside Anne, and started digging, too. But soon, she saw what Anne had been talking about, starting to dig more enthusiastically. With their combined efforts, and determination, they managed to dig through the wall, and soon, light spilled out into the tunnel.

Eventually, the wall fell away, and Fei Fei emerged into a giant kitchen, just like they were expecting.

Or, more accurately, they fell into the giant kitchen.