Lee Ping slowly opened his eyes, brightness saying "Hello" to the young teenage boy. He raised a hand to his eyes, protecting himself from the sun's rays as he carefully sat up from his lying position. Where was he? What was he doing before hand? He wondered to himself as he looked around at his surroundings before letting out a gentle yawn. He appeared to be in a forest. Why he was there, he had no clue. He couldn't remember anything that would give him any recollection of how he got there or why.
Lee let out a soft grunt as he helped himself get up off the earthy ground. Looking around some more, he saw tall trees that had canopies shielding him from the blue sky with only a little sunlight peeking out from between some leaves. And looking onward to the path in front of him, he saw the trees form a trail as if they were telling him to go that way. Agreeing with the trees and not wishing to be any more lost than he already was, Lee Ping followed the trail, his shoes crunching the sturdy grass below him.
"I wonder how I got here." He said to himself. "Why would I be in a forest? Or better yet, since when was there a forest in town?" Bringing a hand up to his face in wonder, Lee continued to talk to himself in curiosity. "Wasn't I in school? I swear I was. But if I was there, then why would I be here? Was I chasing someone?"
Then Lee thought of something he hadn't before. Suddenly stopping in his tracks, Lee Ping said to himself, "Was I chasing Radcircles?"
Then as if someone was listening to him, a peculiar shadow ran past a couple trees beside him. Seeing it out of the corner of his eye, Lee quickly turned his head in suspicion and said, "Hello?"
There was the echo of silence before the softest sound of rustling from a nearby bush broke the uneasy quietness of the forest. Lee gasped and turned just as the shadow sped out from behind the bush and deeper into the woods. "Hey!" Lee yelled, running after the strange shadow and off the trail. "Stop!"
The shadow continued to run, managing to dodge every tree and boulder in sight as it ran into the deepest part of the woods. Lee took notice of this as well as he tried to run faster to catch up with the person or thing in front of him. Running farther and farther away from the trail, the forest started to grow darker and shadier as the canopies above him got more protective from the sun as if there wasn't a sun at all to begin with.
Barely being able to see the world in front of him, he saw the shadow stop in front of a tree and for a second he thought he saw the shadow grow a pair of bright white bunny ears. But before he could think anything of it, he witnessed the shadow look around to make sure no one was around and hopped into a sudden hole that had appeared in the ground.
Lee Ping gasped, his eyes widening in bewilderment at the hole. Nervously, gulping, Lee slowly looked down at the hole before him as he tried to catch his breath from all the running. The hole appeared to be going down into nothing but darkness. He knew he should've left it alone and gone back to the trail; that would've been the smart thing to do. But then again, he thought to himself; that may have been Radcircles that he had just been chasing. He may have been chasing down another clue to who framed him for the prank.
Curiosity getting the better of him, Lee Ping looked toward the hole one more time and leaned his torso forward to get a better look down inside the hole. But it wasn't the loose soil surrounding the hole that made Lee Ping lose his balance and fall into the hole; he wasn't athletic but he wouldn't let a little soil make him fall. Instead, a gloved hand reached out from inside the hole, grabbed Lee's ankle and yanked it hard, pulling Lee down into the hole.
His screams echoed through the hole as gravity let him fall down for who knows how long. On his descent down the rabbit hole, Lee's eyes saw so many different things tumbling down with him that he would never expect to be in a rabbit hole. He saw a couple chairs; one that he had landed onto before his butt slipped off the cushioned seat and made him fall once more on his own. He saw a couple stuffed toys that included a stuffed rabbit, a stuffed cat, a stuffed mouse, and what he thought was a stuffed animal of the Tazzleworm. There was also a table falling down as well with a glorious china tea set perfectly poised on top of it, not letting a drop of the tea inside it, spill a drop. Oh how he questioned the laws of gravity and physics on that one.
When it seemed like ages later, Lee found himself looking down, seeing a floor suddenly getting closer to his feet. Out of instinct, Lee Ping let out another scream as his body hit the floor with a loud and utter thump. "Ow. . ." Lee grumbled, his whole body now aching with pain as he brought his palms to the floor and pushed himself up, now in a sitting position.
"Ah; my head." Lee moaned, bringing a hand up to his head. Then, looking up, he saw the opening of the hole what looked like a good hundred feet down. "What the-? I fell down from there? But how could I have survived and yet the only thing I got from it was a mere headache?" Lee asked himself, once again questioning the laws of science on how his existence could still be there if he had fallen so far down without a scratch on him. His headache was growing bigger just thinking about it.
But he didn't have time to think about his survival, he had to try and get out of there! Putting a hand in his pants' pocket, Lee took out his phone and looked up the time; the time shown in bright numbers – 3:20.
"3:20?!" Lee gasped, looking down at the phone in his hand. "Crap! I'm supposed to be in Detention! If Barrage finds out that I'm not there, he'll kill me!" Quickly putting his phone away, Lee got up and looked up, looking for a way out. Seeing no other option, Lee swiftly jumped up and tried grabbing a root, stick, anything to get a good hold on the interior of the hole so he could climb out. But after several tries, Lee couldn't find anything and kept slipping back down to the floor. Sighing, Lee took his phone out again and let its light shine up the hole.
"Huh? Weren't there chairs falling down with me? And a table?" He wondered aloud, seeing nothing falling down the hole and nothing down on the floor with him. Was he imagining things? But how could he have? He had landed on one of the chairs on his descent down, so . . .
Lee sighed, shaking his head when a thought came to him. "Wait a minute! I have a phone! I'll call someone!" Lee said, victoriously as he dialed Camilio's number into his phone before bringing it up to his ear. "Come on. Come on, Camilio. Pick up." He said, hearing the phone ring a couple times when a female voice spoke in a technological voice 'Sorry but your call could not be sent through.'
"What?" Lee looked down at his phone and instantly saw the problem. "Seriously?! Are you kidding me?! Now I have no bars?!" Lee let out another heavy, frustrated sigh. "Whatever."
Lee was about to try and get a signal from his phone when he suddenly saw something out of the corner of his eye. Looking away from his phone, Lee saw a shadow run away from him; this time he knew he saw white bunny ears on the shadow's head. "Radcircles!" Lee shouted in realization as he put away his phone and ran after the shadow into the next room.
Once stepping foot into the room, Lee stopped and looked around; the shadow wasn't there. "How?" Lee wondered. The well-lit room was completely empty, the only thing inside it being a circular wooden table. He started to turn back to where he had entered when he heard the faintest sound of a door slamming shut. Lee's head snapped to the sound and quickly ran in the direction he had heard it. But the only thing he saw was the colorfully papered wall; there wasn't a door in sight.
"But I swear I heard it!" Lee swore, bringing his hands to the wall and feeling around, making sure there wasn't a door behind the wallpaper. "Aw, come on!" Lee angrily said, kicking the wall with the tip of his shoe. However, when he did, Lee Ping never suspected that he would receive an answer. Once his shoe made contact with the wall, Lee instantly heard a loud yell of pain.
It made the 10th grader gasp, startled as he pushed himself away from the wall. "Wh-who's there? Show yourself!" Saying that, Lee prepared himself for the worst and got in a fighting position.
But he heard something instead. "Oh would you cut the act already?! You're not a ninja!" A tiny voice said, shocking Lee.
"Huh?" Lee questioned, looking around and seeing no one else in the room except him. "Who's there?"
"Down here, you twit!" The tiny voice said, making Lee's neck instantly crane his head downwards.
Lee's eyes widened in shock, seeing the voice's body or . . . form. Slowly and carefully getting down on all hands and knees, Lee looked down at the owner of the squeaky voice. "Ir-Irwin?!" Lee nervously asked as he stared down at the tiny door with its body having the pie symbol streaking across the center and its doorknob resembling the face of his former Mathlete companion.
