Alright, y'all! Part Two's here! This one will have some more from Mao's point of view than Part One did. Enjoy!!

Oh, incase it's not clear, I OWN NOTHING!!

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CC's eyes narrowed with concern. Voices? If Mao was hearing voices... that meant there were other people around. But who would be coming out to such a remote area, which she had picked specifically because there were no people? Perhaps Mao knew.... "Mao?" she said, "What are they saying?"

"I don't know," said Mao, "I can't make anything out."

"Is that so?" said CC. So they probably weren't speaking Chinese, then, if Mao couldn't understand them. CC felt anger bubbling inside her. How dared they? She was so sure she had picked this place out specially for its remoteness and this stupid couple had intruded...! But then her anger subsided as she realized, that where there were other people, there was food. "Hey, Mao," said CC, "I'll bet these people have food. I can get it, but you'll have to help me."

"Oh... okay," said Mao, eagerness rising through him.

"So... where are they now?" asked CC.

"I... I don't know," said Mao, trying to concentrate.

"It's alright, it's alright," said CC, noticing the pained look on the boy's face, "I have an idea where they could be. The road we took to get here is that way," she said, pointing, "And so if we go in that direction, we may be able to find them."

"Okay," said Mao.

"So... just go put your shoes on, and we'll be ready to go!"

Once Mao had grabbed his shoes, the two of them began walking, and CC made Mao continue to follow their targets' thoughts. There was no better way of making sure they were heading in the right direction.

The two of them ended up retracing their steps several times, but before too long, they had arrived at a point in the woods from which a small, dark smudge was visible in the distance. "CC, the voices...!" Mao complained.

"Don't worry," said CC, ruffling his hair, "We're very close now. It's just that space, see?" She pointed.

"I guess," said Mao, squinting. He saw a dark shape in the woods, and started to move toward it.

"Stop!" CC hissed. "The people are there. If we want their food, you can't just go charging in; we need a plan."

The two of them slowly crept closer to the small campsite, where a man and a woman sat a short distance from a small brown tent. A backpack was suspended in a tree a ways away; CC deduced that this must contain the food. "Here's what we're going to do," said CC to Mao, "All you have to do, is go up to those people, and distract them. Speak to them; do a trick; I don't care what you do. But I need you to keep them busy while I take their food."

"Okay," said Mao.

CC and Mao parted ways then, and CC crept around out into the clearing, where she could see the backpack tied up in a tree. She approached it, and then stopped to listen. She could hear voices a ways away, but they were so faint they probably weren't too close. Both the man and the woman appeared to be speaking Japanese.

"So, we spend our last few days out here?"

"Yes. It's so beautiful out here. Perfect for a last trip before our wedding."

As CC climbed up the tree and began fiddling with the knot, she made a mental note of this fact in case Mao asked about it later. Presently, the voices seemed to be addressing a third person, cluing CC in on the fact that Mao had approached them.

CC unravelled the knot, moving quickly. As soon as she had loosened it enough, she hoisted the backpack onto her shoulder, and climbed down the tree, where she proceeded to turn it inside-out. She kept all the food, in addition to a first-aid kit, some scraps of paper, and small containers of biodegradable soap, shampoo, and toothpaste, only half-full. She took special care to replace all methods of communication, so the couple would get out of her and Mao's territory quickly once they realized where most of their food had gone.

Mao, meanwhile, followed the now distinctly human voices into a small section of the woods where a man and a woman were sitting together. The more they talked, the more Mao realized that they were not speaking Chinese. They were speaking some language he had never heard before, and he felt sick to his stomach. How was he going to speak to them? Their shamelessly unintelligible thoughts surging in his mind, he willed himself to take a step forward to face them.

Both the man and the woman stared at him for a moment, and then stood up, noticing his pained expression. "Hello, little boy," said the woman, in broken Chinese that Mao could just understand.

"Where did you come from?" asked the man.

Mao felt his brain get cloudier and cloudier as the disgusting white noise hammered in it, but he willed himself to look up at them and smile, as he scratched his head. The two adults smiled hugely at each other and him, and the woman whispered something to the man, which Mao was pretty sure was about him. Whatever it was, it sounded exactly the same as their thoughts,. Mao succeeded in isolating the word "kawaii," whatever that meant.

"Do you have family?" the woman asked in Chinese. "Or friends?"

"I... yes," said Mao triumphantly, "I have CC. She takes very good care of me!" The small superiority he felt in fooling the two adults took some of the edge off the pain from the voices in his head. But then another flood of thoughts from them brought it back, this time even more severe. Mao's face contorted.

"Are you okay?" asked the woman, reaching out to lift up his chin. Her thoughts were so close, so annoying and why couldn't he understand them? It wasn't fair! Unable to stand it any longer, Mao smacked her hand away.

"Stop it!" he screamed. "Don't touch me!" In a fury, he began pounding the woman anywhere he could reach. "Stop it! Stop it! Shut up, shut up, shut up!" He shook her so hard he almost knocked her over, before the man pulled him off, shouting. Their thoughts completely overwhelmed Mao, who ran away as quickly as he could, screaming and crying.

CC returned to the small shack where she and Mao slept after much difficulties; the items were difficult to carry in her hands (some of them, including a plastic bag half-full of rice balls, were pretty bulky), and she had to stop in order to rearrange them several times. When she finally made it back, she noticed that Mao was not there. Cursing under her breath, she dragged her prizes back to the wood, threw them in a tree, and ran back into the woods to search for him.

Mao ran as fast as he could go, straight ahead, not caring where he was going. He tripped and fell several times; plants whacked his face, arms, and legs; but all he could think of was getting as far from the hated voices as possible.

It was a long time before the woods fell silent around him. Now there were no noises, except the wind in the trees and the scamper of animals. But Mao was exhausted and out of breath. He fell to his knees and scanned the forest around him, but there was no sign of CC. Panicked, he screamed frantically: "CC! Where are you?!"

No response.

"CC?!"

Again, no response. Mao burst into tears, feeling the weight of his loneliness. The woods were bigger than him; he was lost, and CC was nowhere to be seen. He was going to die there, and the animals would eat him. "CC, CC...," he sobbed over and over again, as he lay curled up on the ground, shivering despite the summer heat.

CC, meanwhile, continued to run through the forest, searching for Mao. As her search dragged on, she found herself becoming more and more frantic. Mao was just a little boy, after all, and any number of things could happen to him in the woods. He didn't know the way back to their home base because he had never come out here alone before.

It was sunset before she found him huddled amongst some shrubs in the woods. "Oh, Mao!" she cried, running over to him. Mao opened his eyes and, upon seeing her, gave a squeal of delight and flung himself around her neck.

"Oh, CC! You're here! I'm so glad! I thought I would have to die here!"

"Oh, Mao, it's okay."

"CC! I'm sorry! I'm sorry I couldn't...."

"It's alright," said CC, scooping him up, "I understand. Come on, we'll go back and eat."

"Great, I'm starving!" said Mao.

"Oh, really?" said CC, "You'll love some of the stuff we'll have."

She carried him back to the outskirts of the woods, from which they could see their little shack by the lake. CC stopped on the way back to grab the bag of rice balls, which she cracked open as soon as the two of them had found a nice, exposed rock to sit on. "Try one of these," she told Mao, pulling one out and handing it to him. Mao, who was suddenly beside himself with hunger, sunk his teeth right in. His face lit up at once.

"Oh, CC! This is so yummy! Oh, I just wanna keep eating it and eating it and eating it!" He took several more exaggerated bites.

"There's plenty more where that came from," CC promised, "These are rice balls. They're from Japan."

"Japan?" Mao looked at CC quizzically, "What's Japan?"

"Japan is this great island in the big ocean that's next to China," CC explained, "It's got a lot of people, and they don't speak the same language as they do in China. That's why you couldn't understand those people earlier. They were from Japan."

"Oh," said Mao. "Do you know what they were doing here?"

"I don't know what they were doing here," said CC, "However I believe they were about to be married."

"What does that mean?" Mao asked with a small smile.

CC struggled with how to explain such a complex subject to such a little boy. "Ah... well, when two people love each other very, very much," said CC, "They get married. They agree publicly to spend the rest of their life together, have kids, and everything like that. They always celebrate marrying each other by having a huge party."

"Oh," said Mao. Suddenly his face lit up again. "CC, can I marry you?! I love you very, very much!"

CC tensed up. "Silly Mao," she said, "Only grown-ups get married. Not kids."

"Oh," said Mao, a look of disappointment on his face. But it left in an instant. "Then I'll grow up first," said Mao, "And then I'll marry you! And we'll have kids and we'll live happily ever after! How long will I have to wait?!"

"Oh, a long time," said CC, shaking her head, "I should think at least... ten, eleven years."

"Eleven years?!" Mao whined, "But that's so long!"

"Er... don't worry; it'll go by fast!" said CC with a huge smile, in an attempt to end the conversation.

"Okay," said Mao with a sigh, as the two of them stared at the moonlit water of their lake. "So... can I have another rice ball?"

The end!