Love O2O- Beyond a Beautiful Smile

Chapter 20- A Whole New World

A/N: They made me do the head count at O-Week so now my brain is on strike. Ergo, this chapter may contain big words as I struggle to find my mental feet again after counting past my fingers.

After leaving Sledge Hammer Peak, the group of four stuck together, with KO and Hao Mei joining them on their geocaching adventure before taking them to a local café for lunch. It was the first time the Chinese pair had heard of geocaching and, not surprisingly, Hao Mei was enthralled. Searching for items based on coordinates and obscure clues was like a MMROPG come to life. The cache the Australians had been looking for on Sledge Hammer Peak had included several criteria: not only did they have to visit, they had to find the location of a specific mulberry tree, and had to take a photo of their gps showing their exact coordinates at the site. Tom and Will explained that sometimes you got to a site and the "items" (as Mei insisted on calling them) were fixed in place, like tourists information signs, while other times they could search an entire area just to unearth a gaudily painted garden gnome. Some caches, like the Sledge Hammer Peak cache, had tasks for the adventurers to fulfill, and the Aussies had Hao Mei in stitches recounting some of the more extreme tasks they had needed to fulfil... including getting a photo of Will proposing, on bended knee, to a kangaroo at the zoo. Even KO cracked a smile as Tom regaled them with how the Kangaroo had leaned against Will... leaned and leaned and leaned until Will toppled over and into a muddy puddle, at which point the kangaroo decided it was done being sociable and bounded off. Will had spent the rest of the day with a drying brown patch on the rear of his jeans and Mei was almost in tears as Tom copied Will's expression of discomfort.

"Can we make one?" KO's question took the other three by surprise. Even though Tom and Will had only met him that morning, they already knew how reticent he was.

"You want to create a cache?" Mei was stunned.

"Hmm."

"It's easy enough to do and Chengde only has the two caches already set up; Sledge Hammer Peak and Frog Crag." Will thought about it a bit more then turned to Tom to discuss it in English. While he filled Tom in on KO's suggestion, Hao Mei put a hand on KO's arm.

"I didn't think you'd get in to something like this? But you enjoy it enough to want to create some?"

"No." KO lightly touched the hand resting on his arm. "But I enjoy your smile."

Suddenly self-conscious, Mei felt his cheeks heat and quickly removed his hand, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. When he looked up, Tom and Will were watching them, knowing half smiles on their faces. He shifted in his seat and the pair took pity on him, leaving their comments unsaid.

"Why don't we do a tourist trail of caches?" Tom leaned forward and smoothed a tourist brochure over the table. "We can find the best place to sample street food, or local delicacies. Find the best entertainment, night life, place to stay... set it up so that people can only claim the cache if they go to those coordinates and actually experience something new."

"Donkey Rolls, here. You Noodle and Pubang deer meat clusters, here." KO drew a star on two different streets that weren't too far apart.

Mei chuckled. "I should have known that you'd know where the good food is." He filled the others in; "he's a chef. Super talented chef but unfortunately for the food world, he's an even better programmer so laosan hired him to work in the office."

"So you work together?" Will reached a hand behind Tom's chair, subtly stroking his back, hidden from the rest of the café. "We met at the office too. Technically."

"Technically?" Hao Mei looked between the two.

"I'm an electrician. He's a paper pusher." Will gestured at Tom with a jerk of his chin.