Nick stared blankly at the trees in the woman's direction. The basement door creaked open.
Nick turned around and looked at the tentacle. The tentacle looked at him.
What was that?
But before Nick could put his question to words, the tentacle suddenly withdrew back into the basement and left Nick on the porch. And before he could question it about that, he heard footsteps, so he turned around to see a tall man with hairy arms and legs and a pelt around his waist.
He looked like he was from the same place as the woman and her bear baby.
"Uh, did you happen to see maybe a tiny blue bear or a blue-haired woman?" The man cautiously asked. He was also stunned by Nick's presence in the center of the forest and the strange appearance of his dwelling, but he cared more about his family.
Nick wordlessly pointed in the direction the woman had sprinted off in with Kai.
"Thank you," the man nodded in appreciation before heading in the direction Nick indicated. Nick looked at the big, muscular back.
Was it a movie set, after all?
Was the bear a kid in a suit?
'No way.'
Nick had seen the bear cub's mouth open with his own eyes. He had seen the teeth, the tongue, the throat, and all that. There was no way it was fake. That was a real bear cub.
Maybe they were using a real bear to film. Considering they were in the middle of a forest and were dressed like that, maybe it was some kind of prehistoric family movie.
Nick felt that the blue color took an edge off the realism, though.
He sense the tentacle crawl out of the basement again and stretch to hover over his shoulder. He glanced at it.
"Do you like board games?" He asked.
The tentacle didn't just like board games. It ruled at them. Nick wasn't without victories, but he had to struggle for them. Eventually, he stopped caring about winning and just spent time trying to learn more about the tentacle monster living in his basement.
He stuck to mostly yes-or-no questions, occasionally slipping up. He learned a little, but there wasn't a lot he could ask after a while. He didn't have a bottomless reserve of yes-or-now questions, after all.
He was also tired.
It was surprisingly exhausting waking up in the middle of a forest instead of his neighborhood and discovering that he had a tentacle monster living in his basement. So, after a while, he called an end to the board games, heated up some noodles, and put on the movie the tentacle had used to explain part of its situation.
Without knowing it, he fell asleep in the sofa, the empty bowl in his hand.
While sleeping, he dreamed about being hugged by someone he had never met before. For some reason, when he woke up, he couldn't remember a single detail about her appearance. He didn't think much about it. He was pretty lonely, after all.
Maybe it was a subconscious call that anyone would do at this point.
He was also more occupied with the fact that he woke up in his bed when he distinctly remembered falling asleep on the sofa.
It didn't take long for him to figure out that the tentacle had carried him up the stairs and tucked him. He wondered why it had bothered taking off his shirt but not his pants or socks, though.
He was not going to ask.
Nick greeted the morning with a glass of water on the porch and the tentacle hovering over his shoulder.
"Man, maybe it's just me, but the water here sure is great," he said, admiring the forestry view.
The tentacle nodded.
"You hungry?" Nick asked the tentacle. It nodded.
He had planned to ration the food he had in his house. He was still planning to. But there were people nearby. Regardless of whether he had ended up in the middle of a movieset or in a forest with a tribe of scantily clad natives, he wouldn't starve.
Besides, he wasn't keen on making the scary tentacle monster in his basement go without food. He didn't want to risk joining that bird.
However, as if it had heard him talk about food, a blue bear cub trudged out from the bushes and straight toward Nick's house.
It was only when it was about to step on the porch that it stopped and looked up, noticing Nick looking at it. It froze.
It stood still for three and a half seconds before slowly stepping to the side and walking up the stairs next to Nick. It gently walked past him and into the kitchen. Nick didn't stop it.
"Whatever he takes if he manages to open the fridge is your portion," he said simply.
He wasn't strong enough to stop a bear, even if it was just a cub. But he knew a certain someone or something who was.
The tentacle shot him a glare—Nick didn't know how it did it without a face or how he felt it but he was certain that's what it was—before chasing after the bear cub and wrapping him up to drag him away from the fridge.
With a tentacle around his body, limbs, and mouth, there wasn't much Kai could do other than sit still next to Nick and look at the majestic and seemingly bottomless forest.
And as expected, it didn't take long before a tall, hairy couple appeared at the edge of Nick's tiny clearing, looking very worried. When they saw the tied up Kai, they turned pale.
"M-many apologies, esteemed sir. Please forgive our unruly son! I hope he didn't cause too much trouble, but we can pay for whatever he did!"
With a glance from the confused Nick, the tentacle let go of Kai and nudged him down the porch.
"T-there's no need for all of that. He was just hungry. It is a little concerning that you have a bear on the loose, though…?"
Nick looked at Kai's parents. Kai's parents looked at the tentacle. The tentacle looked at them.
Nick and the tentacle looked at each other.
"Oh."