Chapter 16
After bickering with those guys for quite a while, it was already close to dinnertime.
Since it was getting late, I was about to get up to eat something simple.
“Are we not eating? I’m hungry.”
As soon as food was mentioned, I instinctively looked at Barbarian Man. But he also turned his head with a surprised expression.
The owner of the voice was Baby Poppy.
“Did you just say you’re hungry?”
He was the type who never said things like he was hungry or that he wanted to eat.
Maybe even he was surprised by his own words, because he mumbled to himself.
Well, he had done a lot of things he normally wouldn’t today. He had cut down and gathered all those vines.
I stood up and snorted.
Now that the kid had finally said he was hungry, there was no way we could just eat a quick, half-assed meal.
“Shall we go catch some fish?”
When I asked Barbarian Man, who was lying nearby, he looked at me and laughed.
“Wouldn’t it be better to catch a turtle and go with that instead of you?”
It was clearly mockery. I wasn’t about to back down from such insulting words.
“Do you want a spear stuck through your body?”
“Let’s go, big brother.”
He sprang up like a spring and bent at the waist as if escorting a boss.
I smiled in satisfaction, patted his back a couple of times, and said,
“Let’s do well, okay?”
He stood with his hands behind his back, nodding repeatedly.
Before leaving, I fixed up the spear I was going to take.
The other day, I’d gone out in a hurry and hadn’t prepared properly, so I’d missed a lot. Today, I planned to prepare properly and avenge that humiliation.
I made several notches at the tip of the spear, then inserted the handle of my MacGyver knife into the split end.
After inserting it, I wrapped vines around the tip to secure the blade so it wouldn’t come loose.
When a terrifying spear with a blade attached was born, I proudly raised it and shouted,
“Fish, you’re all dead!”
Unlike me, who was excited, Baby Poppy and his friend Barbarian Man went far away from me and whispered to each other.
Something about how I might stab them with the spear if I got angry.
These guys clearly still thought I was a prison escapee who had killed people.
Because of that, I walked east chatting with the two of them, who were trying hard not to irritate me.
The topic of conversation was whether an octopus would climb up if you peed on a rock.
While talking, we soon reached the rocky area.
Last time, when I’d walked here in silence with Barbarian Man, it had felt far away, but today it didn’t seem that far.
When we arrived at the place where we’d hunted fish before, Barbarian Man fell back into his habit and climbed over the rocks ahead by himself.
What a disloyal bastard.
In a place where it was hard enough just to take care of myself, I now had to look after Baby Poppy’s safety too, which doubled my trouble.
“T-The rock is shaking!”
“Hey! I said don’t move!”
“It’s slippery!”
“I said crawl on all fours like me!”
Truly, it was a tragedy from the inside and a comedy from the outside.
Still, we safely reached the place where the waves flowed in and sat down beside a pool where fish could be seen.
Blocking the fish’s escape route was Baby Poppy’s job.
Whether it was thanks to the new spear or because my skills had improved after catching them once, I caught fish more easily than before.
After catching two fish, I felt excited and wanted to compare with Barbarian Man.
But when I looked at his spear, there were three fish even bigger than mine stuck on it.
It hurt my pride a little. My equipment was better.
Next time, I decided I’d secretly watch his hunting method and benchmark it.
“It’s getting dark. Let’s hurry back.”
Barbarian Man was right. As I got up, I decided to make him use his hands a bit too.
“Hey, Barbarian Man. Don’t go alone—hold my hand.”
But he stared at me blankly and replied,
“No.”
It was a clean cut.
“Damn bastard.”
He really had a talent for making people feel awkward.
I flipped him off at the back of his head as he went ahead.
While enjoying myself alone with that pathetic act, Baby Poppy, who was following behind, looked at me like I was pitiful and said,
“If you want, take my hand.”
What?
“Do you want us both to die?”
If I held onto him and he slipped, I’d obviously fall with him like dominoes.
When I told him not to joke around, he waved his hand, saying he’d just said it for nothing and to hurry up.
Seriously, how could there be two guys here and not a single dependable one?
Even if I live alone, this is ridiculous.
Funny enough, when Baby Poppy almost fell, it was me who caught him.
Barbarian Man had already reached the sandy beach and was standing there with his arms crossed, waiting for us.
Seeing us crawl over the rocks hand in hand like cowards must have been funny to him. Looking at his laughing face made me want to throw my spear at him.
I was confident I could hit him properly from here.
I swore that as soon as I reached the beach, I’d beat him up.
But by the time my feet touched the sand, I was too exhausted.
I couldn’t grab him and beat him.
The three of us trudged back home. We were hungry and tired, so there wasn’t even any conversation.
The sky and sea dyed in the sunset were ridiculously beautiful. The red color, too beautiful to be expressed with any paint, looked like raw meat.
Like raw pork belly laid on a white plate before being put on a grill.
“Ah, I want to eat meat.”
At my lament, the other two sighed as if on cue.
They must have felt the same.
After a while, Barbarian Man asked me,
“When you went to the mountain yesterday, didn’t you see any animals?”
“If there had been, wouldn’t I have been eaten?”
“Even small animals?”
“If there had been, wouldn’t I have caught one?”
“Sorry for asking.”
“If you know, then shut up and walk.”
The memory of the grilled snake we ate in the morning was long gone. We’d split it three ways, so it hadn’t even filled our stomachs.
“Isn’t there a way to catch a bird?”
Baby Poppy pointed at a seagull flying by. Barbarian Man replied indifferently,
“It’d be faster to knock a monkey out of a tree.”
“So there’s no way.”
“There is a way.”
Those last words came from me. Both of them looked at me at the same time.
With eyes like believers awaiting salvation.
I preached them the gospel of hope.
“A way for us to eat meat.”
Their eyes sparkled.
“What is it?”
“But to eat meat, we have to accept a sacrifice.”
“What sacrifice?”
I looked each of them in the eyes in turn, with no emotion, and said,
“The loneliness of losing one friend?”
The two walking figures stopped. The atmosphere turned cold in an instant.
But since I was in a mischievous mood, I didn’t stop there and grinned in the darkness.
With a sinister face, showing my teeth.
Seeing that, Barbarian Man slapped Baby Poppy’s shoulder.
“Hey, let’s go. This crazy bastard’s lost it again.”
Seeing me gripping the knife-tipped spear, the two of them turned pale and started running.
From far away, I heard someone shout, “See! I told you! He’s definitely an escaped convict!”
I deliberately shouted after them in a psychopathic voice,
“Meat~ let’s go together~”
Watching Barbarian Man, who had abandoned me earlier, and Baby Poppy, who was unfortunately tied to him as a set, waste their energy running was pretty fun.
I chuckled to myself and muttered,
“They’re really funny guys…”
Like I’d really eat you, you idiots.
We ate dinner and lay down early on our makeshift beds. But when I tried to sleep, I couldn’t, so I called the two who were also tossing and turning.
I figured we could kill time with some boring game.
“Memory.”
“Forcing.”
“Avoid.”
“Sunny spot.”
“Avoid.”
“Do you both want to die?”
If I’d known I’d end up killing them instead of killing time, I wouldn’t have started.
I stuck my head out of the bed and asked what country repeated words in word-chain games.
Baby Poppy, lying face down biting his nails, and Barbarian Man, lying with his head hanging off the bed, rolled their eyes to look at me.
They still didn’t know what they’d done wrong.
I threw rolled-up palm leaves at them.
“I told you not to repeat words.”
Barbarian Man, who got hit by round palm-leaf “poop” like eraser dust, rubbed his forehead and complained,
“Why can’t we use words we already used?”
“Because that’s the rule I made.”
“You’re a tyrant.”
They both got yellow cards. The game restarted, and the first player, Ben, threw out a word.
“Tyrant.”
“You damn… munitions.”
“Swimming.”
“Eternity.”
“Enemy.”
“Swimming… did you?”
“I did.”
“Then crystal.”
“Stop.”
“Terrain.”
“Form.”
“Ta… ri.”
After hesitating briefly and giving a word, Barbarian Man declared he quit.
He said he was going to sleep. Baby Poppy, now the next player, tilted his head.
“Isn’t that a person’s name?”
“It’s my name, bastard.”
After that, it was just me and Baby Poppy.
At first, we calmly continued the word chain, but as time passed, our desire to win grew, and we focused on winning, probably repeating hundreds of words.
Eventually, Baby Poppy went down first. His voice grew quieter and quieter until he took the express bus to dreamland.
Late at night, as the final winner, I enjoyed my victory and looked up at the night sky with wide-open eyes.
Countless stars were embedded in the dark blue sky.
It was a sight I hadn’t seen once since becoming a high schooler and moving to the city.
To see those stars again on this deserted island—it was so absurd I laughed.
While laughing to myself, I turned my head. Barbarian Man, who had woken up at my movement and was looking around, met my eyes.
“Pfft.”
Seeing how one of his double eyelids had become more pronounced from squeezing his eyes shut, I laughed.
He really was needlessly handsome.
After confirming nothing was wrong, he groaned and lay back down.
Feeling bored, I called his name into the air.
“Bentley.”
“…Benjamin.”
I thought he was asleep, but he wasn’t. His correcting voice was soaked in sleep yet full of irritation.
Right. Come to think of it, his name was Benjamin.
“It sounds like Jasmine.”
When I muttered to myself, I heard him snort with laughter.
Then he told me to go to sleep. Since I was already sleepy, I smiled, turned over, and said,
“Good night, Benjamin.”
Honestly, when he said my name earlier during the game, I’d been a little surprised.
He’d never once called me by my name since we met, and he was such an indifferent guy that I hadn’t even expected it.
I was quietly grateful. Whether he’d said it without thinking or not.
