Thwack—
Thwack—
The crisp sound of drumsticks hitting stone echoed twice by the ditch.
By the water's edge, the "spicy noodles" that had been leisurely drinking water suddenly reacted as if they'd seen a ghost. First, the shock made them convulse, and then... they scattered in all directions as if they'd gone mad.
A few unlucky ones happened to charge in Fumiya Jin and Nijika's direction, and so...
Swish—shing—swish...
They were all sliced in two.
Afterward...
Fumiya Jin reached the bushes first.
He carefully probed the bushes with his tachi to make sure no venomous snakes were left behind.
Only then did he wave Nijika over.
"These are blueberries. They're edible. Considering snakes have slithered through here... just peel the skin." Fumiya Jin's hands moved quickly, picking over a dozen and turning to place them in the girl's hands.
The girl took them, nodded, and after a moment's thought, put them in her pants pocket.
"Why are you pocketing them? Eat some first," Fumiya Jin said, glancing at her dry, pale lips.
"Shouldn't we take them back to share?" Nijika asked, stunned.
Fumiya Jin shot her a look, picked two more, peeled their skins, and reached out to pop them into her mouth...
"Mmph..."
"This isn't the time to be so selfless. Let's take care of ourselves first. In my eyes, all their lives combined aren't worth a tenth of yours," Fumiya Jin said earnestly, looking into her eyes. "Besides, we risked our lives to find these. Even if we ate them all and didn't bring a single one back, they'd have no right to say anything."
Nijika froze for a moment.
The blueberry in her mouth was soft, its juice bursting out with a gentle press of her tongue.
Perhaps because it was a wild variety, or maybe it wasn't fully ripe, the sweetness wasn't intense, but the tartness was more pronounced.
But listening to Fumiya Jin's words, seeing the seriousness in his eyes...
The blueberry in her mouth suddenly seemed a little sweeter.
"Oh... I get it..."
...
...
Meanwhile.
On the beach.
The beach was actually quite long.
The group explored along the shoreline.
At first, everyone was full of enthusiasm, imagining how much food they might find.
But by now, their spirits had dampened. Under the scorching sun, the feelings of thirst and hunger grew unbearable, and everyone started to become irritable.
The core reason was simple—they hadn't found a single bit of seafood along the way. They couldn't even find a cat's eye snail on this beach.
"What's going on, Haji? Didn't you say we'd find seafood easily?" the fleshy-faced woman asked impatiently, looking at Haji who was walking at the front.
The curly-haired man scratched his head, completely baffled. "I don't get it either... Logically, a beach like this should at least have some shellfish and small crabs. But we haven't seen a single breathing hole along the way... Are the resources really this scarce?"
"Maybe the snakes here ate them to extinction?" the black man asked.
"No way... Snakes don't really come onto the beach, and they're not fond of eating these sand-burrowing shellfish and small creatures," the curly-haired man said, shaking his head.
"Then you tell us what's going on," the fleshy-faced woman said irritably.
"I... I don't know either..." The curly-haired man gave a wry smile. "It's fine, let's just walk to the end of this beach first. If we still can't find anything by then, I'll dive in and look. No matter what, there can't be zero fish underwater, right?"
His words managed to calm everyone down a bit.
The group stopped complaining and continued walking.
After walking a while longer...
"Hey, what's that up ahead?" the chubby guy suddenly said, pointing into the distance.
Everyone had been focused on the sand at their feet, but his reminder made them look up.
Near the end of the beach, they saw an area of reefs. At the edge of the reefs, there seemed to be a large, protruding, cone-shaped object... Its color didn't look like stone; it was more like rotten, moldy wood.
Startled, they immediately quickened their pace and ran towards it.
Arriving near the reef area, they took a look...
The protruding object was, in fact, a large piece of a ship's hull, constructed from a mix of metal and wood... or rather... the wreckage of a hull.
No one could tell what specific part it was.
But the metal in its structure was severely rusted, and the wood had rotted beyond recognition. It seemed to have been lying here for a long time. The inside appeared to be solid, offering no storage space.
Besides that, in the reef area near the wreckage, they could see some colorful objects washed up on the rocks.
The curly-haired man was the first to jump onto the reef and climb over for a look...
There were two empty Coca-Cola cans, a plastic water bottle with only a little water left, a badly damaged rope net, a large red portable gasoline can, and a blue laundry detergent bottle... The rest was just unidentifiable plastic trash and waste.
As the curly-haired man looked, he was first surprised, but after sorting through it all, he felt a bit disappointed.
"Still nothing we can use as a pot..."
Although they now had containers for water, desalinating seawater in large quantities required distillation, which meant they needed a pot.
Most of these items were plastic. The few metal objects were just small Coke cans, which were far too inefficient for boiling water...
After all, there were seven of them who needed water.
"How come it's all just trash..." The fleshy-faced woman came over to look and was also disappointed.
"This gasoline can, the detergent bottle, and this net should be useful, right?" the madam said after inspecting them. "Let's take them back."
"Let's take the Coke cans and the water bottle back too. They might be useful," the curly-haired man said after a thought.
"Seriously, that's it? I thought we'd found something good... Turns out it's just a piece of scrap metal and a pile of garbage..." The fleshy-faced woman was deeply disappointed. "Hey, Haji, shouldn't you get in the water and find something? We're starving here."
"Uh..."
The curly-haired man thought for a moment.
An idea suddenly occurred to him.
"Wait, if a piece of wreckage this big ended up here, it means the ship probably wrecked somewhere nearby... so there might be more useful things under the water here?" The curly-haired man suddenly got excited. "Then I really should go take a look. First, to find food, and second, to see if there's anything else useful down there... If I can find an iron barrel or something, our freshwater problem will be solved!"
"Then what are you waiting for? Get in!" The black man with dreadlocks, also getting agitated from hunger, urged him on.
"Alright," the curly-haired man nodded, scanned the area, and found a spot to enter the water.
But he didn't get in right away. Instead, he took off his shirt and pants and walked over to the fleshy-faced woman.
"What do you want?" The fleshy-faced woman watched him approach in just his underwear, slightly wary.
But the curly-haired man had no such intentions. With a flick of his hand, two lengths of hemp rope appeared.
He tied one length around his own waist and handed the other to the fleshy-faced woman.
"This is..." The fleshy-faced woman was taken aback.
"My life-saving item, called the 'Tanka People's Safety Rope'," the curly-haired man explained. "Brother Doctor was right about one thing—this game is full of dangers. Even underwater, there could be extra risks, so I have to be cautious. You're the only veteran player among us, so you should be the calmest if something happens. That's why I'm leaving this rope in your control."
____
Hello! Walnut here! Or... Miku Dayo in this case heheh...
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