When the sunlight streamed in, Kasumigaoka Utaha opened her eyes.
Her vision was still a bit blurry, but the warm, soothing sensation on her forehead had vanished.
She reached up to touch her brow.
The makeshift compress, fashioned from her own panties, had been removed and neatly folded on a nearby rock.
Beside it lay some smoked crocodile meat and a cup of water that still held a lingering warmth.
The campfire was still burning, but the person who had been sitting beside it was gone.
Her backpack was missing.
The rebar was gone too.
“…Aoyama-kun?” No one answered.
The shelter was empty.
Only the post-rain air and the fresh scent of vegetation remained, so crisp it felt as if the entire world had been washed clean.
Utaha propped herself up and sat.
Her head still spun slightly, but the burning fever that had consumed her body had mostly subsided.
She touched her forehead again.
Her temperature had dropped significantly.
Though not yet back to normal, it was at least no longer a raging fever.
“So early in the morning…
where did he go?” she muttered softly.
She picked up the cup of water and took a sip.
The warm liquid slid down her throat, making her feel a little more at ease.
As for whether Aoyama had run off—Utaha trusted him.
Meanwhile, Aoyama was walking deeper into the forest along a narrow trail.
The post-rain forest looked as if it had been freshly painted, covered in vibrant, brilliant greens.
Water droplets clung to the leaves, and sunlight filtered through the canopy in golden shafts.
He held the rebar in his hand, the sharpened ballpoint pen refill knife tucked into his belt.
His pace was steady—neither fast nor slow.
His eyes constantly scanned the surroundings, searching for anything useful.
As he passed the roots of an old tree, he paused.
Beneath a cluster of damp plants, he recognized several herbaceous plants with fine hairs on their leaves, serrated edges, and small yellow flowers at the top.
“Bupleurum.” Aoyama knelt, carefully uprooting a few plants and shaking off the soil.
He walked a bit further and found another type of medicinal herb in a damp area around a bend.
Its leaves were heart-shaped and purplish-green, releasing a strong fragrance when crushed.
“This is Perilla, a common herb for dispelling cold and relieving the surface.” He wrapped the two types of herbs separately in large leaves and tucked them into his backpack.
Just as he was about to turn back, a strange sound suddenly echoed from deep within the dense woods ahead.
“Is that a person?” Aoyama immediately ducked behind a large tree, straining his ears.
The noise grew closer, now mingled with heavy gasps, frantic footsteps, and the hoarse shouts of a man.
“…Stop…
stop chasing me…
please…” “Leave the stuff behind!
You can’t escape!” Moments later, two figures burst from the underbrush, one after the other.
The man in the lead was in his early thirties.
He wore a jacket caked in mud and blood, a bulging hiking pack strapped to his back.
A jagged tear ran down his left sleeve, and blood dripped from his fingers.
His face was deathly pale, his entire appearance utterly wretched.
The man pursuing him was slightly younger, with tanned skin.
He brandished a long knife, its blade polished to a lethal shine and stained with dark red blood.
A near-maniacal ferocity gleamed in his eyes as he closed the gap with a steady, swift stride, clearly far more experienced than his prey.
“…” Aoyama stood behind the tree, motionless.
But the Backpack Man, running ahead, had already spotted him.
At the brink of life and death, he seemed to have grasped at his last straw.
He charged toward Aoyama, roaring, desperate to drag him into the vortex of this chase.
“Brother…
help me!
He’s trying to kill me…” After a few more strides, the Long-Blade Man also saw Aoyama.
His movements faltered for a split second as his gaze swept over Aoyama.
A teenager in a school uniform, holding a rebar rod, with a slender frame that didn’t look sturdy at all.
His expression quickly shifted from wariness to the cunning of a man who had just hatched a plan.
“Brother, don’t listen to his bullshit!” the Long-Blade Man shouted, his voice laced with a forced, friendly familiarity.
“This bastard stole my stuff!” “He’s got a pack full of food and medicine!
If you help me stop him, we’ll split it fifty-fifty!” The Backpack Man’s face turned deathly pale.
He whipped his head around to glare at the Long-Blade Man, then turned back to Aoyama, his lips trembling as he tried to explain.
But Aoyama ignored him.
He didn’t even spare a glance for the Backpack Man.
“This distance…
is enough.” At the exact moment the Long-Blade Man shouted his words, Aoyama had already moved.
His speed far exceeded the two men’s expectations.
He shot forward like a black shadow.
A short whoosh cut through the air—the sound of the rebar slicing through it at high speed.
The Long-Blade Man’s expression hadn’t even shifted from his calculating smirk when Aoyama’s rebar pierced through his chest.
Squelch—!!!
The sickening crunch of the rod driving through flesh, piercing his heart and bursting out from his back.
The tip of the rebar emerged from the man’s back, trailing a plume of dark red blood mist.
Fresh blood cascaded down the steel surface.
“You…” The Long-Blade Man looked down in disbelief at the rod impaling his chest.
A few muffled gurgles escaped his throat as his eyes bulged, desperate to say something he could no longer form.
Aoyama didn’t let go.
Gripping the end of the rebar with one hand, Aoyama yanked his arm upward.
The Long-Blade Man’s hundred-plus-pound body was hoisted off the ground by Aoyama’s single arm, dangling in mid-air like a heavy sack of cargo.
“…Is he even human?” The Backpack Man stood frozen, his soul seemingly drained from his body.
His mouth hung open wide enough to fit a fist, his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets.
With a flick of his wrist, Aoyama flung the Long-Blade Man’s corpse off the rebar.
The body spun halfway in the air before slamming heavily into the muddy ground several meters away, splashing mud everywhere.
The long blade slipped from the man’s slackened right hand and clattered onto the stones.
“A sword is much more convenient.” Aoyama bent down to pick up the weapon, examining it closely.
The blade was about fifty centimeters long, sharpened on a single edge with a thick spine.
Though it was poorly maintained, it was clearly a genuine metal weapon.
He weighed it in his hand.
It felt good—much better suited for close-quarters combat than the rebar.
He gripped the sword and turned toward the Backpack Man.
“Y…
You…
You…” The Backpack Man’s face had turned from deathly pale to a sickly ashen gray.
His lips trembled, and his entire body shook like a sieve.
He had watched with his own eyes as this teenager in a school uniform, in just two or three seconds, drive a piece of rebar through an adult man’s heart and then toss him aside like trash.
Such strength and speed were simply not human!
“A monster…
You’re a monster!” “Please…
please don’t kill me…” The Backpack Man collapsed to his knees with a heavy thud, splashing mud all over his face.
He pressed his hands together in a desperate plea, his words stumbling and incoherent.
“I…
I’ll give you everything!
All of it!” “There are canned goods in the bag, compressed biscuits, medicine, water…
I’ll give it all to you!
Just let me go!
Just let me leave!” As he spoke, he frantically tore the backpack from his shoulders and shoved it forward with trembling hands, as if it were a scorching hot potato.
Aoyama glanced at the backpack.
The bag was bulging, its zipper half-open to reveal a densely packed interior.
Aoyama’s gaze returned to the Backpack Man.
The man’s left arm was bleeding.
While the wound wasn’t immediately fatal, it would inevitably become infected in this environment if left untreated.
If he let the man go, his chances of surviving much longer in this forest were slim.
And…
Aoyama’s thoughts turned to Kasumigaoka Utaha.
For both him and Utaha, these restless survivors were nothing but unstable variables.
Aoyama’s lips curved into a smile.
“Fool,” he said softly.
“If I kill you, I get all your stuff anyway.” “What?!” The Backpack Man froze in utter confusion.
“Wait—” Aoyama took a step forward.
His long blade traced a silver arc through the air.
A minute later, Aoyama had an extra, bulging hiking pack at his side.
And two more bodies behind him.
Aoyama squatted down and unzipped the pack to inspect its contents.
What he saw inside made his eyes light up.
“Three cans of food, two packs of compressed biscuits, a small first-aid kit with bandages, iodine, and several blister packs of antibiotics…
and a signal gun with two flares.” Moreover, in a hidden compartment at the bottom of the hiking pack, he found something unexpected: a folded, waterproof map with several points marked in red ink.
One of the points was near the coastline on the island’s southern side, with the words “Gathering Spot” and “Resource Point” scribbled beside it in crooked handwriting.
So it wasn’t just me and Utaha who were transported here.
Aoyama folded the map and tucked it into his pocket, then stuffed all the supplies back into the hiking pack, including the biscuits and canned food.
He stood up, clutching his two weapons: the long blade and the rebar.
With the fully loaded hiking pack on his back, he started walking back the way he came.
After a few steps, he stopped and glanced back at the two bodies lying in the mud.
I’ll need to be careful with the others on this island.
Withdrawing his gaze, he strode deeper into the dense forest.
Aoyama’s pace was much faster on the return journey.
After walking for about half an hour, he saw the outline of the shelter.
The fire was still burning, its orange-red glow emanating from beneath the structure.
“…I’m back.” When he entered the shelter, Kasumigaoka Utaha was sitting against the stone wall.
She had put her school blazer back on, her black hair cascading over her shoulders.
Her complexion was much better than yesterday; though still pale, the unhealthy flush had vanished.
Hearing his voice, she looked up.
Her gaze fell on the long blade in Aoyama’s hand, the bulging new backpack on his back, and the dark red stains on his cuffs—faded by water but still visible.
Kasumigaoka Utaha’s pupils constricted slightly.
“…” But her gaze lingered on the dark red stains for only a moment before she looked away.
She didn’t ask what they were, nor what had happened.
She simply looked at Aoyama and said softly, “Welcome back, Aoyama-kun.” “Are you hungry?
I’ve warmed up the meat.” Aoyama stood at the shelter’s entrance, silent for two seconds, then nodded.
“Yeah.
Take your medicine first.
I found the herbs.” A faint smile touched Kasumigaoka Utaha’s lips, and she asked no further questions.
She quietly accepted the Bupleurum and Perilla he handed her, then watched as he sat down by the fire.
The unease that had been gnawing at her heart finally vanished.