“Let go of me…”
Half-asleep, Kato Jun groggily heard a sweet, familiar voice murmuring in his ear.
Although the voice was undeniably melodious, being abruptly jarred from his slumber still left him feeling a bit grumpy.
“Yukinoshita…?”
Opening his heavy eyelids, Kato Jun suddenly realized that his arms were wrapped tightly around Yukino Yukinoshita’s slender waist.
The two of them were lying flush against each other on their sides, locked in an intimate, full-body embrace.
“Let go of me this instant, you perverted beast!” Yukinoshita hissed furiously, her entire body stiffening as she felt a very distinct, involuntary morning reaction pressing against her from his lower half.
“Ah!
I’m sorry…”
Kato Jun recoiled instantly, releasing his hold and pulling his hands back as if burned.
Taking immediate advantage of his retreat, Yukino Yukinoshita scrambled to the opposite corner of the cave like a startled fawn, putting as much distance between them as the narrow space allowed.
Last night, after dragging her bedding away to maintain her dignity, the chill of the cavern had apparently gotten the better of her unconscious mind.
When she had opened her eyes this morning, she was mortified to discover that she had completely abandoned her own nest of hay and curled right into Kato Jun’s arms, spooning against him for warmth.
She had originally intended to slip away quietly before he stirred, only to find his heavy arm locked securely over her hips like an iron vice.
With no other choice, she had been forced to blush through her embarrassment and wake him up.
It was, without question, an excruciatingly awkward morning.
Thump, thump, thump…
Outside the cave, while Yukinoshita sat on a sunlit rock grinding her metal scraper and furiously sulking, Kato Jun was busy pounding fresh coconut pulp inside a plastic bowl with a smooth wooden branch.
Once the suffocating tension between them finally dissipated into the morning air, Yukinoshita broke the silence.
“Kato-kun, what in the world have you been pounding away at all morning?
Aren’t those coconuts supposed to be our food?”
“No, this batch is for producing coconut oil,” he replied without pausing his rhythmic pounding.
After dozens of minutes of vigorous crushing and squeezing, a slick, aromatic layer of natural coconut oil had begun pooling at the bottom of the container.
Kato Jun dipped his fingers into the bowl, scooping up a generous amount of the clear liquid, and methodically massaged it into his face and neck.
“This fresh coconut oil functions as a highly effective, all-natural sunblock.
It forms a protective barrier over our skin, shielding us from the punishing ultraviolet rays outside to prevent severe sunburns and blistering.”
After giving a brief demonstration, Kato Jun extended the bowl toward her.
“Here.
Considering how strong the sun is today, applying this will make moving around much more bearable.”
Having caught an eyeful of her porcelain, radiant skin during her seaside bath yesterday, Kato Jun knew that a girl with such a delicate complexion would suffer terribly under the tropical sun if left unprotected.
He had started working on this batch at the crack of dawn specifically with her in mind.
“Thank you…”
Although she was still thoroughly annoyed by his unintentional morning liberties, her vanity and instinct for self-preservation won out.
Yukinoshita accepted the bowl with a faint murmur of genuine gratitude.
A desire to preserve one’s beauty was second nature to any girl, and she certainly had no desire to end up covered in peeling, blotchy red sunburns.
Once their makeshift sunscreen had thoroughly absorbed, the two set out according to plan.
Armed with their sharpened aviation steel, they began felling small saplings along the forest edge to construct a proper sunshade and storm shelter directly outside the mouth of the cavern.
With rescue entirely uncertain, establishing a shaded, well-ventilated structure to deflect torrential rain and ocean winds was their highest priority.
The physical labor was relentless—chopping straight trunks, stripping fibrous jungle vines to twist into crude cordage, digging foundation postholes, and lashing the heavy timber frame together.
The pair laboured under the rising heat for hours, only securing the final crossbeams as noon arrived.
The second the frame stood firm, both Kato Jun and Yukinoshita collapsed beneath its shaded canopy, panting heavily against the cool sand.
Even though they had eaten a hearty breakfast of roasted crabs and coconut meat, the intense manual construction had completely sapped their energy reserves.
Yukinoshita lay curled on her side, lacking even the strength to lift a finger.
Kato Jun was equally exhausted, though in his case, the strain was purely mental.
Anticipating the heavy workload, he had activated his unique survival skill early in the morning, locking his stamina in place throughout the construction.
As a result, only his sanity had taken a minor hit while his physical energy remained largely intact.
Kato Jun: Hunger: 130 / 170 (Satiated) Health: 170 / 180 Stamina: 130 / 180 Sanity: 110 / 170 Active Skill: Absolute Stat Lock (Duration: 3 Hours / Cooldown: 24 Hours) Note: Next system unlock triggers when all four core attributes average 200.
Successfully finishing the shelter had granted him an immediate ten-point boost across all attributes.
At this rate, breaking the two-hundred-point milestone was well within reach.
Feeling his fatigue dissipate, Kato Jun pushed himself up to a seated position.
Beside him, Yukinoshita was still resting motionless, her chest rising and falling softly.
Yukino Yukinoshita: Hunger: 50 / 110 (Depleted) Health: 130 / 130 Stamina: 30 / 120 (Exhausted) Sanity: 140 / 170 Affinity: 45 Notification: Target character’s average attribute value has surpassed 130.
Initial skill slot available for activation.
Unlock now?
Kato Jun blinked in surprise.
So Yukinoshita was capable of unlocking personal skills too?
And her attributes could grow through daily survival tasks, just like his?
Was this sudden milestone triggered by the warm cooked meal from last night and her rigorous labor on the shelter today?
Furthermore, her affinity—which had plummeted from 20 to 10 yesterday—had suddenly skyrocketed to 45.
A woman’s heart truly is as unpredictable as the ocean depths…
With emotional swings this drastic, could she secretly be a closet tsundere?
Amused by her stat screen, Kato Jun didn’t hesitate.
He mentally tapped the confirmation prompt to unlock her potential.
Ding!
Yukino Yukinoshita has acquired the passive skill: Deft Craftsmanship.
Skill Description: Enhances manual dexterity and fine motor control.
Grants massive intuitive bonuses to weaving, carpentry, precision manufacturing, and tool-making.
That sounds absurdly practical…
Kato Jun mused, glancing over at Yukinoshita just as she began pushing herself upright.
“This shelter…
it was built completely wrong,” Yukinoshita muttered abruptly, her sharp eyes scanning the wooden frame above them.
Having just acquired the passive skill, flaws in the timberwork that had previously eluded her suddenly stood out like glaring errors on a test sheet.
The weight distribution was unbalanced, the cross-bracing was fragile, and the thatched palm roof would easily collapse under the sheer force of a tropical storm.
The joints needed lashing with damp clay, and the roof angle was far too shallow to shed water properly.
In the span of a single breath, a deluge of architectural principles had spontaneously formed in her mind, allowing her to pinpoint half a dozen fatal weaknesses in their handiwork.
“No, this won’t do at all.
We have to tear this down and rebuild it properly right now!”
Yukinoshita declared, determinedly climbing to her feet despite her visibly trembling legs.
“Whoa, hold on, Yukinoshita-san!
Our physical stamina is completely drained.
Rebuilding the shelter and expanding the campsite will have to wait until tomorrow!”
Kato Jun quickly intervened, startled by how rapidly and aggressively her new passive skill had taken hold.
The underlying mechanics of this island were feeling more and more like an open-world survival game by the hour.
Shaking his head, he decided it was best not to overthink the cosmic absurdity of it all.
“Right now, our immediate concern is food.
We need to secure high-quality protein for dinner,” Kato Jun continued, still smarting over his complete failure to catch fish with a sharpened spear yesterday.
“That’s a reasonable point.
Are you planning to spearfish in the shallows again?” she asked, conceding that the shelter could at least survive through the afternoon.
“I plan to hunt the tide pools, but spears are too inefficient.
I’m going to fashion a functional bow and arrow.”
With that, Kato Jun emptied the remaining contents of the family-sized condom box onto a flat stone.
By twisting these strips of medical-grade latex into a composite elastic cord, he was confident he could craft a crude bow that packed far more velocity and range than a standard slingshot.
“In that case…
let me assemble it.
And let me inspect that slingshot you made yesterday as well,” Yukinoshita insisted, stepping forward with an eager, focused gleam in her blue eyes.
An inexplicable urge to craft had suddenly taken hold of her fingers, and she felt an unyielding confidence that she could construct an exceptionally refined hunting bow.
“Uh…
sure, be my guest,” Kato Jun agreed, his eye twitching slightly as he surrendered the materials to the intensely motivated girl.
An hour later.
Thwip—THUNK!
Accompanied by a sharp, whistling gust of displaced air, a slender, fire-hardened wooden shaft violently embedded itself into the hard-packed earth of a distant mound.
The arrow had penetrated a full three inches deep.
“Good grief…
the kinetic power on this thing is unreal,” Kato Jun gasped, staring dumbfoundedly at the vibrating wooden arrow before glancing down at the taut bow in his grip.
He had zero doubt that if the shaft had been tipped with a sharpened steel arrowhead, this improvised recurve bow could easily puncture straight through a wild animal—or even shatter against solid stone.
He had watched in absolute disbelief as Yukinoshita stripped flexible saplings, laminated the wood with heat, and twisted the plastic cord and latex into an impeccably balanced, high-tension bowstring.
Even the re-engineered slingshot hanging from his hip had been stripped, reinforced, and tuned to deadly perfection.
Deft Craftsmanship…
isn’t this passive skill a little too overpowered?
Compared to her versatile, game-changing crafting talent, his single-target stat-lock skill suddenly felt painfully underwhelming.
A hollow wave of defeat washed over him, leaving him to wonder if Yukinoshita was actually the intended protagonist of this bizarre survival scenario.
Well, whatever.
At least our hunting efficiency is going through the roof.
“How does the draw weight feel?
Our raw materials were severely limited, so this was the absolute best tension curve I could manage,” Yukinoshita remarked, sounding mildly critical of her own masterpiece, even as she secretly marveled at where all this instinctive woodworking knowledge had come from.
“Are you kidding?
It’s incredible.
With this kind of piercing power, we won’t just be shooting fish—we could probably snipe passing seagulls out of the air,” Kato Jun praised honestly, itching to put the weapon through its paces.
Splash!
A sharpened reed arrow plunged into the foaming surf, sending up a clean spray of water.
However, whether due to the optical distortion of light refraction, the arrow veering off-course upon hitting the surface, or simply his own atrocious marksmanship, Kato Jun failed to hit anything.
He had drawn, aimed, and released over twenty consecutive arrows at two fat, sluggish groupers trapped in the rocky shallows, yet every single shot had struck harmlessly into the sand.
Statistically speaking, even an amateur blind-firing with pure luck should have accidentally grazed a fin by now, but Kato Jun’s record remained a spotless zero.
“Haaa…”
Hanging his head in absolute humiliation, he waded forward through the knee-deep surf to retrieve his floating arrows.
“Step aside, Kato-kun.
Allow me,” Yukinoshita sighed, unable to endure the painful spectacle of watching her usually dependable companion miss twenty consecutive point-blank shots.
She gracefully took the bow from his hands, notched an arrow, adjusted her stance, and drew the bowstring smoothly back to her cheek.
Compensating instinctively for the optical refraction of the water, she aimed slightly below the silhouette of a lurking grouper and released.
THWACK!
The sharp wooden tip cleanly impaled the fish straight through the midsection.
“Direct hit!”
Yukinoshita let out a triumphant gasp, quickly hauling the arrow from the water to proudly display the fat grouper violently thrashing on the wooden shaft.
The projectile had completely pierced its body.
“T-That was…
incredible,” Kato Jun stammered, utterly stunned that she had bagged a target on her very first attempt.
Compared to her effortless marksmanship, his previous efforts made him look like a complete, embarrassing novice.
“I believe I have the hang of this,” Yukinoshita declared, a flush of supreme confidence blooming across her features.
She shoved the impaled fish into his stunned hands, notched another arrow, and turned her attention back to the tidal pool.
Thwack!
Thwack!
Thwack!
While she didn’t achieve a mythical one-hundred-percent hit rate, her accuracy hovered steadily around a terrifying fifty percent.
Within half an hour, a heavy cluster of fat sea bream and groupers hung securely from a length of braided seaweed.
Standing behind her like a glorified caddy, Kato Jun could only watch in stunned, speechless awe, feeling an uncomfortable mixture of profound admiration, wounded male pride, and the overwhelming sensation of being thoroughly carried.
Her sudden, overwhelming competence had genuinely left his head spinning.
“Alright, that’s more than enough!
If we catch any more, the meat will spoil before we can finish it all!” Kato Jun finally blurted out, stepping in to stop her before she emptied the entire reef of marine life.
“Ah…
you’re right,” Yukinoshita murmured, suddenly realizing how carried away she had gotten.
A blush crept onto her cheeks, and she self-consciously tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
Perhaps it was because this was the very first time she had completely outperformed Kato-kun—the seemingly omnipotent survivor—in a tangible field.
Or perhaps seeing his perpetually composed expression collapse into an adorable, sulking pout of defeat had simply brought her far too much satisfaction.
Whatever the reason, the sheer thrill of outshining him had proved dangerously addictive.
Watching his slightly slumping back as he trudged ashore carrying their massive haul, Yukinoshita’s lips curved into an irrepressible smile, her eyes narrowing into delightful crescent moons.
Her mood had truly reached its absolute zenith.
Damn it all!
Why does she get such a ridiculously broken skill?
It’s one thing to master carpentry on the fly, but having pinpoint archery aim on top of that is just cheating!
Sitting by the fire pit, Kato Jun moodily hacked away at another coconut to extract oil, casting resentful glances toward the girl across the clearing.
Yukinoshita was happily humming a cheerful melody under her breath while skillfully rotating skewers of fresh fish over the crackling embers.
Still…
she looks astonishingly cute when she smiles like that.
Watching the radiant, pure joy illuminating her delicate features, the petty frustration in Kato Jun’s heart dissipated like smoke on the ocean breeze.
Yukino Yukinoshita’s current affinity: 55.