The shirts were still dripping when Sora rounded a large overturned rock and saw the silver packets caught between two tide pools. At first she mistook them for torn foil from the galley, the kind that would be useless after a night in seawater. Then she noticed the black lettering on one packet, scuffed but legible.
TYPE 900 MILITARY COMPRESSED RATION — 500 G.
She crouched and picked it up. The foil was scratched, but the seal had held. She turned it over to check the packaging, remembering a batch of emergency provisions she’d helped the administration team order for a company event. The purchasing manager had complained about the cost, then insisted that every packet be counted against the delivery list. At the time, Sora had thought the whole process absurdly fussy. Now she wished she’d paid closer attention to the storage instructions.
There were eight packets in all. Three had split on the rocks and taken in water; their contents felt damp and soft through the foil. The other five were firm, with no obvious damage to the seams.
Five good packets. Two and a half kilograms of food.
Sora sat back on her heels and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She could almost see Kai’s face when she brought them to the collection point—not a broad smile, she suspected, but that brief look he got when something had gone better than he expected. More important, this was food that could be stored and rationed instead of eaten immediately. For the first time since the wreck, the next day looked less like a blank wall.
She checked each seal again, pressing carefully along the seams and wiping away the grit with the edge of her sleeve. One packet had a shallow dent near the corner, but no split. She put that one on top, where she could keep an eye on it, and tied the five together with a strip of fabric torn from the hem of the ruined T-shirt. It was an awkward bundle, but it left her hands free for the climb back to the flat rock.
She carried three packets to the flat rock Kai had chosen, set them in a neat row, then returned for the remaining two. She was halfway back when a man’s voice sounded behind her.
“Well, now. Someone’s found the good stuff.”
Sora turned. Zhou Dahai stood on a higher rock a few feet away, one hand resting on his thigh as he climbed down. He was in his early forties, with a torn white shirt and a scab across his left eyebrow. Before the wreck, he had been the kind of colleague people recognized more by department than by face. Legal Affairs. Always ready with a joke in the pantry, always mentioning how many apartments his family owned back home. Sora had barely spoken to him.
His attention was fixed on the ration packets.
“Zhou,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come up.”
“Hard to hear anything with the waves crashing.” He looked toward the flat rock, where the other three packets were plainly visible. “How many did you find?”
“Five that are still sealed. The others are ruined.” She drew the two packets closer to her chest. “I’m taking them to the collection point.”
“Collection point?” He glanced at the rock again. “Who decided that?”
Sora hesitated just long enough for him to notice. If she said Kai had chosen the spot, Zhou might follow her back to the cave or use the information to demand access to the supplies there. She had no idea what he’d heard about Kai, but she wasn’t going to hand him another reason to go looking.
“I did,” she said. “It’s easier to keep everything together until we decide what’s usable.”
He gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You did? That’s quite an initiative for an intern.”
“I’m only trying to keep the food from getting lost.”
Zhou’s gaze flicked to the bandage around her knee and the grit embedded in her palms. “You’ve been crawling around on these rocks for an hour for five packets of biscuits?”
“Compressed rations,” she said, surprised by how quickly she corrected him. “They’re not biscuits.”
“Food is food.” He licked his lips again. “And food belongs with the people who can distribute it properly.”
“Then you won’t mind handing it over.” He held out his right hand. “Ms. Voss said all recovered supplies are to be turned in and distributed. I’ll take these back to her.”
“Did she ask you to come here?”
Zhou’s fingers stayed open between them. “I’m telling you what the rule is.”
“Then ask her to confirm it. I’ll give them to her myself.”
The smile slipped. For a second, he looked less offended by her refusal than by the fact that she had made him ask twice. In the office, he could have sent an email or called a manager. Here, there was no desk between them, no policy manual to wave about, and no one nearby who would be obliged to take his side.
“Don’t make this complicated,” he said. “I’m being polite.”
“I’m not hiding the food. I’m taking it to the place where we agreed to put the supplies.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” He stepped down onto the lower rock. “You and which people?”
Sora’s heel found the edge of a narrow crevice. She shifted away before she could lose her balance, keeping her grip on the packets. “I found them first. I’m not giving them to you just because you turned up.”
The change in Zhou was small but unmistakable. His mouth tightened, and he stopped pretending they were having a friendly conversation.
“Listen, little girl. We’re not back at the office. There’s no need to be difficult over a few packets of food.”
“Then why don’t you go find some yourself?” The words came out more sharply than she meant them to. She regretted saying them almost at once, not because she thought she was wrong, but because she had seen the way his eyes changed.
He reached for the packet on top.
Sora twisted away. “Don’t touch it.”
Zhou caught only the edge of the foil before she pulled it clear. His face flushed, and he looked past her toward the empty shoreline, checking whether anyone was close enough to witness what happened next.
“You’re making a big mistake,” he said.
“Then let Ms. Voss decide.” Sora tried to keep her voice steady. “I’ll go back with you if she says I have to. But you’re not taking them from me out here.”
He gave a short laugh. “You really think ‘I found it first’ means anything?”
He stepped closer, forcing Sora to retreat until her calf struck the rock behind her. The waves rolled through the pools below, washing white foam around their boots. She tightened her arms around the packets and searched the shoreline for Kai, but the outcrop blocked her view of his side of the search area.
Zhou noticed where she was looking.
“Waiting for someone to save you?” he asked. “Who’s coming? Your supervisor? That intern with the knife?”
Sora said nothing. She wouldn’t give him Kai’s name, and she wouldn’t let him know how much she wanted Kai to appear.
Zhou’s expression hardened. He reached for the packets again, this time without pretending he had permission.
Sora jerked them against her chest. “I said no.”
For a moment, they stood on the uneven rock, each holding one end of the silver foil. Sora could feel the packet bending between their hands. She was afraid it would tear and spill the food into the saltwater, but the thought of handing it over was worse. She had found it. She had carried three packets to the collection point alone, then come back for the rest. She was not going to let him turn that effort into his own good fortune.
Zhou released the foil and looked at her as if he were seeing her properly for the first time—not a junior employee to be brushed aside, but a person who had refused him in a place where he expected refusal to be punished.
“You found it first?” he said again, quietly. “Let’s see how much that matters out here.”
He moved toward her, and Sora braced herself against the rock, holding on to the two packets as the tide surged around the lower stones. She could hear Kai somewhere beyond the outcrop, moving metal or wood across stone, but the sound was too distant to tell whether he had heard them. Zhou took another step and blocked the narrow path back to the collection point.