I'm Living with My Female Bosses on a Deserted Island

Mm.

A little while later, Seoyoon and Jia woke up one after the other.

"Did you sleep well?"

I was already up, so I spoke to them. The assistant manager hid under the blanket, looking embarrassed.

A moment later, Seoyoon cautiously peeked her face out.

"Yes. Good morning, Mr. Woojin."

It seemed they hadn't noticed Luka and my little indiscretion.

Luka curled up in my arms, wearing a mischievous expression like a cat pleased with getting away with a secret prank.

"…I wonder what happened to the rescue team?"

Manager Han Jia asked.

Was she worried?

Unlike at the beach, there was no way to know from here…

"I'll check while I'm out looking for food today."

"Really?! Thank you, Mr. Woojin!"

As expected, Manager Han Jia's biggest concern was escaping.

Though I now thought the chances were slim, I didn't want to crush her hopes.

"───."

The assistant manager, who wanted to escape even more desperately than Manager Han, had instead gone quiet.

It seemed the failed escape plan had come to mind, and she would rather avoid thinking about it.

"Since we know Mr. Woojin can make things… shall we expand our work area today?"

"Assistant Manager, we're out of food. Finding food comes first."

"Ah, right…."

Food was an extremely sensitive issue when it came to surviving on a deserted island.

It was no exaggeration to say it was our number-one priority.

Unlike modern life, where food was waiting whenever you opened the fridge, we had nothing to eat this morning.

With four mouths to feed, our food was inevitably running out faster.

The fear that we might go hungry if we didn't find something soon was becoming a very real concern.

Of course.

Luka, who'd decided to have me carry her on my back, was curled up as if it had nothing to do with her.

Honestly, what a queen's mindset.

"If there's anything to wash, give it to me. I'll do it."

Manager Han Jia sat up.

It seemed she was volunteering to handle the laundry.

"There's water nearby, so we can scoop some out and use it."

I pictured Manager Han crouching by the water and doing the laundry.

"So, Mr. Woojin, give me your underwear and anything else that needs washing."

"It's okay…."

"Don't be shy. Come on, come on~."

I couldn't help feeling a little embarrassed about handing my underwear to a married manager.

"Don't be embarrassed. It's better than wearing smelly underwear, isn't it? Hehe."

"Then I'll leave it to you."

I handed her the underwear I'd been wearing and the bundled-up laundry.

"Got it~."

"How are you going to wash it? Just rinsing it in water?"

"Yes. For now, I'm adding a few drops of shampoo and body wash. The surfactants help remove sweat and sebum."

The modern supplies we'd brought in our luggage were definitely useful.

But since I'd used some when I washed yesterday, I was a little worried about how quickly we'd go through them.

"What'll we do when we run out?"

"Hmm─."

"Hmm─."

Both the assistant manager and Manager Han groaned as if my question were difficult.

"Lye water… maybe."

The assistant manager cautiously offered an idea.

"People used to wash clothes with lye. Some kind of alkaline substance is supposed to help with laundry."

"It's alkaline, Mr. Woojin…."

"Anyway, it was something like that."

Why did the assistant manager casually know that lye water was alkaline?

"But I only know about it. I've never actually done it…."

The assistant manager glanced over at Manager Han.

"I wasn't from the generation that did laundry with lye water either~~!"

"Didn't your mother or grandmother ever tell you about it?"

"W-well…."

Washing with lye water.

It probably worked, but none of us had ever actually tried it.

If we ran out of shampoo, we'd have to do some trial and error….

"Well, it's not that important a problem right now."

"It is important."

The assistant manager said firmly.

"Hygiene. Matters."

"I mean it's less important than food. Haha."

"That's true. Food comes first."

Hygiene was important, of course.

Poor hygiene wouldn't kill us immediately, but if there was one bastard you really didn't want to run into on a deserted island…

It was disease.

The more I thought about staying on this island, the more problems there were.

"Let's deal with the most urgent problems first. Manager, please handle the laundry, and Luka…"

At the assistant manager's words, Luka raised her head from my arms.

"…Nothing."

"Luka'll go pick up some stuff~."

Foraging.

It was the most basic way to gather resources, though there was no telling what she might bring back.

She was a lucky gyaru with an unpredictable streak.

"Mr. Woojin. Could you come over here for a moment?"

The assistant manager called me over to a corner.

It was a setup I'd experienced plenty of times in the military.

Assistant Manager Kang Seoyoon had her arms crossed and looked ready to ask, 「Aren't you going to properly train your subordinate?」

Hmm, quite a picture.

"I know you're working hard, Mr. Woojin, but…."

"You want me to make Luka do something, right?"

"…Pardon?"

The assistant manager blinked her big eyes.

"No."

"No?"

What? I'd completely misread that.

Seoyoon cleared her throat in embarrassment and hesitated.

Why was she taking so long?

"What is it?"

"Um…. Could you make one more thing today?"

Ah~~~

So she meant wooden planks.

Ugh, what a pain…

Finding food had to come first today.

Maybe my annoyance showed, because Seoyoon cleared her throat and emphasized her point again.

"This is important, too."

"What is it? Can't we do it after I get back?"

She hesitated.

Seoyoon took a long time to get the words out, then spoke in a trembling voice.

"Could you make us… a bathroom?"

……

I understood immediately why she'd pulled me aside.

Even I hadn't thought of it.

If we were going to use the rocky overhang as our base, there was something urgent.

A bathroom.

It ranked far above a platform, a roof, or a laundry spot.

In a way, it was a matter of hygiene at our base, and it was also closely connected to privacy.

I could make do by pissing against a fallen tree, but the assistant manager and Manager Han……

Even Luka probably didn't want to relieve herself just anywhere.

"I already picked out a spot a little ways away."

She'd even chosen the location already.

To make a makeshift bathroom on a deserted island, the obvious first step was digging a hole.

A hole deep enough that the smell wouldn't rise…

Asking the women to do that without so much as a shovel would be a pretty brutal task.

There was a reason the assistant manager had decided she needed me.

"It's okay if you do it after we get back today. Please, okay…?"

As she asked me to make a bathroom, the assistant manager's face grew redder and her voice quieter.

Even Kim Woojin couldn't say no to this just because it was a pain.

"All right. I'll see what I can do after we finish exploring today."

The assistant manager's face brightened.

My to-do list had gotten longer.

Since we'd decided to stay on the island, I suppose it couldn't be helped.

For now, we set aside the immediate discomfort, and the assistant manager and I headed out to explore together.

"Should we check first to see if the rescue team came?"

"Sure."

We headed toward the shore without giving it much thought.

As expected, the rescue team hadn't come.

Perhaps people had gone inland to find a way to survive, because there were noticeably fewer people around.

There were still a few who waited for rescue, watching across the sea.

"……There's no rescue team. How have we waited ten days on this huge island without a single boat or plane passing by?"

"I know."

The assistant manager let out a long sigh.

"It can't be helped. Let's go find a way to survive."

Our goal had become simple again.

We had to survive today, too.

"Shall we head over there? We need to go somewhere we haven't been before."

"Let's."

After walking for about an hour, we came across a grove of palm trees.

"Palm trees. And they have coconuts!"

"I don't think those are coconuts."

Shit, the fruit looked like a clump of bright red tumors.

More than that, just seeing a grove of palm trees made me a little uneasy.

I'd had a feeling the climate was subtropical or tropical, but there really were palm trees.

The reason we hadn't found them until now was probably that they were behind a small cove on the opposite side from the beach where we'd first washed ashore.

If we'd searched the whole coastline from the start, we might have found them.

But I still didn't know whether this discovery was a jackpot or not.

Even when I used the detection spell, those palm fruits didn't feel like anything special.

"Should we pick some? If you boost me up, I can get them."

"They're too high. I'll knock them down with wind magic."

"Oh, right. You can do that."

Remembering when she'd boosted me to pick fruit, the assistant manager awkwardly scratched her head, having briefly been about to get ready to carry me.

I nudged the unfamiliar palm fruits with the Glyph of Wind, knocking them down.

"They really aren't coconuts. Aren't palm fruits supposed to be coconuts?"

"Then I guess these only look like palm trees. They aren't actually palm trees."

Why did that sound like the opening to some horror story?

They look like palm trees, but aren't…

To a Korean, anything with long, tough leaves radiating out would inevitably look like a palm tree.

And the fruit even grew in segmented clusters, like coconuts.

The fruit was an oval mass made up of several pieces fused together.

Its surface was divided like a honeycomb, and the colors varied between orange, red, and yellowish brown, but every one of them looked dangerous.

"What is this??"

The assistant manager tilted her head.

"It kind of looks like a pineapple…."

When I touched it, it was quite hard.

"I'll try cutting one open."

At times like this, maybe doing what primitive humans did would give us an answer.

Thump!

One Wind Cutter split the fruit in half.

"Amazing. You don't even need a knife."

"I got stronger from your Spartan log training, Assistant Manager."

"Ahem…!"

I knew it wasn't a coconut, but the inside was just as hard, with thick, fibrous flesh.

What the hell was this?

"Do you think it's edible?"

"Why are you asking me…?"

The assistant manager looked up at me cutely as she asked.

Her eyes seemed to expect me to know some advanced survival skills.

"You don't know? Mr. Woojin, you're good with fruit."

"I'm not a fruit expert. But……"

Hmm.

I thought I could sense a strange mana from it.

Should I try it?

"I'll try eating it."

"That could be dangerous! What if you get sick?"

"Just a little."

I removed a piece of the hard rind and smelled it.

It surprisingly smelled fruity.

When I put some in my mouth, the flesh didn't chew softly. It felt like chewing on tough fibers.

As I chewed, a little juice came out.

"Ptooey."

It wasn't fit to eat. My mouth felt astringent and tingly, and the roof of it felt rough.

"Does it taste bad?"

"Yeah. You'd have to starve for three days before it'd taste good."

The assistant manager looked a little disappointed.

"It might be edible, so let's take some with us for now."

"Okay."

The fruit was basically a resource waiting to be picked.

I knocked them down with little taps of the Glyph of Wind and put them in my bag.

Even just taking three made the bag pretty heavy.

"Just in case, I'll bring some leaves, too."

"The leaves?"

"Oh, they might be useful for something."

"That could be true."

The assistant manager folded the long leaves in half and tied them to the outside of her bag.

As expected, she was meticulous.

I hadn't paid much attention to the leaves…

More precisely, since they weren't materials full of mana, they looked like low-grade junk items in a game.

Just as we were about to head back, I sensed another source of unusual mana.

……

"Mr. Woojin? Shall we head back to the forest now?"

The assistant manager looked back at me in puzzlement from the entrance to the southern forest.

'When I get a signal like this, I have to trust magic no matter what.'

Something good was definitely going to happen.

Just like when we found the rocky overhang.

"Assistant Manager. Let's check over there."

Seoyoon hurried after me as I strode off.