Chapter 3
Though I ended up with my arms around a curvy, married manager, I felt sorry for her more than anything.
The situation seemed to be improving, and yet it wasn't.
Because our belief that help would arrive soon had been shattered.
The crushing reality that we might have to live here from now on, and the sense of being cut off from our families.
Those things had broken Manager Han Jia, who had always smiled no matter what.
I was used to living on my own, so I felt I could endure it, but…
I couldn't begin to imagine the shock and loss Manager Han Jia, who already had a family, must be feeling.
"It's okay. Cry as much as you want."
I didn't know whether the manager heard me.
But Han Jia's arms around my waist tightened a little.
* * *
Day 3 stranded. 09:00
I woke to a commotion and saw the manager sitting with her back to me, rummaging through a bag.
"W-Woojin, you're awake?"
She seemed terribly embarrassed, perhaps remembering what happened yesterday.
"Manager, are you feeling better now?"
"Yes. Thanks to you."
She seems a little calmer.
"I'm really sorry. I was thinking about my kids and my husband."
"It's all right."
"I packed both your bags ahead of time."
"Oh, thank you."
So these were the travel bags from the wreckage.
They probably had what little food we had left and some empty water bottles.
Seoyoon was looking out at the sea a little ways away.
Was she searching the horizon for the rescue team?
"Do you think… we'll be able to go home?"
Han Jia asked.
"Who knows? For now… we have to survive."
I picked up my bag and walked over to Seoyoon.
She was crouching and doing something.
I wondered if she was lamenting her situation like yesterday.
"O water…!"
Whisper.
"?"
"Water… Come forth, water! O spirit of water."
"What are you doing?"
"Eek!"
Assistant Manager Kang jumped in surprise.
"You should've told me you dreamed of being a magical girl."
"Ugh!! I was just trying to copy you in case I could do it too…."
I never expected her to be imitating me.
Had she been holding an empty water bottle and chanting the whole time?
"I know how to do it. Why do you ask?"
"……."
"Do you dislike me acting all high and mighty?"
"Ahem. That's not it… I can't keep relying on you forever, Woojin."
"Hmm, you can just say you don't like it if you don't."
"I told you, that's not it."
Seoyoon snatched the empty water bottle and thrust it at me.
"…Could you teach me the trick?"
"I don't know. I just see it."
"What do you mean, you see it?"
A pattern that meant 'water.'
I took the bottle and filled it with a glug-glug.
"Shall we go? At least we won't have to worry about dehydration."
"I guess I should give up on becoming a magical girl."
And besides, Assistant Manager, you're a little old to be called a girl…
I shouldn't say that, should I?
"Oh, right. I walked along the coastline for a bit to get a rough idea of the island's size and shape."
"Did you find anything out?"
"The place we're at now is on the southern side of the island."
Seoyoon said, holding up her smartphone.
"The latest smartphones have electronic sensors, so the basic compass app still works."
"The southern shore… and the forest we're heading to now is in the south, too."
"That's right. Knowing where we are will make it easier to find our way back."
She's smarter than me.
Though I'd known that for a while.
"I'll mark the way back with lipstick. The most important thing is not to get lost."
So cosmetics were useful after all.
"You're in your element, Assistant Manager."
"I never thought I'd be putting it on tree bark, though."
"But…"
I stared at the assistant manager and asked.
"Are you okay with going just the two of us?"
You never knew what could happen in the forest.
Like your partner suddenly turning on you and attacking.
From that perspective, women faced far greater risks.
Seoyoon couldn't be unaware of what it meant to go into the forest with the island's only man.
It bothered me a little that she was so readily setting out to explore with me, without even the manager.
Seoyoon stared at the ground for a moment as if thinking, then murmured quietly.
"Hmm, I don't know."
I hadn't expected the textbook answer, 「I can trust Woojin」, but her vague response was unlike her and bothered me.
She usually had a definite conclusion to everything.
"────Still, we've been coworkers for a month."
Was that all?
Her answer was more deflating than I'd expected.
* * * *
Kang Seoyoon saw Kim Woojin as a hopeless incompetent.
More than lacking ability, he had no desire to do anything himself.
Since he was a temp, Seoyoon hadn't expected him to get everything right from the start.
"Mr. Kim Woojin, are you listening?"
"Huh? Ah, yes."
She'd known from day one that he had poor concentration and no desire to learn.
But at the very least, he should've realized he was inconveniencing others; instead, he was inexplicably carefree.
Kang Seoyoon thought Kim Woojin was a selfish person who did nothing but cause trouble for others.
The label "hopeless incompetent" came after that.
Rather than labeling someone a hopeless case or incompetent…
「I'll handle the hard stuff, so just keep up without holding me back!」
That was Kang Seoyoon's leadership style.
But no matter how much she tried to help, there was no teaching someone who had no desire to learn.
"Why didn't you do it the way I showed you? Explain yourself, Mr. Kim Woojin."
"I'm sorry."
"I didn't ask you to apologize. I asked you to explain."
"This way seemed more efficient…."
"Efficient? Hah. Who told you to come up with that and do it your way?"
"I'm sorry."
That look again.
The look that said he'd bow his head and pretend to be sorry no matter what she said.
He wasn't actually reflecting on his actions at all.
If that's what he wanted, she'd give him work suited to a useless incompetent.
"Bring up all the luggage from downstairs."
"By myself?"
"Didn't you hear me? What are you doing? Get moving."
"Yes."
Still, having a man around was useful when she could order him around like a servant.
But he was someone she really didn't want to get close to.
A selfish person. A piece of trash who had no idea how to do anything for others.
Kang Seoyoon believed her judgment was infallible.
Even considering the position she'd end up in later,
if she'd been asked for fun to pick a coworker to 「come with me to a deserted island」, Seoyoon wouldn't have chosen Kim Woojin, not even by the slimmest chance.
To the passionate Kang Seoyoon, Kim Woojin was an inexplicable mass of unpleasantness.
'It's not like I'll ever see him again.'
Fed up with Kim Woojin's unchanging attitude after a month, Kang Seoyoon had given up on him completely.
That conclusion never changed for the rest of her life.
When Seoyoon analyzed and judged people, she was almost never wrong.
However───
「Are you okay?! Assistant Manager!」
Everything had been turned upside down.
At the moment she'd been truly terrified, someone had wrapped an arm around her and reassured her.
It was Kim Woojin.
As the plane shook wildly and passengers screamed all around them, Kang Seoyoon, who prided herself on being smart, couldn't think or act.
In that chaos, there was only one person───
The very Kim Woojin she'd looked down on as incompetent and selfish was the only one who snatched an oxygen mask and put it over her mouth.
"!"
Kang Seoyoon was utterly shocked.
How fickle people could be.
People would gossip behind your back if you failed them once, even after doing well ten times. She'd seen plenty of new female employees like that.
But even if she'd brought it on herself, after a month of harassing him, how could he not have held a grudge?
──And yet, at that critical moment, he put my life before his own.
Seoyoon couldn't understand that choice.
The selfish person she'd written off as a hopeless incompetent had acted altruistically at the decisive moment between life and death.
When proud Seoyoon put on the oxygen mask, what she felt more than fear of dying was regret.
'I was… I was wrong.'
This man wasn't rotten to the core.
Why hadn't she seen that?
If they survived and got another chance, if she could go back a month, she'd be kinder────
And the world tore apart.
──────
When she woke, Kim Woojin was lying collapsed beside the shore.
"Mr. Kim Woojin! Wake up, Mr. Kim Woojin!"
Was he dead? Had he saved her?
Kang Seoyoon was dizzy with the thought that she owed him her life.
Just as she was about to give him CPR to wake him somehow…
"Cough! Cough!"
He spat out water and sat up.
'Thank goodness. Really.'
────Back to the present.
He asked.
"Are you okay with going just the two of us?"
It was a question she hadn't expected.
She knew Woojin was more playful than she'd thought, but he wasn't the kind of man who'd assault a woman.
She'd trusted him instinctively.
She never expected him to worry about her position.
'He's more considerate than I thought.'
Everything she'd seen of Woojin on the deserted island was new to her.
His playful side, his refusal to bow to authority, and how much more useful he was in a crisis than she'd expected.
「If it's you, Mr. Woojin, I don't mind. I wouldn't want to go with another man.」
The words rose to her throat.
Seoyoon's lips parted.
She couldn't bring herself to say it honestly.
"Hmm, I don't know."
After all the ways she'd bullied him, acting nice to him now would be too transparent.
She'd look like a pet that started following him just because he gave her water.
For that reason, Kang Seoyoon couldn't reveal what she truly felt.
"────Still, we've been coworkers for a month."
* * * *
Day 3 stranded, 14:00. Southern forest.
Current situation: fucking hot.
The island's climate seemed to lie on the border between tropical and subtropical.
Thanks to that, the temperature didn't fluctuate much, so we wouldn't freeze to death at night, but once we entered the dense jungle,
the fantastic combination of warm temperatures and murderous humidity turned it into a boiling sauna.
"Hff, hoo."
Assistant Manager Kang Seoyoon was sweating like crazy, too.
She'd taken off her jacket ages ago, and her white shirt was soaked through, making the black, ornate lace of her bra plainly visible.
It certainly wasn't some kind of display lingerie.
I could even see Assistant Manager's breasts bouncing as she moved.
She must know perfectly well, but if I pointed it out, she'd just yell at me, right?
"Try looking for something instead of just standing there."
The correct answer was: she'd yell at me even if I didn't point it out.
The irritable assistant manager was like a puffer fish bristling with spines.
She did have something round and plump attached to her chest, too…
'That's a hell of a distraction.'
Had Assistant Manager's breasts always been this big…
They looked soft and supple.
Assistant Manager knew what she looked like, but now that survival was the top priority, she seemed to be trying not to care.
I couldn't imagine how stressful it was for someone in the beauty industry to put up with looking so disheveled.
"I've used two tubes of lipstick getting this far, and I haven't found anything…. This is driving me crazy."
Seoyoon, who'd been holding it in, finally voiced her frustration.
"There's so much damn grass. Would it kill it to have something edible, too…?"
"I know."
Before we set out, we'd made a good plan for finding our way, so I thought things looked promising.
No chance.
What could two amateurs possibly know, blundering around the jungle?
"Come to think of it, in a documentary I watched, grubs came out if you peeled back the bark like this."
"So what?"
"I mean, they're an excellent source of protein…."
"U-ugh."
Seoyoon immediately covered her mouth.
"I have a weak stomach, so please don't say that."
"……."
"I'll consider it when I'm actually about to die."
By then, we might not have the strength to find plump grubs….
"Could you eat them, Woojin?"
"Well, if I had to survive, I'd have to."
"That's unbelievable…."
I'd said that, but I wanted to avoid eating grubs raw, too.
That's why we were eagerly eating the calorie bars from our bag.
"We're out of these, too."
"There were only a few handfuls."
"……Sigh."
Anyway, even though I tried to ignore it, there was a certain smell coming from Kang Seoyoon.
It wasn't the subtle perfume she usually wore.
How should I put it…
It was her body scent.
She'd been sweating nonstop and couldn't shower, so of course she smelled bad, but strangely, I didn't dislike it.
Seoyoon's natural scent was strangely intoxicating, an addictive smell that stirred me up.
Would calling it a female scent be too provocative?
But as if reacting to Seoyoon's body scent, I felt my lower half growing more and more tense.
Ironically, when a man's body enters survival-crisis mode, his sex drive actually increases.
Leave behind my seed before I die!!
My body's cells began squeezing out every last bit of libido.
With the assistant manager beside me, reeking of her body scent, I was stimulated in a different way.
"…Smell…."
"Yes??"
I murmured without thinking.
At the word "smell," Seoyoon flinched and made the most flustered expression I'd ever seen.
The expression of someone whose secret had been discovered.
She took a defensive stance.
For an adult woman, being told "you smell" might be a death sentence.
"I smell fruit from over there."
I quickly changed the subject.
"Where?"
Yeah, I'm fucked.
If I didn't find something, I was gonna get the shit beaten out of me.
How was I supposed to tell her I was turned on because she smelled so damn good?
"This way."
I took the lead as if I knew what I was doing.