Chapter 40
When we let the bamboo buoy float on the water, it bobbed gently with the calm waves.
For something made in a hurry, it looked pretty convincing.
I pointed at the buoy and said,
“Kim Woong-nim. Please put the rock here.”
“Yes, Benefactor!”
Kim Woong lifted the huge rock we’d brought to the shore ahead of time.
Wow. Is he really a monster?
He lifted the rock so lightly that for a moment, it looked like he was just carrying an empty box.
“Heave-ho.”
A heavy rock about my size was lifted onto the buoy.
“Oh.”
The bottom sank slightly under the weight, but the buoy still floated steadily on the surface.
It worked pretty well.
Nice.
The test was over, so now Kim Woong just had to take that rock down into the sea and catch the crayfish.
But how much weight can this buoy actually take?
@
Yerin now had one more thing to worry about.
Was she the only normal one in this party?
That Kim Woong guy isn't normal either. Normally, if someone told you to dive while hugging a rock, you'd react with something like, ‘Are you crazy?’
-As expected of you, Benefactor. This is definitely a good method!
That was his reaction.
Those two were really in sync.
And on top of that,
Reels nonchalantly handed Baby, whom she’d been holding, to Yerin.
“Could you watch Baby for a moment?”
“What are you doing now?”
“I’m going to get on top of the buoy.”
“Why?”
As usual, Reels lightly ignored Yerin’s words.
Hop.
She jumped right up onto the buoy.
“Reels, I said that’s dangerous!”
Yerin squeezed her eyes shut.
‘Just sink already. Please.’
Unlike Yerin’s wish,
Jolt.
The buoy just rocked for a moment,
then floated perfectly fine on the water.
“Oh!”
“Oh!”
Reels and Kim Woong exclaimed at the same time.
Seeing the buoy still perfectly fine, Yerin pressed a hand to her forehead.
‘Why on earth are they doing that?’
Reels started walking in place on the buoy, looking delighted.
“Look at this. It’s sturdier than I expected.”
“Benefactor, try jumping on it once!”
“Yup!”
“What do you mean, jump? No way!”
They casually ignored Yerin’s protest,
and happily played around by jumping on the buoy.
Yerin felt a terrible headache coming on. Then, suddenly, a sense of unease washed over her.
No, surely not.
“Reels.”
“Yes?”
“Just in case I’m asking, but you can swim, right?”
Reels blinked at Yerin from atop the buoy.
“Swim?”
Then she continued, as if it were nothing.
“I can backstroke. You just have to lie on the water, right?”
A deep surge of frustration rose from Yerin’s core.
‘So she can’t even really swim, and she’s still doing this?’
Yerin looked down at Baby in her arms.
Baby was tilting its head too, as if it didn’t understand either.
It felt like the lizard was thinking the same thing.
Ugh, you little brat.
@
“Reels, this is really dangerous. Okay? Listen to me this time.”
Yerin grabbed my arm and clung on stubbornly.
She looked genuinely worried.
I’m not a kid, but she worries way too much.
Maybe it’s even worse because my appearance is so childlike.
“Yerin-nim. I’m really fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m telling you, I’m really fine.”
I’d never learned to swim, but I could do backstroke.
If you relax and lie back in the cold bath, your body naturally starts floating, doesn’t it? Besides, seawater has salt in it unlike freshwater, so the body floats much more easily.
In other words,
theoretically, if I just relaxed and lay back, there was no way my body would sink!
“I’ve thought it over carefully, and it’s not dangerous at all.”
“No. It’s extremely dangerous.”
This time, Yerin was pretty stubborn too.
Just as we were having a tense standoff with neither side willing to back down,
Kim Woong, who had been quietly listening beside us, stepped forward.
“Yerin-nim.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t worry.”
Kim Woong hammered his own chest with his right hand. His muscles were so hard they made hollow thumping sounds.
“My swimming skills are practically at seal level.”
“......”
“Even if Benefactor falls into the water, I can save you right away.”
“Oh. As expected of Kim Woong-nim!”
Yerin looked at Kim Woong and me as if we were hopeless, then slowly covered her face.
“No.”
“......?”
“That’s not the problem right now.”
Yerin looked too exhausted to even stop us.
“Normally, you’d start by making sure you don’t fall into the water.”
“......”
“Why are you so naturally jumping straight to ‘If you fall in, we’ll rescue you’? And why is Reels trying to ride that thing in the first place?”
Now that I thought about it, she was right.
There wasn’t really any reason for me to ride the buoy anyway.
I glanced at Kim Woong.
Kim Woong looked back at me.
A moment later,
we both nodded and said at the same time,
“It’s fun.”
In the end, Yerin buried her face in both hands.
It was a surrender declaration.
@
“Kim Woong-nim. Faster!”
“Gasp! Benefactor, gasp! This is heavier than I expected, gasp! This is my max speed!”
Kim Woong was swimming through the emerald sea with the rope connected to the buoy wrapped around his wrist.
Splash.
Behind him, the buoy I was riding drifted along slowly.
“Still, this is incredibly fast.”
“Haa... haa... Thank you!”
I looked at Kim Woong with admiration.
He’s seriously insane.
Right now, the buoy had both me and the rock on it.
My own weight alone wasn’t exactly light.
And there was the weight of the diving rock, plus the buoy itself.
Altogether, it had to be well over 80 kg.
And yet Kim Woong was calmly swimming while dragging all that.
Of course, he did seem a bit out of breath.
“Kim Woong-nim. Faster!”
“Gasp! I’ll try my best!”
As expected, muscles honed by training never lie.
And so, we slowly headed toward the place where the crayfish had been spotted.
Yerin, left behind on the shore, was watching us with a worried expression while holding Baby in her arms.
Her voice carried from afar.
“Hey! Both of you stop fooling around and take this seriously!”
“Yup!”
“Oh, so now you answer me politely?!”
If Guan Yu had the Red Hare, I had Kim Woong.
Uwahahahaha.
I lay leisurely on the buoy and looked up at the sky.
A cloudless blue sky. It was incredibly beautiful.
‘Ah, I really did make the right choice coming to a deserted island.’
Just as I was thinking that, the buoy stopped,
and I heard Kim Woong’s voice.
We must have arrived at the place where he’d spotted the crayfish.
“Benefactor! I’ll go check if this is the right place.”
“Yup.”
Splash.
With that, Kim Woong disappeared into the water.
Left alone on the buoy, it really felt like I was the lead in a shipwreck survival movie.
Honestly, I could understand why Yerin was worried.
Men and women have different dopamine circuits, after all.
Men usually see something and think, ‘Hmm. Looks like that might work,’ then go ahead and try it.
By contrast, women are like, ‘Why would you do something that stupid?’
Pfft!
Soon after, Kim Woong surfaced.
“Benefactor, this is the right place. They’re still in the crevice between the rocks.”
“Kim Woong-nim.”
“Yes!”
“Just keep your body as relaxed as possible and descend while hugging the rock to your chest.”
“You mean minimize resistance?”
“Yup.”
I grunted as I shoved the heavy rock beside me toward Kim Woong.
Kim Woong took a deep breath, took the rock into his arms, and disappeared into the water with his body held perfectly upright.
@
Kim Woong descended quickly while clutching the rock with one hand.
Honestly, even he was half skeptical.
He’d thought a single rock couldn’t possibly make that much difference.
But because it was Reels saying it, he felt it was definitely worth trying.
The effect of the rock was far greater than he had expected.
Unlike before, when his body kept trying to float upward, the added weight now pulled him smoothly down into the sea.
Kim Woong relaxed his body as Reels had advised.
Then his descent speed noticeably increased.
The sunlight-rippled surface and the blue sea.
The seafloor growing closer and closer.
‘There!’
Kim Woong widened his eyes.
He saw a familiar shadow in the crack between the rocks.
Long antennae jutted sharply out beyond the rocks, and brown shells gleamed in the sunlight.
These were the same ones he’d seen yesterday.
Crayfish.
Kim Woong reached the bottom in no time and carefully set down the rock he was holding.
Thunk.
Sand puffed up slightly where the rock landed.
Now it was the real thing.
With a bamboo spear in one hand,
he fixed his eyes on the target and cautiously approached the crack in the rocks.
The crayfish also seemed to notice something and started moving their antennae rapidly.
‘This time, I’ll definitely catch you and get praised by Benefactor…!’
Holding his breath, Kim Woong aimed the tip of the spear between the rocks.
Thwack!
The bamboo spear shot through the crack like lightning.
One startled crayfish fled at incredible speed, but its tail brushed the tip of the spear.
Flap, flap!
The crayfish thrashed wildly underwater.
Kim Woong quickly grabbed its shell and hauled it in, then stabbed the spear into its belly.
‘Got it at last. Heh heh heh!’
Kim Woong was thrilled at the thought of being praised by Reels.
What’s more, the crayfish he caught was bigger than he’d expected.
It was as big as Kim Woong’s forearm.
‘I’m starting to run out of air. Mission accomplished, so let’s head back up.’
Kim Woong forcefully kicked off the seafloor while gripping the spear with the crayfish on it.
As his heavy body surged toward the surface, the light reflected in the sea grew brighter and brighter.
Splash!
“Puhah!”
Kim Woong surfaced and let out a rough gasp.
Reels, who had been sitting on the buoy, sprang to her feet at once.
“Did you catch it?”
Kim Woong grinned and thrust the spear toward Reels.
A huge crayfish was hanging from the spear tip, writhing and struggling.
“Benefactor, I did it!”
“Wow.”
Reels’s eyes sparkled when she saw the crayfish.
“Then let’s go back and gather more rocks.”
“Huh...?”
“There are three of us. What are we supposed to do with just one?”
“......”