Chapter 45
On this refreshing morning, I stirred the wood stove with a twig.
The firewood that had been blazing last night had all turned into pitch-black charcoal.
I picked out a few pieces of charcoal that were still in decent shape,
Crunch.
and ground them with a stone until they were crushed into tiny bits.
I put the charcoal that had become black powder into a bamboo tube and headed for the water source.
If you're up, of course you should wash up.
I washed my face with cold water and roughly tidied my disheveled hair.
Finally, I coated my finger with the charcoal powder I'd stored in the bamboo tube.
Yerin, who had been watching, asked.
“Rils. Why did you bring charcoal powder?”
“To brush my teeth.”
“Brush your teeth? With this?”
“Yep.”
Hmm. Honestly, I didn't want to brush my teeth with charcoal either.
I'd end up with black teeth and look like a comedian playing the fool.
But after more than a week without anything resembling a proper brushing, my mouth felt unbearably gross.
I squeezed my eyes shut and scrubbed the charcoal powder on my finger against my teeth.
“Back in the old days, people brushed their teeth like this.”
Scritch, scritch.
Ugh. This is awful.
A strange taste spread through my mouth.
It was like eating burnt food, and my tongue felt astringent too.
Like I'd eaten a hundred sweet potatoes at once and hadn't even drunk water.
Anyway, my mouth felt really gross and chalky.
“Ugh. This is really bad.”
Scritch, scritch.
Still, I gritted my teeth and kept scrubbing.
I couldn't let cavities form. They say going to the dentist these days can cost you millions of won, and if you don't want to end up in the hospital, taking care of your teeth is a must.
You have to endure this much pain for the sake of healthy teeth.
After a few minutes of vigorously rubbing my teeth with charcoal, I quickly rinsed my mouth with water.
“Pwah!”
To check whether it had worked, I ran my finger over my teeth.
Clack. My teeth made a crisp sound.
I couldn't be the only one to feel this pain.
Good things are meant to be shared.
I held out the bamboo tube filled with charcoal to Yerin and Kim Woong.
“Everyone, brush your teeth.”
@
Now that there were three of us, dividing up our roles was essential.
Today I planned to check the trap and collect the resin oozing from the conifer I'd wounded yesterday into a bamboo tube.
I was looking forward to trying my hand at shore foraging today.
First, I was going to have Kim Woong, who was a good swimmer, gather food.
And I planned to give Yerin a simple task.
But then.
“Rils.”
“Yep.”
“I want to go with Rils too.”
“No.”
“Whyyyy~”
“You need to do the job I gave you.”
“I don't wanna~.”
Yerin made a face that said she genuinely didn't want to be separated from me.
“I'm sticking with Rils no matter what.”
“…….”
“Nnnnooo.”
“…….”
“I'm going with Rils, I told youuuu.”
What is she, some full-grown adult with separation anxiety like a puppy?
What's wrong with her?
I let out a long sigh.
“Yerin-nim.”
“Yeah?”
“Please do the job I gave you.”
“Nope.”
“Take this with you.”
I casually handed the machete in my hand to Yerin.
Yerin took the machete I handed her with a sulky face and grumbled.
“This is seriously too much.”
“You have to earn your keep too, Yerin-nim.”
“Tch.”
What.
She did grumble, but in the end, if you told her to do it, she'd do it.
I waved to them and went into the forest with Baby in my arms.
The first place I headed was the trap I'd set.
I quickened my steps with a little hope in my heart, but.
Hmm.
As expected, it was a bust.
Not even a squirrel, let alone a rabbit, had gotten caught.
“Tsk. Too bad.”
A trap is basically a probability-based gacha item. Too bad, but if nothing got caught, there was nothing I could do.
You just have to accept the result.
I turned away from there without any lingering attachment.
Because today's real objective was somewhere else.
Before long, I arrived near the conifer I'd wounded yesterday.
“Oh.”
A sticky liquid was slowly seeping out of the bark I'd wounded.
Shimmering translucently in the sunlight, it looked like flowing honey.
I quickly held the bamboo tube I'd brought up to it.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The resin began to fall into the tube one drop at a time, but.
“Hmm.”
The pace was far too slow.
Watching it drip one drop at a time was like looking at a broken faucet leaking water.
This is pure grind work.
Even if I collected it all day, I had no idea how much I'd get.
Still, it was a necessary ingredient if I wanted to make a torch for shore foraging.
“Can't be helped.”
I used a cord to secure the bamboo tube to the trees, sat down on a nearby rock, and set Baby down on the ground.
“Go play.”
Baby scampered into the forest as if it had been waiting for that.
Then.
Rustle-rustle.
Baby started breakfast by hunting insects.
Watching the resin slowly collect in the bamboo tube, I thought to myself.
'Sweet.'
@
Yerin headed toward the bamboo grove, grumbling all the while.
Even if she didn't like it, there was nothing to be done.
After all, anyone could tell that the real power in this party was Rils.
“This is seriously too much.”
As if venting her frustration, she swung the machete hard at the bamboo.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Yerin already knew how to cut bamboo.
She'd watched Rils do it from the side and learned it by eye.
If you aim below a node, it cuts relatively easily.
After chopping down on it several times, one thick bamboo stalk tilted and fell to the ground.
Yerin cut the fallen bamboo into a suitable length, then used the machete to split it in half.
Crack.
The bamboo split into two halves,
and the inside was wide and smooth.
According to Rils, they were going to fill it with seawater.
“They really make me do all sorts of random things.”
Honestly, at first she hadn't understood it.
She couldn't see what difference it made to haul seawater into bamboo.
But once she listened to Rils, it sounded pretty plausible.
If you filled bamboo with seawater and left it under the sun on the white sand, the water would evaporate and only salt crystals would be left behind.
That was what Rils meant: salt brushing would be better for dental health than charcoal brushing.
Yerin let out a sigh and lifted the bamboo tube.
Well. If salt came out of it, that would be a good thing.
If she sprinkled it on meat or fish when grilling, the flavor would improve even more.
The more seasonings you have in cooking, the better.
@
“Huff. Huff.”
Yerin gathered the bamboo she'd cut into a pile, tied them together with cord, and hoisted them onto her shoulder.
Living on a deserted island seemed to have improved her stamina a bit.
If this had been before, she'd have collapsed flat on the ground already.
Before they parted, Rils had repeatedly warned Yerin.
-Yerin-nim.
-Why.
-Don't try to cut corners. You need to make a lot.
-…….
-As much as possible.
The amount of salt you can get from 1 liter of seawater is only about 35 grams.
To get enough salt for daily life, you have to evaporate a lot more seawater than you'd think.
In other words,
they'd need that many bamboo tubes too.
“For a little brat, you're really good at bossing people around.”
Yerin grumbled as she walked on.
Carrying several bamboo stalks through the rough jungle was an enormous ordeal too.
‘At this rate, I'm going to end up with calf muscles.’
The biggest reason Yerin didn't want to part with Rils was.
She was worried she'd get lost on her own.
Because a jungle where everything looked the same was the perfect place to get stranded.
Luckily, by using the rocky mountain Rils had told her about as a landmark, she could easily find the shore.
Splash, splash.
The familiar sound of waves drifted over.
Splash!
“Oh.”
On the beach, Kim Woong had already arrived and was hunting.
He was repeatedly diving into the water and resurfacing, spearing fish.
He looked busy even from far away.
‘He's working hard.’
Anyway.
She had to do her part too.
Yerin laid the long bamboo tubes out one by one on the white sand and filled them with seawater.
Before long, the bamboo tubes stretched across the white sand like a little canal.
“Phew.”
Yerin wiped the sweat from her forehead with her hand.
Maybe she could rest a little now.
Then she suddenly remembered what Rils had said.
“Ah!”
There was one more task she'd been given.
Fire.
Rils had told her to light a fire once she got to the beach too. At that, Yerin had made a disgusted face, but.
Rils had said it would be easy to light one and taught her a method.
-Yerin-nim.
-Huh?
-You have a PET bottle, right?
-Yeah.
-You can use it to light a fire.
“…….”
Yerin slowly looked down at the water-filled PET bottle in her hand.
“Does this really work?”
She still couldn't believe it.
Still, if Rils said it would work, she'd at least have to try.
After all, it was Rils who always solved things in miraculous ways whenever she thought they were impossible.
Yerin looked around and started digging into the sand with her hands.
Scrape, scrape.
It looked a lot like Baby digging in the white sand.
According to Rils, the beach had such strong wind that if you just lit a fire normally, it'd go out in no time.
So first she had to dig into the sand and make a space to block the wind.
“Haa.”
Yerin sighed and finished a hole of just the right depth. The nail art she'd had done was already a complete mess.
Thinking she'd have to get her nails done again once all this was over, Yerin looked at the bottle of water.
“Hmm...”
Rils's explanation was incredibly simple.
A transparent PET bottle filled with water would act as a lens.
Like focusing sunlight to a single point with a magnifying glass, concentrating the sunlight through the water-filled PET bottle could create an ember.
Honestly, it sounded ridiculously easy, but whether it would actually work was another matter.
“Don't you dare fail.”
With the dry grass and shredded bark gathered in the center of the hole, Yerin held up the PET bottle and focused the sunlight to a point.
“…….”
Yerin looked back at the PET bottle with a skeptical gaze.
“What, has anything even changed?”
Still, she stayed crouched there and waited quietly.
With the sunlight reflecting off the white sand, the perceived temperature was no joke. Even with sunscreen on, it felt like UV rays were piercing straight through her skin.
“Ugh, I really hate this.”
Time kept passing.
“Huh?”
Yerin's eyes grew as wide as a full moon.
A heat haze shimmered among the dry grass.
Yerin hastily lowered herself and poured all her attention into the PET bottle acting as the lens.
The grass gradually blackened and started giving off smoke.
“Wait, wait. This actually works?!”
Yerin stared intently at the pile of dry grass, her eyes wide.
Fwoosh.
Before long, a tiny flame poked its head out through the hole in the white sand.
A tiny flame, fragile and precarious like a newborn life.
But the small flame quickly devoured the dry fibers around it and swelled in size.
“It caught!”
That was the moment Yerin succeeded at starting a fire for the first time in her life.