Chapter 46
[Feels like watching the gallery's veteran sergeant]
Posted by: NongNongNongNongNong
(A meme of Rils lying on a huge rock, staring up at the sky)
Dumping all the work on the juniors and living the easy life.
ㄴlololololololol
ㄴRils: You guys have worked hard, so take care of it yourselves for a bit.
ㄴThe gallery king deserves a break.
ㄴHe’s been the one suffering the most this whole time.
ㄴManagement never goes out into the field anyway.
ㄴFuck, lol. So it really was true to life.
ㄴI couldn’t watch the stream because of something urgent—what are they doing?
ㄴThey’re collecting sap or something.
ㄴWhy would they collect that?
ㄴTo make torches, yeah.
[Yerin < The Reform Icon]
Posted by: YerinCute
As soon as she met her assigned bully, she immediately became an SCV.
I thought she’d give up after one day, lol.
ㄴHer image shot way up.
ㄴIf you stick with Rils, the perks just roll in.
ㄴHer subscriber count went up like crazy;;
ㄴHow many tens of thousands?
ㄴ300k -> 500k
ㄴFor real?
ㄴHoly shit, lol. It’s almost doubled.
ㄴYerin might be the biggest beneficiary of this whole content arc.
ㄴShe went from just another money-hungry female streamer to a laid-back big-sister image.
ㄴIt was fucking hilarious when she was doing that “Ah, sex!” bullshit.
[Yerin < Able to Pull Her Weight Now, Damn]
Posted by: BreadIsTruth
(A meme of Yerin successfully starting a fire)
Hanging around with the gallery king has made her pretty seasoned.
She lit it herself and still looks dazed, lol.
ㄴThe more you watch, the cuter she gets.
ㄴYeah, she’s got a bit of a cat vibe.
ㄴThe troublesome kid is growing up, damn.
ㄴAs expected, the setting—aka the deserted island—really shapes a person.
ㄴHow many cups is Yerin’s chest?
ㄴWas it D or E?
ㄴWasn’t it surgery?
ㄴㄴㄴ It’s natural. Look at the movement.
ㄴThat’s insane, fuck.
@
Loafing around.
After resting while lying on a rock and staring up at the bright blue sky, I sat up.
“Heave-ho!”
How much time had passed?
I checked inside the bamboo container to see if the pine resin had been collected well.
Hmm.
Still, it looked about half full.
This should be enough to make torches.
Anyway, I wondered if everyone else was doing all right.
I wasn’t worried about Kim Woong. I’d already sent him out hunting by himself before, and he was diligent by nature.
He’d manage on his own just fine.
The problem was Yerin.
I lifted Baby up and set him on my shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
Baby answered by wagging his tail.
If we went the way we’d been using, we’d have to take a bit of a detour to get to the sea.
So today I decided to carve out a new route.
Because adventure always gets the heart pounding.
Instead of the usual path, I planned to cut straight across the jungle.
Since it was definitely a place untouched by human feet, the path was rough from the start.
Still, after all the time I’d spent on this deserted island, it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t walk.
“Huh?”
Bzzzzzz.
“What is that?”
A creepy, strange sound rang beside my ear.
It wasn’t a drone, but something more familiar—and even more unsettling.
I stopped walking and looked around. Then I spotted a single honeybee, warily guarding against a sudden intruder.
And that intruder, of course, was me.
After getting my honey fix today, I ran into a honeybee.
‘Phew.’
If it had been a giant hornet, that would’ve been a disaster. A honeybee’s sting is only enough to hurt a little, after all.
Still, I should remember the location roughly.
Might come in handy later.
After briskly putting some distance between me and the bee, I heard the refreshing sound of waves.
Looks like I’d already arrived near the shoreline.
Cutting straight across really got me here fast.
“Oh.”
This is better than I expected.
On the white sand, bamboo containers filled with seawater were lined up neatly.
And next to them, a small campfire was burning brightly.
Honestly, I hadn’t expected much. Yerin. If you keep this up, I might start getting my hopes up.
“Rils!”
Yerin, who had been sitting in front of the campfire, waved cheerfully and came over.
“How is it? I did well, right?”
“Yup.”
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“I’ll give you one praise sticker.”
Yerin stared at me in disbelief, then fanned herself with her hand.
“But it’s way too hot here. It was already sweltering, and now you’ve got a fire going too—it’s basically a sauna.”
There were no trees on the white beach to block the sun, and the sand was so hot it was radiating heat from the ground too.
And on top of that, there was the campfire.
It was a triple-torture system, plain and simple.
If we stayed here foolishly, we’d roast to death.
“Yerin. If you were hot, you could’ve just waited under that palm tree over there.”
“What if the fire went out while I was gone?”
“We can just light it again.”
“So cruel.”
Yerin made a wronged-looking face.
“I worked hard until you got here… This isn’t the reaction I wanted!”
“I gave you a praise sticker, didn’t I?”
“Unbelievable.”
As we bickered and argued.
Splash!
Then I heard a spray of water.
Kim Woong, who had finished hunting in the sea, was walking back onto land.
“Savior!”
Three fish skewered on a spear.
His hunting skills really were something.
Kim Woong: reliable as always!
We grilled the fish Kim Woong had caught over the fire Yerin had started and made a simple brunch.
But seriously, staying here feels like we’ll actually get roasted to death.
One of the most painful ways to kill a person is said to be burning them at the stake. That’s about how it felt.
“It’s too hot.”
“Same.”
“Extremely hot.”
All three of us were thinking the same thing.
We immediately retreated under the shade of the palm trees near the beach.
Just blocking the sunlight made it incredibly cooler.
This was paradise.
But we couldn’t let our guard down.
There’s always danger lurking in the wilderness.
“You have to be careful when resting under palm trees.”
“Why?”
“Because there are coconuts hanging up there.”
“Ah.”
Coconuts are heavier than they look.
If one fell on your head at the wrong time, it’d crack your skull open and kill you on the spot.
Just in case, I looked up once.
“…….”
Coconuts were hanging all over the place.
Hmm. There are a lot.
Has nobody picked them yet?
As for us, we’d found a water source, so there was no real reason to pick coconuts.
But the other streamers would’ve needed to find water.
It was obvious they couldn’t pick them because they were too high up.
Coconuts are a familiar fruit to people.
Not because they’re common everywhere, but because they’re one of the standard survival-movie tropes.
You always see the protagonist pick one, smash it on a rock, and gulp down the water inside.
I sprang to my feet.
I couldn’t just leave the bombs above my head and sit here in the shade playing an island version of Russian roulette.
If it’s come to this, even better.
I could clear the bombs, fill my stomach, and rehydrate.
If I just picked the coconuts, it’d be a triple win.
“I’m going to go get rid of those bombs.”
Yerin immediately grabbed my arm.
“Rils. You’re not thinking of something weird again, are you?”
“What?”
“You’re obviously planning to climb the tree, aren’t you?”
How did she know?
By now, Yerin could tell what I was going to do with just a glance.
Just as we were about to start squabbling.
Kim Woong strode up in front of the coconut tree, striking a very dramatic pose.
“Don’t fight, you two. I’ll climb it.”
Oh.
He really was as reliable as his size suggested.
The very model of a macho man!
Kim Woong immediately placed his hand on the palm tree.
Thump.
His thick hand gripped the tree’s surface, and the muscles in his rough arms twitched.
“It’s dangerous, so please stand back.”
Kim Woong hugged the tree with both arms and legs, then pushed his heavy body upward with tremendous arm strength.
Scrape-scrape.
He was climbing pretty well.
He’d already climbed about a third of the way up.
At this rate, picking the coconuts would be a piece of cake.
That was when I thought that.
Sliiide.
“Huh?”
Sliiide.
“Whoa?”
Sliiide.
Kim Woong started sliding down the tree like he was on a playground slide.
After sliding back down and landing on the ground, Kim Woong casually brushed off the dust and said,
“My savior.”
“Yup.”
“It’s awkward to say this, but…”
“Yup?”
“I actually have a fear of heights….”
Ah.
You had a fear of heights?
Then you shouldn’t have tried to look so cool in the first place!
When Yerin and I stared at Kim Woong in disbelief, he sheepishly scratched the back of his head.
“Haha. Sorry.”
Yeah. I get it, so move aside.
I’ll climb it myself.
@
When you browse the internet, you sometimes come across memes you just can’t understand.
Jumping off high places, for example.
Or holding a lit firework in their mouth.
Or jumping across to the other side of a water channel.
And strangely enough, most of the people in those videos were men.
Men’s trait: they’ll at least try it first.
If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. If it does, it feels great.
That kind of simple mindset.
I didn’t really know why, either.
Maybe it was an instinct etched into our DNA.
After all, for a long time, men were probably the ones handling tasks like heavy labor and hunting.
You’d need a certain amount of recklessness to hunt mammoths, climb cliffs, and try mysterious fruits.
Of course, plenty of people probably died in the process.
But the ones who survived left descendants.
And that’s how we ended up as we are now.
The dopamine circuit in me was twitching, urging me to climb the palm tree.
I lifted my head and looked up at the top of the palm tree.
‘Wow.’
It was high enough to make my knees weak.
If I fell from that height, the impact would be enormous and I’d die on the spot.
Even the drone filming us seemed uneasy, darting left and right all over the place in front of me.
Bzzz. Bzzz.
-Please stop doing reckless things.
It moved as if it were sending me that signal.
But challengers are the ones who seize what they want.
Hop.
I handed Baby to Yerin and, without hesitation, wrapped myself around the palm tree like a cicada.
As Yerin tried to stop me, Kim Woong held her back with his arm.
“Yerin. Please cheer on our savior’s challenge. If he… falls, I can catch him from below.”
As soon as he said that, Kim Woong got pounded by Yerin’s fists.
“You idiot! Do you seriously think that makes any sense?!”
“Gah! Gah!”
Those two make a pretty good comedy duo.
They could probably go audition for comedians.
Anyway.
The most important parts in tree climbing are your arms and legs.
Like hugging a lover, you use both arms and both legs to squeeze the tree as tightly as possible, then push off with a little bounce to lift your body up.
Shhk.
I’d thought it would be hard at first, but it was surprisingly manageable.
My skin stung where it rubbed against the bark, though.
Still, it wasn’t unbearable.
Maybe it was because my body had gotten smaller and I weighed less?
I was climbing much more smoothly than I expected.
How far had I climbed?
When I absentmindedly looked down,
“Wow.”
I was already so high up that it sent a chill down my spine.
I could see the broad white beach at a glance, and even Yerin and Kim Woong looking up at me worriedly from below looked like ants.
Baby looked as small as a LEGO block.
‘This is seriously dizzying.’
My heart pounded fast, and it felt like adrenaline was racing through my entire body.
I forced myself to shake my head and look back up.
The top wasn’t far now.
I kept bouncing upward with effort.
“Hoo…”
At the top, plump ripe coconuts were waiting for me.
It’d be easiest to pick the closest one first.
I reached out with my shortened arms and tapped the coconut a few times, but it was hanging so tightly it didn’t budge at all.
Yerin’s shout echoed up from below.
“Rils! Don’t push yourself. If you can’t pick them, just come down!”
“That’s right! Savior, please just come back down!”
I’d come all the way up here—how could I just go back down?
If you draw a sword, you’ve got to cut something with it.
I took a closer look at where the coconut was attached.
“Aha!”
I think I get it.
So I don’t pull the fruit itself—I have to tear off the stem?
I fixed one hand to the tree, reached toward the stem, and rocked my body left and right.
Crack.
As the stem began to split.
When I gave it one more hard yank,
Crack!
One of the hanging coconuts dropped to the ground with a thud.
Boom!
I heard a sound below like a grenade going off.
Like a monkey overjoyed at finding bananas, I began massacring the coconuts.
Crack!
Boom!
Crack!
Boom!
From the white beach below, where the bombs were falling, Yerin shouted furiously,
“Rils! I clearly told you to stop coming down! Do you want me to really get mad?!”
Hmm.
Yerin looked like she’d be terrifying when angry, so regrettably, coconut-picking had to end here.
We’d picked enough to eat, anyway.
As expected, challengers seize what they want.