Training On A Deserted Island

Although September had already arrived, the hot days continued in Yaso City, which faced the Sea of Japan.

A cruiser rented by the Mitarai Group, the largest corporate group in the regional city, waited to depart beneath the sunlight filtering through gaps in the clouds.

Kojiro Maki, who had been hired for a part-time job aboard the cruiser, was carrying food and camping equipment onto the vessel under the captain’s orders.

“Pant, pant… I’m only halfway done?”

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the towel wrapped around my neck. I belonged to the Pro Wrestling Research Club at Yaso General University, and even with my 180-centimeter height and muscles honed through training, the work was exhausting.

“Hey, hurry up!”

Captain Fujioka’s voice rang out. The man himself was leisurely sipping tea in the cockpit. If you want to set sail so badly, get off your ass and help! With that thought, I carried another box of mineral water onto the boat.

Once I had finally finished loading the supplies, I took a break on the deck. Apparently, the Mitarai Group, which had rented the cruiser, was holding a camping trip on a deserted island under the pretext of employee training.

I had no idea what camping on a deserted island was supposed to teach anyone. They were probably just using training as an excuse to have some fun.

“Hey, brat! Stop slacking off and clean up the aft deck!”

Captain Fujioka’s voice came flying at me again. I regretted choosing this part-time job. Why the hell had I taken it?

“Patience, patience. I’m doing this to see her smile.”

Once I received my wages, I planned to buy a present for my childhood friend, Misaki. I wondered what kind of expression she’d make if I gave her the earrings she’d been wanting. Grinning to myself, I headed toward the aft deck.

The passengers began arriving, and men and women carrying luggage boarded the cruiser. They looked excited as they climbed aboard before disappearing into the cabin.

After I finished cleaning up, the cruiser departed. Our destination was a deserted island called Shiki Island. It was about two hours away by boat and supposedly had a beautiful sandy beach.

There were twelve passengers, but the only crew members were the captain, a mechanic, and me, the part-time worker. Despite supposedly being a luxury cruiser, the mechanic had to keep a constant eye on the engine. Apparently, although the exterior looked luxurious, the hull and engine were old.

When a couple of passengers became seasick, I brought them some motion sickness medicine.

“Please take this medicine.”

I handed them some capsules and a bottle of mineral water.

“Tch! If you had medicine, you should’ve given it to me when I boarded. You’re pretty damn thoughtless.”

The complaint came from a man around forty who was supposedly the sales manager at Mitarai Credit Union. His name was Nagase, a slightly overweight man who was in charge of supervising this training trip.

What the hell was this guy’s problem? I’d gone out of my way to bring him medicine! If he got seasick, he should’ve asked for it before we left. How the hell was I supposed to know who would get seasick?

All the passengers were employees of Mitarai Credit Union, and I’d heard that the training trip had been arranged at the chairman’s suggestion. Apparently, Shiki Island belonged to Toshihiko Mitarai, the chairman himself. He probably just wanted to show off that he owned an entire island.

“Hey, there’s an island! Isn’t that the one?”

“That’s right, sir. That’s Shiki Island.”

The captain, who was usually rather unfriendly, was all smiles as he answered. The Mitarai Group was an important client, and apparently, the captain considered them valuable customers whose favor he had to maintain, even if it meant sucking up to them.

The island gradually came into view. There was a beautiful sandy beach along its southern shore, where seabirds frolicked at the water’s edge. I watched the white waves wash over the sand, erasing the footprints the birds had left behind.

If only I’d come here for fun instead of work, this would’ve been perfect. I cursed my luck inwardly as I watched the boat approach the shore.

The cruiser approached a pier built along the sandy beach and docked beside it. The passengers disembarked one after another, leaving me to carry their remaining luggage onto the island.

By the time I had finished unloading everything, I was so exhausted that I collapsed onto the sand. The captain, who hadn’t helped with a single thing, stepped off the boat.

“You’re pretty pathetic. I’m going to greet the guests, so you get started on lunch.”

“Come on, at least let me rest for a bit.”

“Five minutes. That’s all you get.”

After the captain left and I’d rested for a short while, I entered a thicket on the island to look for firewood. I quickly found some dead branches and fallen trees. Carrying an armful of firewood back to the beach, I arranged some stones into a makeshift stove.

I returned to the boat and retrieved ingredients from the cooler, along with cooking utensils and a lighter. I was making stir-fried noodles. When I glanced toward the passengers, I saw that they were also preparing lunch.

Apparently, the passengers were having a barbecue. They took ingredients from the supplies I’d carried over and began threading them onto skewers. They had expensive-looking meat, while I only had cheap pork belly, cabbage, and bean sprouts.

I threw some firewood into the makeshift stove and lit it. After heating a frying pan and adding some oil, I tossed in the pre-cut ingredients. Finally, I added the noodles and seasoned everything with store-bought stir-fry sauce.

I served the finished noodles on a plate and brought them, along with a drink, to Tanno, the mechanic who was still aboard the boat. I suspected Tanno might be something of a recluse, since he hardly ever left the vessel.

“Tanno-san, here’s your lunch.”

“Just leave it there.”

His curt reply reached me. I placed the noodles and drink on the table.

When I returned to the beach, the captain had already started eating his noodles. I sat down beside him and began eating too. As he watched the passengers, the captain spoke up.

“Must be nice having such an easy time of it. All they have to do for their training is spend two nights here.”

“But it looks like they’ve used up all their ingredients for the barbecue. What are they going to do?”

“They said something about gathering food from nature to develop their survival skills. They’ve got a ton of flour and some fishing equipment, so they’ll manage somehow.”

After lunch, the passengers began setting up their tents. They had split into separate groups of men and women. The men’s group was making steady progress, but the women’s group wasn’t getting anywhere.

“Kojiro, go give them a hand. At this rate, they won’t have their tents up by evening.”

Following the captain’s instructions, I headed over to the women’s group. There were four women, named Sanae, Mika, Tomoko, and Ririka. Sanae was the oldest and apparently a supervisor. Mika and Tomoko were both in their late twenties, while Ririka seemed to be a new employee.

I helped the women set up their tents, and after about an hour, both tents were finally standing.

“Thanks, Kojiro-kun.”

Mika, the most voluptuous of the four women, thanked me. With a slightly goofy grin on my face, I returned to the boat.

Trouble had broken out aboard the vessel. The engine had apparently been running poorly, and the mechanic had discovered that the problem was caused by worn-out spark plugs.

“What are we going to do?”

After giving it some thought, Captain Fujioka said he had decided to leave me on the island while he returned to our home port to replace the spark plugs. The reason he was leaving me behind was to teach me how to operate a portable radio so I could serve as an emergency contact if anything happened.

Since there was no cellular base station on the island, neither ordinary cell phones nor smartphones had any reception. I was instructed to contact the captain by radio if anyone was injured or became ill.

“When will the boat be back?”

“Sometime tomorrow morning.”

“So I’m spending the night on the island?”

“Just use one of the tents we’ve got aboard. There shouldn’t be a problem.”

I’d originally been scheduled to spend two nights aboard the boat anyway, so I figured sleeping in a tent wouldn’t be much different. Five minutes later, the captain explained the situation to Nagase, who was responsible for the training trip, and the boat departed from the island.

I pitched my tent a short distance away from the passengers because the captain had told me not to interfere with their training. When I asked what I was supposed to do about dinner, he had handed me some cooking utensils and fishing equipment. In other words, I was on my own.

“Well, I guess I don’t have a choice. Might as well do some fishing.”

The waters around the island seemed to have plenty of greenlings and largescale blackfish. I caught four greenlings and two blackfish, more than enough for dinner.

The passengers also seemed to be catching fish for their evening meal. The sun set, and night fell. As I lay on the beach and gazed up at the sky, countless stars twinkled overhead, while a cool breeze blowing in from the sea made the evening pleasantly comfortable.

“I wonder what she’s doing right now.”

As I stared at the sky, my thoughts turned to my childhood friend, Misaki.

The men and women who were supposedly there for training had started drinking and making a racket. I could hear their commotion, but since I was some distance away, it didn’t really bother me.

“It’s still early, but I might as well go to sleep.”

I crawled into my tent and lay down. The sandy ground wasn’t too uncomfortable to sleep on. Perhaps because I was exhausted from carrying all that luggage, I quickly drifted off.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up when my body began shaking.

“What the hell?! An earthquake?”

The ground was trembling. I heard something collapsing in the direction of the island’s only mountain. I felt a little uneasy, but having been born in a country where earthquakes were common, I stayed relatively calm and remained still.

Just then, a mysterious voice echoed inside my head.

“…Huh? What was that voice?”

The utterly unexpected announcement left me confused. What the hell was a Level System? Was I hearing things?

Once the earthquake subsided, I found my flashlight and headed toward the other tents. Several men and women were gathered around a campfire, talking.

“Is everyone all right? Anyone injured?”

“Nobody’s going to get hurt in a little earthquake like that.”

Nagase answered irritably, apparently annoyed at having his sleep interrupted. Among the employees attending the training was Yodai Mitarai, a member of the Mitarai family, who stood with his arms crossed and a troubled expression on his face.

Incidentally, employees at credit unions were apparently referred to as staff members rather than ordinary employees. It seemed to be the same terminology used by foundations and hospitals.

“Did you hear a strange voice?”

“…You mean the one that said something about a Level System?”

“So you heard it too. Just who the hell is playing this prank?”

Apparently, he thought the voice was someone’s practical joke. Once I’d confirmed that everyone was safe, I returned to my tent.

It would take some time before we realized that the earthquake that night had been anything but ordinary, and that it had brought about profound changes across the entire planet.