Chapter 24

He slumped like a rag against the chair’s backrest, tossed a piece of ham into his mouth, and chewed. To Isu, he looked like a carnivorous beast that truly knew the taste of meat.

“Hayden, you a-aren’t a snake.”

Isu shook her head at his predatory gaze. Looking unpleasantly out of sorts earlier in the morning, he now smiled languidly as if he had perked up.

“I am a snake.”

“No, no. I’m the snake.”

He smiled, revealing his dimples, as he gazed affectionately at Isu, who was insisting she was the snake.

“No, you’re the snake’s owner.”

“If I said I’d be the owner, you’d bolt away in a hurry.”

With light banter passing back and forth, they finished their meal. Talking to him had comfortably become second nature before she knew it, and since he seemed to enjoy it too, she didn’t bother correcting herself.

“I’m going to check on the pit now. People might wander around, fall in, and get hurt, so I was thinking of marking it…”

Though she hadn’t explicitly made him a promise, she intended to keep him informed of her whereabouts going forward.

He rinsed his mouth out with seawater and rose from his seat.

“Let’s go together.”

Isu gathered the torn tarp she had salvaged a few days ago. She planned to cover the pit with the tarp and mark its location for everyone to see.

Thump, thump. They walked along the pine forest path branching off beside the quarters. After walking for about five minutes, they reached the spot where the shovel lay discarded on the ground and dirt was piled up like a mountain.

Confirming the crime-scene-like sight all over again, he chuckled as if it were beyond absurd.

“You really made it meticulously, didn’t you?”

Isu felt a sense of pride. Instead of cowering in hiding inside the quarters, she had forged her own makeshift weapon. She wanted to show this very sight clearly to Graham and issue a warning: this time, she wouldn’t just sit back and take it.

“Originally, I planned to dig the pit deeper, cover it with the tarp, and disguise the top with dirt. If Graham comes to catch me, I’ll lure him to this spot and drop him right into the pit. I also wanted to craft a snare and lay it around everywhere. I would’ve done that if it weren’t for Jenna and the football players…”

Leisurely surveying the forest, he replied as if Graham were the pitiable one.

“A snare, too? You’re quite the villainess.”

Isu stood in front of the pit and peered inside. But, wait, there was something strange inside.

A beast with brown fur. Unless it was a starved calf, it was a roe deer. Startled by the person outside the pit, the roe deer cried out harshly.

“Aah, aah, aah!”

It sounded precisely like the scream of a woman in crisis. Because such a loud, desperate, high-pitched scream pierced the air, goosebumps broke out all over her skin even as she stood still.

Amidst that, the roe deer kept leaping frantically to climb out of the pit, chilling their blood. Hearing those screams, the people scattered all around gathered as if on cue.

Dinner time arrived. Declan tied a rope around the roe deer’s neck using an escape rope he’d scavenged from the shoreline and wound the rope tightly around a tree.

They agreed to keep the roe deer alive for the time being. Everyone was reluctant to kill and eat it, and since there were plenty of fish in the sea, there was no need to slaughter the deer.

Shivering and letting out screams, the roe deer eventually grew exhausted and sat down in front of the tree. Manuel stared at the roe deer with fascination and admired it.

“Whoa… This is truly amazing. To think of digging a pit right there.”

Dehart nodded in agreement.

“Seriously. While we were pathetically aiming for fish with pointed sticks, Isu was looking far into the future.”

Despite their praise, Isu merely observed the roe deer. She didn’t feel all that great. Perhaps it was because she saw her own pre-amnesia self in the roe deer, terrified and captured by an unfamiliar stranger.

Today, they lit a campfire. They decided to grill and eat the fish the others had caught.

Nate was in charge of cleaning the fish. Before getting to work, Hayden set out to sharpen a utility knife whose blade had grown jagged and dull.

Isu brought a broad, flat stone over to Hayden. Hayden poured water into a wooden bowl and began grinding the blade against the stone.

Swish, swish. The steady sound of the knife being sharpened was both soothing and eerie. The longer Isu listened to that sound, the more the knife regained its murderous intent, flashing with a cold, blue sheen.

She figured that was more than enough, but Hayden showed no signs of stopping. He seemed like a perfectionist. Pursuing perfection was fine, but pouring that kind of obsession into a knife didn’t seem like it would lead to anything good.

“If it’s too sharp, you might hurt your hand.”

Hayden, who had been intently staring at the blade the entire time, finally relaxed his eyes only after seeing Isu’s worried expression and replied.

“Hands get hurt by dull knives, not sharp ones.”

Hands get hurt by dull knives…

She nodded at those words. A sharp knife could cleanly cut its target, whereas a dull knife created all sorts of unpredictable variables.

Perhaps the reason she had lost her memories and been abandoned on this island was also because she had been dull. If she had been sharp and keen like Hayden’s knife, she might have been able to cut down Graham in a single stroke.

“If you point that gun and threaten me one more time, you’d better know you’ll be getting a proper spanking.”

Isu massaged her forehead.

Hayden handed the perfectly, sharply honed knife over to Nate. Nate, who claimed to enjoy cooking, skillfully removed the fish’s innards and skewered the bodies onto tree branches. Isu cleared away the stone that had served as both a sharpening block and a cutting board, placing it beside a pine tree.

Dinner ended in a cheerful atmosphere, just like always. 11:00 PM. Feeling it was a waste to just go to sleep like this, the others announced they were heading over to Declan’s quarters for a card game.

Hayden, however, stated he was going to take a shower and do laundry by the lake. Isu, who had developed muscle aches from digging the pit yesterday, skipped the card game and returned to her quarters.

Since she was quite exhausted, the moment her head touched the pillow made from a formal vest, she drifted off to sleep. She had thought she’d be able to sleep soundly straight through until morning, but she woke up wide-eyed, startled by a woman’s sudden scream.

It was the pitch-black night. The steady sound of bug chirping pierced the air with crisp clarity.

Wondering if she had just heard an auditory hallucination in her sleep, she managed to calm her startled heart. Right at that moment. Another scream rang out once more from the quiet outdoors.

“Aah, aah!”

It wasn’t Jenna’s husky voice. Judging by the sheer pitch of the high notes, it sounded like the cry of the roe deer tied to the tree.

The creature had thrashed around all evening until it was bruised and exhausted, then fallen asleep as if dead.

Had it woken up now? Well, since it was an animal that hid in dark places during the day and foraged at night, it was probably crying because it was hungry. If she left it like that, it would even wake up Hayden, who was sleeping soundly, so she figured she would go pluck some pine needles and feed them to it.

As she stepped out of her quarters, shaking off the remnants of sleep, fresh air filled her lungs. The cool scent of pine needles. The fragrance of flowers. It was air without a single flaw.

First stretching her arms out, she forced her eyes open. Because a layer of fatigue clouded her vision, everything looked hazy.

Rubbing the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand, she began to walk toward the pine tree. But a dark shadow was standing right in front of the pine tree where the roe deer was tied. Seeing the short-sleeved shirt and athletic shorts, it looked like Declan.

“Declan?”

Declan had never come down at this hour before. What was he doing here all of a sudden? Judging by the way he was lingering around the roe deer, it didn’t look like he had come to fetch a necessary item…

“What brings you here? At this hour?”

Isu’s steps, which had been heading briskly toward the roe deer, faltered to a stop. Declan peered around the roe deer hiding behind the tree and replied in a whispered tone.

“Huh? Oh. I remembered it and came to feed it, but this little guy won’t eat. Why did you come out?”

“Me? I heard the roe deer crying, so I came out to feed it, too.”

“Really? Then great minds think alike.”

“…….”

“Where’s Hayden? Is he asleep?”

The way he asked quietly, as if afraid Hayden might hear, felt quite suspicious. The influence of his underhanded behavior witnessed all this time played a huge part in that. Isu stepped back and replied.

“No, he’s not sleeping.”

Declan put something he had been clutching in a handful into his pants pocket and stepped forward two paces.

“Liar.”

“…What?”

“That guy kept you wrapped around him like a fixture the entire time you were stranded. But seeing you come out all by yourself, it looks like he’s too busy sleeping right now.”

Perhaps because the surroundings were dark, Declan’s gaze looked unusually gloomy, and his expression appeared vile.

“…….”

Isu swallowed down the question of why it mattered whether Hayden was sleeping or not and took two steps back.

Crunch, crunch. Even the feeling of stepping on weeds felt creepy. At that moment, a sinister suspicion flashed across her mind. Could it be that Declan had come to assault the roe deer this time…?

“T-Then I’ll head back inside. Since I only came out to feed it, too.”

There was no good to come from talking to a beast whose head was filled with lust at this dead hour of the night. As she turned her back in a panic, Declan lunged forward from behind like a hyena.

In an instant, her mouth was clamped shut by rough, heavy hands.

He choked her neck from behind. She kicked her legs into the air, trying to break free, but was instead dragged backward.

“Mmph, mmph! Urgh…!”

Declan chuckled, making a grating noise as if amused by something. Then, pulling something out from his pocket, he roughly shoved it into Isu’s mouth and clamped it shut again.

“Augh, urgh! Mmph!”

A bitter scent of grass spread inside her mouth. A red flower, partly protruding from her mouth, fell to the ground.

The flower was shaped like forsythia and was about the length of a finger joint. Suddenly, something Nate had said a few days ago pierced sharply through her mind.

“Around the last day, the people at the guesthouse get all worked up and hold an orgy. Back then, a woman handed me a red flower and called it an aphrodisiac. This looks just like that flower. The woman ate that flower, too, and rolled around like a genuinely horny bitch.”

It was ominous. No way, did Declan actually pluck that flower? If so, why? To feed it to the roe deer and assault it? Did he spot a woman waking up from her sleep and change his target instead? No way, no way. Crazy, crazy…