The Miracle of the Lake
A week after arriving at the Glowing Blue Lake, Chester was certain that his right leg had completely healed. No matter how much he swung it around or applied pressure at various angles with his full body weight, he felt absolutely no pain or discomfort.
'Could it be? Did it not just heal, but actually realign the broken bone?'
Chester had previously feared that even if the mysterious water's power healed his wounds, he would be left with a permanent disability. After all, he had forced his severely fractured bone back into place and kept using it. But as if to prove those worries completely pointless, the miraculous power of the Glowing Blue Lake had restored his leg to perfect condition.
Chester examined his perfectly fine leg, crouched low, and then sprang upward like a coiled spring. Upon landing, he darted side to side in rapid succession, then ran several laps around the lake.
"Whoa."
His leg felt incredibly light. As if a heavy shackle that had bound him for so long had finally been shattered, his leg moved exactly as he willed it, without a single hint of discomfort or pain.
'Was my body always this light? It feels like I've grown wings.'
Chester climbed onto a slippery, moss-covered boulder and balanced on one leg for a long time. Not content with just standing, he bent his knee to perform single-leg squats. He did a front flip, then a backflip. He showed off his flexibility by dropping into a full split, then threw a few kicks into the empty air just because he could.
While Chester was thoroughly enjoying his fully recovered leg in every way possible, Monia, who had just woken up inside their shelter, lay on her stomach watching him.
"..."
At first, she stared blankly at him with a thin trail of drool escaping her lips. But as she witnessed Chester performing stunts worthy of a circus act, her eyes gradually widened.
"Huh?"
She was still half-asleep, so only a strange grunt escaped her mouth, but the sheer visual shock was rapidly forcing her awake.
"Uh... wait, what?" Monia kept making bewildered noises as she clumsily dragged herself out of bed, nudging Ant—who had been sleeping curled up against her legs—aside before stepping out of the shelter.
Whine?
Tumbled onto the ground after being nudged away, Ant rolled over, blinked at his surroundings, and then curled back up into a tight ball to go right back to sleep.
"Uh... ah..." Her brain still hadn't fully booted up, so she could only stare at Chester for a moment. Then, with unsteady steps, she stumbled toward him.
"Ah!" With a cry of pure emotion, she threw her arms around Chester as he approached her, hugging him tightly.
"Oof!" While Chester's mind spun from the sudden, crushing impact of something incredibly soft and substantial pressing against him, Monia rubbed her face and body against him, her voice trembling.
"Are... are you completely healed?"
"...Yeah."
"Really? Truly? You're not lying to me, right? You're really all better? Right? Please tell me it's true!" Her eyes, wide with desperate hope, were brimming with tears that looked ready to spill over at the slightest touch.
"Yeah. I'm completely healed."
How agonizing it must have been for her. Watching the man she loved suffer from injuries he sustained while fighting off a bear just because she had been scared—it was a burden too heavy to bear. Knowing that her own weakness had caused him harm. Yet, Monia had forced herself to act strong. She had played the part of someone who was perfectly fine. She feared that if she broke down upon seeing his wounds, he would push himself even harder, so she hadn't dared to show any vulnerability.
"Thank... thank goodness." That was why, the very moment she realized Chester's injuries were entirely gone, she let her walls crumble without hesitation, weeping openly.
"I'm so, hic, really, sob, so glad!" She sobbed like a child.
"Waaaaah!"
"Hey, hey. Don't cry. Come on, I'm perfectly fine now."
"Uwaaaah!"
"Ah, seriously... please don't cry."
"Seriously! I was, hic, so... sob... Please! Just don't get hurt anymore! Don't do anything dangerous ever again!"
She wailed and cried for so long that by the time she finally calmed down, the sun had already climbed to its highest point in the sky.
"My goodness." Chester chuckled softly as he looked at Monia's red, swollen face.
"Don't laugh! Sniff."
She snapped at him, but how could he not find her incredibly endearing when she was crying tears of pure joy just because he had recovered?
"Haha."
"I told you not to laugh!"
"Right, right. My bad."
"What do you mean 'my bad'! Sniff! In the first place, it's the injured person's fault!"
"Yeah, you're right. It's all my fault."
"...I know I was the one who messed up first. It's not your fault."
Monia grumbled as she snuggled deeper into Chester's chest. Chester naturally wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.
It had been a week since they started sleeping together in their cramped little shelter. Though both were clumsy when it came to romance, they had progressed to the point where they could share a casual embrace without any awkwardness.
After enjoying their brief embrace, they pulled back, sharing a fleeting, tender look before naturally transitioning into preparing breakfast.
Monia gathered small twigs, piled them up, placed some tinder inside, and clicked the Matchlock Lighter. Every time she pulled the trigger, a shower of stinging sparks erupted, leaving a vivid, intense afterimage burned into her retinas.
Even when she closed her eyes in surprise at the sudden flare, the bright shape of the sparks danced behind her eyelids. After enduring the visual assault to fire off a few more sparks and successfully catch the tinder, Monia shuddered with profound emotion.
"Ah, the wonders of civilization."
She had been deeply moved when she first used the machete. It had sliced through tough bamboo with ease, speeding up their work and saving them so much physical labor. But this lighter was on a whole different level.
"It doesn't even compare to the Push Drill!"
"If you had that much of a problem with the Push Drill, you should've told me sooner."
Feeling a bit dejected by Monia's dismissal of the Push Drill—a tool he had spent hours brainstorming, researching, and painstakingly crafting—Chester pulled a fish from their basket trap and began cleaning it.
"Ah! Oh, no! That's not what I meant! Your Push Drill is amazing too, Chester! Really! It's just..."
Watching Monia fluster herself trying to fix her mistake, Chester let out a chuckle and waved his hand to show he wasn't actually upset.
"It's fine, it's fine. How could something I cobbled together compare to a lighter anyway?"
"Ugh..."
Chester tossed the fish guts to Ant, washed his soiled hands and knife in the lake water, and resumed prepping the fish.
"Do you really love that lighter that much? You marvel at it every single time you use it."
"B-but it is amazing!"
"The lighters back at the Duke's estate were much better than that one, though."
"I didn't appreciate how precious they were back then... Now that I think about it, what a waste. Let's steal one of those too when we raid the secret vault!"
To think a simple lighter had been elevated to the same status as the Duke's secret vault. Chuckling, Chester skewered the cleaned fish on a branch and handed it to Monia.
While Monia roasted the fish over the fire, Chester scanned the surroundings to see if there was anything else to forage.
"..."
Walking over to the opposite side of the lake from where they had built their shelter—where the bright sunlight reflected off the water's surface, painting it a brilliant white—Chester stopped in his tracks. He spotted something far too unnatural to have been formed by chance.
"What is this?"
The strange object Chester had found was a pile of branches. Of course, branches were a dime a dozen on the Floating Island—you couldn't take a single step without tripping over ten of them—so the material itself wasn't unusual. The strange part was how they were arranged.
Not only were the branches stacked in a neat cone, but inside the structure lay a bundle of shredded inner bark, meticulously peeled and balled up.
'What is this?' Though incredibly crude, it wasn't hard to guess what it was trying to mimic.
'...' He knew that some birds impaled their prey on thorns to store them. He knew that beavers gnawed down massive trees to build dams and lodges. But he could tell that what lay before him went far beyond the level of mere animals using basic tools.
'Did the person who gave us the lighter make this?' That was Chester's first thought, but he quickly dismissed the idea. Why would someone who couldn't even start a fire on their own willingly hand over a lighter—an invaluable tool for survival—to complete strangers?
'Then did they drop the lighter by mistake?' They had been sleeping with a smoldering log as a barrier. Chester couldn't fathom how anyone could move in a way that would cause them to "accidentally" drop a lighter right there, so he discarded that theory as well.
If so, then what on earth was it?
'The most important thing is that there was absolutely nothing here yesterday.' Massaging his fully healed leg, Chester decided he needed to investigate deeper. He drew his machete and stepped into the forest.
And there, Chester discovered a structure that crudely mimicked their own shelter.
Though the craftsmanship was laughably inferior, looking past that and examining it objectively revealed one massive difference.
"...Are there multiple of them?"
Wondering if it had been built to accommodate several occupants, Chester plucked a strand of coarse, curly black hair caught between the branches and examined it. Then, he looked down at his lighter.
There was a tiny strand of black hair caught in the crevice of the lighter, and a dent on one side of its casing. Chester pressed his thumb against the dent, then looked back at the structure.
At the very least, this structure was about three times larger than the one he and Monia had built.
"Does a giant really live on this island?"
As Chester muttered to himself, he suddenly heard a soft thud behind him.
It was a faint sound, like a plump squirrel landing or a fruit the size of a child's fist dropping to the forest floor. Yet, Chester spun around instantly, raising his machete in a defensive stance. But when he saw the source of the sound—which looked incredibly massive and heavy despite the quiet landing—his lips pressed into a tight line.
At first, he thought the figure before him was a human. It stood proudly on two legs, resting one hand against a tree trunk.
But a moment later, he leaned toward thinking it was a beast. The creature dropped its long arms and went down on all fours.
To call it human was impossible; it was covered in thick black fur and looked entirely wild. Yet, to dismiss it as a mere beast was equally difficult, as its facial features and body structure bore an uncanny resemblance to a human.
The mysterious creature stared at Chester, then slowly, cautiously extended one hand.
Chester flinched and tensed as the hand reached out. But when his eyes fell upon what the creature was holding, his guard slipped, and his machete lowered of its own accord.
"Ooo, ooo, ooo!"
Making soft, low noises, the enigmatic creature offered him a few wild fruits and a single, pristine white flower. Confronted with this unmistakable gesture of peace, Chester could only stand frozen, staring in utter silence.