Just a Little Further
"Ah. You're up? Heh. Come here."
"...N-no."
When I stepped outside, Minseo was sitting in a chair with her foot propped up on the generator. It might have looked like a sloppy posture—but she was only resting her injured ankle. Well. Even if it had been a bad posture, there wasn't anyone around to call her out on it.
"...W-why? What's wrong?"
"Hmm? Me?"
Minseo pointed at herself, then waved it off like it was nothing.
"It's nothing. Just the boots not fitting right. Anyway—we're stuck here another day."
She delivered that fairly heavy news as if it really were nothing at all.
"...What?"
"Can't be helped. The ankle's one thing, and the fog's another. If the fog cleared fast it might be different, but..."
"Ah..."
So this was how the snowball started rolling. If I just hadn't taken an interest in that little bug, would things have been fine? No—of course the fog was the real culprit.
"......"
"Pfft...! That face again. Come here."
I trudged over to Minseo, who'd lowered her leg. Up close, her ankle was definitely swollen. Even without the fog, we probably would have delayed departure a bit.
"Ah. Still warm from sleep, huh?"
"Hey...! What are you—"
As I stepped into Minseo's arms, she pulled me in while still seated and guided her hand to my chest as naturally as if I were a plush toy. A short ugh slipped out of me, but nothing erect was pressing against me, so it wasn't that bad.
Of course Jiwoo didn't know about last night, so she startled and started to speak—but when she saw I wasn't reacting otherwise, she closed her mouth. There was a faint envy in her gaze. As if she were thinking that if I'd slept in her tent last night instead of Minseo's, it would be her hand on my chest right now.
"..."
It was a little embarrassing. Even if I were into futanari—no, Intersex—I probably still would have felt that way.
"...Um. Anyway. Today we should, well, assess the situation a bit first... Looking at you, Manager, your muscle pain seems pretty bad too..."
"Yeah. We've got three days of food left anyway. You got that?"
Minseo, who'd been stroking me proudly like a trophy, started poking the spots where I was sore, enjoying my reactions. Then something seemed to occur to her and she asked Jiwoo.
"That?"
"The concentrate."
"......Not now. We don't know what might come up suddenly."
"No, not like that. When we get back—want to share some? With Yeoreum?"
Something about the atmosphere felt off. Almost like there was a criminal whiff to it.
"Ugh, nngh. Stop—no, wait, w-what is it...?"
"Hmm? Ah, heh. There is something like that."
"...D-drugs are not okay."
The moment I said that, Minseo and Jiwoo both looked at me for a second—then burst out laughing.
"No! It's not that! Ahaha...! We were just talking about alcohol."
According to Jiwoo, contrary to the space-travel clichés floating around in my head, recreational substances were actually available in variety on the main ship. E-cigarettes were allowed in designated areas with restrictions, and drinking was permitted too.
Well, when you thought about it—fearing some disease you might catch someday was nothing compared to the fear of a stressed-out human going crazy and taking an axe to the airlock.
But just like when we'd set out, a ship traveling with limited supplies couldn't load up on liquids that were too pure and difficult to process in any way. Pure water could be collected to some degree, but alcohol couldn't. So all beverages, she explained, had been preserved as concentrates. Apparently a full cycle—waking from cryosleep, working a shift, then going back under—included enough rest time that people could freely consume them as long as they weren't on duty.
The method was dead simple. Just tear open the pack you wanted and pour the liquid inside. Of course, being condensed concentrate, it was basically poison without dilution, so you needed authorization to receive it—but on an exciting colony ship where failure wasn't a foregone conclusion, who would bother assassinating or suiciding anyone?
"...Ah..."
So I felt relieved. Honestly, it even made me a little emotional. Alcohol was an unforgettable gift to anyone who'd developed a taste for it. I didn't drink often, but I loved the sensation of washing away a day's labor with a single glass.
"How about it? You'll drink with us, right?"
"...Yes. A-and, um, Jiwoo."
"Yes?"
"You can, um, call me Yeoreum. No, stop touching me...! Ah, since we're all s-suffering together... it feels wrong that only I'm resting..."
"...Ah."
Pfft. Jiwoo laughed softly and nodded, saying she understood.
"How long did it take us to get here?"
"...About seven and a half hours."
"Hmm. What do you want to do? Camp along the way, or leave tomorrow morning?"
That strange fog lasted far longer than my common sense would have predicted. The generally bad weather was probably part of it, but even so, it being thick until one in the afternoon was definitely abnormal.
"The ankle, and Yeoreum too. Assuming it takes more than half a day... we've got two days of food left now. I think we should just leave as soon as we can."
"Hmm."
Minseo poked at her ankle a bit, then looked at the boot she'd slit open with a knife and wrapped tight with duct tape. It wasn't the simple combat boot I'd imagined, so her foot simply wouldn't go in—hence the modification.
"...Let's move. It might take even longer. We might have to turn back."
She tapped my butt—still nestled in her arms—so I got up, and Minseo rose slowly, almost sluggishly, and headed for the tent.
"...Ah! R-rest! I'll do it, I'll handle it...!"
"You know how to fold it?"
That stopped me cold, but—well, people lived everywhere, didn't they? FPS games used WASD to move, and MOBAs varied a bit but A was still attack and S was still stop, more or less. So the injured person finally got to rest. Of course, she still had to explain every time I got stuck, so Minseo's brain got no rest at all.
With all the gear packed and ready to go—
"Hup...!"
The problem was my garbage stamina. Walking was fine. If a monster that ran about as fast as me came chasing, I could even sprint for a few minutes. But the moment I tried to lift a reasonably full pack, the problem hit. Or rather, was about to hit. In this condition, hauling that weight through an actual natural ravine—an accident was guaranteed.
"......"
As if she hadn't expected anything else, Jiwoo looked back and forth between me and Minseo. Minseo was still carrying a load that could hardly be called appropriate treatment for an injured person.
"...You don't, um, need to feel too sorry. We'll have to ditch one tent. And, uh, give me the bag."
I set the nearly military-grade pack back down, and Minseo and Jiwoo opened it and started securing a few items into the front pockets of their own gear. So what else could I do? I walked with my head hanging, dying of guilt.
"Hah, hah...!"
Just like on the way here. I was out front, making every kind of noise—or more accurately, crawling my way up. Moving in the opposite direction meant the downhill stretches that had been relatively easy on the way in were now pure hell.
Especially that uneven route we'd taken for stability. After barely scrambling up a waist-high little rise and rolling my body over, I had the delusion that I wouldn't be able to move another inch.
"Get up."
At some point the small talk had died. Minseo with her injured ankle and heavy load, me who never started conversations much to begin with, and Jiwoo carrying even more weight because of the two of us.
"H-ugh...!"
Just grabbing the offered hand and standing up forced that sound out of me. I clenched my teeth and barely got up. Then we walked, climbed somewhere, descended a slope that looked impossible to go down safely.
"God, this is fucking hard. Insane. Shit."
In the end, Minseo's usual speech pattern cracked. Jiwoo's speech had been getting shorter too for a while, but that was only natural.
"Hold on. Let me check how far we've come. Hoo!"
Thud. My body dropped into rest mode on reflex.
After several exhales and one big inhale, Jiwoo pulled out her PDA while still standing and aimed some unknown device this way and that. It was already getting dark, so we might end up camping right here. Honestly, if I could just rest right now—my chest? Hell, I'd sell my whole body.
"......Four kilometers. No wonder. It looked familiar. Of course it would—we just saw this terrain. Ah. Fuck."
At language rougher than usual for Jiwoo, Minseo breathed like she'd taken a hit. Four kilometers remaining meant the radio should have worked by now—which meant five hours of walking had covered a mere four kilometers.
"Hah, hup, huff..."
"What do we do. Hoo. Should we, hoo, rest here for a bit?"
"...No, let's go a little further. We need to walk until we can't see anything."
Jiwoo shoved the PDA into her pocket a bit irritably and started rolling her legs again, slowly.
"If we rest now we won't move at all. Better to just pretend you're already dead when you feel like dying, and walk a little more."
"Ugh."
At Minseo's groan, I could only groan too. How was a college student whose hobbies were mostly drinking and computer games supposed to handle a multi-kilometer march? Well—physical fatigue and mental fatigue had slightly different total capacities.
Simply put, it was a choice at the level of well, I can still talk—crude as it sounded, there wasn't really another way. Walking while starving would leave us even less mobile, and cruel as it was, by tomorrow morning Minseo's ankle would be more swollen. Thinking an injured ankle worked this hard would be better tomorrow was, frankly, a shameless idea.
"Th-hen, hah, huff, l-let's go...!"
So raising an objection to that decision was out of the question. If I whined here, the two of them might spend their remaining strength beating me. With a heave, I got up and looked ahead again. Remembering that leading the way was a kindness they'd given me as the easiest position helped me move a little.
I walked a bit. Putting all my strength into an ankle that felt like it'd snap if I relaxed even slightly, then finding a steeper path and carefully grabbing a protruding tree to climb. Then, the moment my foot touched a rock that looked solid enough to stand on—
Clack.
"Ah."
In an instant, time began to slow. My center of gravity shot backward, and I realized the rock I'd thought was safe—the one that looked big—was actually just a wide, flat stone. And because everyone was exhausted, no one had been able to call out my mistake.
I'd entrusted my body weight to an unsafe posture, and with my center of gravity raised that high—even a slight shift of the stone underfoot could completely destroy my balance. The path we'd come up flashed through my mind. Even a tiny lead pellet could kill a person—the chance of surviving a head-first impact was basically zero.
So for once, my judgment was fast. I pulled back the hand and arm holding the tree. My exhausted muscles couldn't hold that. So to avoid instantaneous death, I clasped both hands over my head.
"Ugh...!"
I couldn't even imagine how much it would hurt. Every bone in my forearms might break—but that was still far better than a shattered skull—
"Uwaaaah!!!"
At the same time, a terrifying sound rang out. Something between a scream and a battle cry. What was certain was that every ounce of strength had been poured into it—there was no artifice in that voice at all.
The force of mass pulling me vanished. As if the world had decided to let me off just this once, my body stayed upright. The direction of the mass acting on me was canceled to zero by an opposing force.
Maybe it was only then that my sense of time returned to normal. Because I registered that my heart was hammering like mad in the face of death's terror. And so, just as a pointless little embarrassment started to creep in—
Thud. That kind of sound.
I spun around in shock—and Jiwoo, who'd been right behind me, was now behind Minseo. She was lying on her back, staring up at the sky.
"..."
"..."
Minseo and I. Neither of us spoke. Unlike Minseo, who immediately dropped her pack and ran toward Jiwoo without a word, I just stood there.
"......Gyaaaaaaah!!!"
I stood frozen until I heard Jiwoo's raw, unfiltered scream—after that brief moment of staring at us with a blank face.