Holiday in Enemy Territory - 2
The surface of the lake, filled with seawater, was crystal clear. Schools of fish could be seen swimming freely beneath it. Rendel put on a confident expression and waded straight into the center of the lake. He stood perfectly still in water that came up to his waist, not moving a muscle. About a minute passed. The moment a faint shadow flickered right beside him, Rendel shot his hand into the water with a sharp splash.
…….
Oh dear. He missed.
Rendel glanced back at me, lowered his stance a little more, and waited for another fish to approach. But thanks to that failure, all the fish had scattered. Hah. Looks like it’s my turn.
I may not look it, but I watched quite a few survival documentaries back in my old world. I’ve never actually done any wilderness survival myself, but I’m pretty confident in my theoretical knowledge.
“Senior, I’ll try catching some from over there too.”
“It’ll be tough. You sure you’re okay?”
“I’ll get bored if I just stand around.”
That’s what I said, but the truth was I wanted to catch a fish faster than Rendel. After all, fish aren’t something you can just grab bare-handed so easily.
I moved to a corner of the lake quite far from where Rendel was standing. It was near where we had parked the White Fang and Limpid Fairy. The area had a few trees and some rocks—perfect terrain for fish to frequent. I could already see them darting in and out of the gaps between the stones.
I picked up a fallen branch nearby, sharpened the end, and carefully approached the rocks. The fish that had scattered at my presence slowly regrouped. Then, a moment later—
“Hah!”
I thrust the makeshift wooden spear at the perfect moment when a fish of decent size poked out from a crevice. The result was a failure. The spear didn’t even graze the fish; it simply pierced the water. Come to think of it, objects underwater look distorted from outside due to light refraction, don’t they?
I focused again and thrust the spear once more. This time it stabbed straight into the sandy bottom, and a fish even swam by and gave it a casual nudge. These guys… they’re not even trying to dodge now?
While my pride was taking a serious beating, I heard Rendel’s triumphant shout from behind me.
“Got one!”
When I turned around, Rendel was walking out of the water holding up a fish as long as his forearm.
“Whoa. You caught a really big one.”
I was secretly relieved I hadn’t suggested a bet. Seeing him catch something like that with his bare hands in just a few minutes… yeah, the protagonist really is the protagonist.
“What about you, Luna? Catch anything?”
“Uh, not yet.”
“Huh? There was a good branch here. If I’d known earlier, I could’ve caught way more.”
Rendel picked up a branch just like mine, swung it around a few times, then headed back to the middle of the lake. And by the time I had failed my fifth spear thrust, here’s what Rendel was doing…
“This feels like spear training for the first time in a while.”
He was making fish skewers with the branch. And not just one fish per skewer—four of them. I watched in disbelief and realized he wasn’t waiting at all. He was dashing toward distant fish and piercing them with the spear before they could even react. Seeing Rendel with all those fish dangling from his stick was both impressive and infuriatingly enviable.
The eighth installment of the Aindium series I was appearing in, Wing of Union, had been called a make-or-break project for the entire franchise even before it aired. The previous work, Ash Frontier, had been overly obsessed with its themes, lacked plausibility, and the characters—both main and supporting—were so poorly written that fans dropped off in droves. Even the game IP that had been doing quite well saw a noticeable decline in users.
So this new entry, which introduced a fresh setting and character designs to attract new fans, was doing pretty well. It came up often on the boards too. Comments like “Luna is single-handedly feeding the production team.” Every time I saw those, my face would heat up—a minor problem, but the feeling itself wasn’t bad.
While I was lost in random thoughts and mechanically thrusting my spear, I finally managed to pierce the tail of one unlucky fish.
“Wow! I got one!”
“Oh. Nice job.”
Tch. That relaxed tone of a true expert. The fish I caught was only a little bigger than my palm. I hadn’t even stabbed the body properly, so I pressed the tail down with the spear and grabbed it with my hand—only for a problem to arise.
“Eh? Wait? Kyaa!”
Maybe it was because I gripped too hard on its slippery body. The fish thrashed wildly, slipped from my grasp, and flew straight toward my face. I closed my eyes in shock. The fish smacked wetly against my face before sliding down—and then, embarrassingly, slipped right inside my swimsuit.
“Hyaah!”
It felt disgustingly slimy and ticklish. Rendel, who had rushed over at my scream, quietly turned away the moment he realized what had happened. Half-sobbing, I finally pulled the fish out of my clothes and hurled it onto the ground.
I should’ve worn something other than a one-piece. Even in the middle of all that, posts were flooding the board in real time. What kind of service scene is this, you crazy bastards…
“Luna, are you okay?”
“No…”
“Want to take a break? I’ll grab a towel.”
“Sniff. Yeah.”
While Rendel went to get a towel, I slammed the fish I caught against the ground to make sure it was properly knocked out, then gathered it with Rendel’s skewers in the shade.
“Here.”
“Thank you.”
When I tried to dry myself with the towel Rendel handed me, it felt a bit uncomfortable. This was probably going to leave salt all over me.
“Now that I think about it, we’ll need water for washing too, not just drinking.”
“Will the Aindium purification capacity be enough?”
Right now, the purification systems on both the White Fang and the Limpid Fairy were running at full capacity. It was a system designed to let pilots survive for several days even if stranded, capable of purifying contaminated water or even seawater. It was incredibly useful in a situation like this. Without it, we would’ve had to secure water first. Finding drinking water on such a small island would have been extremely difficult—we might have even failed and suffered from dehydration.
Even though we had the purification system, it only produced enough for one person to drink comfortably. It definitely wasn’t enough for washing. With no other choice, I roughly rinsed off with seawater and began preparing the meal.
I used the fire starter stored in the White Fang to make a simple fire, then roasted the skewered fish whole. The savory smell rising from them made my mouth water.
“Oh right. Speaking of last training session…”
In the middle of all this, Rendel said something had occurred to him and went in and out of the White Fang. As a result, our simple grilled fish skewers ended up sprinkled with pepper, drizzled with some mysterious sauce, and even accompanied by a cup of juice.
“Senior, is this juice okay?”
“Yeah. I bought it in town before this operation.”
Ah, back when he modified the White Fang for underwater use. I had been resting, but Rendel had gone into town with the mechanics who were procuring parts. So that’s when he got it. Since it had only been a day, it should still be fine.
It was a modest meal, but for a deserted island, having seasoning and drinks like this was a luxury. The fish we caught ourselves tasted amazing.
**
We caught quite a lot of fish, so food wasn’t an issue. There were a few incidents—like Rendel trying to fillet a fish on the ground and accidentally cutting it in half, or panicking and pouring mana into his sword and smashing one into paste—but we decided to overlook such minor details.
Once basic needs are met, people start looking for entertainment. We already had clothes, food was secured, and we could sleep inside the Aindium cockpits. So we quickly grew bored.
Sitting on the shore beneath the shadow of the cliff, we began splashing each other in the lake without any real prompting.
“Take this!”
“Hah!”
What started as lighthearted senior-junior water play—
Splash!
“Hey! No using your feet!”
—eventually turned into something resembling a rather serious underwater training session. I couldn’t handle the fierce waves Rendel was creating. I couldn’t win in speed either. The smart thing would be to quietly surrender, but my competitive spirit refused to let me.
I scooped up a handful of water and circled around the spray Rendel had made. By the time he noticed and turned toward me, both hands still scooping water, I thrust my clenched fist forward and opened it.
Rendel flinched but kept his eyes open, dodging the spray of droplets by ducking to the side. In that instant, I turned my back to him, leaped backward, and threw myself into the lake.
Splash!
“Ugh.”
I had thrown myself into the water, and Rendel took the full brunt of the resulting splash. Soaked from head to toe in seawater, we stared at each other in silence for a moment before bursting into laughter at the same time.
**
It was already evening. The stars we hadn’t been able to see for the past few days because of the storms now filled the sky. With no light pollution or atmospheric haze, the stars here were breathtakingly clear. They looked somewhat similar to the ones I remembered from Earth, yet when I looked closer, their constellations were completely different.
Lost in a strangely melancholic train of thought, I was staring blankly at the sky when Rendel came over and sat beside me.
“You worked hard today.”
“I feel like I mostly just played around, though.”
“Haha. It’s good to play like this sometimes. I never thought I’d actually end up keeping that promise to go to the sea after coming out on a mission.”
“Right…”
Sitting on the soft sandy beach with my knees hugged to my chest, my head naturally drooped. The view that had been fixed on the sky slowly lowered, passing over the cliff and falling toward the lake. As I gazed at the moonlight reflected on the water, my eyes began to drift shut.
“Luna?”
My body tilted toward the direction of Rendel’s voice, and something firm yet not hard caught my head and shoulder. And with that, my consciousness slipped away into the land of dreams…