CH 4

The squirrel is roaming around the wandering island and living a hard life.

While the squirrel was eagerly nibbling at the fruit that had fallen to the ground, a snake on the tree was aiming at the squirrel to satisfy his hunger after a long while.

The snake was going to hunt for something sooner than now because it was starving, but a typhoon came and made the snake go into hiding for a long time, so it was very hungry now.

Carefully, cautiously, unknowingly, it approached the squirrels who were eagerly eating the fruit.

The snake is not poisonous, but he is still equally dangerous.

Once his hook-like teeth are driven in, they cannot escape no matter how hard they struggle, so all he has to do after is slowly swallow them alive.

He was getting close to his target, little by little.

Then suddenly, a stone the size of a fist flew in and landed right next to the squirrel.

The startled squirrel quickly ran away, and the snake, which lost its prey right in front of its eyes, quickly hid itself with regret.

The only creatures on this island who throw stones and hunt are those who rule the fertile land in the innermost part of the island.

I have to run away before being eaten. 

* * * * * 

First thread the loop through your middle finger and hold the other end of the string with your index finger. 

After holding the string with two fingers like that, put a stone of the appropriate size in your slingshot and start shooting it.

Chester targeted a mysterious squirrel eating fruit in front of him.

The fist-sized squirrel unknowingly munched on the fruit that had fallen on the ground.

Chester, who slowly aimed the slingshot at the squirrel, then hit the squirrel with an imaginary ‘mark’ made by his mind.

Then, the slingshot, which has been stressed by pulling the wrist, was released by gently pulling the whole right arm in the same direction in which he was aiming.

“Oh my gosh!”

Chester thought he had a good aim, but unfortunately the result was not good.

The stone he shot it landed right next to the squirrel, and the startled squirrel ran away, leaving the fruit it was eating.

“Ahhh. Go to the side a little more.”

It was so regrettable that I was talking to myself without even realizing it.

Putting that regret aside, Chester went to the place where the stones were stuck and picked up the fruit the squirrel was eating.

‘It’s not rotten, right?.’

It is dirty from the ground, but not inedible, so Chester took the fruit the squirrel was eating and put it in his mouth.

Chester walked through the entire forest, only eating fruits.

Unfortunately, he had to leave behind the prey he had missed and find a new target.

Chester walked through the forest.

Chester, who had a hunter as his father and played in the mountains every day as a child, was no longer there.

After walking through the forest for a while, his legs, who were accustomed to walking in the well-paved ground of the city for a long time, were in terrible pain.

Ignoring his pained legs, Chester continued walking through the forest.

As he walked carefully not to get lost and lose his sense of direction if he went too deep, he quickly found a new target.

Chester’s new target is a bird whose resting in a tree.

Come on, hurry up before the bird flies away! The thought made Chester impatient, but he soon controlled his breathing to calm himself down.

He put a stone on the slingshot, and this time rotate it from the bottom to top to increase the launch angle of the stone.

The stone he shot just brushed past the bird.

“Keough!”

Chester sighed with regret, but then he saw that the bird has fallen from the tree and couldn’t move properly, and so he hurriedly ran.

Perhaps when the stone was shot it rubbed against the wing of the bird, thus damaging it, and because of that the bird is now struggling on the ground, unable to use one wing properly.

Chester frantically picked up a pebble from his pocket and threw it at the bird.

The stone passed well over the bird’s head, and Chester quickly picked it up and threw it again before the bird flies away.

“Keugh!”

Missing the bird again, Chester realized that his body is more tired than he thought.

Chester, who was able to catch the bird only after throwing a stone for the third time, lifted the bird’s carcass with a heavy sigh of relief.

Thinking of how long it took to catch this one and how many failures there had been, his eyes widened, but Chester smiled involuntarily when he saw the prey in his hands.

* * * * *

When Chester returned to the shelter with the bird, he found Monia crying, while holding a broken branch and tangled by the ropes.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing?”

“!”

Shocked by Chester’s appearance, Monia pretended like nothing happened and hid the branches and ropes.

“Ah, nothing?”

“didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“…”

Chester gazed at the pile of materials, and notice her failed attempts to build a shelter, so it didn’t matter how much Monia try to hide it.

Could it be that she was insane and try to hide it there?

Monia also noticed that there was no meaning to hide it at all, and her cheeks blushed.

“Are you trying to build a shelter?”

“Oh, yes ? I had some time on my hands, so today I want to immerse myself in nature… … .”

Chester sifted through the piles of failures, and rating Monia’s IQ in his head from a blockhead to a slightly learned monkey.

Finding the firewood he had prepared for the bonfire, Chester quickly started building it.

All he needed were two sticks and a Tinder stick.

First, make a hole by pounding a dry log with a stone.

Press the log with both feet to secure it, then take a twig and fit it into the hole.

Now, it was the classic method of spinning a tree branch.

The trick here is not to just randomly turn the log, but to apply pressure to the hole by pressing down on the log you are turning with your hand.

As the wood is ground by pressure and friction, sawdust is created, and the sawdust burns with the heat of friction and turns into embers.

As the black embers were made and smoke rose, Chester put the embers into a tinder made from the bark of the tree which was used to make the rope and blew into it.

After blowing a few breaths into the tinder, the smoke began to rise and the fire began to burn.

He put down the burning tinder and tossed in a small twig.

When the fire ignited stably, the bonfire was completed by stacking large tree branches.

“ah… .”

Chester looked at the bonfire, which is burning bright red.

After that, the heat rises at once, and the surrounding moisture is blown away. The sticky air that has plagued your body all day disappears, and you feel the crisp, and warm air.

As the sun slowly set, the air was rapidly cooling, so the warm air of the bonfire was very welcome.

“ah. Good.”

After starting the fire, Chester enjoyed the bonfire, while humming a song, and began skinning the bird he had caught.

Even though Monia was trembling in horror at the sight of the dead bird’s body, she puts her hand between the skin and the meat and peels it off.

“…”

Chester thought about any use of the peeled skin for a while, but he couldn’t think of anything at the moment, so he just threw it into the sea.

He didn’t want to leave it near the shelter and let the animals come for it, attracted by the rotten smell.

The meat was cut with a sharp stone, removing the inedible organs and leaving the edible parts, such as the heart and liver.

Chester started by sticking the heart and liver into sticks and roasting them.

“Ugh!”

Finally, unable to bear it anymore, Monia vomited.

She came here and had nothing to eat, so there was no way anything would come out, and yet she just vomited.

“Well, why are you baking it?”

“It has a lot of iron.”

Having stripped off all the meat he could eat, Chester went to the beach, threw away the inedible parts, and washed the blood-covered meat.

The stripped meat is placed on a branch and grilled, and the heart and liver are eaten first.

It was a charred meat with burnt spots everywhere, but Chester ate it all without caring.

“… … You ate it all. Aren’t you disgusted?”

“I ate a lot of them when I was young.”

“… … How did you even get into the butler academy?”

From Monia’s point of view, no matter how much she thought about it, Chester wasn’t a ‘child of a noble family’.

Butler academy.

It wasn’t an ordinary thing for a commoner to become a butler, a butler for an aristocratic family at that.

He couldn’t even dream, unless he was the son of another aristocratic family who couldn’t become an heir or the son of a colossus who led a prestigious top tier.

“My parents didn’t want me to live with them.”

Chester said as he ate a grilled bird leg.

“You just need to worked hard and save money to make your life a little better.”

Of course, he couldn’t get into the Noble Academy with his savings money alone.

There must be a recommendation from a nobleman.

“My father knew an old nobleman who had no children.”

The nobleman wanted to return the favor to Chester’s father, who wished his son a better life.

Thus, the hunter’s son, Chester, was recommended by an old nobleman to enter the butler’s academy.

“…”

Monia was truly amazed to hear the story.

The other children who will enter the butler academy have a high probability that such a life has been decided since they were born, and thus they have been educated since childhood.

But Chester was different.

His life suddenly changed from a hunter’s son to a butler academy student, but Chester’s grades were so excellent that he was chosen as a butler by the Duke’s family.

The duke was so proud of his exceptional grades that he picked Chester even though he was a commoner.

And even though he was suddenly dropped on an uninhabited island after living as a butler for a duke’s family, he was quickly adapting to the island’s environment without a hint of worry.

‘… … is it because of those experiences?’

Monia looked at Chester’s face in a new way.

Since the butler was only a tool, she had never looked closely at him until now.

She never paid any attention to him, she just regarded him as another doll that would follow orders.

So, to her surprise, this was the first time that she had recognized Chester’s face in her mind.

To that extent, she was not interested in common people, and regarded all of them as ‘livestock’, like cows and pigs, whose faces were difficult to distinguish when ‘people’ saw them.

So, it was a surprise.

Chester is recognized as a ‘human’ by the daughter of the ducal family, who lived an arrogant life while looking down on the world.

So far, everyone she recognized as human looked like her.

All of them had a lot of money, liked to dress up fancy, lived with many butlers and maids, and were cared for.

A life so spoiled that the thing that uses the most energy in a day is to breathe or eat something.

A life without any curves, where nothing changes even when you compare what happened yesterday and what happened a year ago.

And now, in front of her was a person who had lived a completely different life.

A person who has lived a life that is different from others and full of ups and downs.

“…”

Monia looked at Chester as he ate the bird’s meat.

She got interested.

Monia looked at Chester returning after dumping the remains of the eaten bird into the sea.

“Hey.”

“yes?”

“Could you tell me a little more about yourself?”

Chester said as he lay down in his shelter.

“No. I’m going to sleep.”

Then he fell asleep for real.

Left alone, Monia grumbled with her cheeks puffed out, then went to sleep as she had nothing to do.

“… … Aww! There is dirt all over it!”

But unfortunately, the floating island was too harsh for her, who brought in the finest beds to sleep in even in prison.

“eeek! Bugs?!”