Content Warning: Vague descriptions of the process of field-dressing an already-dead animal (a deer, which dies off-screen). They're mostly (but not completely) contained in the portion between the two fully bolded sentences, so if you want to know when to metaphorically close your eyes, that's there for you.
"Come on, Saburo-kun! This way, this way- Oh, not that way!" Dice reached out and yanked Saburo away from the forest trail. When he looked down where he'd been about to step, he saw a snare. "You gotta pay more attention."
"Where the heck are you taking me?" Saburo carefully stepped around the trap.
Dice pulled him along. "It's fine, it's fine! I gotta repay you for the other day somehow, so I'm showing you something good!"
The other day being when Saburo may have snuck into the pachinko parlor, where he may have, a-hem, fine-tuned a machine to give Dice back some of what he'd spent. It wasn't stealing, you know, he'd just adjusted some probabilities to not-quite-force a jackpot. That could've happened without his influence. That parlor was totally a yakuza joint, anyways.
"Even if he said I could go with you, I just really don't think Ichi-nii would want meEEE-" yoink, swish! and Saburo was hoisted high off the ground, feet-first, caught in a different snare.
"Aw, shit. I told you to look where you were going. I'll figure out a way to get you down." Dice circled the tree the trap was tied to, trying to figure out how the contraption worked.
"Be careful! I don't want to fall!" He tried to figure out a way to release himself, but he didn't have the core strength to lean up to get at his foot, and now all the blood was rushing to his head…
A booming voice called out just then. "Arisugawa-kun, great timing!" Oh, no, it was that Mad Trigger Crew soldier. He was running towards them, smiling a scary amount, and carrying an entire dead deer hoisted over his shoulders, its head bobbing grossly with each step. "Look at this! Trapped it today!"
Dice started to talk, processed the fucking deer corpse and was briefly baffled into silence, and then managed to say, "that's really great, can't wait to eat it, but could you help us out first? That wasn't your only lucky trap today." He pointed up at where Saburo was hanging.
"Oh. Little Buster Bro. Yes, let me get that." He offloaded the animal onto Dice (who nearly buckled under the weight) and moved to where the other end of the trap was tied. He lowered it slowly, Saburo managing to adjust his own position so that he didn't land headfirst as he went down. Riou took back the deer and headed off. "I need to finish dressing this as soon as possible. Come on."
Saburo took a minute to reorient himself, and when he came back to it, Dice was following Riou along, motioning for him to follow, too. "Come on, this is gonna be awesome!"
"W-we're going with him!?" Saburo was about to run after them, but remembered his previous error and slowed to check the ground for any more traps.
"Yeah! This was the good thing I wanted to show you. Riou-san always makes, aha, awesome food. Hey, what're you gonna do with the deer?"
Riou took a moment to think before answering, "since there'll be four of us, maybe a hot pot. I've collected some excellent spices lately."
Dice suddenly looked dismayed. "Four? Don't tell me that damn office worker's here, too…?"
"You got along with Kannonzaka-kun last time."
"Getting along for the sake of eating more food doesn't mean I like the guy!" Dice groaned, then looked back at Saburo. "I think you're bad luck. You got caught in a trap, and now we've gotta hang out with corporate slave numero uno."
Dumbfounded, Saburo asked, "then why don't we just not go?"
"I want hot pot," Dice said.
Saburo didn't exactly want to go with these two weirdo adults, but he wanted to find his way back through the forest on his own even less, so he stuck close to the two of them as they made their way through the forest. How in the world did they know where they were going? It all looked the same to him.
They ended up at a clearing with… some sort of structure made of scrap metal plates, wooden planks, sections of pipe, and a lot of tarps. Riou was pulling one of said tarps across the ground and setting the deer down. "Do you live here?" Saburo asked, not caring how rude that was. He knew Dice didn't have a home, but Riou living in this shitty shack was almost worse.
"No," Riou answered as he examined the wide cuts already made on the animal's underside. "It's useful for cooking more involved dishes. I camp elsewhere most nights." He got his hands in there - his bare hands - and wrenched open the gut. Oh god. "Lad, you should come watch. This is important knowledge to have."
At one look at the inside of the animal corpse, Saburo wretched. "No! Ew! I really hope I never need that knowledge!" Where was Dice? Had he gone inside? Maybe he should join him just to get away from this crazy survivalist. Wait, who knew what kind of weird stuff this guy had in there? And did Saburo want to risk being trapped inside?
Riou huffed with annoyance. "You might not always have a supermarket available. You can't let momentary fear stop you from learning how to survive in extreme circumstances."
"I'm not scared! I'm- If I ever end up in extreme circumstances I'll just get my brothers to do the gross stuff."
"If you're going to take up a commanding role, you need to know what to tell your troops to do."
Saburo whined, half frustrated, half grossed out. He wasn't getting out of this, was he? He put his hood up and sat against the wall, pointedly not looking in Riou's direction. "I'll listen but I'm not gonna look."
Riou sighed (a strange sound from him, short and sharp), but acceded. "So, I've already removed the internal organs. Waste in the gut can dirty the meat, so it needs to be removed as soon as possible. In this case, the liver is..."
This was awful.
Riou could only say a little more before Dice, thank god, interrupted, his top half appearing through the doorway. "Saburo-kun, man, what're you-"
Saburo cut him off, "Arisugawa-san, save me! He's making me learn!"
Riou looked like he almost facepalmed, but stopped because he realized his hands had deer goop on them. "This is important knowledge that he should acquire while he's young."
Dice just laughed, brushing Riou off. "Man, no it ain't. Come on, Saburo-kun, salaryman made some tempura and it's actually not awful. Don't ask what's in it, though." He grabbed is hand and pulled him inside.
"Do you not know Kannonzaka-san's name, or…?" Saburo asked, nodding his head in greeting at the man in question when he saw him. The old guy was seated politely at a table that looked like it'd been cobbled together out of scrap wood.
"Office drone gets to be called his name when he stops acting like every other office drone on the planet," Dice said, Doppo clearly hearing him if the mumbled apology was anything to go by.
The inside of the shack was warmer, just barely, with tarps over the ground serving as flooring. In lieu of any actual seats or cushions, there were misshapen mats of fur on the ground. How did Dice and Doppo look so calm in this freaking serial killer hideout? The table had a plate of fried, uh, something on it, so Saburo distracted himself by eating.
True to Dice's word, the tempura wasn't awful. It was pretty good, even. Doppo still apologized for it not being good enough.
They ate the rest of it while Dice pestered Saburo with questions about how to best win at digital slot machines. When the programming knowledge flew right over his head, Dice scoffed. "I don't need all that anyways, I got lady luck on my side."
"You're very smart, Yamada-kun," Doppo said, stating the obvious. "Do you think you'll go into, ah, computer science?"
Ugh. Stupid, boring, old man questions. What did it matter what his job prospects were? "Dunno," he answered honestly.
"W-well, you've got lots of time to think about it. You're probably smart enough to do any job you wanted, so you can just focus on being a middle schooler for now… Friends, clubs..."
Friends he didn't have and clubs he didn't do. He let out a disinterested hum in response.
Doppo apologized, and apparently he got the message, because he changed the subject. "Did Busujima-san manage to catch anything?"
"A whole ass deer!" Dice responded. "It's huge! Got giant antlers and everything! He's outside pulling all the guts out. It's so gross." He said it was gross, but he still just laughed.
"Really? I'm going to take a look." Doppo stepped outside and then turned on a heel and came right back in, all the color gone from his face. "He was, ah, c-cutting the head off."
Dice keeled over laughing. "I said it was gross and you still went and looked, you masochist!"
Did Dice really hate Doppo? They seemed to get along okay. Well, Dice had brain of a fruit fly, so maybe he just forgot that he hated him.
After calming down a bit (though he didn't ever actually look calm calm, did he?), Doppo asked, "what is he planning to do with it?"
"Hot pot!" Dice said, the prospect of food distracting him from his mirth at the other's expense.
"I see…" Doppo glanced around the room. "W-well, um, not to be presumptuous, but should we maybe start to help set up the room for that? To make things easier on Busujima-san?"
"If you want my help just fuckin' ask, dude." Huh, maybe Dice did really hate Doppo, because now he seemed annoyed. Why the deference had set him off so easily, Saburo didn't know, but his mood was far from the cheer he'd shown earlier. "Scoot, Saburo-kun," he said, gently pushing against his side with his foot. Saburo got up, and the two adults worked swiftly to pull the table off its legs and set the components against the wall. Doppo then folded away the tarp that made up the center of the floor, pushing loose dirt aside to reveal a few hot coals.
Doppo started to explain, not that Saburo cared. "It keeps the room warm. Busujima-san's practical knowledge really is quite extensive. But we'll be, um, I think we'll be starting the fire up properly for the hot pot, probably. Do you… want to start the fire, Yamada-kun?"
"No," Saburo answered.
"Okay. Sorry. I thought y-you might like to help. I guess you're not, ah- sorry. Of course you wouldn't be interested."
Oh, Saburo kind of understood why Dice got so annoyed now.
Doppo stoked the fire himself, just adding a little bit of wood. It was pretty warm for its size, and didn't have much smoke - how'd he do that? Riou must've taught him some trick. Doppo put a wire grate over the fire.
At that moment, Riou poked through the doorway to see how the others were doing. Seeing the room set up, he smiled. "Thank you, I was just going to start preparing ingredients. Lad, since you didn't learn about butchering the meat, you should help prepare the vegetables. That's just as important to know."
"Oh, is Saburo-kun gonna help out?" Dice asked.
"No, I'm not." Saburo scoffed. "You dragged me here, Arisugawa-san, you can just do twice as much work for me." He leaned down further where he sat against the wall, really not enthusiastic about any of this, at all.
"Are you sure, Yamada-kun?" Doppo started to ask. "Busujima-san really is knowledgeable about this kind of thing, so learning from him-"
"I'm sure," Saburo affirmed. He put his hood up and sat in the corner and didn't care that it probably made him look like a petulant child. If his phone had any bars he would've called Ichi-nii already and gone home. "I don't care about plants or whatever."
Doppo didn't look as put off by Saburo's hostility as he thought he would've. "That's fine. I'll help, too, Busujima-san, i-if that's okay."
The three adults all disappeared behind the curtain in the corner of the room, and Saburo settled in and tried to find a game on his phone that didn't need an internet connection. Even if the shack wasn't comfortable, per se, it was warm and now it was pretty quiet, too, barring the sounds of chopping, washing, and occasional conversation from the other room. He could see why some people liked camping. Not that he'd ever want to do this again.
Riou went back and forth between the kitchen and outside, moving around meat and supplies. He largely ignored Saburo, until-
"Here," Riou said.
Saburo looked up from his phone and saw Riou holding out a deer foot at him. He couldn't hide the mixture of horror and bewilderment on his face. "Wh-what the hell!?" he shouted.
"To pass your tests," he said, like that meant anything at all.
Saburo had no idea how to respond. He was not going to touch the hoof that he was apparently being offered.
Thankfully, Doppo took that moment to join them in the room. "U-um, Busujima-san, I believe it's serow hoovesthat give luck on tests, not deer. A-and I don't think it's their actual feet. Just charms."
"Oh." Riou left.
Doppo watched him go, almost smiling, but then turned back down to Saburo. He leaned down in front of him, holding two small bowls of liquid and a spoon. "So, Busujima-san left it to Arisugawa-kun and me to make the broth. O-of course, we can't agree which type to do. So, which do you think is better, Yamada-kun?"
Saburo tasted them both and decided on one (which was vastly superior, it wasn't even a question). Doppo nodded and started to move back to the kitchen, but before he could disappear again, Saburo asked, "whose was that one?"
"Ah, that one was my choice."
"Is Arisugawa-san's taste actually that bad, or was he just arguing with you to mess with you?"
"Hm, well," Doppo hesitated, "it's rude to think that of people, don't you think?"
He went back behind the curtain.
Saburo returned to his phone game. Minesweeper was so boring. Was this how people spent time in, like, the olden days?
Eventually, they finished preparations and brought out a pot of broth, placing it over the makeshift stove in the center of the room. It was cramped with all four of them around the fire. They started loading it up with ingredients. Saburo recognized some of it - the venison was obvious, and much more palatable now that it was down to just meat and looked like something people actually ate. A brown vegetable that was probably burdock was in there. The white things were hopefully onion. The rest looked more like weeds than anything edible. They probably were weeds. He said as much.
"Many types of weeds are nutritious," Riou said, handing him chopsticks and a bowl with some sort of condiment that he couldn't identify.
Dice and Doppo had sat down on either side of him with their own bowls, and were already reaching out to grab some of the more quickly-cooked ingredients.
"Whatever," Saburo sighed. When he reached into the pot, he picked around the mysterious green bits.
Laughing, Dice pointed out his habit. "Just getting your favorites? Good plan. Though in this case, they all pretty much taste the same."
Riou huffed. "Don't be picky, lad. You need to eat a diverse diet to grow up properly."
Doppo tried to say something, but Saburo cut him off, continuing to argue. "I'm already as tall as Kannonzaka-san, so I really don't think growing is a problem. Try again."
"You should show some more respect for your elders." Riou was on that again, was he?
"Busujima-san, I don't think-"
Doppo stopped when Saburo started grumbling, "I'll show respect for my elders when they stop being weirdos." He said it even knowing that it was probably dangerous to argue with the guy, but he was in a terrible mood and couldn't help but vocalize it.
Riou was actually mad now. Saburo immediately regretted what he said. Riou was usually collected, but the disrespect had set him off; his voice was louder, echoing off the metal walls in the tiny room, "you know, if it weren't for your older brothers-" and, oh, Saburo realized right then that he might've actually been scared instead of just in a bad mood, because he was shaking and he didn't hear the rest of what Riou said.
"W-what ever," he hissed, not knowing how to deal with the situation other than to try to dismiss it.
Riou boomed, "that's it, you disrespectful-"
Riou didn't get to finish, because Doppo suddenly shouted, "cut it the hell out, Riou! L-lay off the damn kid! So what if he's picky, or disrespectful? He's a fucking middle schooler, and he's clearly having a terrible time! Just leave him be!"
They all sat briefly in stunned silence. Including Doppo.
His face suddenly contorted, shifting in an instant from anger to horror at what he'd just done. "I-I'm so, so sorry for my outburst. Please excuse my disrespect, Busujima-san. I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry, I really just didn't, I didn't..." He breathed in and managed to stop himself, which was unusual. He put his hand near Saburo, but didn't touch him. "...Yamada-kun, do you want me to take you home?"
He thought about it for a minute. He almost took him up on the offer. But… he was calming down, now. "That's alright."
"Okay. If you change your mind, please let me know." Doppo went back to eating, but the others weren't quite there yet.
Riou audibly took a deep breath, in and out. "I'm sorry, Yamada-kun. Please eat how you prefer to."
"Um, it's okay," Saburo said, even though it wasn't, really. He noticed Doppo was already grabbing some of the thinly sliced meat, so he followed. Riou did, too.
Dice was, amazingly, the last one to get back to eating. "I guess Doppo-san can be kinda cool when he wants to, huh?" he said as he reached for a piece of venison that definitely wasn't cooked all the way though yet.
Doppo flushed at the praise and lowered his head, mumbling "n-not really." If Saburo hadn't seen it himself, he never would've thought Doppo had it in him to tell Riou off like that.
Saburo continued eating, gradually figuring out that Dice had been right, and all the greens really did just taste like the broth they'd soaked in, and he probably shouldn't have been so picky in the first place. Hm.
The four of them readily finished up the hot pot, with just a bit of broth left behind. Dice bothered Riou about dessert, but he managed to fall asleep on the floor before anything could get made. Saburo was thankful for that - he was totally stuffed, and really, really tired. He took the opportunity to ask Doppo to take him home.
Doppo apologized profusely on Dice's behalf, insisting that "he never does this" and then "he's really only like this sometimes" and then "it's just when there's a lot of meat" and then "well, maybe he's made a habit of it, but please don't judge him too harshly for not being able to see you off himself, anyways."
They walked back through the forest, sun just starting to go below the horizon, making it tricky to see the ground under the brush. Luckily, Doppo seemed to know a route that had far fewer traps. Doppo's guidance was a far cry from the way Dice had pulled and yanked Saburo along that afternoon.
"Thanks for earlier," Saburo said.
Doppo brushed it off. "I-it was nothing. Busujima-san wasn't thinking. And Arisugawa-kun shouldn't have brought you here in the first place. I'm sorry for not taking you home as soon as you showed up."
"It's okay. The hot pot was pretty good. And I don't think Arisugawa-san even knows what the word consequences means."
Doppo snickered before stopping himself and apologizing. To who?
When they arrived back in Ikebukuro, it was shortly after dark. Ichiro greeted them, coolly stating that he'd just been starting to worry (though Jiro behind him shaking his head at that suggested a somewhat different story). Doppo explained the situation and apologized repeatedly. Since Saburo was okay, though, Ichiro just thanked him, and asked Saburo, "was the meal any good, at least? I've heard Riou-san's food is killer, in the literal sense."
"Huh?" Saburo gave a quizzical look. "It was a pretty normal hot pot."
"Well," Doppo said, "the broth was made with stink bugs."
"Stink bugs?"