Previously:

"… What did you want to talk about?" Kurusu-sensei asked. "Is something wrong?"

"… You tell me. Are you okay, Sensei?" Torako asked.

"Eh?" Kurusu-sensei said. "Yes, I told you, my wound—"

"I'm not talking about that. I mean… me and Yarai… have we hurt you?" Torako asked, concerned. Kurusu-sensei looked surprised, but then she smiled. There was a hint of almost undetectable sadness in it, but she didn't seem upset.

"You're a really kind girl, aren't you, Fukui-chan?" Kurusu-sensei said. "You don't have to worry about me. I'll be all right."

"… Are you sure?" Torako asked.

"I'm sure. Thank you for asking," Kurusu-sensei said, hugging her. "You're all my precious students. I want you to be happy!"


Chapter 31: Attack


"Thank you… Kurusu-sensei," Torako said, smiling gratefully as they hugged in their shelter. That was just like her, putting her students first.

"The water's here!" a voice called loudly.

"Oh, good! I'm thirsty!" Kurusu-sensei said, letting her go. "And we can make a delicious stew with the meat you all caught!" This time there was nothing tainting her smile. They walked out of their shelter and saw that Yarai and Segawa weren't there. Yarai had made her move away to give them privacy, and Torako and Kurusu-sensei found them sitting with Shigeno and Matsumoto, who had gone with the group who collected water.

"Ugh… So tired..." Shigeno moaned. First they spent all morning gathering food, and then they had to carry all that heavy water back.

"Well, at least it wasn't that far..." Matsumoto said.

"Thanks for your hard work!" Kurusu-sensei said, smiling at them.

"Hey! It's almost sunset, so let's make dinner!" Takahashi said, coming over to get them. It was the turn of the larger group that they were assigned to for cooking to make dinner.

"All right, I'm starving!" Shigeno said.

That night they made savory stews and a few sweet stews using the fruit and veggies and the meat they had. Yarai's group made a savory stew with the deer-like animal's meat, spicy greens, and tuber plants. Despite the long day, everyone seemed to have a little more energy than they had the day before. People could be heard talking, and people who had struggled finishing one bowl of food previously came back for seconds.

"How's Miina?" Torako asked Miina when he came to get his and her share.

"She's eating again, so that's good… but the pain-relieving herb is barely doing it's job," Miina said, frowning. "Oji-san is giving her acupuncture therapy, too."

"I'm sure she'll feel better then," Kurusu-sensei said with a reassuring smile. "Acupuncture really helped me when I was in pain." Kurusu-sensei, Shigeno, and Matsumoto took bowls of food to the rest of the injured, so they wouldn't have to struggle over to them to eat.

"That should be it," Yarai said, looking around. "We can eat when Kurusu-sensei and the others get back." They didn't have to wait long. The others returned, and they served themselves and found places to sit around the fire that Akira, Rion, Mariya, Oomori, and Rei had made.

"Great stew!" Akira praised them.

"It's hard to get such a rich flavor without seasonings," Oomori agreed, smiling.

"Kurusu-sensei is a good cook," Torako said.

"Well, Fukui-chan knows more about cooking with wild ingredients, than I do, though..." Kurusu-sensei said.

"Tooru would have loved this..." Rei said sadly. "He liked spicy foods..."

"..." Everyone was silent for a moment as they remembered Tooru. His death seemed so unfair. Of all the things he could have died from on this island, it was a collapsed ceiling that got him… They had been so near the end of their search, and he had died without any answers.

"Tooru-san… was cool, wasn't he?" Akira said. "He was smart and kind and really brave..."

"… Yeah..." Rei agreed, tearing up again. She started eating again to try to stop herself.

"I'm sure Tooru-san loved you and wanted you to be happy..." Oomori said kindly.

"… B-But… How am I supposed to be happy now!?" Rei asked as her tears fell. Rion hugged her and held her while she cried.

"..." Torako felt really bad for her. She glanced sideways at Yarai. 'I've been really lucky...' she thought, remembering how that horse-ape creature had nearly killed him. If it's claws had landed differently, instead of a few broken ribs, Yarai would have been dead.

"What is it?" Yarai asked when he noticed her looking.

"… Nothing..." Torako said, scooting closer to him. She didn't want to talk about how lucky she thought she was in front of Rei, who had been so terribly unlucky.

"..." Segawa frowned when Torako moved closer to Yarai, but Rion smiled.

'Fukui-chan really likes Yarai, huh?' Rion thought, happy for them. There was a soft rustling in the grass next to Torako.

"Hm? Did you hear something?" she asked the others.

"!!" Yarai furrowed his brow and suddenly pulled her into his lap with one hand while the other snatched at something in the grass.

"H-Hey!?" Segawa said. "What do you think you're doing in public!?" Yarai held up the snake he had just caught. It had a triangular head, so it was probably venomous. Yarai kept a firm grip on it and used his other hand to break its neck. The other girls cringed a little. Torako was just glad it didn't bite her.

"More meat," Yarai said, setting it down behind him.

"C-Can you eat a poisonous snake?" Segawa asked.

"Yeah, it's safe as long as you cook them well enough," Torako said. "Heat should break down any venomous residue."

"I see you two are wasting no time..." Kokonoe said, coming over to them.

"Th-That's right! Get out of his lap!" Segawa said, remembering the position they were in.

"Calm down, Segawa-san… Yarai did that save her from the snake," Akira said.

"Oh?" Kokonoe said. He looked around for said snake and spotted it dead on the ground. "I see… Well, I'll leave you kids to it." He continued past them to join Yashiro, Mutou, Seigou, and Igarashi.

'H-He's absolutely no help!!' Segawa thought, frustrated.

"Well, I guess I should move..." Torako said.

"You're fine where you are," Yarai said, holding her in place. Torako blushed, but didn't try to move away.

"..." Akira thought they both seemed pretty happy. He glanced at Rion and blushed a little, wondering if they might…

"No, she's not!" Segawa snapped, clenching her fists.

"Segawa-san, don't you think you're overreacting?" Rion asked. It was a bit forward, but they were a couple, after all.

"!" Segawa said as her cheeks flushed. She was angry that no one was taking her side. She opened her mouth to say something, but Mariya spoke first.

"Anyway, we should probably clear this grass away next," Mariya said. They had made bare spots for their fires, but it obviously wasn't enough. "With those rat-like creatures and other pests we've noticed, it's clear too many unwanted things are hiding and living in it." Some of the groups had run into the rodents while setting up their shelters the other day and had to chase them away.

"R-Rat-like creatures…?" Segawa asked. She didn't like the sound of that. Her group had been fortunate enough to be avoided by the rodents as they were being shooed from one place to another.

"Yeah, we'll do that tomorrow," Akira said. "Once that's done, we can build better shelters and then start on making boats."

'She's still sitting on his lap...' Segawa thought, glaring at Torako, who was doing her best to ignore it.

"Hey… Look over there!" Yamato said at another fire, which he was sharing with Takahashi, Miki, Suzuki, Kashiwagi, and Murayama. He was looking at how Torako was sitting in Yarai's lap.

"I guess it's true that they're a couple..." Murayama said.

"They're really going for it, huh?" Suzuki said. "Doing that so shamelessly… I would've thought he'd choose Sensei or Segawa."

"I want to do that, too, Ryouichi-kun!" Kashiwagi said.

"Eh? Not right now, I'm eating..." Suzuki said.

"But those two have always been close, haven't they?" Takahashi said, ignoring the boyfriend and girlfriend's side conversation.

"Yeah, but Sensei was the one he was always carrying and protecting the most..." Miki said.

"Isn't that because Fukui doesn't need it?" Yamato said. "You know she can defend herself, and she's in better shape than Kursusu-sensei, who can be a bit of a klutz..."

"Yeah, but she's so flat-chested..." Suzuki said.

"Ryouichi-kun… are you saying a girl's only worth is the size of her chest?" Kashiwagi asked, frowning at him. Takahashi and Miki were also giving him looks of deep disapproval.

"N-No… Of course not!" Suzuki said quickly. 'Damn… I shouldn't have said that out loud!'

"That aside, poor Rei-san is still taking Tooru-san's death really hard, huh?" Takahashi said.

"Well, it's only natural…" Yamato said. "We're sad about his death, too, so it must be even harder for her, right? Way harder..."

"So, um, anyway..." Torako said, wondering how to bring the next subject up that she wanted to discuss with her group. "I've been thinking… This whole time travel thing really bothers me… I don't know how or why it happened… but do you think we could have been sucked into a causal loop?"

"… Huh?" Akira said.

"Causal loop?" Segawa asked.

"A causal loop is a theoretical proposition in which, by means of either retrocausality or time travel, a sequence of events is among the causes of another event, which is in turn among the causes of the first-mentioned event," Mariya said. "Such causally looped events then exist in spacetime, but their origin cannot be determined."

"Retrocausality? Spacetime?" Akira asked.

"Retrocausality, or backwards causation, is a concept of cause and effect in which an effect precedes its cause in time and so a later event effects an earlier one," Yarai said. "In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model which fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why different observers perceive differently where and when events occur."

"… Uh-huh..." Akira said, deciding to ignore the spacetime part and focus on the part he thought he understood. "For example, in this case… What were you thinking?" he asked Torako.

"I was thinking… this island was clearly built in response to the disappearance of our plane… Our plane disappeared October 4, 20XX. Then, we landed on this island… over fifty years later. But, if the world hadn't believed we'd died back then, this island wouldn't have been here for us to land on. Our plane's disappearance caused the creation of this island… and this island gave us a safe point to land in the future… Well, relatively speaking. I wonder if it's possible that this strange island, which uses advanced technology, didn't somehow have some connection with the same coordinates its location would have been before it was built… That our plane somehow managed to exist in two different points in time in that same location… Could that have created a wormhole, somehow?"

"I agree, that seems to have been what happened… But that still doesn't really explain anything…" Mariya said. "Why our plane? And why did we land at this point in time and not sometime sooner?"

"Not even you know, Mariya?" Akira asked.

"… I really couldn't say," Mariya said, frustrated that they didn't have more information.

—∞—

The next morning, they gathered together all of the blades they had and formed teams to clear the grass. Group A would clear the first plot of grass, Group B would clear the next one, etc. They thought doing it in shifts would be better with such tedious work that required so much squatting and bending over. Kurusu-sensei and everyone else who was healing from something were exempt. The groups who weren't working did other things to keep themselves busy, like bringing water to the workers, making lunch, or weaving a fishing net so they could catch fish from the river.

"..." Torako wiped the sweat from her brow. She only had a little bit more to go before she finished her share of the work. Another pair of hands appeared beside her hers as she started cutting again. She recognized those hands, but she looked at his face to confirm what she already knew. It was Yarai. "Huh? What are you doing?"

"Helping you," Yarai said.

"Oh, you're don't have to do that! I'm almost done, anyway," Torako said.

"I have an ulterior motive…" Yarai said, ignoring her protests. He glanced at Segawa who wasn't that far behind Torako. He wanted Torako to finish well before her.

"?" Torako said, wondering what he could mean, but she didn't try to stop him anymore. As soon as they finished, he took her hand and led her over to the same spot where they'd had their first kiss. Yarai kissed Torako again, and she returned it. Yarai was like a hungry wolf, and she felt a surprisingly intense passion welling up within herself as well. But Yarai stopped when he heard the call for the change of shifts for cutting the grass. Although they were at it for over eleven minutes, it seemed like it had ended too soon.

"What's wrong?" Torako asked, disappointed.

"I don't want Segawa to find this place. It's hard enough getting away from her..." Yarai said. Torako saw his point, so they headed back to rejoin the others before Segawa came looking for them again.

"Where did you two go?" Segawa demanded when they met back up with her, Shigeno, and Matsumoto.

"To find some shade," Yarai said. Technically, they had been in the shade while they were kissing.

"Why did you only help Fukui?" Segawa asked, looking disgruntled.

"Well, she is his girlfriend..." Matsumoto said.

"Isn't that only natural?" Shigeno said.

"Grr… You two are no help!" Segawa snapped, and she stomped off, putting distance between them but still keeping an eye on Yarai and Torako.

"Too bad Saki's such a sore loser..." Shigeno said.

"You guys! The fishing net is done!" Kurusu-sensei called to them from where she was sitting with the others working on it. She had insisted on doing something, so they gave her a job that wouldn't put too much stress on her.

"… I guess we should go fishing, then," Torako said, looking at Yarai.

"Yeah! We can have them make fish tacos with mango salsa tonight! … Only without the tacos..." Matsumoto said. Aside from the mangoes, they didn't have most of the other ingredients, but they had some close substitutes.

"Can we go with you?" Yamato asked as he and Murayama approached them. "I have some experience with fishing."

"Sure," Shigeno said. Yarai and Torako could probably do it on their own, but it would be helpful to have more people to help carry all the fish back.

"I'll go, too!" one of the men who was originally from the 'pyramid' group said, coming forward. Torako eyed him with obvious distrust. It was the same man who had talked about having his way with her after the girls had been captured in the battle against Nishikiori's group. She stuck closer to Yarai. She thought she could probably take that man in a fight, but she didn't want to be put in that kind of situation.

"..." Yarai noticed how uncomfortable Torako was and looked at the man, wondering what the problem was. Torako never told him about what had happened while they were captured.

They reached the river without incident, and the boys held the net while the girls tried to herd the fish into it by scaring them. It was fine until Torako had to pee.

"Where are you going, Fukui-san?" Matsumoto asked when she started wading out of the water.

"Ah, I just need a quick break!" Torako said. She put her shoes back on and headed into the trees to find a private spot. She had gone a fair distance and was about to pull her shorts and underwear down, when she heard a twig snap behind her. "!" Torako spun around and saw the last person she wanted to see standing there.

"Don't worry, it's just me!" the man from the 'pyramid' said. Torako thought that was cause for worry. She regretted leaving her spear by the river.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Looking for you," he said, taking a step closer to her. Torako took a step back, but while she was mid-step, the man suddenly lunged at her and took advantage of her poor position to throw her off balance and push her to the ground. Torako yelled and immediately tried to fight him off, but he was much stronger and faster than he looked, and before she could knee him where it hurt, he had his legs between hers, and her wrists were clamped firmly in the grip of one of his hands while the other covered her mouth. Torako struggled, but she couldn't break free, and he was holding her face in such a way that she couldn't even bite his hand to make him pull back so she could call for help. "There's really no need to be so nervous…" he said with a twisted smile. "You're with that boy now, right? I bet you're doing it all the time… So what's the harm in doing it with me!?" A foot slammed into the man, kicking him aside with so much force that he was ripped away from her and slammed harshly into a tree with the unmistakable sound of the cracking of bone. Yarai was glaring at the 'pyramid' man as if he wanted to kill him. He had noticed that the man had left in the same direction as Torako when he claimed he needed to pee, too. Yarai had thought it was strange, so he followed him, then heard Torako yell. Yarai stepped over Torako, grabbed the 'pyramid' man, and rolled him over. He began punching him without mercy, over and over. It took Torako a moment to recover from the shock of what had almost happened to her. When she did, and she saw what Yarai was doing, she tried to stop him.

"Stop! Stop it! You'll kill him!" she yelled, hugging Yarai from behind. Even though he really wanted to keep hitting the bastard, Yarai paused. The man's face was already a bloody mess.

"Don't tell me you're worried about him, after what he tried to do to you..." Yarai said darkly. Torako could feel him shaking. She was trembling, too.

"I'm worried about you!" Torako said. "You're not a murderer, Yarai!"

"..." Yarai continued to glare down at the man who could barely breath anymore. Despite what Torako said, he thought he might be. He could definitely kill this man. But he felt her arms around him and heard the desperation and fear in her voice. Yarai loosened Torako's grip on him, stood up, and turned around to help her up. He could see her legs shaking. "… You came here to pee, right? Go ahead. I'll take care of this..." he said, looking down at the 'pyramid' man with disgust. Yarai walked off to give Torako privacy, dragging the unconscious man with him.

"W-What happened!?" Shigeno asked as she and the others ran up to meet him part way.

"Was that Fukui-san? Is she all right!?" Matsumoto asked.

"She'll be all right, no thanks to him..." Yarai said, showing them the 'pyramid' man.

"Whoa!?" Yamato exclaimed. "D-Did you do that!? Why!?"

"… He attacked Fukui," Yarai said.

"Ehhh!?" the others exclaimed.

"W-Why!?" Shigeno asked. Yarai decided he may as well tell them. It would save Torako the trouble of having to explain it herself.

"He tried to rape her..." Yarai said, glaring down at the despicable man.

"!?" the others gasped, horrified. Their expressions darkened as they looked at the man.

"… Good! I'm glad you hurt him!" Shigeno said.

"Me, too!" Matsumoto said. "That's unforgivable!"

"Where is Fukui?" Murayama asked.

"She's coming. She'll be here in a moment," Yarai said. Right on cue, Torako came over to join them. She had managed to stop trembling, but she was obviously still shaken.

"Are you all right? You look pale!" Matsumoto said, concerned.

"I-I'm all right..." Torako said. "I messed up… I let him get too close..."

"It's not your fault!" Shigeno said.

"Yeah! Don't worry, you're all right, now!" Yamato said.

"Yeah, he can't hurt you now!" Murayama said. They were all anxious to console her after her terrible scare.

"Th-Thanks… Thank you..." Torako said. She appreciated what they were trying to do. They finished fishing, and Yarai dragged the 'pyramid' man back to camp while the others carried the fish. When they arrived back, at first no one noticed anything was wrong, but then one woman cried out in alarm when she saw what was left of the 'pyramid' man's face. Suddenly everyone was watching them.

"W-What happened!?" Akira asked, hurrying over to them. "Did an animal do that to him!?"

"I did," Yarai said.

"!" Akira said, surprised, but he knew Yarai must have a reason. "… Why?"

"..." Yarai hesitated for a moment. Telling the small group that had been with them at the river was one thing, but he didn't want Fukui to feel embarrassed or ashamed if other people started looking at her funny because of what had happened, even though none of it was her fault.

"Because he tried to rape Fukui-san!" Shigeno said, so outraged that she couldn't keep quiet. "He waited until she was on her own and attacked her!"

"!?" everyone exclaimed. Kokonoe narrowed his eyes at the 'pyramid' man and glared at him. All of the women were appalled, and most of the men had looks of strong disapproval and/or great dislike on their faces. Saitou looked indifferent. He thought it would have served Yarai right if his woman had been taken from him like that. Segawa, as much as she hated the idea of Torako being with Yarai instead of her, was horrified. People started shouting out different punishments for the would-be rapist.

"Put him in a cage!"

"Stone him!"

"Give him the death penalty!"

The 'pyramid' man, who had only just regained consciousness in time to hear the brutal calls for his punishment trembled with fear. Akira stepped closer, glaring down at him.

"So… What do you think we should do with someone so unforgivable?" Akira asked the rapist. He didn't want to kill anyone, but they had to give him a really severe punishment to make sure it wouldn't happen again, and to discourage any other men who might be having those kinds of ideas about the women in their camp. He wished there wasn't a need for it, but they clearly couldn't trust every single person to behave themselves.

"Here's an idea!" Kokonoe said, stepping forward. "Any man who rapes a woman will automatically get his balls cut off, no exceptions." All of the women cheered this idea fiercely, which made some of the men nervous. Saitou looked like he wanted to run.

"B-But! I didn't actually rape her!" the 'pyramid' man said desperately.

"Not for lack of trying!" Yarai said furiously. He wasn't going to let him squirm his way out of this.

"Well, it is true that he didn't actually commit the full crime… So, how about this? In the case of 'attempted rape', the culprit will be beaten to within an inch of his life. About four more hits should do it, don't you think, Yarai?" Kokonoe said.

"..." Yarai still thought they were letting the man off too easy.

"… We'll do that," Akira decided. "From now on, it'll be like Kokonoe-sensei said!"

"In that case..." Yarai said, looking down at the 'pyramid' man. Yarai dropped him, and before the 'pyramid' man could move a muscle, Yarai was kneeling on the ground, punching him in the face mercilessly. It was brutal to watch. Even some of the people who most wanted to see him punished flinched.

"Okay, that's enough!" Kokonoe said after four punches, stopping Yarai before he really killed the man. "We've got another patient for you, doctor!" Mutou stepped forward.

"Bring him this way," Mutou told Yarai. Yarai dragged the unconscious man across the ground to where Mutou had his other severely injured patients. Yarai left him there without looking back.

"Are you okay!?" Segawa asked Torako urgently as she and Kurusu-sensei came over to her, Shigeno, and Matsumoto. Yamato and Murayama got help from other people to take care of the fish they had brought back.

"Did he hurt you!?" Kurusu-sensei asked anxiously.

"I-I'm okay… Yarai-kun got there in time, so..." Torako said, looking down. She hadn't thought that man could corner her like that. She felt far too vulnerable. Kurusu-sensei hugged her. Kokonoe came over, too.

"He won't touch you again," Kokonoe promised. "We'll make sure of it." Torako nodded. She had managed to avoid crying, but she could feel the dam threatening to burst.

"Fukui," Yarai said. Torako looked up and saw that he had returned. She threw her arms around him and hugged him. Yarai held her close. For once, Segawa didn't do anything to stop them.

—∞—

Late that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Yarai quietly approached the bed of the man who had attacked Torako. The man tried to cry out in alarm, but his jaw had been broken, so Mutou had bound it tightly to keep him from moving it.

"I want you to know… that if you ever put your hands on her again, I'll crush them beyond repair," Yarai said with a terrifying expression on his face.

"That's not a threat Yarai..." Kokonoe said, coming up beside him. He glared sinisterly down at the injured man. "If you lay even one finger on her, I'll rip your balls off and feed them to you." The looks they gave the 'pyramid' man were enough to bring tears to his eyes make him tremble uncontrollably with fear. Yarai and Kokonoe left together.

"Thanks for looking after her," Kokonoe said.

"It should never have happened..." Yarai said.

"Is Tora blaming you?" Kokonoe asked.

"… No," Yarai said.

"Then you shouldn't either," Kokonoe said, turning to walk away. "Take care of her." He waved goodnight without looking back.

"..." Yarai watched him go then quietly returned to the shelter he shared with Torako and the others. He made it to his bed without disturbing them and lied down next to Torako. In the incomplete darkness, he could just make out the peaceful expression on her face. He listened to her soft breathing, relieved that she seemed to be all right.