TAVBZ 06

Chapter 06

“Damn it!”

Enoch spat out a curse after quietly peering down the mountainside.

The day was exceptionally clear. The visibility was so good that even the distant horizon came into sharp view.

Nearby, there were two more mountain peaks roughly the same height as the one we had climbed, and beyond them, the horizon was faintly visible as well.

No matter which way I looked—it was an island.

Sigh…! Hahaha!

“Damn, this is an island.”

I washed my face with cold water, swallowing bitter tears along with my frustration.

This only confirmed my theory even more. That this place was inside a novel. Though, in hindsight, it hardly even seemed like a theory to begin with.

After a while, once I had regained some composure, I quietly took in the island’s terrain.

A massive river ran roughly through the middle, looking uncannily like Seoul’s Han River.

For convenience, if I were to call the far side the North Island and this side the South Island, there was another mountain on the South Island roughly the same height as the one we had climbed.

That meant there were two mountains on the South Island and one on the North Island.

“So it really is an island…”

I sank down right there. My legs had gone weak.

Enoch, who had been scouting around the surroundings, returned. He sat down beside me, his face equally drained.

We sat there in silence, each lost in our own thoughts.

“Where exactly could this be? An island near the Langrid Empire? Or….”

Could it really be Korea…? If it were an island featuring modern Korean items, it would be a reasonable suspicion.

The bigger problem than being possessed by Margaret was that I hadn’t finished reading the novel.

I had read up to the part where the heroine, Yuanna, escapes the island through the “gate” that appears once every year, but then the accident happened, and I had no idea what happened after that.

• Once a year, a gate connecting the island to the outside opens. Until that gate opens, they must survive on the island by any means necessary.

The novel was written in the first person, but that line was definitely in the introduction.

It was a handwritten draft of someone’s story, but that line was written in a different handwriting, which seemed strange.

It was also curious that in this day and age, someone would handwrite a book.

The descriptions were plain and realistic, almost like the records of a real castaway, which made it all the more interesting to read.

“All of this happened because I secretly peeked at a stranger’s novel I found on the street. Damn it.”

I pulled at my hair in frustration.

Enoch, sitting beside me, also washed his face with a similarly weary expression.

He looked genuinely desperate.

“I can’t guess anything at all.”

Enoch furrowed his brow painfully, looking helpless. Then he spat another curse and ran his hands through his hair in annoyance.

It was the first time I’d seen him show such intense emotion. But I felt just as hopeless in this situation.

“To be abandoned on this damn island.”

It was already unfair enough that I had been crushed by a falling sign, and now I had to play the role of a real survivor inside someone else’s draft novel. Too unfair.

I rested my face in my hands, thinking. I felt wronged, but I couldn’t just die here.

“Think of a way. A way.”

As I had initially planned, the best approach was to gather as many survival supplies as possible and find the “bunker” that the heroine had discovered.

There was no other choice. I had to stick to the original plan.

“By the way… what are the other characters doing right now?”

From what I remembered, the characters each woke up in different places. Some woke up by the river, others in the middle of the forest.

Enoch had probably met the heroine after fighting with Margaret on the beach, right?

The story had already started off completely differently from the novel, but whatever—I had to survive first.

Grrr…

A pitiful growl came from my hungry stomach. Enoch looked at me. It was the sound from my stomach.

“Seriously? Again me?”

Enoch’s stomach was quiet, yet mine kept protesting hunger. Was it following its owner?

But thinking back, we had only eaten acai berries and spent all our energy climbing the mountain.

Enoch hadn’t slept, so he must have burned even more calories.

“Right. This is a problem. I need to do something.”

I got up and dusted myself off.

“Let’s go down first. Now that we know it’s an island, we can come up with a plan and survive.”

I extended my hand to Enoch, who was still sitting.

There was still no place for him in my plan, but I didn’t have the strength to dodge him yet.

Enoch looked at my outstretched hand with an inscrutable expression.

Only then did I remember that he disliked me.

“There’s no way he’ll take Margaret’s hand…”

I tried to pull my hand back, but he grasped it instead. His large hand closed around mine gently.

He stood up without much effort. It seemed unnecessary to hold my hand while standing.

I still couldn’t figure out what he was thinking.

“Thanks.”

Despite his exhaustion, his deep, low voice was so sweet it was dangerous to the heart.

Why is this man so effortlessly charming, even when he’s supposed to look miserable?

I turned away, clutching my chest and taking a deep breath to calm myself, then looked back at Enoch with a neutral expression.

“Let’s go.”

We had to descend before the sun set.