Chapter 5: Got Confessed To

Green Shark

From the start, I had not believed her claim that smashing me over the head had been a misunderstanding.

Even so, I had thought there must be some ulterior motive behind the humanitarian gesture of keeping me alive...

"Human trafficking..."

They could call it ownership or whatever they wanted, but it all meant one thing: I was merchandise.

In that regard, Marmotte was no different. She also regarded me as one of their "resources."

"Hehe."

Squeeze—

"Gyaaaagh!"

As Green Shark firmly tightened her hold around me, my waist gave a faint crack.

Marmotte leaned in and whispered conspiratorially to Green Shark.

"Green Shark. Think about it. This is an opportunity, I’m telling you."

"Hmm."

"An opportunity to earn a mountain of silver, too!"

...Was it?

Objectively speaking, I did not think anyone would pay that much money for someone like me.

If they were planning to kidnap me and extort a fortune from my family, I would honestly prefer that they did.

I had been at a loss for any way to contact the outside world in the first place. If money could resolve this, that would be a relief.

"But he is male."

"Yes, he’s male."

"I like him."

Like a child being scolded for refusing to put down a toy, Green Shark wrapped her arms around my body.

She was solid, but with the softness unique to a woman, and her strong scent filled my nose.

[Spine: Hairline Fracture 24/25]

"Ghk!"

Her strength, on the other hand, was not cute in the slightest.

Marmotte went on praising my value and the future it could bring.

"Or we could sell this outsider and buy even more men, couldn’t we?"

"Hmm?"

Green Shark seemed somehow tempted by that, and I twisted my body.

I wanted to protest, but I was so close to passing out that I could not even speak.

"So..."

Grrrrumble—

All of a sudden, a thunderous roar rang through the cramped temporary shack.

It was Green Shark’s stomach, rumbling so powerfully that my tightly embraced body shook with it.

"I’m hungry now."

"What?! You just ate all the food!"

"It wasn’t enough."

She said it shamelessly.

Judging by the wrappers scattered across the floor, she had already finished every last one of my preserved meals.

No, I remembered that being enough food to last me a week if I rationed it?

"Well, there’s still plenty of time. Let’s think it over slowly."

Marmotte clicked her tongue and gave me a sidelong glance.

Apparently, she had taken a serious dislike to me. And what the hell even was a Ratkin?

Sniff sniff.

"There’s something nearby. A lot of them."

"You’re going to eat again?"

Green Shark flared her nostrils, then carefully lowered me to the ground as though handling glass that might shatter at any moment.

Then she sprang to her feet.

"Don’t run away."

Leaving behind that brief warning, she went outside the shelter.

.

"Haaah..."

That left Marmotte and me alone inside.

The marks from where Green Shark had held me were still vivid on my arms.

I rubbed at them and considered making a break for it while I had the chance...

But honestly, I was not confident I could escape even wearing jump armor, so for now I stayed put.

"..."

Marmotte gazed at me with a prim expression.

She looked like she would be terrible at fighting, and looking at her slender limbs, I felt like I could knock her down barehanded.

Was this how Green Shark saw me?

"What?"

Perhaps sensing my improper gaze, Marmotte spoke curtly.

"Nothing."

I played innocent. My mind was a complete mess.

Well, my head had literally been scrambled, so of course it was a mess. But what was going to happen to me from here on out?

The worst-case scenario was being sold as someone’s slave, worked to the bone, and dying alone. The best-case scenario was living as Green Shark’s pet, like I was now.

Either way, it was bleak as hell.

"Don’t get any foolish ideas. If you escape, Green Shark might smash your legs this time and fit you with prosthetics."

"?"

I understood the part about smashing my legs, but what did she mean by fitting me with prosthetics?

Ah. Did she mean they would break my legs and not even give me crutches?

...I would find out later that it meant cutting off perfectly healthy legs and replacing them with artificial ones, but I really had not wanted to know.

"Oof."

I stretched out my stiff body. My head was still spinning, but the tiny crack in my spine had mostly healed.

Long live the regenerative enhancer.

Bang!

Had it been ten minutes since she left? The door flew open so roughly it seemed ready to break.

Standing there was Green Shark, carrying something enormous on her back.

"Huh?"

It looked like a deer, but its back was covered in ominous yellow humps like a camel’s...

"A boomalope?"

"There are a few nearby," Marmotte said indifferently.

On my planet too, after all the veins of natural fuel had run dry, boomalope had been raised on a massive scale to obtain fuel.

Its back humps were packed with highly concentrated chemfuel—a living bomb, in other words.

"Why that?"

"Meat?"

When I asked Green Shark, she answered that it was fresh because she had only just caught it.

I stared at the boomalope with cold, dead eyes.

Not because seeing it twitch with part of its skull caved in made me feel an odd sense of kinship.

"I heard they taste awful..."

They had been genetically engineered, but solely for fuel production—not for their flavor or fat content.

I remembered people in RimTube challenge videos saying it would taste better to simply chew and drink gasoline.

"If you grill it, it usually tastes good."

"That isn’t the kind of fire flavor we’re talking about!"

Of course, it would burn splendidly. With an explosive flavor.

"Outside first!"

The shelter had already been taken from me, but I still did not want it blown up. I opened the door and went outside.

When I waved a hand, Green Shark shrugged and followed me out with the boomalope over her shoulder.

.

.

.

The boomalope tasting bad was only a secondary concern.

The greatest problem was that when it died, the unstable chemfuel inside its humps would all vaporize and combust at once.

It truly was a boom-deer.

"Hmm."

Marmotte and Green Shark watched with great interest as Polaris went outside and got to work.

An ordinary male would have fainted at the smell of blood or run away.

But this Midworld man, Polaris, rolled up his sleeves and stood directly before the prey.

"Ugh, the smell..."

Even as he grimaced hard at the pungent scent of volatile oil, his hands moved with surprising skill.

Using the bone knife Green Shark had lent him for dressing meat, he carefully cut away the boomalope’s hump sacs.

Apparently, sacs that ignited once the heart stopped beating had to be removed while it was still alive.

So such knowledge circulated in the Midworld as well.

"Ohh."

Green Shark, too, gave an admiring sound as she watched his handiwork.

But what came next was even more surprising.

Only after every fuel sac had been cut away did the boomalope’s pitiable life come to an end.

Silence—

There was no death cry that would normally have turned everything within ten meters into a shredded mess.

His work was crooked and not perfect, so scraps of meat still clung here and there to the hump sacs, but at least they did not explode.

"Even with less of it soaked in, the smell is still there."

The sharp fuel odor that would have seeped into the meat was gone, but since it was a wild animal rather than livestock, the deer’s distinctive gamey smell remained.

Polaris scored the butchered meat with shallow cuts and soaked it in water to draw out the blood. At the same time, he plucked medicinal roots growing nearby.

Marmotte had always been accustomed to the nutrient paste provided by the facility, while Green Shark’s cooking skills extended only as far as crude survival meals—grilling or boiling something.

As they watched him and wondered what he intended to do with those weeds,

"Ohh."

In tribal society, cooking was the job of the weak—the sick and elderly, too frail to hunt.

But there was something different about a man who cooked.

The lean muscles subtly visible beneath his rolled-up sleeves stirred an odd attraction.

Gulp.

The two of them swallowed dryly in unison as they watched him focus on cooking.

Whether it was an appetite for the meat grilling so nicely, or for something else, even they did not know.

.

.

.

"It’s done."

The dish was completed after a full hour of struggle.

Even with the humps removed, he had roughly covered the deer’s distinctive stink with wild herbs. He had drawn out the blood thoroughly and boiled the tough meat once beforehand to make it as tender as possible.

Even so, the fat still left in the meat made it cook almost as though it were being fried. Served with nearby berries, it made for a fairly appetizing fine meal.

"Let’s eat!"

Unable to endure any longer, Green Shark immediately reached for a huge piece of meat with her bare hand.

Smack!

"Wait a moment."

There was certainly something charming about sitting around a campfire and casually sharing food.

But I had to demonstrate my usefulness as much as possible if I did not want to be sold off like a cow led to slaughter.

To be honest, my cooking was only at the level of knowing the basics. The real thing was this.

"We should at least set the table properly."

I brought over the planks left from building the shelter and the scraps I had stripped from the pod.

I did not have proper tools, but I could manage something as simple as hammering nails into boards with nearby stones.

Before the steak had time to cool, I successfully made a respectable high-quality table and chairs.

The finishing was a little rough, but I could proudly say the table was perfectly level.

"Sit down."

I pulled out their chairs for them.

The two sat down hesitantly.

"Thanks for the food."

They picked up makeshift forks carved from tree branches.

Green Shark grabbed the meat with her bare hands as if she could not wait any longer and took a huge bite.

The Neanderthal’s eyes went round. Marmotte looked quite shocked as well.

[Fine Meal: +5]

"Ahh, this is what you call ‘delicious.’"

"I know that too."

"Yep."

If I had simply slit the boomalope’s throat, even if I was not injured, I would have had to endure flames at point-blank range.

The fuel soaked into the meat by its death explosion would have ruined its taste and smell, and no matter how I cooked it, it would have been nothing more than a simple meal—burnt and tough outside, tasting of blood within.

But I had honed my skills through years of living alone. I was an expert in home cooking. [Cooking: 6]

"Don’t eat while sprawled on the ground. You eat sitting up..."

It was only a wooden dining table, yet the meal had been elevated from an extreme survival ration to a royal feast, and their faces were filled with bliss.

Watching them, I cheered inwardly.

‘It worked.’

In the end, on this unknown planet beyond the Union, my value lay not in my body but in my hands.

"I’m confident in making things."

Between my engineering knowledge and the electrical technician and construction certifications I had earned while preparing for employment, I could build an entire city by myself in no time.

...Though it was bitter that I had taken a vacation to play 4D Minecraft on a resort planet and wound up crashing here with the whole spaceship.

"I won’t sell you."

Green Shark wiped the grease from around her mouth and grinned.

Then she seized both my shoulders and met my eyes seriously.

Perhaps because she was pressing down on me so strongly, her powerful body—one I had to look slightly upward at despite her being a woman—was radiating heat.

"You are my stew keeper."

"Pardon?"

-----

The average frontier world today.

There is a reason she suddenly drops a confession.

She confessed, but nothing came back. What a shame.

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