The clearing detonated.
Every voice at once, overlapping, crashing into each other like waves against rocks. No order. No direction. Just noise.
"WE HAVE TO GO AFTER HER!" Mutsumi grabbed Gomaotto's straps with both fists, knuckles white, her brown eyes wild beneath the brim of her Stetson. She spun toward the northern treeline where the Ammophila had disappeared. "She went north! I saw which direction she banked! If we move now, right now, we can track the flight path before we lose the angle! Chitose is alive, the venom was a paralytic not a toxin, that means she's still breathing, she's still conscious, we just have to get to her before that thing does something worse!"
"HOW MANY OF THESE INSECT SLUTS ARE ON THIS GODDAMN ISLAND?!" Atsushi kicked a chunk of wreckage so hard it sailed into the undergrowth. His aviator jacket hung open, cream-fur collar dark with sweat, and the veins in his neck stood out like cables. He kicked again. A rock this time, smaller, which bounced off a tree trunk and ricocheted into the dirt near Kazuhiko's feet. Kazuhiko didn't flinch. "BUTTERFLIES! NOW WASPS! WHAT'S NEXT? GIANT FUCKING MOSQUITOES?! COCKROACH BITCHES?! SOMEBODY TELL ME HOW MANY BECAUSE I SWEAR TO GOD IF ONE MORE THING WITH WINGS TRYS TO TOUCHE ME I'M GOING TO LOSE IT!"
"We're going to die." Mami's voice came out thin and reedy, barely human. She sat exactly where she'd scrambled after Nozomi drove her from Haibu's arms, knees drawn to her chest, the frilly pink dress hiked up around her pale thighs. She rocked forward and back, forward and back, her pink pigtails swaying with each oscillation. Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks. "We're going to die on this island. They're going to take us one by one and we're going to die. First the butterflies took those boys and now the wasp took Naruse-san and we're next. We're all next. We're going to die here. We're going to die."
The word looped. Die. Die. Die. A broken record skipping on the same groove.
"Nobody is dying!" Ayumi planted herself in the center of the clearing, right on top of Chitose's abandoned shoes, and swept her arms wide. The welt on her forearm had gone purple. Sweat plastered the white headband flat against her forehead. "Listen to me! Hey! LISTEN! We need to stay together and figure out a plan! Mutsumi is right, Chitose is alive, we can still help her, but only if we stop panicking and start thinking! Everyone take a breath and FOCUS!"
Nobody focused. Nobody took a breath. Mutsumi was already three steps toward the northern tree line before Ayumi caught her arm. Atsushi put his boot through a piece of shattered luggage. Mami's rocking accelerated. Kazuhiko leaned against his tree and watched the disintegration with flat green eyes, jaw working around a piece of gum like it was the only thing keeping his teeth from grinding to dust. Misuzu had her back against a trunk on the opposite side of the clearing, arms crossed beneath the shelf of her breasts, copper hair curtaining her face. Her shoulders trembled.
Miki Shirakawa stood at the edge of everything, as she always did. Her gray bob hung motionless. Her round cheeks had gone bloodless, porcelain-white, and her melancholic eyes stared at the patch of sky where Chitose had vanished. She didn't speak. She didn't move. She didn't even blink. Her small hands hung at her sides, fingers curled inward, and her body held the rigid stillness of someone whose fear had bypassed panic entirely and settled into something deeper. Paralysis. Her chest barely rose.
Haibu stood apart from all of it.
He faced north. His eyes tracked the line the Ammophila had taken, tracing the path above the canopy, reading the angle of broken branches where her passage had snapped the uppermost limbs. Fifteen degrees east of true north. She'd been confident. Unhurried. A predator returning to its nest with fresh prey.
Nozomi pressed against his left side, her hip fitted to his, her hand wrapped around his forearm. Her green hair brushed his bare shoulder where the lost jacket no longer covered him. She said nothing. Her blue eyes watched his face with that fixed, consuming attention that never wavered, reading his jaw, his brow, the direction of his gaze. Waiting. Patient as a blade in a sheath.
His right hand hung loose at his side, fingers still curled from reaching for Chitose. Still warm from grabbing nothing but air.
Mutsumi wrenched her arm free from Ayumi's grip and faced the group. Her chest heaved beneath the camouflage jacket, and she shoved a strand of unkempt brown hair from her face with the back of her wrist.
"We need to go after Chitose. Now. Right now." Her voice cracked on the last word, but she held her ground. "Every second we stand here arguing is a second that thing gets further away. The canopy damage gives us a trail. If we move fast, we can follow the broken branches before the wind shifts them."
"Are you out of your mind?"
Misuzu pushed off the tree trunk, arms still folded tight beneath her chest, the white coat riding up to expose the strip of tanned stomach above her jean shorts. Her copper-red eyes locked onto Mutsumi with open contempt, lips curling.
"There is absolutely no way we are going after her. Did you not just see what happened? A giant wasp woman ripped Naruse out of the air like she weighed nothing and flew off with her. Flew. Off. That thing was the size of a car and it moved faster than anything I've ever seen. And you want us to chase it through the jungle on foot?"
"She's our class president!" Ayumi stepped forward, blue eyes blazing. The tracksuit sleeves were pushed to her elbows, both fists balled at her sides. "She's been protecting every single one of us since the crash! She stood up for you when Kamijo was running his mouth, she organized the headcount, she made sure nobody was left behind, and the second she needs our help you want to just abandon her?"
"Yes." Misuzu didn't blink. "That's exactly what I want to do."
"You're a coward."
"Call me whatever you want, Matsuoka." Misuzu flicked a length of copper hair over her shoulder with practiced indifference, though the tremor in her fingers betrayed her. "I don't care. I'm not going to die for Chitose Naruse. I'm not going to get dragged off by some wasp and pumped full of venom until I'm moaning and drooling like a puppet. I'm not going to get turned into a bug girl or whatever the hell those butterflies did to Ino. Did you see the wings growing out of her back? She wasn't human anymore. She was begging for cock like an animal in heat. That's what's waiting for us out there."
She jabbed a finger toward the northern treeline.
"That thing said her sisters would come back for the rest of us. So forgive me if my survival plan doesn't involve walking straight into their nest and handing myself over."
Mutsumi's hands shook at her sides. She looked from face to face, searching for an ally, finding nothing but averted gazes and hollow stares. Her brown eyes glistened.
"We can't leave her. Please. You all heard what that creature did to her. The stinger, the venom, the way Chitose was screaming before it took effect. She's paralyzed somewhere in a nest full of those things and she can't move, she can't fight, she can't even call for help. If we don't go after her, nobody will."
"Then nobody will."
Atsushi's voice cut across the clearing. He stopped kicking debris and turned, hands jammed in his aviator jacket pockets, the gold chain around his neck catching a sliver of light through the canopy. His thin eyebrows drew down into the permanent scowl etched across his features, and he cracked his neck with a sharp twist.
"Jinno's right. I'm not risking my dick for Naruse."
Ayumi rounded on him. "You can't be serious."
"Do I look like I'm joking?" He spread his arms wide, the silver ball chain on his hip jangling with the motion. "That wasp bitch was enormous. She picked up Naruse with one arm. One. And she had four more. Plus that stinger thing that made the class prez go cross-eyed in about three seconds flat. What exactly is our plan here? March into a nest of those things with a broken knife and a can of body spray?"
"Mutsumi's flamethrower worked on the butterflies!"
"For about ten seconds! And those butterflies were flammable! Wasps aren't butterflies, genius! Oribe, tell her. Wasps don't have the same dust on their wings, right?"
Mutsumi opened her mouth. Closed it. Her jaw worked, and something behind her eyes fractured.
"Their wing structure is different," she admitted, the words dragged out like teeth. "Hymenoptera wings are membranous, not scaled. The flammability was specific to lepidopteran wing dust. The same approach wouldn't work on an Ammophila."
"There it is." Atsushi turned back to Ayumi with a grin that held no warmth. "Our bug expert just confirmed we'd be walking in with nothing. So yeah, I'm staying right here, keeping my body intact, and waiting for the rescue choppers your boyfriend promised would show up in three days."
Ayumi snapped. "Chitose would go after any one of you. Every single one of you, and you know it."
"Then Chitose's an idiot."
Mutsumi flinched like she'd been slapped. Her grip tightened on Gomaotto's straps until the fabric creaked.
Haibu watched the fracture lines spread through the group. Mutsumi and Ayumi on one side. Misuzu and Atsushi on the other. Kazuhiko observing from his tree, green eyes shifting between speakers like he was cataloguing debts. Mami still rocking, lost in her loop. Miki frozen at the periphery.
Nozomi's fingers tightened on his forearm. He felt her pulse against his skin, rapid and warm.
Nozomi's grip on his forearm shifted, fingers sliding down to wrap around his wrist. She turned into him slightly, angling her body so that the soft curve of her hip pressed flush against his side, and tilted her chin up to look at his face.
"Haibu." Her voice dropped below the noise of the argument, intimate and deliberate. "What do you want to do?"
The question landed in the center of his chest and sat there.
What he wanted was to move. Right now. Immediately. To follow the broken canopy north at a pace that would blister his legs and shred his lungs, because somewhere out there Chitose Naruse was paralyzed inside a nest of creatures that had already demonstrated what they did to the people they captured. The image of her face when the stinger drove in, that single terrible second before the venom shut her expression down into slack compliance, hadn't left him. It sat behind his eyes like a splinter.
But the rational architecture of his mind, the part his father had spent years sharpening on cold mornings in forest blinds and long silent hours reading weather on open water, was already building the counter-argument brick by brick. No terrain intelligence. Unknown nest structure. Unknown number of hostiles. Fire advantage nullified. Nine people, several of them already compromised by pheromone exposure and psychological shock, led into the territory of a creature that had taken Chitose without slowing down.
His father's voice. A decision made in grief is a grave pre-dug.
He was still forming the words when Atsushi's voice cracked across the clearing like a whip.
"Why are you even asking him?"
Atsushi stepped forward, boots grinding into the dirt, gold chain swaying against his chest. He pointed at Haibu with two fingers, the gesture loose and dismissive.
"Mori doesn't think for himself. You know that, right? He just does whatever Oribe tells him. Look at him, he's been standing there watching her cry for five minutes and he's about to go charging into a wasp nest because she wants to." He laughed, short and ugly. "He's basically her dog."
Nozomi went rigid against him.
The change was immediate and physical, a full-body tension that rolled through her like a current, and her hand dropped from his wrist as she turned to face Atsushi with something that had been cold a moment ago and was now incandescent.
"What did you just say?"
Her voice came out quiet. Dangerously quiet. The kind of quiet that preceded something catastrophic.
Atsushi blinked, half-amused, and spread his arms. "I said what I said."
"You arrogant, brainless, self-important waste of space." Nozomi took three steps toward him, green hair swinging, blue eyes burning bright and fixed. A flush spread across her fair cheeks, and her hands balled at her sides. "Haibu Mori is more capable in one hand than you have been in your entire worthless life. He has kept every single person in this clearing alive today through knowledge, through skill, through actual intelligence, and you stand there with your stupid chain and your stupid jacket and your absolutely stupid face, and you have the nerve to suggest that he follows anyone?" She stepped closer. Atsushi actually drew back half an inch without seeming to notice he'd done it. "He should be making every decision for this group. You have contributed nothing. You have protected nobody. You have done nothing except shout and kick rocks and make everyone around you more afraid."
She pointed at him, arm fully extended, the line of her body rigid with conviction.
"If anyone should be leading this group, it is Haibu."
The clearing went still.
Then Atsushi detonated.
"EXCUSE ME?!" The volume punched through the jungle, scattering birds somewhere above the canopy. He closed the distance Nozomi had put between them until Kazuhiko straightened slightly off his tree, ready. "Why the HELL should HE be in charge?! What has he done?! He shows up after the crash, nobody knows where he was, nobody can explain it, and suddenly he's everyone's hero?!" He jabbed his own chest with a thumb. "I'm the one who's been here from the start! I have been the one holding the group together. If ANYONE is in charge here, it's ME! I should be making decisions! Not some quiet freak who lets women fight his battles and has nothing to say for himself!"
"Holding the group together?!" Ayumi's voice cut in from across the clearing, cracking with disbelief. "You have been screaming since we landed!"
"STAY OUT OF THIS, MATSUOKA!"
The argument consumed itself, voices layering and colliding, Nozomi giving nothing back, matching Atsushi's volume with cold precision whilst Ayumi fed fuel into the fire from the opposite flank.
Across the clearing, away from all of it, Misuzu crouched.
She had folded herself down to Mami's level one knee in the dirt, copper hair falling forward over her shoulder. The white coat rode up the backs of her thighs, and she rested one hand lightly on Mami's forearm.
"You poor thing." Her voice was honeyed, smooth, each word placed with surgical care. Her copper eyes moved over Mami's trembling face with an expression constructed to resemble sympathy. "You've been through so much. We all have. And now they want to drag us all into more danger." She made a soft sound in the back of her throat. "Doesn't it make sense to just stay safe? Stay here, stay together, wait for help?" She gave Mami's forearm a gentle squeeze. "You agree with me, don't you?"
Mami's rocking had slowed. She was watching Misuzu the way a small animal watches something that hasn't moved yet, uncertain whether stillness meant safety. The pink pigtails had gone lopsided. Her wet pink eyes flickered between Misuzu's face and the hand on her arm.
"I..." Her voice was tiny. Fragile. "I don't want to go into the jungle again."
Misuzu smiled.
Ayumi's head snapped toward the pair on the ground. Her blue eyes locked onto Misuzu's hand wrapped around Mami's forearm, the gentle squeeze, the honeyed smile, and something dark crossed her face.
"Get away from her."
Misuzu looked up, copper lashes lifting slow and unconcerned. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me." Ayumi crossed the clearing in four long strides, her sneakers grinding the dirt. She stopped above them, fists tight at her hips, the purple welt on her forearm pulsing. "She's terrified and you're whispering in her ear like a snake. You're making her decision for her."
Misuzu rose from her crouch with deliberate grace, unfolding her long legs, copper hair spilling down her back. The hem of her white coat settled just below the curve of her rear, and she tilted her head with a practiced innocence that didn't reach her eyes.
"I'm not making anyone do anything. I asked her how she felt and she told me." One manicured hand pressed against her collarbone. "Is it so wrong to comfort someone? She's scared, Matsuoka. Look at her. She doesn't want to go chasing wasps through the jungle. I didn't put that in her head."
"You absolutely did. You crouched down there and fed her exactly what you wanted her to say."
"Oh please." Misuzu's lip curled. "Not everyone needs to be dragged along on your little hero crusade. Some of us have the sense to stay alive. If Miura agrees with me, that's because she's thinking clearly, not because I told her what to think."
"Thinking clearly? She was catatonic thirty seconds ago!"
"And your solution is what? Scream at her until she agrees to march into a wasp nest? Very protective of you."
Ayumi stepped closer. Their faces were inches apart, breath mingling. Misuzu didn't yield. Her copper eyes gleamed, chin lifted, the line of her jaw set hard beneath all that silken hair.
Haibu stopped listening.
The argument collapsed into white noise, indistinct and shapeless, swallowed by the single clear thought that had been forming in his chest since the Ammophila vanished above the canopy with Chitose's paralyzed body hanging limp in her arms.
He turned north.
And walked.
No announcement. No declaration. No dramatic pause for the group to witness. He simply picked a line through the undergrowth where the broken branches overhead marked the wasp's flight path, and started following it. His boots found the ground with the quiet, measured pace of someone who had walked through wild terrain since before he could read.
"HEY!" Atsushi's voice cracked behind him like a gunshot. "Where the hell do you think you're going, Mori?!"
Haibu didn't stop. Didn't turn.
"Going to get Chitose."
"Get back here! We haven't decided anything yet! We're still talking about this, you don't get to just walk off and do whatever you want! I'm the one in charge and I haven't given anyone permission to leave!"
Haibu paused. Half-turned. His brown eyes found Atsushi across the clearing, steady and unreadable.
"I don't care what you do, Kamijo. Any of you. Stay, argue, scream at each other until the wasps come back for seconds. Chitose is my friend and she's out there. I'm going to get her."
He faced north again and kept walking.
For a breath, the clearing held its silence. Then Gomaotto's straps creaked.
Mutsumi's face broke open like sunrise through storm clouds. The despair that had been cracking her apart for the last five minutes shattered and fell away, replaced by something fierce and bright that flooded her brown eyes with heat. She adjusted the backpack on her shoulders, pulled the Stetson down tight, and ran after him. Her boots crunched through the undergrowth until she fell into step at his right side, matching his pace stride for stride.
Three seconds.
Nozomi moved like a whip. She darted forward, green hair streaming, and slotted herself between Haibu and Mutsumi. Her shoulder pressed against his bare arm, her hip brushing his with every step. She looked up at him with those wide blue eyes full of worship and heat.
"You're incredible, Haibu. Truly. The way you just stood up and decided, no hesitation, no wavering. That's real leadership. Not screaming and posturing like some overgrown child."
Mutsumi's jaw tightened, but she said nothing.
Back in the clearing, Ayumi pulled away from Misuzu mid-sentence. She looked at Atsushi, then at Misuzu, and her lip twisted into something ugly.
"I hope you both get caught by a dung beetle person."
She turned and jogged after the departing group without looking back.
Kazuhiko watched them go. He stayed against his tree for a long moment, green eyes calculating, the silver chain on his hip catching filtered light. Then he stretched, rolling both shoulders, popping his neck to one side with a soft crack. He pushed off the trunk and started walking.
"Kai!" Atsushi grabbed at his arm. "What the hell, man? You're going with them?"
Kazuhiko pulled his arm free without effort.
"Oribe knows bugs. Mori knows wilderness. Between the two of them, my odds are better with a smaller group that has actual skills than a larger one."
"That's bullshit! You're walking straight into danger!"
Kazuhiko paused at the treeline. He looked back over his shoulder, thick twists falling across his sharp features, and gave a shrug so indifferent it bordered on offensive.
"Can't be worse than here. We've met two different groups of bug girls in this one spot, Kamijo. Whatever's out there, it already knows where this clearing is."
He stepped into the undergrowth and disappeared after the others as the clearing started to empty.
Mami watched Kazuhiko's red shirt vanish between the ferns. Her rocking stopped. The loop in her head, the endless die-die-die refrain, stuttered and caught on something new. Something worse.
Kazuhiko's words hung in the air like smoke. Whatever's out there, it already knows where this clearing is.
Her pink eyes went wide. She looked at the trampled ground where the butterfly women had pinned Ai. Looked at the gouged earth where the Ammophila had landed, the deep furrows her legs had carved into the soil. The broken canopy overhead where the wasp had punched through on her way in and again on her way out.
The scream that tore out of Mami Miura's throat had nothing in common with the thin, reedy whisper she'd been producing for the last ten minutes. It was raw and high and animal, the sound of a rabbit that has finally understood the shape of the shadow above it.
She scrambled to her feet so fast her pink heels caught on the hem of her frilly dress and nearly sent her sprawling. She caught herself on one palm, shoved upright, and bolted for the northern treeline.
"WAIT FOR ME! PLEASE WAIT! DON'T LEAVE ME HERE! PLEASE!"
Her pale legs pumped beneath the salmon shawl, pigtails streaming behind her like pink ribbons in a gale. She crashed through the undergrowth with zero grace and absolute commitment, branches whipping her arms, ferns slapping her shins, the white daisy clip in her hair snagging on a low branch and ripping free without slowing her down.
"MIURA!" Misuzu lunged forward two steps, copper hair swinging. "Get back here! MIURA! Stop running, you idiot!"
But Mami was already gone. The sound of her crashing through the brush faded into the dense green wall of jungle, punctuated by one last desperate shriek for someone to please, please wait.
Misuzu stood at the edge of the clearing with her arm still extended, fingers grasping at nothing. Her copper eyes burned. She dropped her hand and spun on her heel, teeth bared.
"Unbelievable. That brainless little princess just ran off into a jungle full of giant insects in high heels."
Atsushi grunted behind her. He stood with his arms crossed, surveying the clearing with the dawning expression of a man who had just noticed the room was empty.
"Great. So now it's just the three of us. Fine. We don't need them. We'll hold this position, build a signal fire, wait for rescue like rational human beings, and when those idiots come crawling back with wasp stingers in their asses we can say we told them so." He looked to his right where Miki had been standing. Looked to his left. Scanned the full perimeter of the clearing, turning a slow circle. "Where the hell is Shirakawa?"
The spot where Miki had stood was empty. No sound of departure. No broken branches marking her exit. No farewell, no announcement, no indication that she had moved at all. She had simply ceased to be present, as if the jungle had inhaled her.
"Son of a..." Atsushi kicked the nearest piece of wreckage, which skidded across the dirt and came to rest against a root. "That girl needs to wear a damn bell! She does that every single time! Just ghosts off without making a sound! How does someone move that quiet?!"
He turned back to Misuzu, spreading his arms wide, the silver ball chain on his hip rattling with the gesture.
"Okay. So it's you and me. Two people. In a clearing." His black eyes narrowed beneath those thin eyebrows. "This is fine."
Misuzu didn't respond. She stood facing the northern treeline with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, one boot tapping the dirt. Her copper eyes tracked the path Mami had torn through the ferns. Then she moved upward, scanning the jagged holes in the canopy, the broken branches overhead pointing north like a breadcrumb trail, the gaps in the green ceiling that let columns of golden light spill through.
Kazuhiko's observation settled into her chest like a fishhook.
She uncrossed her arms. Pushed the copper curtain of hair back from her face. Started walking.
"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!"
"With them." She didn't turn around. Her black knee-high boots found the trail Mami had carved, stepping over the crushed ferns and snapped branches. Her white coat swayed against the backs of her bare thighs with each stride.
"You JUST said going after the wasp was suicide! You JUST said you weren't going to die for Naruse! You literally stood in this clearing five minutes ago and told everyone they were insane!"
"I stand by every word."
"THEN WHY ARE YOU LEAVING?!"
Misuzu paused at the treeline. She looked back over her shoulder, copper lashes low, one hand resting on the trunk of a palm. Her red eyes swept over Atsushi from boots to buzz cut with an expression of thorough, clinical assessment.
"Because if I get caught by one of those things and it turns me into some horny bug monster, the first dick I see is not going to be yours, Kamijo."
Atsushi's mouth fell open. His left eye twitched. A vein surfaced on his temple that hadn't been there before.
"What the FUCK is that supposed to mean?!"
Misuzu was already walking. Her hips swayed between the ferns, copper hair catching the fractured sunlight as she disappeared into the green.
Atsushi stood alone in the clearing. Completely alone. The silence pressed in from every direction, thick and humid and alive with sounds that hadn't been audible when ten people filled the space. Clicking. Rustling. The wet creak of something large shifting its weight somewhere in the canopy above.
He lasted four seconds.
"JINNO! That was completely uncalled for! My dick is perfectly fine! Better than fine! You would be LUCKY!" He crashed into the undergrowth after her, boots stomping the same trail, aviator jacket flapping behind him, gold chain bouncing against his chest. "And for the record, I am NOT joining the group! I am following you to tell you exactly how wrong that statement was! There is a DIFFERENCE!"
Ahead on the trail, Misuzu's laugh carried back through the trees. Sharp, genuine, and entirely at his expense.