A/N: HI SORRY IM LATE BY AN HOUR EEP im so tired i worked saturday 8am-9pm liVinG the JapAnEsE worK eThIc. Hope you'll enjoy this chapter as much as you did the last. Your reactions were pRicElEsS. Always looking forward to reading your screeches. ;v; Wheee
Also, if you're American and preferably over 19, I really need your help ;u; please head to my message board to find out more. O-or follow me on Instagram at hisangelchip.
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[Vanilla]
"You," I began as soon as he was within earshot, nearly breathless from crossing the distance but somehow unable to keep a straight face. "Are an idiot."
I couldn't quite tell if my captain was being serious since nothing seemed to be wiping that look of sheer confidence on his face, enough to play with his words. "And you like it."
"Oh is that what you think?" I adjusted my glasses and decided to look elsewhere. "I'll give it to you. You're good at convincing yourself."
He laughed at this, reaching over in an attempt to execute the usual forehead flick that I'd seen coming a mile away and successfully avoided at once. Both the audience and the team behind him seemed particularly amused by this, which only served to further embarrass my already-embarrassed self. Thankfully, our brief interaction or odd exchange of targeted remarks was cut short by an announcement for the captains to gather for instructions; leaving me to fend for myself in a group of six other strangers.
Already, Si Yin was wildly gesturing for me to introduce myself. I had no choice but to give in.
"Hello everyone. Nice to meet you. I'm Julian White from—"
"We know who you are," said Rosi, dismissing my humble attempt to reintroduce myself after the chaos of having formed teams of eight. All thirty-two of us remained on-stage, awaiting further instructions while the rest of the school were free to inspect and examine our every expression and general body language. Needless to say, I wasn't the best at hiding my discomfort; or the fact that I was still recovering from missing out the probability of Leroy drawing the second wild card in the box. "So. It's outdoor cooking."
"Any ideas?"
The seven of us had gathered to form a general circle, leaving a space for the captain who would probably have to join us soon. Already, Si Yin was blending in faster than the wind and myself, number three's self-proclaimed childhood playmate and supposedly familiar with the rest of his friends, seemed perfectly out of place. Completely unfazed by the fact that no one had clapped, cheered, or acknowledged her as Leroy had called her up on stage, she was the first to prompt the group for ideas.
"Blow their minds with some good Brazilian cuisine," concluded Raul, snapping his fingers as though he'd laid out the best idea yet. "Just take this and that and everything, whatever we learnt from days before and we get the trophy. Done."
"Hi I'm Nabila," piped the girl to my right, dressed fashionably in fishnet stockings and combat boots. Her red tracksuit jacket was at least two sizes up and she'd snipped her shorts thigh-high. "A senior."
Rosi clapped her hands in warning, giving the two of us (me, a non-participating participant of the conversation) an ice-cold glare. "Hey, why are we introducing ourselves?"
"Everyone knows no one," said Si Yin, grabbing at the opportunity. "So I'm Xu Si Yin a first-year and if you have trouble saying my name, I have another one for you. Also, I honestly think LC picked me because of him," she jerked a thumb in my direction and all I could do was laugh nervously.
No one seemed to disagree with her opinion.
"If we know what we're good at, we can split tasks good," said the student across me, pale complexion and flawless skin surpassing any form of sparkling vampire fiction-writers have dreamed about. "I'm Pongsakorn Fhaumnuaypol but people call me Bank. I am Thai. I am also quite old."
Rosi dismissed his introduction with a wave. "You're only three years older than most of us. Two years for Nabila but anyway—"
"Why's your nickname 'bank'?" Si Yin fired away, earning herself a glare from her direct senior but remaining completely oblivious to everything around her. This, I'd long gotten familiar with. "Is it spelled b-a-n-k, like the place you get money and put money in?"
Bank nodded. "My parents like money... I'm in horse-riding by the way. LC told me to look after his horse when you bite your tongue that day. No one ever touch his horse before... I think he like you a lot."
I raised a hand to stop him from going any further, smiling nevertheless so as to maintain a civil and harmonious group dynamic. Still, I was beginning to see why we were picked; understand the thought he'd put into this and rationale behind each and every member of the team. Admittedly, this line-up wasn't too bad at all. We were each sufficiently different in terms of background and culinary knowledge despite being made up of mostly six reds. Most importantly, all of us were familiar with the use of heat and spices in our respective cuisines—which paved a solid foundation for exotic and complex Brazilian recipes in the middle of the Amazonas. But was I so generous as to give him the credit for predicting the exact theme and requirements of the cross-year or simply attribute this all to his characteristic style of on-the-spot winging it?
Hm.
"I am aware of what the rest of the school thinks of me, thank you very much," I said to Bank. "But I'd like to request that our first impressions of each other be formed with direct, personal contact and not established through hearsay or, well, rumours. I'm very pleased to meet you all and am looking forward to working with you. Oh, and please call me Julian—"
"Yeah," oh good god, he's back so quickly. "I know you."
I turned, making space so that we weren't standing shoulder-to-shoulder. "Well, Leroy, not everyone's you, so. Oh and perhaps you'd like to introduce yourself too, since your name has apparently been changed to 'I make bad decisions.'"
The team captain snorted, filling the gap in our circle of members. "I like taking risks."
"A little too much," I pointed out before noting that the conversation was turning a little too personal for comfort. "And? Any news you'd like to tell us?"
He took this to the group and, in a matter of seconds, seemed like an entirely new person from my perspective. After all, I'd never had the chance to see him lead up close. This close, specifically; not just staring after an empty back and yet, I had to admit—there was nothing surprising about him being good at it.
"Locations, ingredients, equipment: determined by lots," he began. All eyes were fixed on him at once. "Draw a 'one' and you get a grill, spices, pans. There's even a hunter if you have rabbit or deer on your menu, and you get access to the village fields and food garden. 'Four' is the opposite—"
The shrill screech of Keith's mic cut him short, turning heads and raising palms to ears. The emcee himself seemed to regret tapping the head of his microphone. "Sorry. Sorry people. Okay, so I've just got some new info from the board featuring last-minute additions to the rules, so. This might be unfamiliar with some of you but we're going to have to draw lots one more time. Only the captains. One to four.
"What that will do is give them either an advantage or disadvantage, head start or handicap cooking outdoors depending on the number, with four being the one provided with most aid and equipment, and one being provided with only... an axe."
I should have known right then and there; our captain had to have used up all his luck drawing a wild as his final card. All that remained were the leftover bits of misfortune that no author above would be so kind to rid at once. Yet, I continued to harbour some form of hope that we wouldn't draw anything with a handicap—which was honestly a fifty-fifty chance come to think of it.
"This year, we're taking a leap of faith," Keith started out slowly, reading off a document handed to him by one of the instructors. Presumably the Dean's statement. "Encouraging our students to step out of their comfort zone has always been one of our primary educational goals and with four days in the Amazonas for the first time, it is only logical to make full use of this adventure and push your abilities farther than you've ever imagined it can go.
"That will, particularly, apply to the team that needs to forage ninety-five percent of their ingredients for the cross-segment on their own," Keith lowered the note in his hands, blinking hard and in disbelief. Joining him in this was the rest of us on-stage—completely lost at the extent to which they wished to put our teamwork to the test and squeeze every bit of knowledge we had in our minds, condensing it into a single instance which was now.
Clearly, ninety-five percent was a severe underestimation. An axe wasn't going to make up the remaining five percent of ingredients and thankfully, the rest of the room seemed to have that bit of common sense to figure this out.
"Uh, so," Keith cleared his throat, returning the papers he'd been reading from to the instructor beside him. "I guess we could start with, uh, Tenner?" He snapped his fingers to catch the stage assistant's attention, who then scrambled over to the school's number one with a box. "Pick a card."
Not once did she stop to think. Her hand: in it went and out it came, card between her thumb and index. Two.
"Well at least it wasn't the worst." Si Yin had probably meant for this to be heard by no one but herself. Unfortunately for her, heads turned and thankfully, Chen's draw was enough to distract them from her comments. A three. "Aaand at least he didn't get the best."
"It's a make or break, Cox." Rosi hissed at our captain's back, cupping her hands around her lips for extra measure. "Fifty-fifty. You can't screw this up."
Already, I could imagine the kind of curses he was muttering under his breath, hoping that we wouldn't have to suffer the handicap of foraging all night while Birchwood had to herself a personal hunter and an entire grill set. This time, for real—we were picking between extremes.
In he reached. Out he pulled.
He took a single glance at it and had the very word on the tip of his tongue.
====================
Eight was admittedly a less-than-conservative number for a truck as small as the one we pied onto: shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-to-knee. Not the most comfortable distance I preferred to have between me and another human being, especially Leroy Cox. The vehicle jerked one before seemingly running into a ditch, causing most of us to fall over and into the personal space of whoever it was to our right.
Twenty to thirty feet in front of us sat, in contrast, Birchwood's team on the back of a larger truck—happily chatting away despite the equipment and additional helpers they had on board. Among them was a native man, rather built, and a woman who seemed to be sharing something about the plant in her hand. Bay leaves.
I then turned to look at our collection of things: a grand total of... an axe.
"Not even a knife," groaned Raul, his head bobbing up and down as the truck sped up and ran over some rocks and gravel.
The facilitator seated in the passenger's seat turned at the semblance of conversation, raising a finger in warning. As absurd as it was beginning to sound, we weren't allowed to talk. This, I'd come to realise, wasn't entirely undesirable.
For the past thirty minutes or so, I'd gone through several simulations and calculated outcomes of each and every word, phrase, sentence of comfort I could think of to offer my captain, who'd had to experience the burden of responsibility for drawing the unfortunate card. Unfortunately, I hadn't been able to come up with anything since we boarded the back of the truck and had our bags checked. We weren't allowed to bring anything fresh.
I caught Si Yin playing with the knot on her drawstring bag and noticed the vague outline of a knife pressed up against the vinyl. It was so obvious.
And the reason why she'd passed the bag check despite having brought something additional was because of the only advantage we, as the team who picked the worst card, had. Apart from the axe, we were each allowed to bring one item with us.
Stealing a glimpse of Leroy's bag, I couldn't quite figure out what he'd brought either. We were, after all, forbidden to discuss this beforehand; which meant that overlapping of items, clashing of picks, and an absence of synergy was inevitable and almost desirable by the likes of the school board. Ah, discord—they loved sowing it.
"Watch while Birchwood gets an entire trailer," Rosi had continued under her breath as soon as the facilitator returned her gaze to the road ahead. Raul could only shake his head, sighing twice in a row.
It wasn't pointless complaining, to say the least. Simply put, we weren't merely going to be whipping up a three-course restaurant-quality meal out of nothing in the middle of the rainforest but also attempting to survive in it with an axe while the three other groups had the basics of lighters or matches. Not to mention, there was no telling when the skies felt heavy enough to start pouring without warning.
Plus, all that they claimed to be providing were two tents and eight sleeping bags.
And as though thinking about this wasn't enough to give me quite the headache, there was something very uncomfortable on my lower back, so I reached behind to deal with it—thinking that it was merely something wrong with the rickety seat—only to feel something warm and human. It was an arm.
I turned to Leroy with a look, eyes directing him to the arm on the back of my seat that was reaching far beyond it's own personal space. He returned my gaze with something of equal strength.
"If you hadn't noticed," I began quietly, "your hand is holding on to the bar that is supposedly my backrest."
"And now you've got an arm as your backrest," he had the gall to point out with a smirk and I simply refused to give it to him, however distracted I was by the fact that the truck with Birchwood's team had decided to take a turn while ours seemed to continue into the path of nowhere.
"I prefer my backrests to be non-living things," I said with utmost patience, nearly forgetting that there were six other people watching us interact. "The last I checked, your arm isn't dead."
The facilitator in the passenger's seat was back to shushing us with a wag of her index, regardless of the content of our conversation. Beside her, the driver said something barely audible and she pulled out a map, pointing and tracing our general route until her finger ran off and out of the map.
This confirmed it. We were in the middle of nOwHerE.
Nowhere was a place with trees seemingly taller than the rest of everything we'd seen or experienced. The scent of earth now stronger than ever and the shade of canopies, dense and wide, filtering every bit of the sun prying past its leaves at three in the afternoon. This, according to our facilitator, was our assigned base.
"Team two at campsite," she reported, directly into a device clipped onto her collar. Whether or not there was actually a signal—well, none of us would ever know. Either way, that was the end of her interaction with the eight of us as she'd explained before the ride here: safety purposes. Everything else had to be handled by ourselves and ourselves only.
At once, our captain called for a meeting, signalling for the rest of us to settle at the clearing in front of our sleeping tents. There were two: one for each gender, or so I logically assumed. The pile of dried leaves in the center of the clearing gave the impression of a nicely-made campfire. Except there was no flame.
"I'm good with standing," said Raul—his smile nervous and painfully false. Meanwhile, Si Yin was the first to sit herself on the log and pry open her drawstring bag, revealing the kitchen knife she'd brought along. Nabila joined her on the decomposing tree trunk while Bank settled with a nearby stump.
"We need this, right?" The final-year student whipped out one of those portable water microfilters that campers and hikers often had attached to their bags. "I mean, better safe than sorry."
"I think I'm the only one with enough common sense to bring a lighter," said Raul, producing one from the front pocket of his bag. Thank goodness. The problem was when the items were deemed to common or ordinary to be brought along, with each and every one of us assuming that someone else would have thought of bringing it with them.
"We could use rocks for a stove or make a grill out of sticks but," Rosi produced a medium-sized cast iron skillet from her bag and I was surprised it fit into her bag without showing. "Sanitary issues."
"Okay good we're apparently very in sync," was all Raul had to say, excited as he turned to our captain. "You? You have some secret spice? Special herb mix thing? Fishing bait-thingy? A gun?" Everyone stared. He raised both hands into the air. "I was obviously kidding."
And to end our piqued curiosity, Leroy brought out something that seemed, at first glance, rather anti-climatic.
"Oh, we got our first overlap," Rosi pointed out, gaze alternating between Si Yin and Leroy. He, too, had brought along a kitchen knife. It was strangely familiar—that curved handle, thin blade, scalloped edge.
"That's no ordinary knife though," I couldn't resist the urge to correct her, the bane of my existence. Correcting people. "It's a Wusthof santoku, unlike Si Yin's school-bought knife."
My classmate promptly held up her knife to the light, as though unable to tell the difference. Nabila, a senior who probably understood more about the differences between knives better than the rest of us, nodded and asked to take a closer look at Leroy's knife. He didn't give it to her.
"Later," was all he said, directing everyone's attention to me. "Let's see yours."
I gave him a pointed look before reaching into my bag and producing a medium-sized mason jar. "I know this is silly; and that it's completely unlikely that I actually put this in my luggage but yes, I brought it along because my aunt believes that a jar of salt can protect me from evil beings, so yes. Salt. Diamond crystal Kosher salt."
"Your aunt says to bring expensive-r salt everywhere you go?" Raul was in disbelief. "Nah I'm not judging but, yeah we do need salt," he concluded, nodding away. "So, Bank? What do you have."
The remaining senior of the group sifted around in his bag, leaving us in a minute of suspense before holding up a bottle of... I couldn't quite read the label. This seemed to apply across the board as well, accounted for by the complete lack of reaction from everyone else. Nevertheless, I pulled up several possibilities from the back of my mind; fish sauce, light or dark soy sauce, Worcester, teriyaki—
"Thai soy sauce," explained Bank after he realized all we were doing was staring blankly in return, waiting for a translation of the characters printed on the bottle. "Very good."
This called for more staring. Although admittedly, I shouldn't have been so surprised by something that had already been on my list of guesswork. Clearly, I wasn't the only one thinking his choice rather, well, unique.
"It's weird but it works," said Rosi aloud, the only one among us to speak her mind after a moment of silence. "I mean we're counting our stars here."
She wasn't wrong. While our picks weren't necessarily telepathic or the most synergized a team of strangers could be, they weren't entirely off-the-charts either. Floating somewhere in-between, the slim chances of pulling off a miracle felt somehow within reach and speaking of floating, this forest floor doesn't seem like the most horizontal place to be setting up camp and I wonder why the facilitators specifically chose this place knowing that they might have a hard time setting up the tents.
"So the first thing we need—"
"Oil," said our captain, noting the only main condiment we seemed to be lacking. He stood and gave the tents a check.
Downhill. That was why our truck had such a hard time getting past tiny rocks and gravel because the momentum was in his favour but going too fast would only emphasize every speck on the road.
"They have towels."
Rosi poked at the patch of fallen leaves on the ground, piled over thick undergrowth. "Can someone get the fire going? If it's oil, I could go looking for nuts and stuff. Then we could try making out own."
I shifted my feet, careful not to step on the plants growing up to my calves and practically flourishing in the... but—
"We need wood," Raul laid out as Leroy emerged from one of the tents without the jacket of his tracksuit. It had miraculously disappeared. "Like, for smoking. If we're still going with the Brazilian thing."
I picked up a stray branch that had ended up by my feet whilst Rosi had been poking around the area, wishing to adopt the ways of a local which were personally taught by none other than Mr. Tour guide himself when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed an interesting pattern in the soil.
"Yeah, that. Shouldn't we be coming up with the menu first?"
"You've got the order wrong, Si Yin. It's ingredients first, then—"
Oh. Tracks, I observed. A coyote's. They were interesting, to say the least. After all, I hadn't expected them to look exactly like in the National Geographic magazines I'd read nearly five years ago when Uncle Al decided to subscribe on behalf of Miss Julie's bout of boredom. And of course, the tracks were heading downhill, where... where there would be—
"I suppose we would've heard the stream if we hadn't been arguing over what comes first but we could always, you know, continue arguing," I put out from where I was seated, waiting patiently for my words to enter one or two brains.
Thankfully, their skulls weren't as thick as ones I've previously dealt with. They'd blinked at once, gradually coming to a stop in their conversations to stare blankly in return and we were at once rewarded with it: the sound of a running source of water. Barely audible and easily missed had one not been looking out for it.
Nabila was the first to react, turning to me with an odd smile on her face. "So captain-boy wasn't wrong when he said you were good. But how did you know there was a stream nearby?"
I would've given our captain a pointed look right then but having to answer her question was enough of an excuse for me to forget. "The undergrowth here is much thicker than on our way here. It almost resembles the place we went for insect-picking, which was near one of the tributaries of the Rio Negro. And the floor is uneven, slanted downwards which means there's something further down but since all we've been doing for the past thirty minutes on the truck was go downhill, I figured we might be close to lower ground, where water would be. Oh, and of course, animal tracks leading downhill. It's several small factors, but they added up. Plus, the facilitators wouldn't have chosen such a place to put up our tents, knowing that they would have a hard time with the slanted ground."
Their mostly blank faces were the perfect and usual sign for me to stop talking, knowing that I may have crossed the line or went slightly overboard with the information, so. Unable to look anyone else in the eye, I stared at a tiny droplet of water on a nearby leaf.
"Wow, you know a lot."
"There's a reason why everyone wants him on their team," piped Si Yin, flinging her bag into one of the tents before gathering her hair into a bun. "So. Fishing?"
"Yeah," Leroy was now standing in the middle of our makeshift campfire circle without a campfire. "Three teams: fish, wood, veg. Rosi, fruit. You're on dessert. Raul, the axe. You can't mess up the smoking."
"Let me do the veg and mushrooms," Nabila raised her hand, as though this was some sort of class. "I've got ideas."
She received a single nod and got to work with Rosi at once, turning to the rattan baskets beside the facilitator who'd been watching us struggle from afar.
"I can use axe," offered Bank, observing Raul's unwieldy handling of the axe we were provided with. "Easy for me."
A single glance was enough to see the scepticism written all over everyone else's face, excluding Leroy and myself. After all, Bank was shorter and smaller-built compared to the one currently holding the wood-cutting tool and the exact way in which he'd said it was enough to further their extent of disbelief.
"Right," was all our captain ended up saying. "He'll need your help anyway," he added, referring to Raul who managed to respond with a timely finger of indecency.
"So, fishing?" Si Yin repeated, bubbling on the spot. "The three of us?"
It was then that I finally had an excuse to look at Leroy only to see his eyes already fixed on mine. Clearly, he didn't need a reason to be looking at someone. He then rested his eyes on the fallen branch of a tree I was holding on to before doing the same thing he did on-stage—that curling of his finger which my uncle would have found highly offensive—so that he could take a closer look at it.
"Nabila. Your stockings," he said without looking up from the branch, rounding the pile of leaves to borrow the axe that Raul had abandoned on a stump while he and Bank inspected nearby trees for wood prospects. Nabila had turned with an understandable frown on her face, basket under her arm.
"What? You don't like them?"
Our captain glanced over his shoulder, smirking. "It's not for fishing?"
"I hate your smart little ass," Nabila shook her head, handing her basket to Rosi before entering one of the tents and zipping it close. "If only you were smart and cute. Like the one beside you."
Si Yin and I exchanged a look before staring at the empty space beside Leroy. Within a minute, he'd sharpened the tip of the branch in a way that resembled the tip of a spear; which was basically what he'd turned the walking stick into. He handed it back to me and promptly received the pair of fishnet stockings from Nabila. Or, um, caught them.
"This is really weird," she pointed out, watching Leroy hand the stockings to Si Yin and instructing her to stretch and cut along the inner seam using a knife. "You know that, right?"
"Decreases our chances of going to bed hungry, increases our chances of winning the thing," he said and I doubt Nabila could find much to argue with. She returned to Rosi, grabbing a compass on the way and glancing at her watch.
"If we don't come back by five, report us missing," she said to the facilitator now seated on the log, clipboard in hand and scribbling down what I assumed was a couple of notes on our current performance.
Meanwhile, Si Yin was having trouble knotting the ends of what actually started to look like a fishnet and combining it with the other snipped pieces to form a larger net almost big enough to wrap around a human body. I helped her with it.
"Mr. Captain-thing? I got a question," she piped up all of a sudden, working on her knots while Leroy continued to perfect the spear. "Is this net for me to use? 'Cuz I like using my hands."
I gave her a look. "Didn't it start pouring when you were scheduled for the local activities?"
"Yeah and I was looking forward to beating that Violet girl's fishing-record thing because I reeeaaally don't think she caught all that with her bare hands. She wouldn't even roll her Gucci suitcase in the mud... okay but I didn't get to fish yesterday but my point is that I used to live at my grandma's when I was a kid and we had a little river-stream thing near the house. Trust me, I'd rather use my hands than the net." Si Yin tossed the fishnet stockings—now tied up and ready to be used—in my general direction.
Leroy didn't seem to mind her insistence. "If you're good with that. You?" He turned to me, holding up the spear. "Net or spear? Or hands," he added with an unbelievable smirk that was ultimately a figment of my imagination. That, or the smirk was in his eyes.
Absolutely ridiculous.
"Well, I'm holding on to this," I gestured to the net in my arms and then to the spear in his hands, "and you're holding on to that, so."
"I'm excited," bubbled Si Yin beside me, barely able to stop her feet from moving even as she stood on the spot. "Catching fish, grilling fish over an open flame, yes yes yes."
"We have to treat dinner like it's the real thing for tomorrow," Leroy reminded. "So we know what to improve on."
Si Yin blinked, pausing before nodding in slow motion. "Yeah. Okay. I didn't know we were taking this so seriously."
"Someone reserved himself for me—" "Well, after turning down two other captains—"
We paused and the internal sigh, mine, dragged on for centuries before I actually turned to Leroy with a pointed look. "I do not appreciate you reminding me of what I now deem the most embarrassing mistake in my lifetime's worth of perfection."
"Every single word," he had the gall to tease, tapping his temple. The urge to shake the idiot by his shoulders was strong but noting that Si Yin had been somehow patiently waiting for some form of closure to the current conversation, I decided against distraction.
"Well, Si Yin. I guess you could say that I wouldn't choose to join a team I know would lose," was all I had for before starting off downhill, in the general direction of the stream.
*
Had I known that one of the primary expectations of this year's cross segment was the ability to survive in the wild or in our current case, catch fish with our bare hands, I would have done a little more research and admittedly not been so unprepared. While the only knowledge I possessed of the task at hand were the common few Amazonian fishes found further downstream (their general traits and appearances) and those swimming around in the Rio Negro itself, rolled-up-pants-and-sleeves-Leroy-Cox was the surprising opposite.
He and Si Yin got along swell. Swimmingly well. As soon as we arrived at the stream following animal tracks and a general downhill direction towards lush vegetation, they were at it.
"Watch out for the rocks," warned Si Yin whilst removing her shoes and socks, leaving them precariously close to the stream. I had to arrange them neatly on visibly elevated ground. "You'll slip and fall if you're not careful. My uncle's grandfather's friend did that once and hit the side of his head on a jagged edge and died."
Leroy snorted. "We're not going to die," was all he said, spear in hand as he gave the stream a scan. "It's too shallow here. The fish won't be big enough."
"One solution to that would be to move downstream a little, but from my limited knowledge of fishing, a well-known piece of advice is to fish upstream, meaning to go against the current because one, the water's cleaner, and two, less weary fish as rushing water would reduce upstream travel of sound. It also makes sense to be facing upstream because then you could use the current to your advantage when fighting with the fish. And judging from the landscape, rocks, and the strength of the rushing waters, there might be some bigger fish if we stay. We could always move further downstream if it doesn't work."
Si Yin was already climbing up a rock for a vantage point of the rushing waters before I could finish my lame shouting over the noise. And knowing Leroy, he was likely to be looking out for the 'here is fine' or the 'no let's go' and once I'd revealed the answer, he'd just go with it.
Surprisingly however, I wasn't all that correct about it.
"Limited knowledge. We stay for twenty and move if there's no progress," he'd teased before lowering his eyes to the jacket I had on. "You going in with that on?"
I followed his gaze. "No... I suppose not. Please go ahead, I'll join you two soon." I unzipped the jacket of my tracksuit and shrugged it off, folding it neatly before placing it next to Si Yin's. I was in the middle of doing my shoelaces and listening to my classmate wowing at the rushing waters splashing and flowing over rocks, creating tiny waterfalls that were typical of the internet's depiction of Zen and peace when I couldn't help but notice the still and unmoving feet that remained in my lowered field of vision.
I peered up at him, wondering if he hadn't heard me over the water. "Don't wait for—" Good god, why's he looking at me like that?
Naturally, this called for some lightning reflexes of looking away. Which I was particularly adept at.
"Hey, everyone okay? I've got a great idea for the little fishes—we could just hold your net in the water at some narrow section and boom! Fish." Si Yin nodded appreciatively, as though this was her giving herself a pat on the shoulder. Hastily, I removed the rest of my shoes and socks and placed them aside, but it was too late. She'd already noticed the silence.
"Sorry, uh, did I...? I'll just..." she began to inch away but Leroy was already heading past the rocky areas for deeper waters. "Oh. Are we starting now?" She turned to me before lowering her voice. "Sorry about that. I didn't realize you guys were about to make out."
"That was not what was about to happen, Si Yin," I advised at once. She continued to appear perfectly apologetic.
And by the time we joined Leroy past the rocks and made our way carefully across the calf-deep waters, he had something on the tip of his makeshift spear. A Bodó. The exact same species that Birchwood had put on the lunch table just yesterday.
"Not so special after all," he said, tipping the spear over the side of the stream and letting it fall off the tip. "That one's legal... probably." He glanced over to see if I had anything to say. Possibly of expert opinion.
"I've never read up on fishing laws, Leroy. Especially not in these areas... I can't tell if it is," I sighed. "The school should've given us a guidebook, at the very least."
"Maybe we were supposed to ask the facilitator," said Si Yin, eyes fixed on a spot in the water before her hands darted in like lightning and out flew something in the air, hitting a nearby rock and falling back into the stream. "Dang it."
"Anything smaller than the size of a hand is a definite return," I laid out, sighing as soon as I noticed that most of the fishes swimming past my calves were, indeed, very small. It was a miracle that Leroy landed something more than twenty inches long.
Sticking the makeshift net into the rushing water, I felt resistance at once—tiny fish getting caught in the stretchy material but there was simply no way of lifting it up and out without the whole bunch slipping out. Either way, they were definitely not of legal size.
"Maybe we should—" The next thing I heard was a loud, disruptive splash and something slimy but strong hit the side of my face like a slap. This force landed in my net and the weight of it was enough to stretch the fishnet stockings to its near maximum. Its shape, however, combined with a decent weight, made for an indented trap that it could not escape.
Taken aback, I'd nearly dropped it.
"Ohmygod ohmygod you caught it!" Si Yin, the one who'd most probably sent the fish flying in my direction and specifically in my face, waded over. "Fling it out! Just toss it!"
It was nearly impossible, this task. Not only was this wide-eyed, scaly thing extremely heavy for my typewriter arms, there was no way I could accurately fling this thing onto the bank. Fortunately for me, I was hit with another huge splash of water and before I knew it, there was a spear in the fish and I was soaking wet. My first instinct was to check the net.
"You thank your stars that didn't put a hole in it."
He rolled his eyes and gave me the kind of look that was mildly provocative, transferring the unidentified fish to the bank where the other fish was, flopping around occasionally. And as though that decently-huge, luxurious fish contained every bit of our luck gathered in a single entity, the following hour was completely unproductive.
While I could indeed blame this on my soaked attire and equally-soaked undergarment (and by doing so put this entirely on Leroy's tab, I was quick to remind myself of patience and dignity. Besides, there were other distractions. For instance, I forbid my eyes from wandering anywhere near the abovementioned while he wrung out the ends of his wet shirt every now and then.
Somewhere along the way, I'd had Si Yin zip herself up in her jacket since she, eve more so than Leroy and myself, seemed to have a fondness for diving right into the water after spotting any moving thing. She had went for my feet more than twice.
"Let's call it a day," said our captain after an hour's worth of wading about, splashing, and mindless diving after slippery fish. We had a grand total of four fish—two Bodós, one unidentified, and one supposed bass. "It's getting dark."
He and Si Yin took a shortcut back to where we left our shoes, crossing the distance by stepping on select few rocks for better footing. I watched, net over my shoulder and swearing I'd heard something that wasn't the sound of rushing waters. It came from the rocks.
"Vanilla."
I turned, slightly surprised by his calling of my name. He stood over the stream with a steady footing on one of the lower rocks closer to where I was—holding out a hand. Avoiding the rocks they'd used to cross the stream, I made it to the other side and looped the net around his outstretched arm.
Leroy had paused; then tossed the net aside before holding out his hand again as though I'd given him the wrong item he'd been asking for. I checked the rest of my stuff. Even my pockets.
"Do... you... want my glasses or something...?"
He snorted a laugh, eyes amused. "Yeah. And then it's your shirt, pants and underwear," he beckoned. "Give me your hand, dumbass."
"Oh," was all I managed, not quite sure how to feel. Not quite sure what the stirring in my chest was all about. Not quite sure what I was going to do about it.
Or if there was anything I could do, at all.