[Crash Log]
Characters: Ootori Choutarou, Akutagawa Jirou, Atobe Keigo, Kabaji Munehiro
Location: We're on a boat! And it's going downnnnnn
Time: Crash date!
Rating: PG
Summary: The boys make their escape. Jirou runs into Ootori, and they find Kabaji and then the injured Atobe.
Group 8
Akutagawa Jirou, Kabaji Munehiro, Atobe Keigo, Ootori Choutarou
Use two slashes // to indicate a group interaction has happened.
__
Jirou was sitting on his balcony looking at the sea, when he felt the boat shudder. The sound of the bottom scraping against something wasn’t very loud, but he felt as though it reverberated through his entire body. He saved his document, a new invention that he was working on, and closed down his computer. He had a feeling that the klaxons would be sounding soon, and it would not be a drill this time. Calmly he packed up a few important items, then grabbed the trashcan liner and stuffed his pillows into it. Holding onto his laptop case, his pillows and his bag, he headed for Kei-chan and Kaba-chan’s cabin. They might need his help.
A bad dream... this really heavy atmosphere... a feeling like something horrible was about to happen. Ootori tossed around on his bed for what felt like the hundredth time that night in an uneasy sleep, when the entire room shook and jolted him off the mattress and onto the floor. Landing with a heavy thud and an aching hipbone, Ootori opened his eyes to find himself staring at... black. He undid the strap of his sleep mask and looked around again-- his room, but things were sliding sideways, as if the boat were tilted, and the floor was still shaking. An earthquake? On the ocean?
Pushing himself off the floor, Ootori went straight to the door to see what in the world was happening. Flinging it open, he found himself almost crashing into Jirou, who was all packed for some reason, and seemed to be rushing down to the other end of the hall. He stared. ‘What did you do!?’ was the first question that came to mind, but seeing the surprisingly serious expression on his sempai’s face, he could only let out a small “What’s going on...?”
“We hit something!” Jirou yelled. “It’s not a drill this time! I’m going to go check on Kei-chan and Kaba-chan. Grab what you need and follow me!” Of course, once he said that, he pushed Chou-chan back into his room and put his own bags down by the door. “First, get dressed. I’ll get your laptop and your violin. Grab your toiletries and a couple of changes of clothes. I think we hit an island or something. We’ll be able to tell when we get to the top deck. If we need to get into a lifeboat I’ll leave some stuff behind.” He gave a look at his suitcase, rather than the bagged pillows. Then he looked out the door, as he packed Chou-chan’s cords and such into his laptop bag. “It’s weird that I haven’t seen any sign of the crew though...”
Ootori nodded at once and backed off into his room. He had never seen such an intense expression on Jirou’s face before. He had never heard him yell before. He had no idea what was going on and was scared out of his wits by this whole ordeal, but all he could do was trust in his sempai and in his friends. Praying that Jirou would find the other two okay, he went through his things and grabbed what he thought he would be able to carry, throwing them messily into the single empty suitcase he had brought with him. He hadn’t brought much to begin with, with Jirou handling his laptop and violin, but it was difficult to get everything to fit properly when piled up like that, and when his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
It didn’t take long for him to pack and throw on a sweater and loose pants, but the hallway was deserted when he poked his head out again. Atobe-san... Kabaji-kun... Jirou-kun... He sprinted down towards the other end of the hall.
Jirou hadn’t gone far. “Chou-chan, slow down! Don’t panic, okay? Yes, the ship is...having some troubles, but we aren’t sinking very fast, so let’s do this the right way and not get hurt in the process, okay?” He turned, juggled all the stuff in his arms and banged on the door to Kei-chan’s room. “Kei-chan! Kaba-chan! Are you in there? Open up! It’s Jirou and Chou-chan!” He turned his face toward his kouhai. “Kei-chan has his own stairwell, up to the top decks. We’ll take that. It’ll be okay.” He handed his younger, but taller, friend back his violin case. “You’ll probably be happier if you’re carrying that.”
Ootori shifted the strap of his suitcase to the crook of his elbow before taking the violin case back. It didn’t make sense that an inanimate object could have made him feel any safer, let alone something like a polished wooden case, but he clung onto it as if it contained his life, and the familiarity of the case being the only thing he could center himself on.
An extremely light sleeper, Kabaji woke immediately to the abrupt movement and subsequent vibrations of the pierced ship. He left all of his own things behind and made immediately for Atobe’s room to ensure the safety of his good friend. “Atobe-sama!” Kabaji yelled. He never raised his voice. Ever. Especially not in reference to Atobe.
No answer. Before he could storm into the room, he heard Jirou’s banging at the outer door and opened it.
For a long moment Kabaji didn’t say a word, merely surveyed his friends to make sure that they were okay. “Usu,” he said. “Jirou-senpai, Ohtori-kun...You okay?” he looked at both of them.
“I’m okay,” Ootori answered Kabaji, his eyes terror-stricken but voice strong, “We’re both okay. How are you? How is...?” He had heard the other yell Atobe’s name; he wouldn’t have thought it was Kabaji, but he knew his friend’s voice. “Atobe-san!” he called at the door as well, answered by silence. “Is he in there?” he asked, turning Kabaji, though he already knew that his friend was sure. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that.
“I don’t see Butler-chan anywhere,” Jirou said with a frown. Okay, his two kouhai were stressed out and Kei-chan wasn’t answering, time to be the responsible sempai...this time where people could see him doing it. He shrugged off his discomfort and stepped over to the door and opened it. Kei-chan never locked his door, he had people to make sure he wasn’t disturbed. “Kei-chan?” Jirou said, opening the door slowly. He didn’t want to accidentally hit his former buchou if the other was coming, after all.
There was no answer, even after the door stood wide open. Ootori felt a chill go down his spine, but couldn’t place whether it was out of cold, fear, or that sense of dread suggesting that they had just made their way into something terrible. “Buchou?” Ootori called out again, inexplicable panic rising in his voice-- inexplicable, but there would always be a reason, he was sure of it; he had always picked up situations and atmosphere like second nature, but it was times like this which he wished dearly his intuition would be wrong.
He stepped into the room. While Ootori had been thrown out of bed himself, it looked like this room got hit hard. It was in chaos, things flung about and shattered across the floor, bed covers pulled off in a tangled mess, and-- “Buchou!”
Kabaji nodded, following Jirou and taking solace in the fact that two of his friends were safe.
Fear and adrenaline built in the confusion. He felt grateful for the presence of his friends, but worried for the missing Atobe. Kabaji said nothing, but he was sure he had never moved so fast as he did to tear the heavy rubble swiftly from Atobe’s bed.
Atobe lay there pale and unconscious, with his arm bent at a strange angle.
Kabaji still didn’t say anything, but the tears in his eyes as he carefully lifted Atobe into his arms said it all. “We....we.....need......to........get out of here.”
Jirou nodded. He knew that telling Kaba-chan to be gentle with Kei-chan would be redundant, so he didn’t bother. However, “We need to immobilize his arm first. Because he’s going to get jostled, Kaba-chan. Chou-chan, do you see anything we can use as a splint?” He picked up the threadcount-so-high-it didn’t-matter-anymore sheet and used his Swiss Army knife to start tearing it into strips. He kept talking as he worked. “So, we get Kei-chan’s arm splinted, then grab some supplies; he’s going to need a blanket and a change of clothes, something to stay warm, after all. There is a private staircase to the upper levels, so we’ll just go up that. Once we’re on the top deck we can see what is going on and adjust accordingly. Sound good?”
Ootori nodded, quick to listen to Jirou’s instructions and act upon it. A splint would make it so Atobe’s arm wouldn’t jostle around and be damaged further, so any long stick would probably work well. There wasn’t exactly time to be picky, so he clambered over to the rubble trying to find something that would work. Bits and pieces of all furniture imaginable lay in a pile, but it wasn’t long until he had found a piece of wood, apparently from a chair leg, from the way the end leg cap shaped into an inverted sceptre. Lacquered wood, light but strong, with very little splintering at the end, as it had come off at the joint where it met the seat of the chair instead of at the center. It would have to do, he decided, before rushing back to the others so that Jirou could secure the arm better with the cloth.
“Usu.”
Kabaji lay Atobe down so very carefully, such that his broken arm faced Jirou and Ohtori. Self-blame, and other useless emotions, coursed through him. For now, he let them go and focused on packing everything that they needed from the room in the most secure bag he could find. He stuffed Atobe’s tennis bag to the brim with the essentials, and with the things that he knew to be important to Atobe, and slung it over his shoulders.
When they fix the splint, I can tie up all of the other blankets and pillows into the comforter.
While he watched Jirou affix the wood to Atobe’s arm, Kabaji stood very close to Ohtori for comfort. It was very hard to resist grabbing onto his friend’s jacket.
Jirou thanked Chou-chan for the piece of wood and, thanking Konomi-sama that Kei-chan was unconscious, set the other’s arm, pulling it straight and then binding it to the piece of wood, then securing the bound arm to his torso. He might not be a doctor-in-training like so many that weren’t there, but he had basic first aid. It wasn’t even the first time he’d had to set an arm, but that was a story for another time. Right now, his kohai-tachi needed him.
“All right, all set. Thank Konomi that he’s unconscious or he probably would have said something scathing so he didn’t show pain,” Jirou said with a fond look at the unconscious man. “Now, Kaba-chan, you have his tennis bag over your shoulder. Can you manage that and carry Kei-chan or do you want one of us to carry it?” He looked at the white haired man. “Chou-chan, can you carry a bit more? We just need to get up a few flight of stairs, is all, piece of cake, right?” He smiled encouragingly at both of his taller friends.
He was lucky to have a senpai who knew what to do. Kabaji answered the question by lifting Atobe carefully, cradling the injured arm against his chest so that nothing else would crash into it. The weight of the bag did not bother him in the least.
“If you have more bags, you can put them around my neck.”
Nodding at the encouraging expression, Kabaji let himself be filled with determination. They could do this.
“I’m okay with carrying more,” Ootori said readily, already picking up the slack. The heaviest instrument he played holding was possibly the sousaphone, the Conn 20K in pure brass during a marching band event in which the music students at the university were to give an unfamiliar instrument a try, but that was probably only a fifth of a grown man’s full weight. But despite a school life in which the bulk of his time was spent sitting at a piano bench or standing in front of a music sheet stand if he were practicing the violin, he still ran in the mornings to stay fit, and helped move the larger instruments in and out of storage to the orchestra hall when they needed to set up for a performance.
“Jirou-sempai, why don’t you lead us up?” he suggested, “since you know the way around the ship the best.” Ootori himself had stayed close to the cabins, the orchestra hall, and the deck furthest from the cabins where he could play at night with the strings’ music muffled and scattered in the winds without bothering the other passengers. He also wanted to keep Kabaji back in case they came across rubble or perhaps things unstable and might still fall and his friend wouldn’t be able to get so easily out of the way for the other body’s burden, so that he and Atobe would be kept safe from harm.
“All right!” Jirou picked up his own pack again and led the way back into the main living area of Atobe’s cabin to what looked like a small alcove with a floor to ceiling cabinet recessed into it. He opened the doors to reveal the stairs leading up. “Hm, we’re going to need a light. Hold on half a sec. He reached into his bag and pulled out a very large, heavy flashlight. “It’s got LEDs, so it’s nice and bright and will last a while,” he said to the other two. “It comes in handy when checking out the underside of things you are working on. Pointing it away from him he flicked it on. A cool pool of light brightened up the stairwell in front of them. “Okay, let’s go! I’ll make sure the footing is stable, you two stay close, right?” He nodded and started up the stairs. “Right!”
The conversation went right over Kabaji’s head, as he was too distressed to really take anything in.
“Usu,” Kabaji rumbled, and pushed away his anxiety to concentrate on following his teammates up the stairs. Atobe would be okay; they would get out of this okay; he just had to follow Ohtori and Jirou and try desperately not to trip.
Jirou got them up the stairs with very little problems. Later he wondered if the ghosts were either busy with everyone else, or giving them a break because of Kei-chan. It didn’t occur to him that they had avoided him mostly once they went on individual hauntings of the passengers because his responses were more of child-like glee than fear or annoyance.
Once at the top deck, he had Kaba-chan wait with Kei-chan and their stuff while he and Chou-chan figured out where the nearest lifeboat was. However, they realized quite quickly that the ship was resting on/hung up on a spur of rock attached to the island. After the three of them discussed it and Jirou hopped over the railings to make sure the footing was sound, they decided to simply walk across the jetty to the shore, rather than going by boat. A short time later, they were at the same beach as the others, waiting for An-chan to take a look at Kei-chan’s arm and head. Jirou breathed a sigh of relief as he saw all his friends coming ashore in small groups, though he was still quite puzzled by the lack of crew. A mystery for tomorrow, he decided. Today was about survival.
Location: We're on a boat! And it's going downnnnnn
Time: Crash date!
Rating: PG
Summary: The boys make their escape. Jirou runs into Ootori, and they find Kabaji and then the injured Atobe.
Group 8
Akutagawa Jirou, Kabaji Munehiro, Atobe Keigo, Ootori Choutarou
Use two slashes // to indicate a group interaction has happened.
__
Jirou was sitting on his balcony looking at the sea, when he felt the boat shudder. The sound of the bottom scraping against something wasn’t very loud, but he felt as though it reverberated through his entire body. He saved his document, a new invention that he was working on, and closed down his computer. He had a feeling that the klaxons would be sounding soon, and it would not be a drill this time. Calmly he packed up a few important items, then grabbed the trashcan liner and stuffed his pillows into it. Holding onto his laptop case, his pillows and his bag, he headed for Kei-chan and Kaba-chan’s cabin. They might need his help.
A bad dream... this really heavy atmosphere... a feeling like something horrible was about to happen. Ootori tossed around on his bed for what felt like the hundredth time that night in an uneasy sleep, when the entire room shook and jolted him off the mattress and onto the floor. Landing with a heavy thud and an aching hipbone, Ootori opened his eyes to find himself staring at... black. He undid the strap of his sleep mask and looked around again-- his room, but things were sliding sideways, as if the boat were tilted, and the floor was still shaking. An earthquake? On the ocean?
Pushing himself off the floor, Ootori went straight to the door to see what in the world was happening. Flinging it open, he found himself almost crashing into Jirou, who was all packed for some reason, and seemed to be rushing down to the other end of the hall. He stared. ‘What did you do!?’ was the first question that came to mind, but seeing the surprisingly serious expression on his sempai’s face, he could only let out a small “What’s going on...?”
“We hit something!” Jirou yelled. “It’s not a drill this time! I’m going to go check on Kei-chan and Kaba-chan. Grab what you need and follow me!” Of course, once he said that, he pushed Chou-chan back into his room and put his own bags down by the door. “First, get dressed. I’ll get your laptop and your violin. Grab your toiletries and a couple of changes of clothes. I think we hit an island or something. We’ll be able to tell when we get to the top deck. If we need to get into a lifeboat I’ll leave some stuff behind.” He gave a look at his suitcase, rather than the bagged pillows. Then he looked out the door, as he packed Chou-chan’s cords and such into his laptop bag. “It’s weird that I haven’t seen any sign of the crew though...”
Ootori nodded at once and backed off into his room. He had never seen such an intense expression on Jirou’s face before. He had never heard him yell before. He had no idea what was going on and was scared out of his wits by this whole ordeal, but all he could do was trust in his sempai and in his friends. Praying that Jirou would find the other two okay, he went through his things and grabbed what he thought he would be able to carry, throwing them messily into the single empty suitcase he had brought with him. He hadn’t brought much to begin with, with Jirou handling his laptop and violin, but it was difficult to get everything to fit properly when piled up like that, and when his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
It didn’t take long for him to pack and throw on a sweater and loose pants, but the hallway was deserted when he poked his head out again. Atobe-san... Kabaji-kun... Jirou-kun... He sprinted down towards the other end of the hall.
Jirou hadn’t gone far. “Chou-chan, slow down! Don’t panic, okay? Yes, the ship is...having some troubles, but we aren’t sinking very fast, so let’s do this the right way and not get hurt in the process, okay?” He turned, juggled all the stuff in his arms and banged on the door to Kei-chan’s room. “Kei-chan! Kaba-chan! Are you in there? Open up! It’s Jirou and Chou-chan!” He turned his face toward his kouhai. “Kei-chan has his own stairwell, up to the top decks. We’ll take that. It’ll be okay.” He handed his younger, but taller, friend back his violin case. “You’ll probably be happier if you’re carrying that.”
Ootori shifted the strap of his suitcase to the crook of his elbow before taking the violin case back. It didn’t make sense that an inanimate object could have made him feel any safer, let alone something like a polished wooden case, but he clung onto it as if it contained his life, and the familiarity of the case being the only thing he could center himself on.
An extremely light sleeper, Kabaji woke immediately to the abrupt movement and subsequent vibrations of the pierced ship. He left all of his own things behind and made immediately for Atobe’s room to ensure the safety of his good friend. “Atobe-sama!” Kabaji yelled. He never raised his voice. Ever. Especially not in reference to Atobe.
No answer. Before he could storm into the room, he heard Jirou’s banging at the outer door and opened it.
For a long moment Kabaji didn’t say a word, merely surveyed his friends to make sure that they were okay. “Usu,” he said. “Jirou-senpai, Ohtori-kun...You okay?” he looked at both of them.
“I’m okay,” Ootori answered Kabaji, his eyes terror-stricken but voice strong, “We’re both okay. How are you? How is...?” He had heard the other yell Atobe’s name; he wouldn’t have thought it was Kabaji, but he knew his friend’s voice. “Atobe-san!” he called at the door as well, answered by silence. “Is he in there?” he asked, turning Kabaji, though he already knew that his friend was sure. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that.
“I don’t see Butler-chan anywhere,” Jirou said with a frown. Okay, his two kouhai were stressed out and Kei-chan wasn’t answering, time to be the responsible sempai...this time where people could see him doing it. He shrugged off his discomfort and stepped over to the door and opened it. Kei-chan never locked his door, he had people to make sure he wasn’t disturbed. “Kei-chan?” Jirou said, opening the door slowly. He didn’t want to accidentally hit his former buchou if the other was coming, after all.
There was no answer, even after the door stood wide open. Ootori felt a chill go down his spine, but couldn’t place whether it was out of cold, fear, or that sense of dread suggesting that they had just made their way into something terrible. “Buchou?” Ootori called out again, inexplicable panic rising in his voice-- inexplicable, but there would always be a reason, he was sure of it; he had always picked up situations and atmosphere like second nature, but it was times like this which he wished dearly his intuition would be wrong.
He stepped into the room. While Ootori had been thrown out of bed himself, it looked like this room got hit hard. It was in chaos, things flung about and shattered across the floor, bed covers pulled off in a tangled mess, and-- “Buchou!”
Kabaji nodded, following Jirou and taking solace in the fact that two of his friends were safe.
Fear and adrenaline built in the confusion. He felt grateful for the presence of his friends, but worried for the missing Atobe. Kabaji said nothing, but he was sure he had never moved so fast as he did to tear the heavy rubble swiftly from Atobe’s bed.
Atobe lay there pale and unconscious, with his arm bent at a strange angle.
Kabaji still didn’t say anything, but the tears in his eyes as he carefully lifted Atobe into his arms said it all. “We....we.....need......to........get out of here.”
Jirou nodded. He knew that telling Kaba-chan to be gentle with Kei-chan would be redundant, so he didn’t bother. However, “We need to immobilize his arm first. Because he’s going to get jostled, Kaba-chan. Chou-chan, do you see anything we can use as a splint?” He picked up the threadcount-so-high-it didn’t-matter-anymore sheet and used his Swiss Army knife to start tearing it into strips. He kept talking as he worked. “So, we get Kei-chan’s arm splinted, then grab some supplies; he’s going to need a blanket and a change of clothes, something to stay warm, after all. There is a private staircase to the upper levels, so we’ll just go up that. Once we’re on the top deck we can see what is going on and adjust accordingly. Sound good?”
Ootori nodded, quick to listen to Jirou’s instructions and act upon it. A splint would make it so Atobe’s arm wouldn’t jostle around and be damaged further, so any long stick would probably work well. There wasn’t exactly time to be picky, so he clambered over to the rubble trying to find something that would work. Bits and pieces of all furniture imaginable lay in a pile, but it wasn’t long until he had found a piece of wood, apparently from a chair leg, from the way the end leg cap shaped into an inverted sceptre. Lacquered wood, light but strong, with very little splintering at the end, as it had come off at the joint where it met the seat of the chair instead of at the center. It would have to do, he decided, before rushing back to the others so that Jirou could secure the arm better with the cloth.
“Usu.”
Kabaji lay Atobe down so very carefully, such that his broken arm faced Jirou and Ohtori. Self-blame, and other useless emotions, coursed through him. For now, he let them go and focused on packing everything that they needed from the room in the most secure bag he could find. He stuffed Atobe’s tennis bag to the brim with the essentials, and with the things that he knew to be important to Atobe, and slung it over his shoulders.
When they fix the splint, I can tie up all of the other blankets and pillows into the comforter.
While he watched Jirou affix the wood to Atobe’s arm, Kabaji stood very close to Ohtori for comfort. It was very hard to resist grabbing onto his friend’s jacket.
Jirou thanked Chou-chan for the piece of wood and, thanking Konomi-sama that Kei-chan was unconscious, set the other’s arm, pulling it straight and then binding it to the piece of wood, then securing the bound arm to his torso. He might not be a doctor-in-training like so many that weren’t there, but he had basic first aid. It wasn’t even the first time he’d had to set an arm, but that was a story for another time. Right now, his kohai-tachi needed him.
“All right, all set. Thank Konomi that he’s unconscious or he probably would have said something scathing so he didn’t show pain,” Jirou said with a fond look at the unconscious man. “Now, Kaba-chan, you have his tennis bag over your shoulder. Can you manage that and carry Kei-chan or do you want one of us to carry it?” He looked at the white haired man. “Chou-chan, can you carry a bit more? We just need to get up a few flight of stairs, is all, piece of cake, right?” He smiled encouragingly at both of his taller friends.
He was lucky to have a senpai who knew what to do. Kabaji answered the question by lifting Atobe carefully, cradling the injured arm against his chest so that nothing else would crash into it. The weight of the bag did not bother him in the least.
“If you have more bags, you can put them around my neck.”
Nodding at the encouraging expression, Kabaji let himself be filled with determination. They could do this.
“I’m okay with carrying more,” Ootori said readily, already picking up the slack. The heaviest instrument he played holding was possibly the sousaphone, the Conn 20K in pure brass during a marching band event in which the music students at the university were to give an unfamiliar instrument a try, but that was probably only a fifth of a grown man’s full weight. But despite a school life in which the bulk of his time was spent sitting at a piano bench or standing in front of a music sheet stand if he were practicing the violin, he still ran in the mornings to stay fit, and helped move the larger instruments in and out of storage to the orchestra hall when they needed to set up for a performance.
“Jirou-sempai, why don’t you lead us up?” he suggested, “since you know the way around the ship the best.” Ootori himself had stayed close to the cabins, the orchestra hall, and the deck furthest from the cabins where he could play at night with the strings’ music muffled and scattered in the winds without bothering the other passengers. He also wanted to keep Kabaji back in case they came across rubble or perhaps things unstable and might still fall and his friend wouldn’t be able to get so easily out of the way for the other body’s burden, so that he and Atobe would be kept safe from harm.
“All right!” Jirou picked up his own pack again and led the way back into the main living area of Atobe’s cabin to what looked like a small alcove with a floor to ceiling cabinet recessed into it. He opened the doors to reveal the stairs leading up. “Hm, we’re going to need a light. Hold on half a sec. He reached into his bag and pulled out a very large, heavy flashlight. “It’s got LEDs, so it’s nice and bright and will last a while,” he said to the other two. “It comes in handy when checking out the underside of things you are working on. Pointing it away from him he flicked it on. A cool pool of light brightened up the stairwell in front of them. “Okay, let’s go! I’ll make sure the footing is stable, you two stay close, right?” He nodded and started up the stairs. “Right!”
The conversation went right over Kabaji’s head, as he was too distressed to really take anything in.
“Usu,” Kabaji rumbled, and pushed away his anxiety to concentrate on following his teammates up the stairs. Atobe would be okay; they would get out of this okay; he just had to follow Ohtori and Jirou and try desperately not to trip.
Jirou got them up the stairs with very little problems. Later he wondered if the ghosts were either busy with everyone else, or giving them a break because of Kei-chan. It didn’t occur to him that they had avoided him mostly once they went on individual hauntings of the passengers because his responses were more of child-like glee than fear or annoyance.
Once at the top deck, he had Kaba-chan wait with Kei-chan and their stuff while he and Chou-chan figured out where the nearest lifeboat was. However, they realized quite quickly that the ship was resting on/hung up on a spur of rock attached to the island. After the three of them discussed it and Jirou hopped over the railings to make sure the footing was sound, they decided to simply walk across the jetty to the shore, rather than going by boat. A short time later, they were at the same beach as the others, waiting for An-chan to take a look at Kei-chan’s arm and head. Jirou breathed a sigh of relief as he saw all his friends coming ashore in small groups, though he was still quite puzzled by the lack of crew. A mystery for tomorrow, he decided. Today was about survival.