A short distance down the road, Matsuri made a right angle and stepped into the forest. She continued walking, weaving between the trees, her pace no slower than it had been on the open road. She walked like a cat, making not a sound, stirring not a leaf. It was almost as if she swam through the foliage, so at home did she seem there.
It was nearing noon when she reached her destination.
“Hoi!” she exclaimed in a reverent whisper. “Beautiful!”
An endless stream of small nuts fell from the canopy, twirling in the air as they made their way to the forest floor. When they crossed the path of the few sunbeams that penetrated the canopy, they glittered and sparkled in the air.
On the ground, the brownish winged nuts looked like badminton shuttlecocks. Matsuri knelt to pick some of them up. She removed and discarded the wings, leaving only the nut, which she placed in her satchel. The nuts lay strewn about everywhere. Matsuri barely had to move in order to keep gathering. The more nuts she picked up, the more came twirling down.
Irippe nuts were very rich in oil and one of Matsuri’s favorite foods. Yet they flowered so rarely—only once every several years, and sometimes not for decades—that if you weren’t careful, you might miss them altogether. The Taliho called these times when the irippe fell “nut years” because for various ecological reasons, it wasn’t just one or two trees that decided to bloom in a year, it was all of them in the area.
The last nut year had been when Matsuri was only seven, but she still hadn’t forgotten it. Even when the squirrel population boomed and they ate the lion’s share of the nuts, the rejoicing of the villagers had gone on largely unabated. Matsuri had kept a sharp eye out whenever their orbiter passed over the island, looking for those specks of light color—the blooming flowers—among the deep green of the canopy.
When Matsuri’s satchel was half full of nuts, she left the area.
The sun’s still high. Maybe I’ll go up the ridge a ways and look for some other fruit.
I might even find that durian.
She could practically taste the durian’s sweet-and-sour milk already. If she had any trouble finding it, the bats and orangutan trails would point her in the right direction, and the effort would be worth it. Durian were few and far between. They weren’t the only thing she was after, however. A nice jackfruit, or some figs, or the red fruit of the rambutan—any one of these would hit the spot. They were all delicious. Thoughts of culinary delights drifted through her head, and Matsuri’s pace quickened.
Occasionally, she would stop and look up a tree. When she found a fruit, she shimmied up and plucked it. Whenever branch conditions dictated that she couldn’t use both hands, she would knock the fruit off its branch and collect it from the ground. Several of them she ate on the spot.
Her bag was full, and Matsuri was about to head home when she detected something—a foreign smell in the jungle. She stopped.
Smells like…insect repellent.
Could it be someone from space? An anthropologist, perhaps? Someone in jungle development?
Matsuri’s nose twitched and she followed the trail of the scent.
She had only walked a short while when she spotted something orange in the underbrush.
Matsuri strode over. “Hoi? Akane. What are you doing here?”
Akane lay listless, wedged between two large root-fins. Her face, hands, and clothes were covered in sweat and grime. She was lying on a silvery survival blanket.
The orange color came from the coveralls she was wearing—a standard-issue SSA uniform for flight crew. She had on a survival vest, which was covered with pockets large and small and held up by suspenders.
Akane slowly turned in the direction of the voice. “Matsuri?” A look of surprise came into her vacant eyes. When she sat up, it was with a frailty that made her seem three times her age.
“Want something to eat? They’re yummy.”
“Yes!” Akane’s eyes went wide.
For the next ten seconds, she attacked Matsuri’s stash with a vengeance. Then she looked up. “Thank you, but I really shouldn’t be doing this. I’m not supposed to let anyone help me.”
“Hoi? Why not?”
“I’m doing solo survival training—except it’s more of a test than training.”
“Oh.” Matsuri nodded. Solo survival training was widely known as the most severe regimen used by the military—and by the SSA, as it happened. Personnel doing the training were given a limited amount of water, food, and gear and dropped off by helicopter in the middle of nowhere. Then they would have to navigate back to a designated place within a set amount of time, entirely on their own.
It was a test of decision-making ability, stamina, survival skills, and psychological resilience in the noisy solitude of the jungle. The training was famous in the military for higher-than-normal rates of attrition due to mental instability and in some cases, death.
Yukari had undergone solo survival training herself. In her case, it had gone rather smoothly after she met Matsuri on her first day in the jungle. With Matsuri’s expert guidance, she’d had no trouble making it back home. As a test, it’d been a failure, but the SSA had already been committed to using Yukari before the test, and the addition of Matsuri to the team had been an added bonus.
“I had no idea you were even still on the island.”
“It was supposed to be a secret. They were afraid that if you knew, one of you would try to help me. I camped overnight in the security forces’ training area and trained for three days, then they brought me out here by helicopter.”
“Wait, so how many days have you been in the jungle?”
“This is my third day. But if I don’t make it home by midnight, I’ll fail.”
Akane lowered her eyes.