The sweet juice of the berries was still running down his throat, thick but smooth going down. Beneath the sweetness of the berry there was a strange metallic aftertaste.
In one quick, unthinking motion, Kai pulled off a glove and shoved his hand down his throat to make himself gag and get it all out.
After a couple of heaves, his body finally gave in; Kai had emptied himself completely and was already rinsing out with river water.
"That was… ugh… disgusting…"
Kai put his glove back on.
Now there was a small problem… He had completely emptied himself.
If he'd been hungry before, what he was feeling now was worrying. He needed to eat something fast or in a little while he'd have to try his luck with the berries again. But for the moment, for whatever reason, he didn't want to risk it.
The river was surprisingly wide, easily over fifty meters across—for the rivers Kai had seen, this one was something different.
The water was ice-cold and flowed very fast. Luckily it wasn't so bad near the bank, though Kai had no intention of wading in much further. He didn't even know how to swim.
He refilled his bottle and made a big mark on the last tree he'd seen before reaching the river. He didn't know why he'd want to come back that way, but just in case, it was done. He turned back toward the bank and stood there for a while, thinking about whether to go upstream or downstream.
He ended up going with the current. Maybe he'd find people, or maybe he'd end up in a ditch—but his stomach wasn't going to give him much time to think about it.
After what felt like hours, Kai finally reached some fairly large rocks, which he climbed under the excuse of getting a better view into the distance.
His gut growled. Honestly, some food wouldn't have gone amiss.
"I'm… dying…"
He focused his gaze on the forest to his left—the vegetation, of course, blocked any view.
A moment before he looked away, he caught sight of an object among the branches of a tree, something a color that clashed ever so slightly with the green around it. It was yellow. But a soft yellow, like it had been desaturated.
"That… That. What is that?"
His gut growled again, this time with a sharp pang that made Kai double over.
Kai sighed—it looked like he'd have to go check it out.
He didn't expect to get lost, of course, but he made small notches in the trees every few of them anyway.
In the end, what Kai had spotted did look like fruit.
Several round, supposed fruits hung from the tree on thick stems about two fingers wide. The fruits weren't perfectly round—they had various irregularities, but they didn't look like they'd been caused by anything external, as if being asymmetrical was the most natural thing. The color was a desaturated yellow, with thin brown veins running across the surface, adding texture.
"Looks… edible?"
Kai wasn't sure at all, and he questioned whether he'd simply given up and decided to try his luck—but the sound of his gut forced the decision.
He hadn't seen a single animal; whether hidden out of caution or so as not to alert Kai himself to their presence, the creatures seemed to want nothing to do with him.
Hunting was pretty much off the table, and he was starting to feel desperate.
Though he still had some berries.
Would it be riskier to try the new fruit, or the berries again?
Was it risky to keep brushing off the fact that he hadn't seen any creatures? Had they marked him as prey and were getting ready to ambush him?
Kai looked up at the tree and, for just a moment, he could have sworn something looked back. As if the forest itself were watching him, waiting to see what he'd choose.
'I just want to get out of here…' he thought to himself, hesitating about whether to keep talking out loud.
The fruit wasn't very high up—he could grab it if he stretched a little.
That piece was practically the size of a football, its texture rough and hard.
For some reason Kai couldn't stop thinking it was like a melon, even though melons didn't grow on trees… and they didn't look like this at all…
He had to stretch even further to cut the stem with his pocket knife.
While he was cutting, he looked around—still no living thing nearby, or at least none he could see, because he did hear things every now and then.
The sounds he heard were distant, but they kept feeling like they were all around him.
There was actually one that was starting to drive him up the wall—a kind of shriek that had been drilling into his eardrums for a while now. You could make out the occasional growl between each shriek, as if whoever was making it was putting in tremendous effort.
The sound had traveled quite a distance since it started—Kai had first heard it on one side of the forest, and now it was practically on the other.
He set the fruit down on the ground and cut a second one while looking around, searching for whoever was shrieking like that.
Eventually his gaze landed on a kind of grotto in the face of a mountain—with all the ground Kai had covered following the river, he still hadn't pulled away from the mountain range.
"I could take a look…"
The shrieking stopped shortly after, and the sudden silence felt out of place.
Kai shook his head.
"What am I saying? Do I want to leave this new world already?"
Bringing down the second irregular sphere, Kai turned around and tripped over the first.
He looked at his hands, confused.
"Why did I cut two?"
Kai hadn't even noticed when he'd started cutting the second one.
Crouching down to pick up the strange melon, he turned one last time toward the crack in the mountain face.
He headed back to the river with his haul in his arms and visible haste—though not too much, those balls were heavier than they looked.
The path back was the same as before, he felt nothing different, and that only made him pick up his pace. Kai was nervous for some reason. He didn't feel comfortable in that forest—he felt vulnerable, like a prey.
He reached the rocks again and climbed back up in a hurry, clutching the semi-spheres to his chest. The rocks were a little high, but luckily, they were climbable with just the legs and some balance.
Once he was on top, he relaxed and let himself drop.
He didn't feel safe in the forest, but on those rocks he'd probably just be an even clearer target.
"Great, I'm serving myself up on a silver platter," he said with a sigh.
Kai looked over the results of his brief foraging mission.
He now had two fruits he didn't know if he could eat.
"Doesn't this leave me in the same spot as with the berries?"
Kai lay back and sighed.
"What was even the point of that?"
Of course there was one very quick way to find out whether those fruits were edible or not.
Kai hugged his knees while his stomach demanded he test his haul.
"Aaaghh… Screw it. If I die I'll just talk that entity's ear off until it lets me reincarnate as something else."
Kai quickly took a photo of the berries and the strange melons, documenting what had killed him in some hypothetical future.
Taking out his pocket knife, he cleaned it on the sleeve of his hoodie and a little water from his bottle.
The melon's skin was fairly tough to the touch, but it barely put up much resistance against the blade.
The moment he pulled out his small pocket knife, a few purple drops fell from it—somehow they behaved almost like a solid. Kai separated the halves and found that the fruit had no pulp, no flesh, nothing he could bite into.
In fact, both halves now served as bowls, holding… gelatin?
The inside wasn't exactly solid, but it wasn't liquid either. It was more like the texture of slime.
There were no seeds in that purple viscosity.
"What am I supposed to think now? Am I supposed to look at this and not think it's poisonous?"
That viscous juice was purple—one of the colors that symbolized poison in pretty much any book, game, or show; there was always some flask with a purple potion that was generally poisonous.
Kai examined the bowl in his hands from several angles.
"Do I drink it? Do I try to grab it with my hand?"
Kai took another photo of the inside of the fruit and set his phone down.
"Either way I'm going to feel like an idiot—whether I get poisoned or not. What was even the point of making myself throw up earlier?"
Kai gave that probably-toxic bowl one last suspicious look as his gut growled like never before.
"Well… bottoms up."
With one final sigh, Kai licked his lips and brought the thick, viscous liquid to his mouth, closing both eyes.
…
The whole forest went silent for a few moments, as if waiting for Kai's verdict—but he was silent too. Still with his eyes closed, he could feel the full viscosity of the liquid clinging to every side of his throat; if it didn't go down quickly, he'd start to lose his breath.
Luckily, the liquid had no trouble reaching Kai's stomach. Wait—luckily? Kai still had no idea what it would do to his body. He waited a moment and there were no signs of anything.
Just from that first sip, Kai was almost hungrier than before.
"Nothing's happening, right?" he said, carefully opening just one eye.
'How long does it take for poison to kick in?'
Kai waited a little longer—still no changes.
"Screw it."
Kai started gulping down the contents of the bowl as if he hadn't eaten in days rather than a few hours. He emptied one half, leaving barely a few drops. Then the other, leaving it spotless.
Kai felt… good.
Maybe too good. He felt perfectly full and satisfied. But he also felt a slight warmth in his stomach.
Why did he feel so good after just one fruit? Kai usually ate a lot—probably more than he should. It wasn't normal to be satisfied with just this.
Well. There wasn't much he could do about it now.
"It wasn't… bad?"
Though the purple gelatin had no flavor whatsoever. If it weren't for that recognizable texture, it would have been like putting nothing in his mouth at all.
"All good then."
Kai listened for a few seconds to the murmur of the river and the whistle of the wind through the leaves—the silence from a moment ago felt like a distant memory.
Without much of a hurry, he left his backpack and the fruit on the rock, carrying only his pocket knife and the rope from his descent.
Now with his energy renewed and that warm feeling in his stomach, he could pick his adventure back up.
But he wasn't going to do that just yet.
Kai walked over to the treeline and looked for a tree with reasonably straight branches, cut a couple of them, and went back to the riverbank.
Once he had looked them over carefully, he set a couple aside and started carving. After shaping it with the knife, Kai made a small notch in the wood and set it on the ground.
He cut a piece of his rope and split it lengthwise to make it thinner. It seemed all that liquid had already dried.
Finally, he tied the knife to the wood to make a makeshift spear.
Kai didn't have much intention of getting into a fight—his first priority would always be to survive. And if that meant running, he wasn't going to think twice about it.
Running isn't always possible, of course, and even though Kai had no idea how to handle a spear, he felt more comfortable putting distance between himself and whatever he was up against.
"Should do the job, right?"
Kai wasn't very confident in his work—it felt like the spear would fall apart halfway through whenever he tried to attack with it.
Kai tried swinging it a couple of times, and just as he'd seen coming, the knot holding the blade in place came undone mid-swing.
"That was a little embarrassing… Though not surprising."
With a sigh of disappointment, he decided to keep the knife hidden and use the branch as a walking stick instead.
With that, he stepped between the trees and headed for the cave.
Kai valued his safety—well, today had been a bit of an exception, but he valued his safety. Though he was also a curious person; if something caught his attention, he'd have to look into it.
Having reached his destination, Kai peered inside.
'Wow…'
Kai couldn't believe his eyes.
Inside the cave…