Bring It On! - Chapter 8

Chapter 8.

“You broke it!”

Why was he asking me that?! I hurriedly took the pot from the man’s hands. It was broken clean in half, shattered beyond any hope of repair. We’d boiled eggs in it, steamed fish, even washed grapes and eaten them right out of it. That precious pot, a key player in our survival, had perished in his hands.

I cradled the pot in my arms and glared at him. The man looked at me like he’d been wronged.

“You said to scrub it! How was I supposed to know it’d break this easily?!”

“Have you seriously never done the dishes before? Who scrubs a pot like they’re trying to tear it apart?!”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember!”

He looked just as flustered as I was, shocked by the pot’s sudden demise. Ruffling his hair in frustration, he suddenly dunked his face into the stream. Was he seriously about to drown himself out of guilt? I grabbed the back of his neck and yanked him out. Blugh, water burst from his mouth.

“After what you did, you think you can just walk away? You better spend the rest of your life atoning to that pot!”

“What the hell?! I was just cooling off, I’m pissed!”

“Forget the dishes. Go help Suho organize the supplies.”

Crying over a broken pot wouldn’t help. As much as I hated to let it go, we had to move on and make use of the daylight while we still had it.

“What, and you’re gonna chop wood?”

He glanced at my hands disapprovingly.

“Your hands are too soft for—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m better than you anyway. You just focus on sorting supplies until that thigh of yours heals. Don’t end up bedridden with an infected wound.”

I shoved him hard. He whined that it hurt, but I didn’t stop. If it hurts, he should just hurry up and get moving. Why was he always so damn slow?

“I can chop wood too…! Ahh! Okay, okay! I’m going!”

After that whole mess, I set the pot carefully in the corner. It was already split in two, but who knows? Maybe someday we’d find a use for it again.

***

“Noonaaa! Noona!”

It was just as I brought down my axe and the tree began to tilt with a long crack.

“Suho! The tree is coming down!”

A moment later, leaves burst upward and the tree crashed to the ground. Suho nimbly ran across its narrow trunk and hurried to me.

I wiped the sweat dripping down my chin with the back of my hand.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t. I really can’t. That hyung is seriously weird.”

“What did he do? Is he making you do all the work?”

Suho shook his head hard, looking miserable.

“Then what?”

He held something out to me. They were short lengths of rope. I recognized them immediately. They were the ropes we used to tie stacked logs together. But they weren’t supposed to be this short… My mind flashed to the pot he’d snapped in half earlier that morning.

“No way.”

“He cut up all the ropes. The logs are rolling everywhere in front of the shelter, and now we’ve got nothing left to tie them with. I didn’t even say anything! I was just watching and he started yelling at me not to tell you.”

Right then, as if on cue, a shout echoed not far away. 

“Hey, brat!” 

Suho jumped and clung to my leg in fear. The man was storming over with angry steps, but when he saw me, he abruptly turned away.

“Stop right there.”

He froze for a few seconds, then turned back with a deep breath, pretending everything was fine. But the twitch in his eyes gave him away.

“Are you useless or something?”

“Shit, you don’t have to say it like that. That’s harsh.”

I held up the ropes in front of him.

“…It was an accident.”

“No it wasn’t. He did it six times.”

“Brat, shut your mouth huh?”

Like he had any right to be mad at Suho. Instead of feeling guilty, he looked like he resented the kid for tattling. Poor Suho, having to spend hours working with a guy like this.

I tossed the rope into his arms. He caught it reflexively.

“The logs?”

“I’m picking them up.”

“How many are lying around?”

“…Most of them.”

“Forget it. I need to see this with my own eyes.”

I stopped what I was doing and tucked my hand axe into my belt. As I walked past him, he hurried to keep up.

“Hey, just do your thing, don’t worry about—”

“Is it that bad of a mess?”

I pushed through the bushes and came out onto the beach. Sure enough, broken logs were scattered all over the ground, and a few had even rolled all the way to the edge of the sea, soaked by the crashing waves.

The sight alone gave me a pounding headache. I pressed my fingers against my temple.

“Useful labor, my ass.”

“Picking them up won’t take long.”

“Then stack them properly up there. Make sure they don’t roll toward the sea. Can you handle that?”

“Hey, don’t worry.”

The man patted my shoulder confidently. I watched him for a moment, doubtful, before heading back into the forest to finish chopping the rest of the tree. I should have kept an eye on him until the end. What a poor decision that was.

By the time I returned, the number of logs floating in the water had increased from four to at least twenty, bobbing along the waves.

Yep. The guy was hopeless.

***

His misadventures didn’t stop there.

He was strong, but utterly unskilled. I decided to keep him away from heavy labor until he gained some experience. I handed him a pair of glasses and told him to light a fire. Then he found a stick and started rubbing it directly against the lens.

I was horrified and snatched the glasses from him.

“What? You told me to start a fire.”

“Did you sleep through science class?! You hold the lens like this and reflect the sun through it!”

“…Maybe I hit my head and forgot for a moment.”

Looking sheepish, he took the glasses and froze like a statue. But fire-starting requires finesse, and he just didn’t have the touch. In the end, he had to go through an all-day training session with Suho before he finally managed to produce a thin wisp of smoke over a pile of dry leaves.

He was so ecstatic you’d think he’d won the lottery. It would’ve been perfect. If only he hadn’t scooped me up and run around with me on his shoulder like some kind of prize.

“See?! I did it!”

“Yeah, yeah. Good job.”

That day, we boiled creek water over his first fire to make drinking water. He drank it reverently, as if it were holy wine handed out by Jesus, even though he’d previously complained it tasted gross.

The wound on his thigh was healing visibly fast, but I still hadn’t seen any meaningful labor from him.

Just lighting a fire wasn’t enough. The deal I had with this guy was turning out to be more trouble than it was worth.

At night, he’d crush me in his sleep like I was some kind of body pillow, wrapping his muscular limbs around me. In the mornings, he was always the last one up. For someone who bragged about being full of energy, he sure stayed exhausted. No matter how hard I shook him, he wouldn’t budge. It felt like I’d taken in another guest I had to feed.

To top it off, he kept bickering with Suho during meals over the pettiest things, and now they were ignoring each other entirely. If he couldn’t be useful, couldn’t he at least have a better personality?

“Just make up already!”

I still had no idea why they were arguing about which season, summer or winter, was worse. The man insisted summer was unbearable, while Suho claimed winter was the worst. There’s no right answer. It’s subjective. Suho was a kid, but the man? Why was he trying so hard to win a debate with a nine-year-old?

“But he started—”

“Lee Suho.”

“Seriously, he’s so cocky for a little brat…”

When I raised my voice at Suho, the man looked smug. I gave him the same glare I had just given the boy. He clammed up and picked up a pebble, skipping it across the water. It bounced only twice before sinking. All style, no substance.

“Pfft.”

Suho couldn’t hold in his laugh. A twitch appeared on the man’s cheek.

“If you’re gonna skip a rock—”

“Say ‘that’s not how you do it’ and I’ll lose it.”

Trying to outdo a kid. How pathetic. I could’ve at least pitied him if he had a decent personality.

In the end, I dragged him behind the shelter late at night, after Suho had fallen asleep. He looked tense, clearly feeling guilty. I poked at his abs with my finger as I calmly tried to reason with him.

“Stop being childish and apologize to Suho. Look at the atmosphere, it’s miserable because of you.”

“How is it my fault? He said that if we met outside, he wouldn’t even talk to me.”

“Don’t push my buttons. You’re lucky I haven’t hurled you into the sea.”

“…Just me?”

He still looked like he’d been wronged. But when I jabbed his stomach hard and gave him a sharp look, he finally nodded.

The next day, the man awkwardly told Suho, “Sometimes I hate winter more,” in what was barely an apology.