#28 Theft

---Third day---

I woke up and went near the river to wash my face.

"I thought about what you told me before..." Hirata came to me and started washing his face with me.

"And?" I asked indifferently without looking at him.

"Do you really think that Ibuki's story is just a big lie?" He asked me with an uncertain face.

"You perhaps didn't understand my previous words. I am not trying to convince you to trust my words or to trust Ibuki's story. It's all good that you can make your own decision but what I am trying to say is that you should learn from your mistakes. Let's say that Ibuki is really here just to damage us but you still believed in her. What would you do? Would you just be more careful around her next time and then waited for someone else to betray you again or would you be more careful around all people you know nothing about?"

"...Even though I am not happy to admit it, I would perhaps be careful just around her...I wouldn't be able to show distrust towards other people just because one person did wrong" Hirata said with a weak and sad smile.

"Anyway, Walker-kun, you are a really amazing person..." He said with his usual enthusiastic smile.

"What do you mean?" I asked him with one of my brows raised.

"You always seem so calm and talking with you always makes me feel reassured about the entire situation on this island. It might sound weird but you are like a teacher who knows what to say to calm down everyone around him" Hirata laughed a little after saying that.

"I think that you are much better in this aspect-"

"Mornin'!!!" Someone shouted and jumped on my back.

I almost had an impulse to catch their arm and throw them by the collar to the river but I controlled myself.

"What do you think you are doing, Matsushita-san? If I lost my balance back then, both of us would be swimming in the river right now" I said without minding something soft touching my back.

Are all girls careless like this?

"I put my trust in you, Walker-kun. And you didn't betray it just as I expected from someone like you!" She said with a happy smile but didn't get off me.

There was only a small number of people awake at this time but we were still gathering the attention pretty fast.

What's gotten into her? She wasn't so forceful before.

"Matsushita-san, could you please get off me? Your hair tickles me"

And I can also feel your assets on my back...but I better not say that aloud.

But I must admit that for a teenage girl, her body is quite developed but of course, she loses out to a few girls in our class and I won't even mention our homeroom teacher...

I shook my head to get rid of unnecessary thoughts.

"Sorry, Walker-kun, but I must say that you are quite strong to be able to catch me without losing your balance" She said with a laugh

You saw me carrying that deer before...I don't think you are much heavier than that.

I immediately started hearing whispers all around us

"*Are they a thing?*"

"*Is Matsushita-san dating with Walker-kun or are they only good friends?*"

"*They indeed talk to each other very often at school*"

Tch, another troublesome situation.

"I will go, for now, see you later" She waved at me and run off to the other side of the camp.

I sensed a hostile glare on my back so I turned around and saw Karuizawa looking at me with an angry expression.

"Hmph!" When our eyes met she turned around and left in an angry manner.

What the hell? Have I done something wrong?

I turned back to Hirata and saw him looking at me with a slightly teasing smile.

"What?"

"How do you feel about Matsushita-san if you don't mind me asking, Walker-kun?" He asked me with an awkward smile, perhaps embarrassed to ask such a question.

"...She is a good friend" I looked around us before answering his question.

"...I see" His awkward smile changed into a slightly sad one, he understood my meaning in my words and perhaps felt pity for Matsushita.

"Well, see you later" I said and prepared to leave.

"Wait!" Hirata quickly said to stop me from leaving.

"What is it?"

"...It's...nothing, sorry" He hesitated but didn't tell me anything in the end.

Weird... I left him there and went to help others with some manual labor.

..

That night I also went to visit Class A and even though their base had only 1 entrance it was pretty easy to sneak in thanks to the mistake I made in Class C's camp.

They simply had no strength to keep on watch during the nights, they were already happy to be on watch during the day time. Some students couldn't even endure it any longer and returned to the ship, making Class A lose quite a lot of points. And as I guessed, their leader really was a guy named Yahiko.

I haven't really intended to damage Class A this much but I guess it already doesn't matter.

I also kept on claiming the spots on my way back to the camp but sometimes I was too slow and saw already Class C on the display.

It seems that Ryuen hasn't really left the island but he keeps on taking my bonus points. He should have just left, he will suffer here all alone for nothing since I already know who is their leader which means that they will get zero bonus points.

----Fifth day----

I watched a group of girls marching towards the boy's tent with only one opened eye while quietly resting on the tree branch.

"Hey, boys! Wake up!" Shinohara yelled, standing right in front of the tent's entrance.

"Eh? What's wrong?" Hirata peeked out and asked with sleepy eyes.

"Hirata-kun. Can you please gather all boys? Something terrible happened" Shinohara said with apologetic face after seeing Hirata's tired expression.

"...I understand" Hirata said with serious expression after seeing other girls with unusually scared faces.

After 5 minutes...

"So, what's going on?" Hirata asked as representative of boys.

"Sorry, Hirata-kun but this doesn't involve you. We want to confirm something but before that, isn't someone missing?" Shinohara asked with a suspicious expression.

"Huh? Now that you mentioned it..." Hirata said with a surprised expression, looking all around to find out who is missing.

"I am up here" I finally said while raising my hand for them to see me lying on the branch.

"Walker-kun? Don't tell me you slept there entire night?" Hirata asked me with a guilty face, he was perhaps blaming himself for my "suffering" but I would suffer much more by sleeping with numerous guys within one tent.

*sigh* "Let's skip that for now, we should listen to what Shinohara has to say first" I felt uncomfortable after seeing Hirata's guilty face like it was his own fault.

"...Alright, this morning...Karuizawa-san's underwear went missing. Do you know what this means?!" She said and looked at all of the boys except Hirata with contempt in her eyes.

"What?! U-underwear?" Hirata appeared visibly shaken by this information.

Eww, that's pretty creepy and disgusting. Now that she mentioned Karuizawa...I can't see her anywhere, I guess she is inside the tent with a few more missing girls.

"Karuizawa-san is currently crying inside the tent. Kushida-san and others are comforting her right now, but..." She glared at all boys with quite cold eyes.

"Huh? What? Are you saying we did it?" Sudo, Ike and Yamauchi immediately fought back against such false accusations.

"Isn't that obvious?! Who else would do it if not boys?!"

"What about that girl from Class C?!" Sudo bought out pretty good point but it was immediately shot down by Shinohara

"She wouldn't do such a thing!"

Blindly trusting someone from the other class over your own classmates...That's pretty bad.

"I know that you aren't culprit, Hirata-kun. But we want to search the boy's luggage" Shinohara said

Hirata tried to defend our innocence but girls weren't going to give up in this matter.

A few boys started to accuse Ike of stealing Karuizawa's underwear.

I happened to see the person who did it that night since they didn't think I would be awake at that hour but I didn't stop them since I would only alert them and no matter what will they do, everything will go according to my plans.

I licked my lips while I was counting how many points we will get at the end of this test.

"Walker-kun, you were outside for the entire night right?!" Shinohara said with a harsh tone which made me frown.

"Umm..I don't think-" Matsushita tried to say something but I didn't give her opportunity.

"Are you accusing me of stealing Karuizawa-san's underwear?" I easily jumped from the 4 meters height and narrowed my eyes at Shinohara while I was slowly approaching her.

"...O-of course! You were all alone here and no one knew about it..." She panicked a bit but still showed a determined face.

"Walker-kun!" Hirata called out to me when I came close enough to Shinohara.

I stopped right in front of her and looked down at her with cold eyes.

"Let me just say that I feel disgusted by being accused of a crime like this one. First, I don't know if it was used or clean underwear but if it was the former case then I can tell you that I feel that stealing such thing is fucking disgusting and if it was the latter case then I don't see any meaning in stealing a thing anyone can buy in any store nowadays" I said with a disgusted expression.

"Stop accusing other boys while ignoring Hirata" I calmed down a bit after saying that.

"Yeah! Walker-kun is right!" Ike immediately agreed with me but he instantly regretted it when he heard my next sentence.

"I admit that there might be some perverts among the boys but mostly it is because of puberty or because they want to attract attention. Nevertheless, I highly doubt that they would do such thing that would damage and hurt their own classmate" I calmly explained to Shinohara.

"...I-fine. You boys can solve this problem among yourselves but we still want to find that underwear!" Shinohara softened up and let the boys do the searching themselves.

Girls immediately started to whisper after the tension was gone

"He was a bit scary don't you think?"

"For a moment, I thought that he was going to hit Shinohara-san"

"And how did he jump from that height so easily?"

"I don't think you would be happy if I accused you of stealing boy's underwear either..." I said aloud which was meant for all girls, including Shinohara.

Their reaction was the same as mine...disgusted.