Behind The Scenes

Lucas sighed in relief as he finally sat down, his plate of food in front of him.

The past hour had been nothing but tension, and for once, he just wanted to eat without worrying about raft-destroying saboteurs or missing supplies.

Nina had gone off somewhere instead of sitting with him, but that was fine. He had learned long ago that she did things on her own terms.

What did bother him, though, was that Mia was nowhere to be seen. That was… weird.

She was usually one of the first to grab breakfast.

Lucas scanned the area.

No sign of her.

But before he could think too hard about it, Leo plopped down beside him, setting his own plate down with a grunt.

"Man, I'm starving," Leo muttered, stuffing a piece of dried fish into his mouth.

Lucas smirked. "You sure you weren't kidnapped and dragged out of bed like me?"

Leo snorted. "Nah, but I did wake up to the sound of crying from one of the tents. Probably one of the girls. They're freaked out about the rafts."

Lucas chewed on his food, thinking about that.

He couldn't blame them. The rafts were their best shot at getting food from the ocean — and maybe even leaving this island one day.

Now they had to figure out an alternative, and that wasn't going to be easy.

Still, he didn't want to spend the morning sulking.

"Well, at least we still have food," Lucas said, gesturing to his plate. "Would've sucked if our supplies just vanished overnight."

Leo frowned. "You say that like it could happen."

Lucas paused for a beat before shrugging. "You never know."

Leo gave him a look but didn't press. Instead, they ate in comfortable silence, letting the sounds of the ocean and quiet chatter of the other students fill the air.

For a moment, Lucas almost felt normal — like they weren't stranded on some messed-up survival island where things kept going wrong.

But, of course, that moment didn't last.

"Alright, boys!" one of the teachers called out, clapping his hands together. "Time to get to work! We need some extra hands to help with the fish. Get moving!"

Lucas groaned. "Why did I know that was coming?"

Leo chuckled. "C'mon, man. It's either this or cleaning the latrines. Pick your poison."

Lucas grumbled but stood up, wiping his hands on his pants before following the other guys toward the storage area.

The smell hit him before he even saw the fish.

Lucas gagged. "Ugh."

The girls had already been at work, cutting up fish and storing them in barrels filled with salt.

A few of them looked up as the boys arrived, some relieved, others looking less than impressed.

"Finally," one girl muttered, wiping sweat from her forehead. "We've been doing this all morning."

"You chose to do this all morning," another girl countered. "I wanted to do water duty, but nooo, we had to divide the labor evenly."

Lucas exchanged a glance with Leo.

"This is gonna be hell, isn't it?" he muttered.

Leo smirked. "Oh yeah."

The boys were quickly assigned tasks — some had to gut and clean the fish, others had to pack them away in barrels.

Lucas was stuck with scaling, which meant his hands were quickly covered in fish guts and slime.

"Fantastic," he muttered, flicking a piece of fish scale off his arm.

Across from him, a girl — Maya, if he remembered right — laughed. "Welcome to the club."

Lucas sighed. "Is this what survival's gonna be? Smelling like dead fish all day?"

Maya grinned. "Pretty much."

"Great. My love life is doomed."

"Did you even have a love life?" Leo called over from the gutting station.

Lucas pointed his knife at him. "You wound me."

Maya snickered before returning to her work, and despite the disgusting job, Lucas found himself relaxing a little.

Lucas wiped a hand across his forehead, grimacing as he realized he had just smeared fish guts onto his face. He groaned, flicking the slime off his fingers.

"Fishing is so much better than this," he muttered.

Maya snorted beside him, her hands moving skillfully as she scaled another fish. "Welcome to the real work, city boy. It's not all about throwing a net and waiting."

Lucas rolled his eyes. "I was fishing before this, y'know. That was my job. I had no idea all this behind-the-scenes stuff was happening."

Maya smirked. "And yet here you are, elbows-deep in fish guts."

Lucas grunted in response, scraping the last few scales off the fish in his hand before tossing it into the pile.

Another student swooped in, taking it from them and tossing it into a large barrel of salt.

He flexed his sore fingers, watching as the fish disappeared beneath layers of coarse white crystals.

"Roasted fish never tasted this good before," he thought, now realizing just how much effort went into preparing it.

It made him grateful that everyone was pulling their weight on this island, even if the work sucked.

Still, given the choice, he'd rather be standing in the ocean with a net, feeling the wind in his hair and the sun on his skin.

That was freedom. This? This was labor.

"At least I'm not cleaning the latrines," he reminded himself.

Just as he was about to complain again, something caught his attention.

A scene.

Two girls — ones he vaguely recognized — were struggling to carry a massive bowl of fish toward one of the salt barrels.

The weight of it was clearly too much for them, and their arms trembled as they shuffled forward, their movements slow and careful.

Lucas should have felt bad for them. He should have stepped in to help.

But his eyes weren't on the fish.