My New Life

Chapter 48: The Island Exam Pt.5

It was nearly six by the time Kushida's, and Hirata's groups returned to the base camp, carrying an assortment of different things with them.

I moved over to where Hirata was, where a bunch of other students were also gathering, to see they had gathered a bunch of berries of different kinds.

The problem is, it doesn't seem like anybody knows if they're edible or not.

"Can we really... eat these? They do look good and all but..."

Everyone looked at one another, waiting for someone to confirm it, and I remembered something.

"Give me a second, I'll go find Ike-kun." I stated, loud enough for the group to hear.

I turned around, heading back to the bonfire where Ike was happily chatting with some of his friends.

"Ike-kun! We found some berries out in the forest, can you come see if they're good?" I shouted.

He looked over at me, and grinned.

"Sure!"

He stood up, following me as I lead him back to the group, and his eyes sparkled as the bundle of goodies came within sight.

"Hey! Isn't that a bog bilberry? And that's a Chinese bell-flower too? That's cool!"

He picked up one of the fruits that was scavenged, and smiled, seeming to reminisce.

"Ike, you understand what this is?"

"Ah, this is a fruit of a bog bilberry. I ate this when I went for camping at Otoyama. In appearance as well in taste it looks like a blueberry. This one is Akebia Canada. It is tasty and sweet, man this sure brings back memories."

He was smiling like a kid as he held the berry in his hand, everyone had their eyes on him.

Then, without so much as a second thought, he bit into the berry.

"Phew! Somehow, I feel that they taste even better than I remember." He stated.

I grinned, patting Ike on the back.

"So everything here is edible then?" I asked.

He looked at all of the different fruits, and then picked one up that kind of looked like a tangerine.

"Except for these, they taste sweet, but they give you really bad diarrhea." He announced.

One of the girls, who was holding a few of these tangerine-looking fruits, immediately dropped them all.

"Ew!"

Ike laughed.

"Well, it is to be said that the fruit is good, we can use it as a last resort if we need to." He then said, still holding the fruit in his hand.

"Although, just one wouldn't really do a lot. You would need to eat at least two, and in a pretty short span of time as well."

He tossed the fruit up, catching it, and then putting it into his pocket.

"Let's find somewhere to put all of these, we don't want them to get rotten."

Hirata smiled as Ike began ushering over everyone who was carrying the different forest fruits, beginning to set up an area to stockpile them.

He then noticed me, and walked over.

"Shizukana-kun, I noticed the bonfire is up." He stated.

"Was that Ike's doing as well?"

"Yeah. Like I said, his usefulness during this week is immeasurable."

I noticed Ike approach Shinohara, a look on his face indicating he wanted to apologize, and I tapped on Hirata, motioning for him to follow me.