The Butterfly Has Already Taken Flight

"Which one?"

Hirata leaned in and looked down at the rulebook in Gu Heng's hand.

Gu Heng pointed to the line listing the refresh times.

Hirata's gaze lingered between those two time slots for half a second before he looked up.

"Twice a day... what about it?"

But Horikita frowned first.

She looked at Gu Heng and saw that his fingertip was still pressed against that line, unmoving for a long while.

"Your previous plan was built around it being once a day?" she asked directly.

Gu Heng nodded.

"It was originally one main route with one backup."

"Now the morning will be settled separately."

"The evening isn't for making up points. It's a second opening round."

Hirata opened his mouth, and the trace of relief on his face vanished at once.

He lowered his head and read the rulebook again, his brow tightening further and further.

"So what do we do now?" Hirata asked instinctively.

"Revise it," Gu Heng said.

"Right now?"

"Or should we wait until we get to the island?"

Gu Heng answered quickly. As his words fell, he pressed the rulebook into his palm, his knuckles tightening.

Gu Heng lowered his head and opened the several pages of notes he had organized earlier.

They were densely written.

Which group should take which route first.

Where to establish the camp on the first day.

How to preserve stamina before the second day.

Where they could bind the class together first at the lowest cost.

The edges of those pages had become slightly wrinkled from being flipped through so often.

Gu Heng pressed his thumb in the middle, paused for half a second, then flipped a large section ahead.

The pages brushed across the tabletop with a faint sound.

Hirata watched the old route map on top get pressed to the very bottom, and the hand gripping the corner of the book tightened along with it.

That had been the answer they had hammered out for the first day after staying up until the very end last night.

Horikita reached out and held down one corner of the stack.

"Scrap all of it?"

"Scrap the parts designed to run all day," Gu Heng said. "Keep the people."

"What about the supply request?" Hirata asked.

Gu Heng raised his hand to check the time.

"Resubmit the revisions within ten minutes."

The moment he said that, even Sudo fell silent.

The old route map was still spread across the table, but the blank spaces on the supply request form had already been pushed in front of them.

No one spoke again. Their hands reached for pens and notebooks first.

After the briefing ended, they did not return immediately.

Gu Heng called Horikita, Hirata, Kushida, Sudo, and Ayanokoji, who had been standing nearby without saying a word, into an empty classroom at the end of the hallway.

As soon as the door closed, Gu Heng's first words were blunt.

"Half the original plan is scrapped."

Sudo frowned on the spot.

"What the hell?"

"We can't follow the previous setup anymore." Gu Heng placed the rulebook on the table. "Split the first day into two halves."

"One in the morning, one in the evening."

"Stamina, supplies, movement—we rearrange all of it."

Kushida lightly tapped the corner of the paper with her fingertip.

"Then didn't we do that whole round of mobilization for nothing yesterday?"

"Not for nothing." Gu Heng glanced over the hand she had on the paper corner. "The people are still usable, and the boundaries are still there."

"What's scrapped is the way we move."

Horikita held down those pages, and the line of her shoulders finally relaxed slightly.

She said nothing, only lowered her arms that had been folded before.

"How exactly do we change it?" she asked.

Gu Heng pressed a fingertip to the edge of the paper and fell silent for two seconds.

His index finger rested against the paper's edge. With a slow push, he pressed all the marked routes beneath the pages.

"We won't build a major camp on the first day." Gu Heng looked up. "Just establish light footholds."

Sudo immediately frowned.

"Then where do we sleep at night?"

"Somewhere that can keep out the rain, centralize supplies, and has basic water access and first aid," Gu Heng said. "Enough to survive first, not enough to be comfortable."

Sudo's expression darkened further.

"Isn't that way too shabby?"

"Compared to sleeping comfortably, I care more about you not running your legs into the ground before the second round of objectives in the evening."

He tapped the tip of his pen beside Sudo's name.

"The frontline team won't go all out in the morning."

Horikita raised her eyes.

"We retreat even if we can't get the first-round objective?"

"If we can't get it, we retreat," Gu Heng said. "The morning isn't the decisive battle. It's about saving our legs for the evening."

He moved the pen away from Sudo's name and tapped it against the table.

Kushida did not smile this time.

Her fingertip paused on the corner of the paper.

"What about the girls' line?" she asked. "These light footholds sound like they could easily become a way to make everyone endure things first."

"That's why logistics and the girls' line will no longer be calculated as a whole day." Gu Heng looked at her. "They'll be divided into two separate load-bearing lines: daytime and evening."

"Who can hold up during the day but falls apart at night, who has no issues in the morning but is prone to trouble in the afternoon—all of them will be reassigned."

Kushida raised her brows very slightly.

"Then the batch of detailed notes I gave you yesterday can just be broken down another level."

"This time, break them down by time slot," Gu Heng said.

Hirata finally spoke.

He lowered his head and pressed down on the lines on the paper, his speech slowing as well.

"What the class hears won't be 'save your legs,'" he said. "They'll only hear that yesterday's work was for nothing."

"So you handle their emotions," Gu Heng said. "Tell them the old assignments haven't been scrapped. What's scrapped is the approach of operating all day."

Hirata looked at the old route map pressed at the very bottom, his fingers slowly tightening.

"In other words, we can't treat 'knowing the general direction' as the answer anymore."

"We can only treat it as a reference."

Gu Heng looked up at Hirata.

"Right."

Only after saying that did Gu Heng slowly lean back in his chair, his fingertips loosening from the paper's edge.

The old arrangements that had once filled those pages were pressed at the bottom, with only a small corner showing.

"So what do we tell the class?" Horikita asked.

"Don't say, 'I was wrong earlier.'" Gu Heng remained calm. "Just say the rules are harsher than expected, so the plan has been split into two parts."

"That isn't lying?"

"No." Gu Heng pressed the old route map farther down. "If I say I was wrong now, the class will just panic first."

Hirata quietly added,

"The reassignment won't hold."

Gu Heng nodded.

"So first, get them moving according to the new chart."

"And if someone asks why we didn't think of it yesterday?" Horikita continued.

The tip of Gu Heng's pen pressed into the paper, and the ink spot slowly spread darker.

He drew that black mark into a short line before speaking.

"Tell them to ask me."

Hirata looked up.

Gu Heng did not look at him. He only folded a deep crease into the old route map.

"They can question it."

"But they can't disrupt the rhythm in front of the whole class."

"I'll give them someone they can curse at."

The empty classroom fell silent for a moment.

Horikita's fingers still pressed against the edge of the old map. Hirata raised his head, then quickly lowered his gaze back to the new chart.

No one responded.

At that moment, Ayanokoji, who had barely spoken, suddenly lifted his eyes.

"You threw it away pretty quickly."

Gu Heng looked at him.

"What?"

"That old map." Leaning against the window, Ayanokoji lightly tapped his coffee can with a finger. "You must have written it until very late last night."

Gu Heng did not evade the remark. His Adam's apple bobbed faintly.

"No matter how late I wrote it, I can't use it to block the way forward." Gu Heng looked at him.

Ayanokoji was silent for two seconds.

Then he lightly pressed the rim of the coffee can with his thumb. The can came to rest in his palm, and he withdrew the faint, unformed curve at the corner of his lips.

"Interesting," he said quietly.

Gu Heng did not respond. He only pushed the new plan toward Horikita and Hirata.

"This afternoon, split the class up for another round."

"Don't start over from scratch."

"Just change the rhythm. Don't tear apart the foundation."

"Okay." Hirata took it.

"I'll go settle the class's emotions," Horikita said with a nod.

Kushida lightly pressed the corner of the paper down, her voice still soft.

"What about me?"

"Keep gathering information." Gu Heng looked at her. "But this time, gather who will slow down in the evening and who won't be able to hold on at night."

"Understood." The fingers pressing the paper corner curled slightly. "You're getting better and better at using people."

She pressed a thin crease into the corner of the paper.

Gu Heng ignored it and merely folded up the final revised route sketch.

Several footsteps suddenly sounded in the hallway outside.

"Class D is still revising? They're only changing things now—will they make it in time?"

Sudo abruptly raised his head, and the chair legs scraped across the floor with a short sound.

Gu Heng raised his hand without turning around.

In the end, Sudo lowered his foot back down.

Gu Heng folded the paper and tucked it into the rulebook.

"You heard that?"

Sudo gritted his teeth.

"I heard it."

"Then remember this," Gu Heng said. "Before we even set foot on the island, the others are already counting on whether we'll fall apart."

After everyone else had left, only Gu Heng and Ayanokoji remained in the empty classroom.

Gu Heng was about to pack up when Ayanokoji suddenly spoke.

"That preparation of yours earlier didn't look like something you threw together at the last minute."

"Mm."

"And now you're scrapping it just like that?"

"You have a lot of questions today." Gu Heng looked up at him.

"Because today is more interesting than the past few days," Ayanokoji said.

Gu Heng put the papers into the booklet, his voice even.

"Once an advantage expires, it hurts more than a disadvantage."

Ayanokoji's fingertips paused on the coffee can, and he said nothing more.

When Gu Heng walked out of the classroom, the afternoon sunlight was slanting into the corridor.

Ayanokoji watched his retreating back, turning the coffee can halfway around between his fingers.

The bottom of the can tapped the windowsill with a soft clink.

At the other end of the corridor, Hirata had already been surrounded by two or three classmates.

"Why are we changing it again?"

"Were the teams assigned wrong just now?"

"So who are we supposed to listen to in the first round?"

The voices were not loud.

Yet one after another, they crowded in this direction.

Gu Heng's toe came to a stop against the floor.

Then he tucked the rulebook into the crook of his arm and walked toward them.

This time, Gu Heng was not going over to explain the rules.

He stopped half a step in front of Hirata, blocking the classmate who had spoken first, and took on the first wave of distrust that came crashing down after the rules were announced.