NOVEL NEXT Chapter 470.
Chapter 470. A Slow Day on a Farm. (3/6)
“Hey, by the way, Dawn.”
“What?”
“I know you said Rosa asked you to keep me company, but now that you know where your mother is, rather than getting stuck here with me, didn’t you want to go to the city together with them to track her down?”
“Uhh… I’m still not ready.”
“When will you be ready to face her then?”
“I… don’t know. I’m still scared. What if she doesn’t want to see me? What if she hates me? She’s apparently a surgeon and I bet she’s probably super busy and tired all the time. I doubt she’d even have the time or energy to see me. I don’t want to be a bother.”
“Haaaaah. Who cares? Does any of it really matter?”
“I care. It does matter.”
“Look, so what if you end up inconveniencing her? She’s your mother at the end of the day. Parents exist solely to be inconvenienced by their children. The moment she gave birth to you she was given the responsibility to wipe the green liquid shit stains off your ass and change your diapers. It’s not like you’re going to ask her to do that for you now, so she can at the very least bear the small inconvenience of meeting you.”
“That’s vulgar.”
“So what?”
“Hey, Ran?”
“What is it?”
“Uhm, I thought of something I want if I win the bet.”
“What is it?”
“I want a favor from yuh.”
“What’s the favor you want?”
“I’ll say it after I win.”
“Just tell me now.”
“It’s a bit embarrassing.”
“Say it, or I won’t accept.”
“Fine… can yuh… uh… come with me to meet my mom… and… pretend to be my boyfriend?”
“Huh? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would you want to introduce a fake boyfriend to your mother?”
“Because I’m afraid to meet her alone. But… if I have someone with me when I meet her providing moral support… I think... I can do it.”
“If it’s just some moral support you need, wouldn’t Rosa be plenty?”
“I… want it to be yuh though… is it... an impossible request?”
“Well, it’s not like it’s impossible and something I can’t do.”
“Then will yuh agree?”
“Sure, but that’s only if I lose of course.”
“Then hurry up and take your shot.”
“Alright, if you say so.”
I climbed a bit up the rock, stood up straight, and took aim from what I approximated was the correct adjusted height to fire the bullet straight, parallel to the ground, and still hit the target.
It could honestly go either way. It was a coin flip. If the velocity I used in my calculations was too slow then I’d shoot way below the target. If it was too fast, it’d go way over the target.
The bullet would also slow down over the distance it traverses so its speed wasn’t constant the entire way adding further uncertainty to the equation. I didn’t know what the slowdown for the bullet would look like so I had no way to factor it into my calculations.
In the end, they were just a bunch of sloppy estimates.
Oh well, since I’ve come this far, might as well try it.
I placed my finger on the trigger and slowly pulled it in. The hammer on the revolver cocked back as the chamber rotated a notch.
When the trigger was pulled in all the way the hammer plunged forward.
Bang!
In sync with the loud bang, I felt a strong recoil pushing back against my hand pushing it slightly up shortly after the bullet had already left the chamber.
Less than a second later.
Cling!
My brows raised up in surprise when I heard the crisp ping of metal colliding with metal in the distance.
“No way...” Dawn muttered to herself.
I… seriously hit it? Those stupid calculations were correct?
Somehow, I felt strangely excited, elated even. Putting the theoretical knowledge you learned in school into practice in the real world felt pretty satisfying.
“Yuh… really hit the target?”
“It seems so.”
Dawn raised her binoculars and confirmed, “It landed pretty high, just barely in the circle a bit to the right… but it definitely hit the target… and it’s your win.”
So the initial velocity of the bullet was higher than expected.
“Haaaaah…” she let out a small sigh as she lowered her binoculars a bit disappointed that she’d lost.
“Is it fine if I take a few more shots?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
I unloaded the remaining five bullets in the chamber while gradually lowering the height I shot from a bit every time. Each successive bullet approached closer to the bullseye.
With those six shots, I’d gotten a pretty good feel for it. Dawn showed me how to reload the revolver and I tried shooting from ground level this time. I missed the first five shots from the ground, but the final shot hit the bottom edge of the target. I’d gradually increased the angle by aiming above the bullseye until I hit it. Once I found the sweet spot, it wasn’t very difficult to hit near the bullseye consistently.
“Yuh got the hang of it pretty quickly. Have yuh really never practiced shooting before?”
“Though I’ve never really practiced shooting a real gun, I used to play a lot of first-person shooters. Maybe that helped a little with my aim.” As if it really would. It was all the power of math and the scientific process of trial and error.
“I see. Want to try the rifle now?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t get cocky and let it get to your head after your initial success, yuh’re definitely not going to hit the target on your first try this time if yuh go for the furthest one.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” I didn’t know the velocity of a typical rifle bullet after all.
Dawn taught me how to properly hold and aim using her rifle while standing. When I took my first shot with the rifle, the recoil was significantly stronger than the revolver, but since the butt of the rifle hit my shoulder, it was manageable.
I was able to hit one of the targets 100 meters away without much difficulty using the scope. 200 meters wasn’t too hard to get used to either. But beyond that range, I started missing. The further it went, the worse my accuracy. When it came to the 500-meter targets, I couldn’t hit them. They’d always swerve away to the side with the unpredictable changing wind.
Even after I fired twenty shots, I just couldn’t hit it.
“It’s really hard with the wind.”
“Yeah, it is. Yuh’ve got to be patient and get a good feel for the wind to consistently hit targets at the 500-meter mark and beyond. When it’s a moving target like an animal at those ranges, the difficulty increases exponentially since yuh have to lead your shots and predict not only the wind but the animal’s movements as well. Speaking of animals…”
Dawn’s eyes narrowed as her gaze locked onto a thicket of trees in the distance beyond the 500-meter targets.
“Is there something there?”
“Yeah, I caught a glimpse of a feral hog. I need my rifle back.”
“You’re going to kill it?”
“Yeah, those hogs are menaces. They carry around a lot of diseases that can be life-threatening to not only domestic pigs, but to humans as well. Some of the diseases they carry could completely shut down pork production in the country. They’re an animal marked as kill on sight. They reproduce extremely quickly so their populations can easily explode if left alone. They outcompete other animals for resources in the forest.”
It’s funny, they sound a lot like humans in a sense.
“I seriously hate them. They caused so much trouble for my dad when I was a kid.”
Dawn set herself up prone on the rock and took aim. Her eyes were distant. The air around her was serious. It was the first time I saw her calm tranquil eyes filled with the intent to kill and take a life without hesitation.
I used her binoculars to try and locate the feral hog in question but I didn’t see a thing. How’d she even see it without the binoculars just now? I suppose it was experience.
“You’re really going to shoot it from here instead of getting closer?”
“If we try to get closer, it will likely notice us approaching and escape deeper into that thicket of trees. Feral hogs are by no means stupid. In fact, they’re among the most intelligent of all animals. Yuh should never underestimate a feral hog or the damage it can do. I bet people from the city would laugh at me and think I’m overexaggerating.”
“You’re right, there probably are a lot of people in the city who would laugh it off as nothing, but I won’t. I believe you.”
“Yuh… believe me?”
“Yeah. So do what you’ve got to do.”
“Right.”