“So!”

The other half of IZ*ONE broke their gaze away from the jungle and at the door that was just slammed shut. All idle conversation between them ceased.

Instructor M walked toward them with two boxes stacked on top of each other, “While you guys are waiting for the chicken catchers, I think that you should get familiar with starting fires!”

She then dropped the containers in her grasps, revealing fire starting tools that half of them could recognize, and some that looked like instruments concocted in the outer depths of outer space.

Everyone was ecstatic because they finally get to play with fire, but no one was as excited as, as far as they could tell, Yuri with the fire in her eyes. Those glassy orbs held the deep reaches of hell and the steely determination of an angry hamster. Her shirt was balled into her fist, and she stood up first and faster than the others.

Don’t mistake this look for a murderous glare, Yuri just has a weird fondness for fire. Maybe it’s because people, and a certain someone, have told her that her voice could make someone feel warm.

“FIRE!” Yuri yelled.

Yujin jumped and flailed around like a fish before shouting the lyrics to BTS’ “Fire”.

“FIIIIIIIIIRE! FIIIIIIIIIRE EH OH EH OH!”

“Yujin, calm your ,” Sakura said, pulling her waving arms back down.

“Sakura, don’t start.” The leader spoke with a monotone voice, but there was a hint of exasperation and fatigue.

The energetic puppy stuck her tongue out to the second oldest woman and continued to mutter the lyrics to the song and kept dancing with Wonyoung, who decided to join her best friend. Yuri was still glued to her spot with the same look in her eyes.

Instructor M finally cut in their strange but amusing banter. “So you guys might recognize some of these things. Like this thing,” she held up a keychain-sized flint bar with a piece of metal. “This is a flint and steel if you weren’t aware.”

The instructor explained the procedures of using flint and steel effectively. She positioned the metal over the flint and struck it.

“Did you see the sparks?” She struck it again in case someone, namely Wonyoung and Yujin (who were promptly scolded by Eunbi), wasn’t paying attention.

Instructor M finally acknowledged Yuri’s intense gaze and offered her the tool, “Yuri, would you like to hold on to this while I teach you guys how to bundle up dried grass and leaves to use as tinder?”

“YES!” The main vocalist ran up to her and grabbed the flint and steel with enthusiasm that could match a dog’s.

Instructor M walked around a small perimeter around them, searching for anything that could be used as tinder. Once she gathered enough, she came back to Yuri, who was eyeing the fire tool with a scary gaze, and set the bundle down. When she stood up, she waved her hand over the bundle to Yuri, inviting her to attempt to start a fire, and then she went around to get more tinder for more attempts. She made sure to oversee the attempts so that they don’t burn the whole Jungle Field.

The girls leaned in after their hamster squatted and got her striking arm ready. Suddenly, everyone backed away at least half a foot when they saw her eyes. For a quick second, her eyes showed the devil and his fiery throne, and it was like seeing a glimpse of the near future. Everything was burning, and Yuri was in the center of it all, watching with an evil grin.

“Hey, Yuri?” Hitomi said, and made the girl in question shake her head out of her wicked and scary stupor, “Can you not burn this place and take us down with it? Please, and thank you.”

The hamster came to and realized that she out after hearing about starting fires. She sheepishly rubbed her neck and then went positioned her arm back to the striking position. Yuri held the flint over the bundle of dried leaves and then struck. After one strike, the sparks bloomed a miniscule fire that steadily grew and eventually took over the small bundle of tinder.

Yuri stood up fast and dramatically raised her arms, “And God said, ‘Let there be light!’”

Eunbi cheered as for her as she guaranteed herself as their dedicated fire starter. “And then there was fire!”

Then the other bunny joined in with her mother’s little rally, although she didn’t seem to know how to use the phrase she picked. “And then the Fire Nation attacked!”

“YEA- pffFFFTT WhAAAAT?!” Yujin stopped her jumping and sputtered all over the place, much to Sakura and Hitomi’s chagrin.

Sakura wiped the disgusting liquid off of her arms, “Bruh, can you not?” She then helped Hitomi wipe off the spit.

“Wonyoung, that was nice of you but I’m pretty sure that isn’t how you use it. Let’s watch when we get to the dorm, okay?” Yuri offered the youngest.

The maknae nodded her head enthusiastically and continued dancing around the fire with Yujin. After the Japanese line, excluding Nako, cleaned themselves up from the puppy’s drool they joined in the celebration of the birth of fire by Yuri’s hand. Eventually, everyone started dancing and singing “Kumbaya.”

Instructor M just chuckled beneath her breath as she placed down multiple bundles of tinder around, waiting for them to finish their little festival. When they finally calmed down, she brought back the attention on her and showed them another tool.

She held up a black cylinder, “This thing in my hand is called a fire piston.” Then, she took one end and separated the fire piston into two parts, revealing a metal rod that’s connected to the other end of the cylinder. “On this hand,” she lifted the end with a metal rod, “is the piston.” Then she raised her other hand, “And this is the chamber.”

Instructor M proceeded to explain how the tool is used. She grabbed this dark, very black, piece of cloth called a char cloth and placed it inside a small hole inside the metal rod. There was an o-ring around the end of the rod, which the instructor promptly lubricated with her spit (she explained that you could use your spit, lip balm or lotion). She slid the rod part way into the cylinder and then positioned her palm next to the piston’s end. Her hand slammed quickly into the piston, pushing it all the way in the cylinder. And as fast as the piston went in, she slid it back out, exposing the now lit char cloth at the end of the rod.

“Now the char cloth became a tiny piece of coal,” she explained. “You have a couple of minutes of downtime before the coal dies out so don’t rush it.” She picked up a thin stick, “Just use a stick to pop the coal out so that it falls into the tinder pile,” she did what she described, “And then just blow at it and then….”

A fire then bloomed on the bundle of dried leaves and everyone gasped in awe.

“I don’t really know the science behind thi-”

“When the piston is pushed in fast, the gas that’s trapped inside is heated up and to get fire you need oxygen. So after you push it in fast, you bring it out as fast as you pushed it in so that the char cloth inside gets exposed to oxygen.”

Everyone, including the instructor, turned and stared at the person who spouted the scientific information that was not needed, but, I guess, was welcome(?).

Wonyoung spoke up, breaking the open-mouthed silence that engulfed the group. “Hitomi unnie, how do you know this?”

“Youtube,” she uttered that one word, with a shrug, as if it held all the answers to everyone’s questions.

“Well, Youtube can recommend some bizarre and some useful things,” Instructor M said. “Maybe she got board and went through that three am ’I’m-in-the-weird-side-of-Youtube-’ phase.

Breadloving girl chuckled and then smiled. “Hit the nail right in the head.”

Yujin went over to Eunbi and whispered, “You know, Chaewon unnie would do anything to hear and see Hitomi unnie like that for the rest of her life.”

The leader nodded, “For once, you actually said something right.” The puppy just pouted at her unnie and ‘humph