31

Gillian was, unexpectedly, a man of spirit with a fiery streak, so showing her plain, unadorned self seemed like the better fit, and the result, as one could see……

These beautiful, precious sweets that no amount of money could simply buy were saying it for her.

“My wife loved these too.”

During the brief break for sweets, Gillian spoke of his wife again.

“I can’t quite remember what occasion it was anymore…… but one day, while eating these, my wife said she had a present for me.”

“That was your first kiss anniversary.”

“Ah, yes! So it was!”

A first kiss anniversary……?

Elia’s eyes went wide at the peculiar phrase she had never heard in her life.

Zayed was the one who explained.

“Grandfather and Grandmother created many anniversaries that were just for the two of them.”

“Ah.”

What an absolute romantic.

Well, that was probably why he still talked about his late wife at every opportunity.

Elia had no way of understanding how a love that deep was possible. Or what it felt like.

“Anyway, she said she had a present, and I was pleased and accepted it, and what she gave me was something quite dreadful.”

“Dreadful?”

“Yes. A box that wouldn’t open. No, a box where I couldn’t even begin to guess how it was supposed to open. She was so delighted watching my face when I received it!”

Gillian went on to describe the appearance of the box.

A wooden box, exactly forty centimeters on each side, so smooth on the outside that it appeared to have no seams at all.

No handle, no button to press, and when shaken, it made no sound.

“I said if she couldn’t open it in a year I would open it for her…… but she left before that year was out.”

“……”

“Well, I could have broken it open, but I didn’t want to do that. And I didn’t want to track down the craftsman and ask how to open it either. She would have wanted to see me struggling to open it myself.”

Which meant he still didn’t know what was inside.

‘He must be curious. Remarkable that he held out.’

Elia sat quietly, crunching through the small, expensive, pretty biscuits.

Until Gillian turned to her with a leading remark.

“My dear. I’m curious what you think.”

“What I think, you say……?”

“See if you can open it.”

Snap!

The moment Gillian snapped his fingers, the attendant waiting outside brought the box in.

True to the description, it was a smooth wooden box with no visible means of opening it from the outside.

“There is no key. As you can see, there is no keyhole either. Nor is there anything to grip.”

“Mm……”

“Is there a way to open this without breaking it?”

Elia reached out and placed her hand on the box in front of her.

Since keeping her eyes open wouldn’t tell her anything more, she closed them instead. Then she felt her way across the box using only the sensation at her fingertips.

“This is…… a puzzle box.”

“A puzzle box?”

“The box itself is a puzzle.”

Ordinarily, a puzzle meant a single image cut into many pieces and mixed together.

You fit them together one by one until the picture appeared.

But a puzzle was not limited to picture-matching alone.

A puzzle was something that looked like an impossible problem on the surface but had a consistent internal logic, designed to give the satisfaction of solving it.

A word puzzle was a puzzle, after all.

“But Grandfather. Shouldn’t this be something you solve yourself?”

Mid-thought, Elia paused and looked back at Gillian. He waved a hand.

“I gave up long ago. After years of thinking and getting nowhere, what can I do. That boy Zayed, I told him to give it some thought and he just refused. Insolent creature.”

So he had no intention of solving it himself.

After a moment’s consideration, Elia spoke again.

“Grandfather. Were there any hints?”

“A hint…… ah! She said this. That I was too rigid for my own good. Hahaha.”

To put it kindly, rigid.

To put it unkindly, narrow-minded.

So she had wanted to change that.

‘A method that a rigid person could never think of…… that’s what matters.’

She had given him that box wanting him to break through that internal limitation.

“Ahem. Well then. If you open it, I’ll grant you a wish. And if someone in the family opens it for me, well, I’ll have something to say to my wife when I see her. I’ll be seeing her any day now, and if I haven’t opened that box I’ll die with my eyes wide open.”

At the old man’s characteristically sharp-edged joke, Zayed grimaced and Elia worked to keep her expression neutral. Her mind, meanwhile, was running at full speed.

‘I think I can solve it.’

And if she did, he would grant her a wish?

A wish……

‘Should I just ask him to kill them all. Morgon, Catalena, and the biological father of this body. All of them.’

That would be simple enough.

That was the only wish she had, wasn’t it.

For those people to become the most wretched things in the world. To pickle their hearts in brine.

What required elaborate maneuvering from Zayed could be done with a single word from Gillian.

‘But…… after that, there would be nothing left to live for.’

Eating things like this was good.

Sleeping under bedding soft as feathers instead of a musty old blanket was good too.

But there was nothing beyond that.

Eating well, sleeping well. Occasional moments of pleasure.

She would laugh sometimes, and cry a little sometimes.

And perhaps, through all of that, she might manage to live like an ordinary person, as though being locked away so unjustly had never happened.

‘But even an animal can do that.’

Elia had lived as an animal for a long time.

She wanted to be a person now.

Because thought was the essence of being human.

So revenge, plotting and scheming for the sake of revenge, held a meaning for her that went beyond mere retaliation.

She didn’t know what she would do once it was over, but at least until then, she had to walk there on her own two feet.

She could accept a little help, but having someone else carry out the revenge itself was out of the question.

“Have you given it some thought?”

Gillian, who had waited through her silence, asked with quiet curiosity.

Elia blinked and came back to the present, then nodded.

“Help me once, someday. Whatever the situation.”

“Haha, help.”

“Then I’ll open it for you. That box.”

A promise was worth far more than a gift or money.

Because the one making that promise was Gillian Idmazel.

“Hmm. Very well.”

“Then please leave the box with me.”

“Treat it with care. It is something very precious to me.”

“I will.”

How to open the box.

After Gillian left, Elia sat without moving and stared at the box.

Even as Zayed went off to work and came back. Even when he told her to eat something. She refused and simply sat there.

A nightbird cried out in the distance, and then, in the blink of an eye, the small birds that open the morning began to chirp.

Time passed, and it was fully morning.

Elia stood up and rolled her stiff neck, and it had been nearly twelve hours.

“……”

She walked to the bathtub and began filling it with cold water.

Not for bathing. For an entirely different purpose.

Water poured out and rose in the tub. Elia watched it for a moment, then walked straight back to the bedroom and lifted the heavy box.

And then she…… submerged it directly in the bathtub.

There was no one to stop her, so it was over in an instant.

“Elia?”

A correction. Someone arrived one step too late to stop her.

Zayed, returning from his morning training, witnessed this catastrophic scene only after the box was already thoroughly soaked.

“……!”

His eyes went wide and he crossed to Elia immediately.

“Are you all right? Let me see. Are you under a lot of stress?”

In truth, Zayed had not the slightest interest in his grandmother’s keepsake.

So the box could do whatever it liked, for all he cared.

What he wanted to know was Elia’s state.

“Zayed. Hold that down. Press it to the bottom.”

“What? The box?”

“Yes.”

The thing was done now.

The box was wet, and being wood, it would warp. Cracks would have to form……right?

“Ah.”

Zayed opened his mouth and quickly closed it.

If the cracks weren’t visible, you made them visible.

A simple enough fact, and yet no one had thought of it until now, because of the rigid belief that the box must not be damaged.

“I think I finally understand what Grandmother’s hint meant. She really was a wise woman.”

Elia silently agreed with Zayed’s quiet murmur.

A shift in thinking seemed trivial once you’d made it, but making it was genuinely hard.

When you were fixated on something, other paths existed but you couldn’t see them.

“All right, it’s had a thorough soaking. What next?”

“Let’s dry it in the sun. Until the wood warps.”

After that, she didn’t know. They would just have to watch.

“When Grandfather finds out we soaked the box, he’ll be beside himself.”