32

“Yes. But no matter how I think about it, this is the answer. Giving a box with no cracks on purpose. Telling him to let go of his rigidity. And knowing Gillian’s nature, he would never smash it with a hammer…… putting all of that together, this is the only thing left. After drying in the sun, cracks will appear, and the puzzle will be solved through those cracks.”

“Then I’ll have to pray your thinking is right, sweetheart. But even if it fails, don’t worry. I’ll say I was the one who put it in.”

Zayed stroked her hair and pressed his lips to her temple.

Elia accepted the touch without thinking, then tilted her head.

“No one’s watching. Why?”

“What do you mean, why.”

“I’m just curious why you’re being affectionate when no one’s looking.”

The guileless question left Zayed momentarily at a loss.

It was a fair observation, so why did it sit so strangely?

“Shall I stop?”

Hiding the fluster with practiced ease, Zayed turned playful.

He pressed his lips to the line of her slender neck and dragged them slowly, and Elia flinched.

“You like this.”

“……No I don’t.”

“Then say you don’t like it. I’ll step back nicely.”

He said that, but the arm around her waist only pulled tighter.

He found the contradiction absurd even to himself.

But what could he do.

Right now, he simply didn’t want to let go of Elia.

Those four nights had been devastatingly good.

“Haven’t you rested enough by now?”

“……It’s daytime.”

“What’s wrong with daytime. I won’t go as long as last time. Grandfather is here, after all.”

At his coaxing, Elia hesitated briefly.

But the words ‘absolutely not’ or ‘get away from me’ did not come.

That thing was strangely, unreasonably addictive.

“……The box will take time to dry anyway.”

Mumbling that, Elia turned and draped her arms around his neck.

“But I want to face you.”

“Whatever my sweetheart wants.”

This was not real love.

If one were to put a name to it, something like a simulated romance, perhaps.

Zayed lifted Elia into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his waist and felt a small satisfaction at being positioned slightly above him, looking down.

She was nervous about falling, but she had learned well enough that the nervousness was part of the pleasure.

“Mmh……!”

With her back against the window, she kissed Zayed deeply.

This was not Shell House. Anyone who happened to look up might see them.

But she didn’t want to change positions or move somewhere else.

“Hah……”

He drew her full lower lip in again and again, and they shared each other’s breath. When they finally pulled apart, Zayed pressed his forehead to hers and made a suggestion, very casually.

“Should we open the window. Just a little. Sweetheart.”

“If we do…… the sounds!”

“Yes, sounds would slip out. We’d have to be careful, wouldn’t we. Have to hold it all in.”

Zayed’s eyes narrowed with mischief.

He enjoyed teasing Elia.

He wasn’t actually going to open the window and let some random person hear her. He had already dismissed all the hidden guards from the corridor before coming in.

But saying this made Elia recoil, and that reaction was very entertaining.

“If you keep…… doing that, one day you’ll really regret it, mmh!”

“I look forward to it.”

Now, hush.

No more words needed.

He didn’t undress Elia today. The mere thought of someone outside catching a glimpse of her white skin made his stomach turn.

Slick, wet sounds soaked the peaceful morning.

The sky was clear and cloudless, but somewhere it seemed to be raining, because the newly replaced carpet was ruined all over again.

***

That afternoon.

The box dried completely, just as Elia had wanted.

Aquanta’s sun was fierce enough to make it possible.

Sprawled across the bed and watching the box, she directed Zayed with a tilt of her chin.

“Pick that up and shake it.”

“Like this?”

“Yes. Does it make any sound?”

“It doesn’t seem to make much of a sound……”

Zayed, doing it naturally enough, stopped short.

He had ended up just doing what he was told, and he found that rather funny.

Had he ever been like this before he met Elia?

Not once. He could say that with certainty.

‘Me, doing everything someone asks. How unfamiliar.’

And yet it didn’t feel bad.

Perhaps it was from growing up watching his grandfather shrink and fuss whenever he stood before his grandmother.

‘Then again, Grandmother was even more than Elia. She could command the great Gillian Idmazel like a servant with just a look.’

He was genuinely curious about what his grandmother had left as her final gift.

He set the box down on the bed and began examining it with her, turning it this way and that.

Elia studied the cracks that had appeared.

She pressed here and there, tapped, and even rolled the box around, and then, at one moment, let out a small sound of realization.

“This outer layer was just a shell. You only have to peel it away.”

“Is that so?”

“There’s glass inside.”

Skeptical but willing, Zayed did as she said. And sure enough, a glass box was revealed.

“Inside this glass box there’s another wooden box.”

“And the lid of the glass box has a puzzle on it.”

This puzzle was very simple.

There were a few empty spaces, and the rest of the grid was packed with tiles. You just had to use the empty spaces to arrange the picture.

Elia solved it in her head just by looking, and smiled.

“Let’s take this as it is.”

“Without finishing the puzzle?”

“Yes. We should show him.”

She had thought the water would activate some mechanism in the puzzle, but it turned out to be nothing more than a shell.

So a hammer or a chisel would have worked just as well.

All that was needed was to let go of the rigid belief that the box had to be kept intact.

‘Even so, the box itself wasn’t damaged. And even if the glass had broken, there was another box beneath it, so the gift inside was protected all along.’

Elia felt a fresh wave of admiration for Zayed’s grandmother’s cleverness. And alongside it, a strong surge of curiosity.

What on earth was inside?

Judging by the size, it seemed to be something small.

“Wh, what! There was a glass box inside!”

The private sitting room reserved for their use.

They brought the glass box there and waited, and before long Gillian came rushing in.

The urgency in his manner was plain, and Elia stood and greeted him properly.

“Welcome, Grandfather.”

“How! How did you open it?”

“The answer was a shift in thinking.”

Elia gave a very brief account of what had happened. Gillian seemed to deflate and dropped heavily onto the sofa, doing nothing but stroking his beard.

“So that outer box…… was meant to be broken. Haha. I never knew that, all this time.”

“I think she wanted to tell you that what matters isn’t what’s on the outside. That the real importance is within. That’s my humble interpretation, based on the hint she left.”

Elia added that calmly and rested her hand on the tile puzzle on top of the glass box.

“I can solve this. But I wasn’t sure if you might want to do it yourself.”

“No, no. You solve it, my dear. I think you understand my lady’s intentions better than I do.”

My lady……?¹T/N: the term used is ‘noona’ but it seems out of place in this setting

Ah, so Grandmother must be the older one.

The intimacy of the word he must have used only between the two of them had slipped out, and Elia was so surprised she only laughed inwardly.

“Then…… I’ll solve it in front of you.”

Opening this box would make her someone Gillian cherished deeply.

She felt certain of it.

Elia’s slender fingertips moved the tiles a few times, and the glass box gave a sharp crack and split open.

Inside that box was yet another puzzle.

She solved that one too, and the box within that one too.

Elia worked through the puzzles without pause, and Gillian and Zayed watched in a daze.

“This is the last box.”

At Elia’s murmur, Gillian clenched his fist.

He was not someone who usually showed his feelings, but there were moments when even that was impossible.

Zayed gently chided Gillian, who was boring holes into the last box with his stare.

It was meant to ease the tension.

“You’ll pop an eye out staring like that.”

“What does it matter if I do. My time is nearly up. These eyes have had a good long run.”

“There might be nothing inside. Knowing Grandmother’s sense of humor.”

“Yes, that’s possible. Even so…… I’ll have opened it before I die.”

While the two of them bickered, Elia tapped through the puzzle. At the very end, she touched something, and the small box trembled, and from inside came a soft clicking sound.

A breath of tense silence hung over the table.

Three pairs of eyes fixed on the same spot……

The box opened.

Continued in Volume 2.