She tapped her head again. Hinata shook his head to signal that it was all right, then summoned the courage to ask something he’d been wondering about.
“Akane, do you live here?”
She widened her eyes. “Of course not! I would never sleep in a dusty, dirty place like this. However, I do keep Hammy here, though I feel bad about it…”
So the sound of the hamster wheel had been coming from here. But the door had been locked. Had Hammy been all alone inside?
Hinata glanced over at the college students working at the long table. Akane rubbed the hamster cage and murmured softly, “I wish I could be with him all the time, but my family doesn’t like animals…”
This struck Hinata right in the heart.
From his perspective, the beautiful and mysterious girl Akane appeared to be was merely a mask she was always wearing. Maybe the reason he couldn’t be “head over heels” for her like Rui was because he couldn’t let down his guard around someone so careful to hide her true thoughts.
But her words just now had sounded genuine. Was there something going on between her and her family?
Just then, he remembered there was something else he needed to say to Akane.
“Um… I’m sorry that Chris bit you yesterday. Is your hand all right?”
“I’m fine. It didn’t draw any blood, so it’s no big deal,” she said, showing him her left hand. It was slender and pale, with no marks on the skin.
Whew! Hinata was relieved.
It was still strange, however. Normally, Chris would never bite a person unless ordered to do so. Even when he was panicking over a bug, Chris had never bitten Hinata. Maybe the spider had been really, really big.
As if on cue, Chris whined a little and tilted his head.
Across the room, Mayuka exclaimed, “Ooh, is that a fireplace?”
She was pointing to the wall on the left. There was a recessed area along the base of the wall, surrounded by a firm stone hearth. Hinata had never seen one in person before.
“They’re actually real! I thought they were only in fairy tales. You know, like Cinderella or The Three Little Pigs!”
Hinata and Chris went over to inspect it, too. There was an iron grate in front of the fireplace but no signs that there had ever been a fire burning there.
To either side, running from one edge of the wall to the other, was a long decorative relief, right at Hinata’s eye level. It was piled high with dust, but he could make out a bunch of chrysanthemum-like flowers carved into the wood. It was clearly very fine work, and little carvings of chickens, barely visible, decorated the spaces between the flowers.
“How funny. Look at these little chickens. Here and there… Oh, and there’s another one!” Mayuka said, pointing each one out.
“Chickens are everywhere here,” Akane said.
“Oh, like the rooster on the weather vane? But why chickens?”
“My great-grandfather operated a poultry business. It’s how he got rich.”
“Pole tree?” Mayuka repeated, dumbstruck. Akane giggled.
“It means he had farms where they kept chickens and produced eggs. In the past, eggs were a luxury item, on top of being nutritious, so they sold very well. Great-Grandfather owned several poultry farms and saved up his money until he could build this mansion. That’s why it’s decorated all over with chickens.”
“Ohhh, I see.” Mayuka looked around, then pointed at a faded rug on the floor. “There’s a chicken there, too! And there!”
“I never realized there were so many,” Yuuma said, rubbing his hands together. “I bet you could have fun just finding them all, like hidden characters at a theme park.”
“Ooh, I wanna try!” Mayuka said, folding her hands together in a pleading gesture.
Akane smiled and walked toward the door.
“Let’s go look upstairs, then.”
“Look at the glass piece hanging at the center of the chandelier. Is that shaped like a chicken, too?” Mayuka exclaimed, looking at the ceiling in the foyer.
“Whoa, dang. You’ve got good eyes,” Yuuma said. “You’re right; there’s even one up there…”
Akane was delighted. “Even I never noticed that one.”
Hinata glanced around, trying to join in on the fun. There was a chicken design carved onto the closet just past the front door. Another door across from it had a matching design.
Mayuka rushed over to the stairs. “Look here, on the railing.”
A round little chicken sat on the end of the handrail at the very bottom of the staircase.
“It’s so cute!” she said. “May I go up?”
Akane nodded, and Mayuka ran up the stairs. Toward the top of the stained-glass window along the landing was a very majestic rooster with long tail feathers. It looked a lot like the weather vane on the roof.
The upstairs hallway was built in a large U shape around the open foyer. You could look down at the entryway from the railing, and on the other side was a wall with several doors.
“There’s one here, too!” Yuuma shouted, pointing at the pillars of the handrail. Each one was engraved with flowers and chickens.
Hinata wandered down the hallway, continuing his search. “They’re on the doors, too…”
Four wooden doors each featured a different chicken design near the top. A rooster crowing, a hen turning around…
“What’s this for?” Mayuka asked, pointing to a metal ladder affixed to the wall. Looking up, Hinata saw that the ladder traveled through a large square hole in the ceiling. It was dark up there, and he couldn’t tell what was on the other side.
“That’s the ladder to get into the tower,” Akane explained.
“With the weather vane?”
“That’s right. But it doesn’t go to a room or anything. This ladder only exists so you can go up and inspect it. I don’t really know what it’s like, because I’ve never gone myself…”
Oh, I see, thought Hinata. The tower was like the mansion’s symbol, but it was only decorative, not practical. You could probably get a nice view from up there, but since the way was this dark, there must not have been any windows. Too bad.
“That reminds me,” said Akane, putting a hand to her cheek and thinking. “When Great-Grandfather passed away, they said he left a rather odd will behind.”
“Odd how?” asked Mayuka.
Akane chuckled. “My family thought it had to be a message referring to some hidden treasure, so they went crazy searching for it. But they didn’t find it anywhere. Eventually, everyone gave up. Apparently, they concluded it was just nonsense.”
Yuuma leaned forward. “This is the first I’m hearing of it. What did the old man say?”
“The message was ‘Search for the youngest chicken.’”
“That’s it?!” He laughed and clapped his hands.
Hinata shook his head. “B-but there are so many chickens here… And how are you supposed to tell which one’s the youngest…?”
“You’re right. I wonder which one it is,” Mayuka said, crossing her arms and looking at the ceiling.
“Hey, why don’t we split up and look for it?” said Yuuma, holding up a finger in delight. “Whoever finds the youngest chicken gets the treasure; what do you say? I mean, it’s more fun looking for hidden characters when you know there’s a prize at the end! Now then, on your mark, get set, go!”
He ran down to the end of the hallway and turned right, heading into the farthest room.
Mayuka pointed to the door next to the ladder and exclaimed, “I’ll search here!”
“Then I’ll take this one…” Akane opened the door to the left of Mayuka’s. She sounded like she was enjoying herself.
Hinata and Chris were the last ones left.
“Um, do you wanna look, Chris…?”
Chris glanced up at Hinata in confusion, as if to say he had no idea what was going on.