The idea of hunting for treasure sounded fun, but…
There was something fishy about everything here.
Hinata turned left down the hallway and opened the door closest to the entrance of the house. He left it open, just to be safe. He was pretty sure that this was the room where Mayuka had seen the ghostly light and where Akane had been cleaning.
“Chris, is this where she brought you yesterday?” he asked. The dog just looked confused. “Well, I guess you found that bug and got startled, so maybe you don’t remember. Hopefully that spider’s out of sight by now…”
Before going inside, Hinata poked his head in to check for any insects. The left wall of the room was inclined to match the slope of the roof. There were two large bay windows in it, long and skinny and forming a point at the top. These had to be the windows where Mayuka saw the ball of fire.
Just to be sure, he looked through them and saw the front yard and the street beyond it. This was the spot, then.
Akane said she had been cleaning it up, but the room didn’t look particularly clean to Hinata. However, there was a selection of cleaning supplies including disinfectant and deodorizing spray on the table in the middle of the room, so maybe she just hadn’t gotten to it yet.
“Oh, right—the chicken!”
Hinata got back on track and started looking for decorations.
There was another artistic relief running the length of the wall here, like the one over the fireplace downstairs. But this one was closer to the floor, rather than eye level. Sure enough, there were flower patterns and a few hidden chickens among them. But it was impossible to tell which of them was supposed to be young.
Then he looked at the ceiling. There was no chandelier here, just a rounded glass light fixture—no chickens.
There was an old clock on the wall, but it was a cuckoo clock. No chickens there, either.
“Chris, sniff around for chickens!” Hinata commanded.
“Woof?” Chris just looked confused.
“You’re right, Chris. Sorry, I’m just joking.” Hinata laughed, hugging the dog. The action brought a dark-brown pattern below him to his attention.
In the middle of the wood flooring, wood of a different color had been worked in. And it was in the shape of a chicken! Hinata ran his fingers over the little chicken shape, which was about four inches to a side, and tried pushing it.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Seems like it’s just a decoration… And I have no idea how young it is…”
After another look around the room, Hinata took Chris back out into the hallway.
“I found it! The youngest chicken!!” Mayuka cried, hurrying out to the hall.
“Where?!” replied Yuuma as he rushed over. Akane came back to see as well.
“Over here…”
Mayuka grabbed Hinata by the arm and dragged him into the room where she’d been searching.
“Look at this!”
She was pointing at a relief near the room’s floor, much like the one Hinata had found.
“See this super-tiny one? I think it must be the youngest chicken.”
There was indeed a very small carving of a chicken on it, about five centimeters in size.
“Oh, but there was one about that big in my room, too,” Akane said coolly.
“In mine, too,” noted Yuuma. “Besides, it might be tiny, but it’s still got a big cockscomb on top and a fancy tail. It doesn’t seem very young.”
Mayuka looked deflated. “Oh… But how are we supposed to tell how young they are? If they have a big crest and tail, does that mean they’re not young?”
“…That’s probably why they all had trouble finding it, because nobody knows the answer,” Hinata mumbled.
“Crest… Tail…” Akane blinked, her long lashes fluttering, as she considered something. Then her eyes popped open. “That’s it! Wouldn’t a ‘young chicken’ just be a chick?”
“Oh! Th-that’s it!!” cried Mayuka and Yuuma in unison.
“Wow, Akane!” said Hinata. “That must be the answer!”
She smiled broadly. It was easily the happiest Hinata had ever seen her.
“So you agree that I’m onto something? Shall we look for baby chicks this time?”
“Yeah! Let’s try again!”
Everyone went back to the same rooms they had initially investigated.
“Not here. Not here…”
Hinata searched all over the room. He got down on all fours, peered up at every inch of the ceiling, and examined the decorative relief from end to end, looking for a baby chick. At some point, he’d gotten really enthralled with this treasure hunt.
Chris, meanwhile, yawned with boredom.
“I don’t see any chicks.”
There were dozens of chickens all over, but not one sign of a chick.
Eventually, Hinata gave up and headed out into the hallway to look at the posts of the handrail. As it happened, the three others were doing the same thing. They must not have found anything in the other rooms, either.
They scoured the walls, then looked up at the ceiling… And ultimately, four people and one dog met again at the top of the stairs, totally exhausted.
“I didn’t find anything,” Akane said sadly. “But when the family got together after Great-Grandfather’s death, they didn’t, either. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised…”
“We haven’t checked downstairs yet, though!” said Yuuma, refusing to give up. “Come on!”
The group stomped hurriedly down the steps, full of renewed vigor.
But the search turned up nothing once again.
There were tons more chickens to find, of course. They were on the walls, the ceiling, the floor—even on the tiles in the bathroom and washroom. But there wasn’t a single baby chick among them.
They searched the big room in the back together, but the results were the same. All they earned there were annoyed looks from the college students trying to do their work at the long table.
“We have to go soon… It’s going to get dark,” Mayuka said regretfully.
“Perhaps some other time…” Akane sounded just as disappointed.
As he watched a bored-looking Chris, Hinata considered a new thought. Chicks were younger than full-grown chickens. So what was younger than a chick…?
“…An egg.”
“Huh?” Mayuka looked at him. “What did you say, Hinata?”
“The youngest chicken isn’t a chick; it’s an egg!”
The others’ mouths fell open.
“That’s right!” Akane smacked a fist into her palm. “There’s no chicken younger than an egg! And Great-Grandfather made his fortune in the egg business, so of course it would be an egg!”
“Wow, I never thought of that…”
“But was there an egg somewhere?” Mayuka wondered uncertainly. “I didn’t see any chicks, but I didn’t see any eggs, either…”
Hinata said timidly, “There’s one place where it might be…”
“What?”
“Where?”
They all turned to Hinata.
“Um, well…”
He pointed at the ceiling.