“I—I—”
“Adlet is our ally. He is a valuable comrade in our fight as we stand together against the Evil God. What did you think it was besides that?”
“…”
“You’re not yourself,” said Nashetania. “I apologize, but this is not the time to be making concessions to your jealousy.”
“You’re right. I should be protecting you. I haven’t been myself.” Goldof was looking at the ground. He was so humiliated he was trembling.
“Goldof, I noticed your feelings quite some time ago. But now is not the time. It really is not the time.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Let us forget this conversation,” she said.
“As you wish.”
Nashetania breathed a quiet sigh. “So even you can lose your composure at times. Of course, you’re still only sixteen. Still a child. I had thought of you as someone I could rely on, so I had forgotten.”
“…”
“We don’t understand each other as well as I had thought, I suppose.” Nashetania returned to her search, and Goldof stood there, paralyzed. Her manner gave him the impression that there was now a large rift in their master-servant relationship.
“Hey, let’s search the whole temple through one more time,” proposed Hans.
Adlet and Hans went into the temple together and checked again to see if there were any possible exits or hidden doors. But they couldn’t find anything, not even a trace. As they searched, Adlet was a little cautious around Hans. If they couldn’t find anything, maybe Hans might decide Adlet was the seventh, after all.
Hans nimbly clung to the ceiling, checking to make sure nothing was strange about any of it. “Hmmmeow. There’s got to be somethin’,” he said. It didn’t look like Hans was reconsidering his judgment. He didn’t even seem leery of Adlet.
That made Adlet a little suspicious himself—maybe Hans actually was the seventh, and he was just watching to see what Adlet would do.
“What’re ya doin’?” asked Hans. “Yer the one in trouble here. Keep lookin’.”
“Y-you’re right. Sorry.” Flustered, Adlet returned to his task of examining the floor. It was a frightening thing, for one among them to be an impostor. It made them unable to trust even those they should trust most. For the time being, Adlet couldn’t afford to doubt Hans. He had no choice but to bet that Hans was really one of the Braves of the Six Flowers.
“Nope, no exits here,” Hans said as he released his grip on the ceiling and landed on the floor. They had investigated the entire floor and every wall, and all they had learned was that there was no way out. “I’ve got no idea,” said Hans. “If yer not the seventh, that means somebody must have come in here before you did. But there’s no way in. What does this mean?”
“It must have been a Saint, after all,” said Adlet. “She had the power to create a way out, or the power to pass through walls. Or even a power that would allow her to close a door once it had been opened.”
“But Mora said there weren’t no Saints like that. So does that mean we should be suspectin’ her?” asked Hans.
Mora had asserted that she was informed as to the powers of every single Saint. She had also said that even a Saint would have been unable to enter the temple without leaving a trace of her passage. There was the possibility that she had been lying.
“That’d be premature,” said Adlet. “There might be one with abilities that Mora doesn’t know about. The eighth could be one of the Saints that Mora knows—she’s just hiding some of her abilities.”
“True. But then…that means this is a stalemeowt.”
“Yeah… Oops, I almost forgot.” Adlet opened up the iron box that he’d left in a corner of the temple. Fleeing from the others and fighting with Hans had used up all of Adlet’s tools. He had to restock in preparation for the next battle.
“Ya sure have a lot of stuff. Ain’t there anythin’ we could use? Like some kinda lie detector?” asked Hans as he peered into the iron box.
“All I brought with me are tools to fight fiends. If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve brought other stuff, too.” That was when Adlet found an iron bottle tucked away at the very bottom of his box. He pulled it out and started thinking.
“What’s up?” asked Hans. “Figured out who the seventh is?”
“No…not exactly, but…” Adlet thought some more. Then he pulled the stopper from the little spray bottle with red liquid inside. He spritzed some of it on the altar.
“What’re ya doin’?”
“Oh, this isn’t anything that major, but…”
“What?” Hans examined the little bottle.
Just as Adlet was about to explain, they heard a faint sound from outside the temple. Hans immediately ran outside, and Adlet stowed the bottle away in one of his belt pouches. “Has someone come back?” Adlet poked his face out the broken door, looking around the area.
Hans gave him a wave to signal that there was no trouble. “They might come back soon,” he said.
“We should hurry.”
The two of them searched the outside of the temple for any indicator that there was a way in. As before, they found nothing—no traces of anything unnatural and no footprints. They didn’t even get a faint feeling that something was out of place.
“What’re we gonna do meow, though?” asked Hans. “Things ain’t gonna be so great once the others come back.”
“We could give up searching here and look for the eighth,” Adlet suggested.
“Just at random?” Hans replied. “I’d like to find some kinda clue, at least.”
Adlet leaned against a pillar of salt, closed his eyes, and reflected. He couldn’t find any proof that the eighth even existed, to say nothing of clues as to the conspirator’s identity. But the eighth had to exist, because when Adlet had walked into the temple, the barrier had already been up.
