CH 246

The Chicken Detective, Mia, Deduces!

Mia yawned when she woke up the next morning, even though she had gotten a lot of sleep the night before.

“Mmm… Hm… Anne?”

She rubbed her tired eyes and opened and closed them a few times.

She rubbed her eyes again to clear them when she couldn’t find her loyal maid.

“…Huh?”

Her eyes weren’t it. There was no Anne. No one was, in fact.

“My…”

She gave her head a scratch and got up. She looked around the dark cave with narrowed eyes and saw that she was indeed alone.

“How terribly odd… I think Anne was right next to me last night—Ah?!”

All at once, thoughts from last night came flooding back.

She thought back to the strange cry she had heard in the distance. It had been like hearing a person scream. On an island that was supposed to be empty, someone screamed. What in the world could that have been?

“We’re the only ones who should be on this island, right?”

Had they been mistaken? They might have had company. And maybe it wasn’t as human or as clear as she would have liked. For example, evil cultist ghost…

“Eek!”

She took a deep breath after feeling a chill run up her spine. It had felt too much like the cool touch of a ghost’s hand.

“A-Anne… Anne…”

She whimpered for her maid with a strained voice as she walked nervously toward the entrance of the cave. She couldn’t yell Anne’s name because that would give away her location, and then…it would know where she was. Or perhaps… they would.

“Eeeek! A-Anne! Where are you? Anne…”

She stuck her head out of the cave to see what was going on, but all she could see was a fuzzy figure running toward her. She was about to scream, but she stopped herself when she saw it was only Anne.

“Milady!”

“A-Anne…”

“Bad news! We— Waaah!”

Mia immediately jumped on Anne, which made her yell out in surprise. Still, she caught the body as it lunged and gently stroked its back.

“What’s wrong, milady? Did you dream of something bad?”

After a few kind words of reassurance, Mia was finally able to calm down.

“Wh-Where were you, Anne, all this time? And where did the rest of them go?”

“That’s right. I’ve got bad news. Before I go into more detail, it’s best to wait until everyone is back, but Miss Esmeralda has vanished.”

“Huh? Esmeralda disappeared? What do you mean? How?”

Sion, Keithwood, and Abel eventually went back to the cave, and Nina came back with them.

“When I woke up in the morning, milady Esmeralda was nowhere to be found,” Nina said.

“Esmeralda is…gone?”

Nina could only do one thing: nod. She couldn’t say anything else.

Esmeralda was nowhere to be found, even though everyone had gone out to look as hard as they could.

“Hm…”

When Great Detective Mia saw this mystery, she thought of a few possible answers right away:

(1) The day’s events made Esmeralda feel like an outsider, so she had a temper tantrum and ran away from home. Cave. Whatever.

(2) She couldn’t ignore the Call To Adventure, so she went to the mysterious island to find out more about it.

(3) She was hungry, so she went out to find something good to eat.

All three are just as likely as each other… Or maybe it’s because of something even more stupid that makes no sense…

Mia gave a head shake and a sigh.

“Oh, that girl, I swear…”

“She could have gone by herself to the spring. Maybe for a bath in the morning or a drink of water,” nervous Nina said.

Mia nodded.

“Hmm, you’re right… She seems like the kind of person who would say that the only way to start the day is with a glass of ice-cold spring water straight from the source… Let’s go look around the spring right away.”

“Stay put.”

Sion put up a hand to stop the fight.

“There’s no reason for us all to go together. Could you go to the beach, Keithwood? Keep your eyes on the sea and cover as much of the coast as you can.”

“I guess you think she went to see if the Emerald Star was back, right? Got it.”

“Both of those things. If they have a ship somewhere around here, which is unlikely, she might have thought it was the Emerald Star and been taken.”

Sion’s comment made Mia think of something.

That makes me think… They said that this cave might have been made by people.

If that was the case, it was very likely that pirates had used it as a hiding place.

“Unless she’s not coming back on purpose, we should assume she’s being held against her will by people who were here before or who came here by sea. At the moment, it doesn’t seem very likely, but we should be ready just in case. Be safe instead of sorry. I want Nina to come with me. As for you, Abel…”

“Of course, I’ll join the search party, too,” Mia said.

“I’ll go the other way, the one on the other side of the spring, and look there.”

As the self-proclaimed resident survival expert, this was her chance to show off.

She looked back at Anne.

“Sorry, Anne, but I’ll have to ask you to stay here. If Esmeralda comes back, keep her from running away again if she does.”

“Understood. I’ll do what I can to make sure everyone has food, too.”

They still had some greens left over from Mia’s trip to find food.

She had brought back a small mountain without thinking about how much or how useful it would be, but it was a big help to them now. The most important thing is that they all had the Keithwood Seal of Edibility.

“In that case, you’ll need to cut off the nodes on those stems, just like we did yesterday, and…”

Keithwood left while Nina was giving Anne a quick review.

“I’m sorry, Miss Anne, but we have to leave you here by yourself. Just hide if someone strange shows up. Don’t confront them.” Sion told her.

With that, he and Nina also left, and the last pair, Mia and Abel, got ready to leave after them.

“Okay, Anne, it’s time for me to leave, too.”

“Milady, please be careful out there.”

Mia and Abel quickly said goodbye, and then Mia followed Abel out of the cave. They were walking away from the spring in the opposite direction to get to a place she had been with Keithwood before.