As My Husband Said, I Brought in a Lover

“Why?”

“I would like Miss Luize to track the movement of the beads from here. It’s much better to observe from a distance to get an overall understanding of their movements. There must be a pattern to it. We need to figure it out and find the bead.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for Elliot to do that?”

“My memories are connected to the bead. If I notice something, the bead might use another trick to escape unnoticed.”

“What about Aiven or Maxion?”

“Maxion can’t lie to me, so that won’t work, and Aiven, although trained as a knight, isn’t quick enough to respond immediately. If Miss Luize finds something, you should not inform us but act immediately to retrieve the bead.”

“Alright. I will do that.” Luize nodded.

Not long after Edward joined the group, Carlo shouted. “The vibration has subsided! It seems to have moved.”

“…Where to?”

At Aiven’s question, Carlo, who had been moving across the top of the bead hill, stopped at a higher point than where they had been digging just before.

“Here. It seems it moved here after we dug there, and it became lower. It doesn’t have intelligence, so how did it know to move from its lowered position?” Carlo furrowed his brow and scratched the back of his head.

Maxion asked Edward. “How about we just destroy them all?”

“Should we?” Carlo responded with a bright face.

However, Edward shook his head with a stern expression. “It’s impossible to destroy all of this without the village chief noticing in a short time. The bead might feel threatened and manipulate the villagers to use them as shields. It’s annoying, but until we find another way, we have no choice but to dig through the bead hill.”

“

.” Carlo threw a bead carelessly with a sulky face.

They moved to higher places several times and dug through the bead hill. The bead still seemed to seek out the highest point to hide deeply.

Luize felt something was odd when the bead hill became flatter like a plain, and the high points almost disappeared.

“Carlo! You said the magic stone you have rings louder when it gets closer to the bead, right?”

“

, yes. But now it seems all the same, which is strange.” He tilted his head in confusion.

“…It would be strange for the vibration to get stronger at the top if the bead hides in the deepest part of the highest piled area.”

Suppose the bead was moving around hiding in the deepest part of the bead hill. In that case, a diagonal lower position might actually be closer to the bead than the vertical highest point. Yet, the reaction only intensified at the highest point…

Luize’s gaze turned to the ceiling of the warehouse. The ceiling was an ordinary wooden ceiling without any special decorations, flat with nowhere to hide.

“Elliot, I’ll be back in a bit!”

“Okay,” Edward replied from atop the bead hill.

The men resumed digging through the pile of beads. Soon after, a loud noise came from the warehouse ceiling, and a hole opened up with a large noise.

“…!”

The hole was exactly above Edward, who instinctively reached out to catch what was falling. What fell was…

“

! I found it!”

Luize, covered in dust, holding a black bead in one hand.

* * *

Luize went outside and re-examined the exterior of the warehouse. The village hall’s warehouse, with a sharply pointed triangular gable roof, was tall.

“It looked like a flat ceiling from the inside.”

That meant there was a space like an attic between the ceiling and the roof.

Looking around, the village chief seemed to be inside the village hall.

The warehouse had high windows, not easy to climb. Luize stretched lightly and moved away from the warehouse.

“It’s definitely high, but…”

She ran at a fast pace, kicked off the warehouse wall, and jumped high. In an instant, she hung on the window sill of the third floor and lightly jumped to the attic window above on a diagonal.

“Compared to the trees of Peril, it’s nothing.”

Luize decided firmly and drew her sword, still in its scabbard, to break the window.

The moment her elbow touched the window, the attic window opened with a small metallic sound, as if it had never been locked in the first place.

Luize carefully stepped onto the floor of the attic. The room was filled with dust. The floor was covered with thick layers of old dust as if no one had entered for a long time.

Suddenly, there was a noise from outside. Someone seemed to be coming to the village hall. Luize quickly entered and closed the window, locking the latch.

“Village chief, are you here? My wife forgot the way to the village hall, so I brought the bead myself today!”

“Who is this! The weapon shop’s… isn’t it!”

Ignoring the faintly heard voices, Luize carefully entered the attic. Although the warehouse was tall, so she didn’t need to bend down, the attic was quite spacious as the warehouse itself was wide. Apart from windows on both ends, it was an empty space without any furniture or decorations. Even though she entered as quietly as possible, dust rose and floated in the air with every step.

“That’s…”

And in the middle of the warehouse, Luize came face to face with a palm-sized black bead. She tiptoed cautiously toward the bead. The moment Luize reached out for the bead.

The bead quickly moved away from her touch and shifted its position far away.

“Did it dodge?”

Luize looked bewildered between her empty hand and the black bead, now lying quietly at a distance just like before. She approached the bead again.

The bead dodged her hand again.

“So, it’s come to this.”

This time, she kicked off the ground, trying to cover the bead with both hands. The bead, as if sensing her intentions, quickly moved away from her body and stuck to the wall. The triangular shape of the ceiling made the narrow space between the floor and the wall a perfect hiding spot for the bead.

Luize lay down on the floor and crawled on her knees towards the bead. “Think I can’t catch you there?”

As she reached out her hand, the bead rolled to the side. Then, as her hand quickly followed the direction it rolled, the bead seemed to hesitate before jumping into the air.

The bead, as if warming up, bounced around quickly, then dashed around the attic as if to mock Luize, who had quickly approached it again.

At first, the bead could be seen, but as it picked up speed, it looked more like a black line strung across the attic than a bead.

Even the swift Luize could only follow it with her eyes.

“…How am I supposed to catch this?!”

As Luize clenched her fist in frustration, the bead briefly stopped in mid-air, moving leisurely in a figure-eight as if to taunt her. And when Luize stretched out her arm, the bead began to bustle around the attic again.

“Since it’s going to be destroyed anyway, it’ll be quicker to cut it.”

Luize watched the bead quietly, then drew her sword from its scabbard and closed her eyes. The sight was the laziest of the senses. The eyes couldn’t follow sound, and sound lagged behind intuition.

After taking a deep breath, Luize swung her sword down in one swift motion.

“…That must hurt.”

The bead was hit exactly by Luize’s sword. Not cut, but hit.

The bead, struck exactly by the broad side of the sword, fell down as if hurt, rolling this way and that.

“It really seems alive. Are you okay?”

Luize tapped the bead with her index finger. The bead trembled and then rolled to a corner, shaking violently.

Luize looked at the bead with a pitying face and shook her head. “I must be out of my mind to think a bead looks cute.”

The bead cautiously rolled towards Luize, gently bumping against her fingers resting on the floor.

“… I’m not fooled.”

After a tap and a slight retreat, the bead seemed to gauge her reaction before rolling into her palm.

“…”

Luize looked at the bead now caught in her hand with a troubled expression. The bead was still trembling.

“I said I’m not fooled…”

The bead, as if liking her body temperature, rubbed against her palm and soon calmed down.

“…Are you all better now? Does it hurt anymore?”

The bead moved slightly left and right as if shaking its head.

“Does it still hurt?”

This time, it moved up and down.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was trying to end it quickly without hurting you, but you bumped into me…”