“Ren,” Adah said again, too excited by her new idea to keep her voice to a whisper any longer.
Ren didn’t take her eyes off the shelves she was searching through, and continued to flip open one book after another.
“I already told you what I know,” she said.
“That’s not it,” Adah said. “I don’t need a symbol from you.”
“Then get lost,” Ren said. “Or did Ciel promise to save you in exchange for distracting me? Well, it’s delusional—she won’t save you and you won’t distract me.”
True to her word, Ren’s search didn’t slow down at all. Checking these books didn’t take much brainpower in the first place, which was how Adah’s mind had gotten to thinking about all their nonsensical titles. And that was what led her to her breakthrough.
“I figured something out,” Adah said. “There are seven books with the same title in this library.”
“You would’ve figured that out sooner if you’d listened when Arthur explained the rules,” Ren replied.
“No, what I mean is,” Adah lowered her voice once more and crouched down beside Ren, “the only books that share a title in this whole library are the books we’re looking for. The seven copies of the goal book. Every other book is unique.”
Ren glanced at her, but immediately returned to her work.
“You can put on a very serious voice,” she said, “but it won’t make restating the obvious become important.”
“Listen to me,” Adah said. “Zoe and I both found books with the symbol for ‘of’ in them, but our books had different titles. They just happened to start with the same word. That means all of the symbol books probably have unique titles. When I was searching earlier, it also seemed like all of the decoy books had unique titles. That means if we can find two books with the same title, those have to be the books we’re looking for.”
Probably, at least. Adah couldn’t prove her theory beyond a doubt, but after searching all those bookcases, she had a large enough sample size to put some faith in the idea. More importantly, that theory offered her and Ren a way to win this challenge instead of battling over last place.
Whether out of a faith or desperation of her own, Ren finally stopped pulling books off the shelf and looked Adah in the eyes.
“And did you find two books with the same title?” she asked.
“If I had, I probably wouldn’t have stopped by here to tell you,” Adah said with a smile. “I was hoping you did. I brought the idea, so I figured maybe you could bring the luck.”
That was the other problem with her theory. Finding multiple books with the same title in this library would be just as difficult as finding the symbol books. Adah was essentially proposing to skip the first step of this challenge and move right into the search for the goal books. However, this way of searching would be even tougher, as she and Ren would have to work off their memories in addition to their eyes.
That’s why they needed a little luck. With all the random and gibberish titles in this library, two books with the exact same name ought to stand out. Adah was almost certain she hadn’t come across any matching titles during her search, but any further investigating would only make it more difficult to remember which titles she’d seen before and which she hadn’t. She had to hope Ren had noticed a match among all the books she’d opened.
Ren closed her eyes and rocked back and forth on her heels. In this crouching position, she looked like she might topple over and start rolling away. After some thinking, she opened her eyes again and looked toward the corner of the library where she’d begun her search.
“There was one, I think,” she said. “History of the Great World. I remember thinking it was a title that didn’t mean anything at all, so it stood out when I saw it again.”
For the challenge to work as intended, the goal book would have to have such a generic title. If there were too many unique or uncommon words in its name, then someone could decipher one symbol and then skip ahead to searching for the goal book. Though, that wasn’t much different from what Adah and Ren were trying to do.
“‘Of’ and ‘the’ are in the right spots, too,” Adah said. “That has to be it. Where did you find them?”
“One was in the very last bookcase on that wall,” Ren said. “Toward the bottom, probably. I feel like I wasn’t on the ladder when I saw it. The other… I think I found it at the start of the challenge, but I can’t remember exactly.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Let’s look for them,” Adah said. “If we both find a copy, then that basically proves the theory.”
Ren started to nod, but then turned her head to her left and right. Adah looked in the same directions. She and Ren were alone in this aisle of the library. Not that it should have mattered, Adah had kept her voice down after her initial excitement. No one should have heard their conversation.
Still, Ren stood up and got on her tiptoes to look over into the next aisle. Adah was too short for that, so she walked to the end of the aisle and looked across to the other side of the library. She didn’t see anyone moving between the aisles either.
When she returned to Ren, the girl held a finger up to her lips.
“They’ve stopped looking,” Ren whispered. “They must be regrouping.”
It was true, the library felt suspiciously empty all of a sudden. No one else was searching the right wall bookcases or the adjacent aisles, which most likely meant that Ciel’s group had found their fifth symbol book. Now they could regroup to decide who would search where for the goal books, and who would get the privilege of checking out the first copy.
Although that discussion had a foregone conclusion. Their victory belonged to their ringmaster, after all.
“Let’s not bother checking our work,” Ren said. “You go grab the copy from the bookcase at the end of the wall before Ciel finds it. Once you have it, bring it straight to the front desk. It’ll take me longer to remember where I saw the other copy, but I can retrace my steps and figure it out.”
“Are you sure?” Adah asked. “You’re the one who remembered where a duplicate book was. You could take the sure thing—it won’t be too hard for me to find the other one.”
Ren squinted at Adah for a bit, then shook her head.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “This was your plan, so you take the faster book. Just do me a favor if you win.”
“No need to ask,” Adah said. “I already know who I’d use my sabotage on.”
The two of them shared a parting smile before rushing off to search their respective zones. Adah ran as fast as she could, relying on all those circuit workouts Grace had put her through. Ren had given up the more favorable of the two options, and Adah didn’t want to waste that kindness.
When she reached the far corner of the right wall, Felt was already atop the rolling ladder and picking books from the upper portion of the wall. Perhaps she was pitting Adah’s own strategy against her by hogging the ladder while she searched for the goal book. Unfortunately for her, she’d chosen to start from the wrong end of the ladder.
Felt must have heard Adah’s footsteps, as she looked down from her perch to taunt her.
“Too bad, Adah,” she called out. “I’ll be busy with this ladder for a really, really long time.”
“All good!” Adah said back. “Don’t need it.”
She tuned out whatever Felt said in return and got to work reading the titles packed onto the bottom shelves. Adah’s search progressed much quicker now that she didn’t have to pull each book out and open its cover. She could scan the spines of a dozen books in an instant. To make matters simpler, she even knew exactly what she was looking for.
As such, she found a copy of History of the Great World after little more than a minute of searching. The book was waiting right where Ren had promised.
Adah smiled. There had been a chance that Ren was playing her this whole time. It could have been the case that she only remembered the location of one copy of the book. She could have been acting as though she was sending Adah to the easier spot while there was really no copy here at all. But in the end, Ren had played this challenge straight. She and Adah had worked together without stabbing one another in the back.
And if they could do it once, what was stopping them from teaming up in all the future challenges?
As to not waste Ren’s good faith, Adah sprinted to the front of the library. If Felt was still searching for a copy, then there was a chance that no one in Ciel’s group had found one yet. Adah could come out on top in this challenge with just a bit more luck.
However, she’d pushed her good fortune to its limit today. As Adah approached the front desk, Ciel was already handing a book to the fake librarian. The woman inspected the book’s title and handed it back to Ciel with a smile and congratulations.
As it turned out, all that luck was only worth second place.
Ciel must have heard Adah rush in, as she turned around before celebrating her victory. She looked at the book in Adah’s hand and furrowed her brow.
“You’re gambling?” she said.
Rather than answer, Adah simply handed the book to the librarian, who checked its title and returned it to Adah with the same smile and congrats she’d offered Ciel. As the book exchanged hands, Ciel’s head swiveled back and forth and her mouth fell open.
“How could you possibly have found it so fast?” she asked.
Adah shrugged and said, “I guess you’ll have to watch the episode to find out. It was pretty simple though—I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out.”
Ciel looked as though a particularly spiteful comment was bubbling its way up her throat, but the simultaneous arrival of Pirouette and Ren distracted her for a moment. Once the other two girls saw they were neither first nor last in this challenge, they didn’t bother fighting over who got to turn their book in first. Third place held no value over fourth at the end of the day.
With this small audience watching, Ciel turned back to Adah and forced a hollow smile onto her face.
“Since you’re so clever,” she said, “I’ll have to make sure the other girls stand a chance in next week’s challenge.”
A couple of manned cameras had moved into position around the front desk, and Adah noticed one was pointed straight at her face. If there was any moment during this episode to channel Heartbreak, this had to be it. Adah let the princess come out to play and gave Ciel a giggle in response to her threat.
It really was funny, after all. Adah had known from the very beginning that every sabotage was headed her way this season. Did Ciel think Adah would rattle from hearing something she already knew?
The remainder of Ciel’s posse returned to the front desk one at a time. Tiella was the seventh cast member to return, leaving only Zoe from Region 3 without a copy of the so-called “ancient texts.” As Tiella handed her copy to the librarian, a loud buzzer like that of a basketball game’s shot clock screeched from above.
The first challenge of the season had ended, with both its victor and its loser decided.