Outside in the living room, the rest continued to contemplate the meaning of the riddle.

  Patrick looked closely at the words and had a small revelation.

  “What if there’s no mark at all? What if the answer was right there the entire time?”

  Confused, Leo asked, “What do you mean?”

  “The word right here. ‘Chamber’. It’s just a fancier way of saying the bedroom.”

  Connie’s eyes nodded in agreement. “It makes sense, nowhere on the paper does it say there’s any mark of any kind. Why do you know this though?”

  Looking at Connie, Patrick lightly said, “Nobles at Central would say ‘go to your chambers’ to me a bunch. They just like those big words more, makes them feel bigger, y’know?”

  With that said, they started to move for the bedroom, but Leo remembered Anthony had gone to the bathroom.

  Approaching the bathroom, he knocked on the door.

  “Anthony! We’re moving to the bedroom, c’mon out! The room that’s correct is the bedroom!”

  Silence.

  “Anthony?” Leo twisted the nob, finding it locked.

  “Anthony!”

  Leo banged on the door, something was definitely wrong!

  He backed up and braced himself. Right before he kicked the door, Anthony creaked open the door. A few sweat spots stained the back of his shirt, his expression eerily placid. His once anxious eyes held a new disturbing depth, a quiet intensity Leo hadn’t seen before.

  As if something new had taken him.

  Looking at Leo, he gave a calm smile, lightly raising his hands up as if surrendering.

  “Relax, Leo. I was just thinking a bit, I'm fine.”

  Leo sighed. “Next time, please just say something. You had me scared for a second. C’mon, the bedroom’s where the answer should be.”

  Leading the way, Leo brought Anthony to the bedroom where Patrick and Connie were discussing the rest of the note. But he couldn’t help but feel something strange from Anthony, his vibe was completely different from before, even more so after the loss of Sophia.

  Seeing Leo approach, Connie turned to him and pointed at the second line.

  “The second line, I think the ‘shine’ means the light, there’s literally no other light sources in this room that would shine or anything. I’m not sure what to do with that though as the other parts don’t make much sense.”

  Reading the note carefully, he repeated the note:

  “Bring in the ones that shine for decades but discard the broken in dozens.”

  ‘Shine for decades…? Bring in…Discard the broken…’

  Alone, the words didn’t mean much, but Leo realized from the first line that each word carries big meanings. He deduced it was most likely that the answer was, again, on the paper like the first line.

  Anthony snatched the note from Leo’s hands. “Let me see that.”

  After he finished reading, Anthony looked around the room, more specifically, the lights in the room.

  He muttered to himself. “When the sun sets…Shine…?”

  Looking into a corner, he looked as though he were staring at someone as he nodded. Looking at the ceiling, he looked at the stickers splashed onto the ceiling.

  “Connie, turn off the lamp, please.”

  “What? Why?”

  Leo backed Anthony, “Just do it, please.”

  Staring weirdly at the two, Connie turned off the lamps, leaving the room pitch black. Confused, Connie asked, “So, you gonna explain why we’re pretending to be blind now?”

  Ignoring her, Anthony along with Leo waited for something to happen.

  All of a sudden, the room was illuminated with small bulbs of light.

  No, it wasn’t light bulbs, but stars!

  Leo looked up to see a sea of stars shining down on the room. The light was bright enough for the group to vaguely make out each other’s outlines.

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  “So pretty…” Connie muttered in amazement. “You don’t get to see stars like this nowadays…”

  Anthony snorted. “It’s just glow-in-the-dark stickers, relax. But anyways, this seems to be the answer to the second line.”

  Leo nodded. “Yeah, but we only have the shine, what’s the broken portion of the line? Any idea about that, Anthony?”

  Turning to a dim planet, Anthony said. “Look, only the stars are glowing. Do you see any planets like this glowing anywhere?”

  Looking around, Leo realized none of the planets were glowing. They were still hidden behind the glow of the stars as if hiding themselves from the group.

  “Way to go!” Patrick exclaimed in amazement. “How’d you know to turn off the lamps though?”

  Anthony shrugged and smirked. “I guess I just got lucky.”

  Connie shook her head. “Alright, my bad…uh…”

  She paused, tilting her head as if in deep thought. Seemingly giving up, she skipped next to Leo and whispered so no one else could hear.

  “What’s his name again…?”

  “...”

  ‘They…don’t know his name…?’

  Leo whispered back, “Did I not introduce him?”

  Seeing her shake her head.

  Leo could help but feel second-hand embarrassment for Anthony, realizing nobody but him actually knew who he was. And why the hell was Patrick so comfortable with a stranger? Is this just how he is?

  He remembered how he had met Patrick at the first trial.

  ‘Oh yeah…he’s just like that…’

  Whispering her his name. She nodded and properly approached Anthony.

  “Great job, Anthony. My bad for not trusting you there.” She extended her hand.

  “Ah, it’s fine, don't worry about it. Let’s just get this trial done, yeah?”

  He walked past her, ignoring the hand, which she awkwardly clapped with the other hand with a tense smile.

  “Besides that, from what I read, the ‘decades’ and ‘dozens’ portions are pretty simple, it just asks us to assign each star a value of ten and each planet a value of twelve. With that, we add up all the stars and subtract all the planets from our number.”

  He pointed to the first line, directly at the word ‘nothing’.

  “Now, because we’re ‘nothing’. We start off at zero, the number representing ‘nothing’. Simple enough, right?”

  ‘Wow, was he always this smart?’

  Clapping his hands together, Leo sighed. “Right, let’s get to counting then…”

  Dividing the room into four, the group begrudgingly moved to their corners, each counting the stars and planets on each section.

  Once everybody finished counting, they assembled back at the foot of the bed.

  Patrick had a total of four stars and six planets.

  Connie had eight stars and two planets.

  Anthony had two stars and two planets.

  And Leo had six stars and two planets.

  Leo merged the information into his head. “Alright, adding that up is, uh…Does anyone know math?”

  Staring blankly, everybody just blinked at each other in complete silence.

  Patrick awkwardly raised his hand. “Uh, I’ll add them up, just…relax while I do it.”

  Everyone besides Patrick lowered their head, not daring to make eye contact with Patrick.

  ‘If I called this guy stupid…Then what am I…?’

  At this moment, Leo had one thing set on his mind.

  He needed to learn math, or at least the basics.

  Leo made a praying sign with his hands, silently thanking fate for having met Patrick.

  Leo knew without a doubt that without Patrick, they would never be able to solve this math problem, let alone the riddle.

  Knocking him out of his thoughts, Patrick smirked and proudly announced the results.

  “All done! After converting the stars into tens and planets into twelves, we’ve got a grand total of fifty six!”

  The only one to celebrate his achievement was Leo who began clapping behind him, causing Patrick to puff his chest out even more. Leo could feel his ego flying at this point. Beside him, Connie’s face turned more dead than usual at the sight, especially so when she glanced at Leo encouraging the behavior.

  “Alright, fifty six... What do we do with that?” asked Connie in a tired voice.

  “Connie, could you read the last line, please?” Leo requested.

  Pulling out the note, Connie read.

  “Finally, divide the honest mute. Perform these tasks to escape.”

  Everybody blankly stared at the piece of paper. It was an almost comical sight for him, he had never seen people so confused in his life.

  Until now that is.

  “Uh, are any of you mute?”

  Connie blankly stared at Leo, the disappointment practically oozing out.

  “So then what even is an honest mute?! Patrick? Any ideas?”

  He shook his head. “Frankly, I’ve got no clue.”

  “Antho-”

  Leo hesitated to ask him as he saw Anthony’s brain practically fry itself trying to understand the sentence.

  He quickly turned around facing away from his struggling friend, unable to face the hard scene before him. ‘Okay, probably not.’

  Connie frowned. “What is an ‘honest mute’ even supposed to be?”

  Leo came to understand one thing about himself today.

  He hated tricks.