Secret Room?

One week has passed since I received the library's access from Maa. It's also been nearly a week since she went to the main family to do whatever she was summoned for.

That day, when boarding the carriage that was supposed to transport her, I and Syrus, the butler, were showered with warnings and suggestions for what we should do and shouldn’t do in her absence.

Yes, because Maa won't be here for a while, Syrus has taken on the responsibility of taking care of me. For the time being, it appears that I will not be taking any lessons from him, nor will he take over Maa's most specialized lines of work, but the basic tasks of waking me up and acting as a bridge between me and the other servants of the house are now his responsibilities in Maa's absence.

Poor Syrus. I couldn't help but understand his pain, for despite being people of the same household, we had the chance to interact a lot with each other. Added to that was the fact that he didn't like kids---or me, or both. Anyway, I believe there was no need for me to mention how awkward this sudden shift was for both of us.

Luckily for us, I now have access to the library, and by spending most of my time there, I was doing us the service of reducing each other's interaction to the very bare minimum.

To get back to the present, I was now standing outside the manor, holding a rope randomly found in the garage and wearing a thick coat, as winter was already setting in.

Being a rather indoor, borderline shut-in person, I never really noticed how cold it was outside, mostly because of the manor fireplaces.

I remember the embarrassment I felt when going outside to say goodbye to

Maa, I almost passed out from the cold. Having learned from my mistakes and was now prepared to face the elements.

WaIking past the seemingly unoccupied guards, I received intrigued glance from them but didn't mind them much as I continued my short mini-journey toward the back of the manor.

Upon arriving at my destination, I placed the rope on the ground precisely below the living room balcony, then began extending the rope across the wall to the either end of the manor where the library was supposed to be located.

The rope had already reached its end, and yet I still hadn't reached the corner of the manor where from within the library was supposed to end; there were at least five meters left before I could reach the corner.

As I had thought, there was something strange about the library's overall superficy. I didn't notice it at first, it was only after a while that it started buzzing me.

The library seems to be smaller on the inside than it was on the outside. While using the living room windows as a reference point to locate the library,

With this rope, I had deduced that there were at least five meters missing from the library, or to be exact, from the manor itself..

"Well, to be even more exact, It was not probably missing, but rather was most likely just hidden somewhere inside the library, a "hidden room" of some sort, if I could say so.

Having now received confirmation for my theory, I could now finally start looking for this hidden room. Rolling back the rope, I returned to the manor and stormed immediately into the library to start looking for the secret room.

"Haaaaaa." I sighed loudly, as I sluggishly laid my head against the desk table. It has been a week since I received confirmation of my "hidden room somewhere-within-the-library" theory, and yet, I still haven't found a single trace of it.

"Perhaps I was too optimistic." I mumbled internally.

At first, my theory concerning that "secret room"’s entrance was that it had to be hidden somewhere behind the shelves, which prompted me to remove every book off their respective shelves. task, which turned out, with my small frame, to be quite a tedious one. It took three days to remove every book from the wall, and all that to realize that there wasn’t anything of a hidden entrance anywhere. So in the end, I was left with no other choice but to put the books back on their shelves.

"It's quite ironic, isn't it? Earlier this month, I was starving myself to be allowed inside this library, only to, once allowed, run after a "secret room" I'm not even sure exists anymore. " I sighed.

"Where are you damn secret room entrance?"

It was several square meters that were missing from the library, so, though the result of my three days of intensive searching came to be quite a waste of time, I was still fairly certain that there was a "hidden" or at the very least, "missing" chamber between the library and the living room,

As I lay, wasting my time, a random thought came by,

"Perhaps it was hidden by a system similar to that which locks the library door." I theorized.

Taking off the ke- pendant Maa had given me to gain access to the library, I observed the mysterious yet quite banal-looking object.

The ins and outs were a mystery to me. But this key-pendant was, without a doubt, my first—no, this is my second—interaction with magic. With my first interaction with it being magic, at that time I was rendered unconscious.

"Nobility and powerhouses" mentioned magic several times, but since magic wasn’t the book's main focus, it was never made clear what and how else it could be used for. It’s for me just a very vague concept.

Concept which I know, only nobility can wield; and that nobility, particularly those of the church, are using it to materialize the barrier covering the human continent.

I was not sure how large the human continent is, but the barrier had to be extremely powerful to be able to repel monsters from all sides of the continent’s borders.

During the first few days I had access to this room, I spent an unhealthy amount of time looking for a book that would delve into how exactly magic works, but I still haven't found one that delved mainly into it. The majority of the books present in the library were math books, architecture books, and an unhealthy number of financial record books, which were, needless to say, of no great interest to me.

Well, I did discover something particularly intriguing about the barrier, specifically how it was set, but due to the unsettling nature of that discovery, I decided to avoid thinking about it while trying to actively try to forget.

"Hah…" I sighed, once again, my head still pressed against the desk, as I twirled the key-pendant around my finger.

It was then, suddenly, that the pendant, slipping through my finger, flew across the room.

Standing up, I followed the necklace where it flew to. When I arrived at the location, I saw where the pendant was, but as I was about to reach for it, I noticed something odd about it.

The pendant was glowing with a faint red radiance.

"What’s this?"

For a brief moment, I pondered whether it was safe to accept it. After all, this pendant was, as mysterious as it was to me, supposedly connected with magic, but even when opening the library's door it didn’t emit such a reaction. Yet, remembering that it was almost time for me to have lunch, and realizing I’d most likely need the pendant to leave, I made a decision.

"It can't be helped." I carefully reached for the pendant by its chain.

Even in my hand, it was still glowing as it did. In fact, I realized that it was glowing even more vividly.

"What on earth is going on with this thing?"

As I walked toward the door, I also noticed a change on the pendant. This time, the light was gradually fading. By the time I got to the door, the red light had already completely faded out.

Curious about the thing, I returned to the spot where the pendant had landed, and as I got closer and closer, the light gradually became brighter.

As much as I was curious and intrigued about what caused the phenomenon, I chose to put my research on the subject on hiatus.

After all, I had lunch waiting for me. Not that I was particularly hungry, but simply because I had promised a certain someone that I would never be late or miss lunch.

Having taken my lunch, I was once again on my way to hole myself up in the library. During lunch, I came up with several theories as to why the pendant reacted the way it did, but only one peculiarity theory made my heart boil.

One that suggested that that reaction was related to my "Secret Room."

Yeah, I know, I was too optimistic, but I am allowed to dream, am I not? "

And it’s not like there was a more likely theory that could explain that strange phenomenom. So what else could it be but my secret room?

Desillusions aside, I found it quite strange that while I, during these past few days, frequently passed by the spot where it had fallen, the pendant had never reacted the way it did today.

"Strange…"

I reached the library’s door, put on my pendant, and went inside. The first thing I did upon walking in was, of course, to head to the spot, which upon reaching, disappointingly didn’t provoke on the pendant the expected reaction. The pendant I was wearing was no longer glowing as it had earlier.

First, surprise, then disappointment, several sets of emotions swelled within me, before, desperate, I theorized, "Perhaps it only occurs at certain hours of the day,"

As likely as this was possible, it meant that I wasted my only opportunity of the day. It was, in the middle of the frustration of that quite possibly true realization that I took off the necklace and immediately realized, with both relief and surprise, that the pendant was glowing red again, just as it had before.

"Could this be…" Feeling that I had figured out the pattern of this thing, I theorized that, " … when worn, the pendant does not glow, but when taken off." while trying the said-theory.

As I expected, my hypothesis was confirmed.

"Only when not worn will it glow, and only if I stay in this corner of the room will it... react like this." As I retreated away from the spot the pendant accidentally flew at, the light emitted from the pendant diminished, but as I backtracked toward the spot, it immediately shone back to its former radiance.

"Which should mean that there must be something nearby that triggers the pendant to react the way it does."

Using the pendant in the same way that one would use a lamp in the dark, I

began wandering through the library in search of a spot where the pendant would be triggered to a strong reaction.

Search, which, a few minutes later, led me to a bookshelf pinned to the wall. Which quite puzzled me. After all, when looking for the "secret room", it was around this particular bookshelf that my quest for the secret room ended, but still, the intense light from the pendant told me there was something special about this one.

Once again, I took the books off the shelf and hung the glowing pendant as a source of light to get a better view of what was behind the shelves. It was then that I noticed, by the pendant light, a keyhole in the back of the shelves, deeply engraved in the wall.

Keyhole which I was fairly certain of not having noticed the presence when looking for the hidden room, I never noticed this keyhole on the back. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was never there.

A keyhole.

A key pendant.

"Could it be…"

Unable to refrain from my excitement, I inserted the key into the keyhole which immediately triggered what I heard was a loud creaking noise in the middle of the room. Looking toward where the noise came from, I saw it.

In the left corner of the room, where the wall adjacent to the living room was, a built-in shelf was slowly rotating on itself and, upon having made a half-circle turn, came to a halt, exposing a room behind it

No-that wasn’t it. It wasn't just a room. It was…

" … A secret room." I declared with a satisfied smile.