Her manner left Kokoro uneasy. Is it about me? she wondered. Did I do something? Worrying would only make her feel ill, but Aki said, ‘OK then, see you tomorrow,’ and slipped through the mirror for home.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, WITH RION the last to arrive, all seven of them were together.

It transpired that Aki had already warned them all she had something to tell them. Kokoro was surprised to see it wasn’t only Aki who had something to say, but Masamune as well.

Kokoro wondered about this unlikely pairing. Masamune was the first to speak.

‘Hey, so I wanted to know – how seriously are you people looking for the Wishing Key?’

The group looked startled. Since only one person’s wish would come true, they all saw each other, as far as this was concerned, as rivals.

Which might explain why they’d hardly ever talked about it. The Wolf Queen had made it clear that if someone located the key, found the Wishing Room, and had their wish granted, then the castle would close down permanently, even before the 30 March deadline.

As the castle was still open, it meant no one had yet had their wish granted, but Kokoro could sense that everyone was still conscious the key was yet to be found.

‘I have looked for it, but not recently. I haven’t had time, plus it’s fun here.’

This was from Ureshino, whose bandages were off now. The gauze on his cheek had been replaced by a plaster, and he seemed to be in much less pain.

Masamune glanced over at him and continued.

‘Same for me. But we’ve all searched for it a bit, am I right? No matter what your own wish might be.’

‘I suppose,’ Subaru said. When the subject had come up before, he’d said he didn’t have any particular wish and would help Masamune look. But it seemed even he had done some looking on his own. ‘After the Wolf Queen explained it all, of course I wondered about it. Like – who knows, maybe it’ll just turn up. But it hasn’t.’

Aki nodded. ‘Masamune and I have a proposal. We think it’s entirely possible that someone has already found the key and perhaps has a plan to hide it until the last possible moment in March, or else is struggling to locate the Wishing Room. So we thought we’d ask you all.’

‘A proposal?’

Masamune and Aki exchanged a look.

‘The other day, the two of us just happened to be alone in the castle and we started talking about it. I’ll fess up – Masamune and I searched very hard for the key. We looked everywhere.’

‘We were told it would be in some public area, not in any of our individual rooms, and though it’s a big space there are only so many places to look. And believe me, I scoured the place.’