PUZZLE 2: THE PULLING TREES - ACT 2
Yaeko silently sits on the river bank as the sun rises, facing the sleeping Maiden.
I guess the detective didn't get any shut-eye last night…
I get out of Gaku's jeep, stretch out, and walk over to Yaeko's side.
I check the mount, and its land is still under the water.
"Sister, the satanic power has been activated," I gently advise. "The island will stay underwater until the puzzle is solved."
"No kidding," she bluntly replies. "I can't cut her down with all those crocs beneath her. I can't wake her up in case she panics and starts pulling the trees..." She grimly looks up at me. "All I can do is put pressure on you to find out if she's safe or not."
"I want that peace of mind, too."
Yaeko stands up. "Good." She moves closer to my face, and I feel her seethe. "Now what are you gonna do to get that?"
I look at Maiden again. My adrenaline spikes and my breathing quickens.
Huh?
I barely know her...
Where did this flood of worry come from?
"I need to see the photos of the trees," I say. "As well as the heat vision of the mound."
Yaeko quickly wipes a tear from her eye, then turns away to make a phone call. "Rin, I need you to meet with Sister Tsunagi."
⧗⧗⧗
In the briefing room, I stand before the screens on the wall.
Rin types away at his console, and a photo is presented across all the monitors. "Here's the heat vision photo of the mound, ma'am. You may be right. It's too cold to see any detail, especially with all that water around, but there's definitely a chamber of some kind in there."
I eye the empty area, shown in the darkest shade of blue.
I thought there'd be a clue there… but my hope was fruitless.
I sigh. "To be honest, Rin, I doubt Asaya's left some kind of clue to solve this puzzle, but Yaeko's insisting that he has…"
"I would trust her, ma'am," the operator affirms. "She's no academic, but her instincts are pretty good."
I smile at Rin. "All right. Let's do some investigating. Please bring up the photographs of all the trees."
"Yes, ma'am."
These various photos are shown on each individual screen on the wall. They each have an "N" (for the North tree), "E", "S" and "W" penned in their respective top left corners.
"There seems to be various scratches on each of the trees," the operative observes. "Most of which are minor."
"Hmm… Can all of these be made negative?"
"Sure thing, ma'am."
Rin types away, and all of the photos are desaturated to black and white, then their colors are inverted to make their markings more visible.
I step closer to the screens and look over each photo.
"Rin, please only show the East tree."
"On it, ma'am."
I scan over these trees. "There."
I point to two of the photos, which show two angles of one small "O" shape carved into the bark.
"An 'oh'? Or could that mean 'zero', or maybe 'omnipresence'?"
"It's an Eastern Arabic numeral. Number 'five'. Please show only the North trees."
"All right."
We look over the North trees.
"Thirteen," Rin announces, pointing at a carving of a '1' and an 'E' next to each other.
"In Eastern Arabic, that's 'fourteen'."
"Whoops. Heh-heh, close enough!"
I place my hand on his shoulder. "And the South trees, please."
Again, we spot the relevant carvings.
"That's definitely 'nineteen'," the operator calls out.
"Correct, Rin. And now the West tree."
We spot the small Eastern Arabic carvings for "23", which look like the modern numbers, but each rotated by ninety degrees.
It's just as I thought!
"Um… pardon me, ma'am," he interjects. "But how did you know that the 'O' on the East tree was Eastern Arabic? It could have meant anything else besides that."
"Because 'E' is the fifth number of the alphabet."
"Huh…?" He turns back to the screens, wide-eyed. Hey, you're right! 'N' is fourteenth, 'S' is nineteenth, and 'W' is twenty-third! Is that the clue we need to save Maiden?"
"It's likely… Excuse me, Rin."
I leave the briefing room and slowly walk down the corridor.
Those numbers corresponding with the alphabet… it's a little too obvious.
Am I wrong here?
Could they be another red herring from Asaya?
Perhaps my strange weird emotions are blinding me?
No.
I stop walking.
I'm right, and I can prove it!
I reach the professor's study, and knock on the door.
"Come in!"
I enter and bow to Kaisen, who's sitting behind his desk reading a hardback book.
"Professor, the correct trees can be identified with an equation, but I need to verify something, first."
"Of course, Miss Tsunagi. I wonder what you'll find, ho-ho-ho!"
I rush over to my research board, and look closer at the sketch of the four trees.
"This sketch… is it actually a plan of the puzzle, or of the trees Asaya worked under?"
"As they're not surrounded by any water, we can safely assume they're indeed his original workplace. But as you can see, he's nowhere to be found between them."
"Huh?" I turn to the professor.
"Page sixty-three." He closes the book he's reading, and throws it over.
I catch it the book on medieval torture devices. I skim through the pages, looking closely at each sketch inside it.
"There seemed to be quite the demand for wood back in the day," Kaisen hints.
Looking through a chapter on the materials used for those devices back then, I find an intriguing sketch. It shows the same four trees as on my research board's sketch, but with four additional trees planted in between them. "What the?"
"In reality, there were actually eight trees surrounding Asaya while he worked, at eight points of the compass."
I look closer at the book's sketch, and see a man in between them. "I see. So Asaya's workplace was ruined when they cut down some of his trees to build the torture devices. I initially thought he was satisfied with only four, but eight was better for the all day shade."
"Yes, and to add insult to injury, two of those remaining trees killed his lover."
I clap shut the book. "All right. So the puzzle can be solved mathematically! Each tree corresponds to a number, and the twelve sums of adding each of the four numbers result in various answers. Considering Asaya only planted four trees instead of eight for the puzzle, we focus on answers within the four times table."
"Ho-ho-ho! Well done, Miss Tsunagi! That means there's only one correct combination!"
"Right!" I close my eyes. "The only sums that work are South East, nineteen plus five equals twenty-four, East West, five plus twenty-three equals twenty-eight, and South West, nineteen plus twenty-three equals forty-two."
"And we know that Asaya's lover was killed by two parallel trees, and not by two trees side by side!"
My eyes shoot open. "Precisely! Maiden has indeed been tied to the correct trees!" I then sigh deeply as my excitement vanishes. "But whether she decides to pull them or not, though… is a different story…"
⧗⧗⧗
That night, in the briefing room, I tell Yaeko how to solve the puzzle.
She sits at the table, leaning back on the chair with her arms crossed and eyes deadened.
I sit on the table's edge, tapping my kneecap with discomfort as I face her.
"It's okay, sister," I say, breaking our awkward silence. "I'll handle it-"
"Shut up," she quietly commands, staring at me like I'd just hurt someone. "When bison are faced with a mountain lion, only one of them doesn't back away."
I pause as I read Yaeko's determination like a book. "All right. Got it."
