Adori remained silent for a while. Her heart was starting to beat fast. If she did not come up with something, she knew her secret would be out soon.
She could not have that. She could not let the man in front of her suspect her of the disappearance of the kids.
But she also understood why Elias was wary of her, and it somehow made her frustration even more damning than before.
After all, she perfectly saw how she could be the mastermind in his eyes.
A woman who suddenly appeared on the island three months before the disappearance. Not only was she secretive of her past, she was even good friends with one of the victim's mothers. And that said mother had a really bad reputation with the other residents of the island.
If she was in Elias' shoes, she would definitely suspect her too.
"Verdant was beautiful, yes. But I have my reasons."
"Would it bother you if I ask exactly that?"
Adori shifted on her legs. She never liked indulging people about her past. To her, the past was something which was meant to be left behind. Life was too short to be spent ruminating about what could have been.
And Elias was right to think asking about it would bother her—because it did, greatly so. However, even she knew she couldn't just dismiss the question for the second time.
The eyes that looked like it would pierce right into her soul was a good evidence of that.
"It's a family matter," she said, looking downward. "And a very personal one."
"I understand your reason for not wanting to talk about it if it's because of that."
Adori looked up at him with surprise evident in her face. She heard the man right, didn't she? At the very least, she thought Elias would ask her about what had happened even to satisfy his own curiosity.
"Oh."
Elias slightly moved his gaze away from her. Since they were at the port, he turned to look at the ship that was not too far from them.
"Family matters can be tricky," he said, voice low.
"You sound like you know about it all too well."
Adori looked up at him with a slight smile on her face. For the first time since she met the man, somehow, she was not feeling uncomfortable. Elias suddenly cleared his throat.
"But are you still keeping your last name a secret?"
His question shocked Adori a bit. It was not that she was averted to hiding her last name. The reason she did it was simply because she did not want anyone to trace her last name to her family living in Verdant.
"Yeah… I just don't want anyone to know who my family are, even by mistake."
Elias quickly turned to look at her fully when she said those words. He looked intrigued and shocked. His facial expression really betrayed his thoughts when he spoke again, with a calm tone.
"Normal citizens wouldn't worry about that. Not if they were born into a really prestigious family, so reputable in fact people could distinguish them just from their family name across the ocean."
Adori's eyes went wide at his words. She hadn't thought of that. In fact, she had not thought things through when she mentioned her family. She slightly peeked upward at the man.
He seems really good at using his brain.
Adori had been wrong—she had been utterly and completely wrong to put Elias in the same line as the other police working at the station. Just because he was so disheveled when they first met, Adori had thought of him as someone who did not take his work too seriously.
But she changed her mind. Now she knew Elias was someone who was really devoted to his work.
How else could he sneak the question and take her by surprise while she was being unguarded? Adori cleared her throat.
"That's a really bold thing to say about someone." Adori stared right into Elias' eyes.
"It really is not if it's the truth," he said, voice indifferent.
"I want to know why you seem so interested in my life." She tried deflecting the topic.
"I'm a detective, Miss Adori. And currently I'm investigating a really tough case about two disappearances. I think it is fair for me to know more about the residents of this island even if they are new here. Especially if they have a previous connection with the missing kids."
Adori couldn't think of a relatable comeback so she remained silent. In fact, she was starting to think staying quiet around Elias was a good strategy to not turn into a suspect—even if the man seemed to already think of her as one.
She turned her gaze away from Elias. Adori felt like going home now. She did not even feel like walking around the port looking for clues anymore. She looked at Emis who was lounging around as if bored, but was clearly perking his ears to hear what they were saying.
Just when she was about to make an excuse to walk away from Elias, the man started to speak to her again.
"You don't have to act so reserved around me," he gently said, still looking at her. "I'm simply doing my job here. Besides I don't think you have any reason to fear me, if you don't have anything to hide, that is."
"Of course, I don't," Adori blurted. The words came out as too desperate to her liking. "I just don't like the way you always seem to question me whenever we meet."
"Ah… then I apologise if that has been making you uncomfortable. As I said before, I'm simply doin—"
Elias could not finish his words as a man who wore a police uniform suddenly interrupted him. He looked like someone who was eager to make a report about something. True to Adori's suspicion, the man started spluttering his words the moment Elias was close enough to hear him.
"We couldn't find anything inside the ship—no kids, no clues and no one nearby who even looked remotely suspicious."
As the man was talking, Elias side-eyed Adori. She immediately knew what his eyes were trying to say to her.
I wasn't supposed to hear that.
But Adori was such a curious little human that she completely ignored Elias' gaze.
As if to reward her curiosity, another policeman hurriedly approached Elias to tell him something. The moment he was near the detective, this one too, hastily reported to him about the news he had.
"I just got a report about an old man entering the Whispering Forest!"
Elias pinched his nosebridge as if to let the two men see his disappointment in them. Besides him, Adori and Emis were quickly interchanging meaningful glances between each other.
"Since you seem to be busy right now, I think I better be on my way."
Elias simply nodded at her words, not even bothering to look at her. Without wasting a single moment, the woman and her cat were out of his sight. Elias took a deep breath as if to calm himself down.
Turning towards the two men, he wanted to say something—maybe scold them or make a statement so profound they wouldn't even think to leak information about their case to outsiders going forward. But looking at their completely naive faces, he changed his mind. The buffoons were not even aware of what they just did.
Elias took another sigh. He had wasted too much of his time on Ime Island already. It really was time to bring the case to a close and return home.
He had wanted this to be an easy job, he wouldn't lie. Three kids disappeared just the day after a fifteen-year-old boy went missing inside the forest. He didn't need to be a seasoned detective to look at the facts and think it was an open-and-shut case.
But it looked like he had underestimated Ime island a bit too much. Elias couldn't even get proper information from the residents initially because they were all too wary. Of what?—he didn't know.
Now Elias wouldn't call himself superstitious, but the way the residents talked about the boy when he came out of the forest alive and well, it would be an understatement to say he wasn't the least bit curious.
The Whispering Forest was a famous forest, and he was aware of it even before he took on this case. But he hadn't the least bit of an idea that the people around the forest were all so crazy about it.
It had been infamous for the amount of humans it had claimed. This was why the forest was acclaimed as one of the five Forbidden Zones of the world.
And rightly so, now Elias was sure. Because the way this case all had its roots in the forest was a bit horrifying.
And now, he got a report of someone's grandpa entering the forest—willingly at that.
The longer he stayed on the island, the more intrigued he became of the island's residents and its past.